©Rossella Vanon

Rossella Vanon did not like being photographed and decided she would rather hold the camera herself. Today, she is a sought-after fashion photographer with a knack for creating colorful images wrapped in soft light.

About six years ago, Italian-born Rossella Vanon packed her bags and moved to London. The plan was to get a degree in sound engineering and work with music. But things took a different turn.

“It’s kind of funny how I fell in love with photography,” says Rossella. “I was always the one who ran away when someone took out a camera at a party. In fact, I hated being photographed, which is probably why I decided that I preferred being on the other side of the camera. Now I’m in control. There are no longer any crazy pictures of me with insane faces,“ she laughs. (more…)

©Konstantin Driess

Some photographers value the control and freedom that comes with working alone. Others prefer teamwork and a mutual exchange of ideas and inspiration. Konstantin Driess belongs to the latter category.

26-year-old fashion and commercial photographer Konstantin Driess has only worked as a professional photographer for two years. Still, in that relatively short amount of time he has managed to not only discover what he prefers shooting, but also find a talented group of people to do so with.

“We specialize in lookbooks and campaigns for designers, and shoot portraits, commercials and annual reports for business clients, says Konstantin. “I say we because we are a team. Most of the assistants, stylists and makeup artists are close friends of mine. Do you remember what it was like in school when you worked in a group with your best friends? It’s like that. Except we get paid.” (more…)

©Marco Fazio

Each month we highlight a certain item in Profoto’s rich assortment of Light Shaping Tools. (Previous articles can be found here.) This month we talk to Marco Fazio about a clever little tool that can be used for creating theatrical lighting effects: the Spot Small.

You can learn a lot about most Light Shaping Tools by just their names. Take the Spot Small, for instance. The Spot Small is a spotlight – a small spotlight. Well, it is not actually a spotlight, but rather a tool with a built-in lens, which you attach to a flash head to create a spotlight-like light.

The result is an even and circular light spread with sharp shadows and almost no fall-off. This makes the Spot Small the perfect projection tool. For instance, it can be used to project shapes and patterns on a background. It is for this reason that the Spot Small was made to accept M sized (66 mm) gobos. But you can of course also use put the spotlight to creative use as it is. The images London-based photographer Marco Fazio shot for Italian designer Carlotta Actis Barone is a great example of the latter.

“Carlotta explained to me that her collection was inspired by the early Twentieth century, the woman’s emancipation movement and the growing awareness of femininity,” says Marco. ”This gave us the idea to work with a spotlight and to use it as a symbol for the woman’s changing status in society during this time. In other words, we wanted to light the subject with a hard and very defined light with sharp shadows, as if she was standing in the limelight on a stage.”

There are several tools that can create this kind of light – the MultiSpot and the ZoomSpot, for instance. But these tools have the flash head built-in and have to be connected to a generator. Marco, on the other hand, wanted to work his D1 monolights. This meant that he needed a projection tool that is mounted directly onto the D1, and the Spot Small is in fact optimized for this very purpose. (more…)

Think you can’t take great portraits with just a single, unmodified light source? Think again!

Mark Wallace, for AdoramaTV, uses a Profoto D1 500 and some tricks involving a mirror to transform a bland, unflattering portrait into one with depth and pizazz. Unlike a magician, though, Mark’s happy to reveal his secrets.

Watch the video above and see more from Mark on AdoramaTV.

All video and quotes in this post are used with permission and ©Mark Wallace, all rights reserved; story is ©Profoto. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or repost elsewhere without written permission.

If you think it is difficult to make one kid sit still long enough to get some decent shots, try photographing five. Fstoppers staff writer Corey Melton experienced this first hand when he was asked to shoot comedian Jim Gaffigan and his growing family for Jim’s new book Dad Is Fat.

“I figured that this shoot could end up going in any direction,” writes Corey. “I have a 3 year old daughter at home and I know how hard it is just to get her to sit still long enough to get some decent shots, so I couldn’t imagine 5 all at once! Because of this I wanted to keep the lighting simple and straight up, but to light in a way that the kids could move around and still maintain consistent lighting throughout the shoot.”

Corey’s solution incorporated a D1 monolight with an umbrella and an AcuteB2 battery generator with an Acute/D4 Ring flash.

Read the full article at Fstoppers and learn how Corey used these tools to create a series of promotional images for Jim’s book.

All images and quotes in this post are used with permission of ©Fstoppers and Corey Melton, all rights reserved; story is ©Profoto. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or repost elsewhere without written permission.