Dave Block Photography » Fashion

Recent work

admin — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:08:25 +0000

Seattle is a limited market for aspiring models – there’s a small fashion industry and some local runway work for Nordstrom and the the like, but overall there’s not a tremendous amount of work to be had. If you’re from the Pacific Northwest and serious about pursuing a career in the biz, the path is to get some national exposure and move on to a bigger market. In any case, it’s always interesting to work with people who are interested in seeing what it’s about and helping them put together a portfolio of images to help get them on their way. Here are some images from a test shoot last weekend with Cari. She’s never done any modeling and this was her first time being shot professionally.

Gabrielle

admin — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:23:32 +0000

This month marked another big inflection point in life – after 2 years away from the corporate world, I decided to get back on the hamster wheel and resume the furious spin. I found a great job and I think it’s really going to be something I like, but it was a hard decision. Bottom line, being an artist is romantic and cool, but it doesn’t pay the bills…

The tradeoff to being a working photographer was doing a lot of photography that was, well, work. Shooting tons of events that all started to run together and all you shot was “grips and grins” without any creativity involved was turning my passion into a chore. I did get the opportunity to see and do some interesting things, as well as meet some great people, but I’m not going to miss parts of that particular job.

So now I get to choose what I shoot. I’m going to continue to shoot weddings and build my business there, because I really enjoy wedding photography. I’m going to keep shooting portraits of all kinds, because I love working with people and making them look their best. I’m going to continue to make beautiful images, because it gives me a profound joy that is different than any other passion I’ve ever had in my life.

In that vein, highlights from a recent shoot with Gabrielle. Enjoy.

Angela

admin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:03:07 +0000

Last week I shot with Angela, an aspiring actress and martial artist. She was great to work with and a lot of fun to figure out how to light and pose for what we were trying to do – we wanted to create some shots that were both dramatic and sexy but also showed her athleticism. It took me a while to figure it out, but by the end of the shoot it clicked that she reminded me quite a bit of Linda Hamilton.

These were all shot in my studio (i.e., my living room with all the furniture moved out), with either two or three strobes and a couple of different sets of softboxes and reflectors. Results below.

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Emily in the Rain

admin — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:47:28 +0000

Fall’s here in full force in Seattle which means it’s cool and wet most days. I’ve lived here 5 years now and I’ve adopted the natives’ obliviousness to rain – you pretty much simply go about your business, indoors or out. It does make outdoor shoots a lot harder though – blue skin looks cool in Avatar but less so on a model.

Despite the weather I did an outdoor shoot last week, designed around a rainy day theme – umbrellas and jumping in puddles were part of the plan. Because of the rain, we left the big strobes in the car and shot everything with a single off-camera SB900 flash – some shots with a small softbox, others with a grid. Knocked down the ambient light to create a moody feel and went for dramatic light and shadow in most of the shots. Emily was great to work with – not only totally fine with standing around in the rain for a couple of hours on a cold, wet afternoon, but a model who can visualize what the shot is going to look like and add to the process is so much easier and enjoyable to work with. Shots below.

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One Model, Four Looks

admin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:26:08 +0000

Sometimes it’s just fun to play around in post-production to see what you can do with a set of similar photos. I did a shoot recently – one model, pretty basic lights, gray backdrop, a couple of wardrobe changes – that gave me the opportunity to push the boundaries a little bit more than I usually do in post. I generally don’t edit this heavily for a portrait session (unless it’s for a specific look we’re going after) and definitely not for an event, but in this case the set of images were a great opportunity to work the pixels a little harder than usual to see what I could create. Results below…

Fashion Collar Shoot

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:15:31 +0000

Couple of pics from a fashion shoot I did a couple of weeks ago, and also the first time shooting with my new set of Einstein studio strobes. These were all shot with 2 strobes and a big fill card. Really delighted with the Einsteins – powerful, compact, portable (with the battery pack I can shoot anywhere, which brings a ton of flexibility to location shooting). The challenge on this shoot was working with a wide range of skin tones and outfits from white to black which all reflect/absorb different amounts of light – and having to work around a really, really ugly backdrop, which I tried to minimize as much as possible. In the end, it all worked out well.

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Steampunk Fashion Show

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:06:33 +0000

What do you get when you answer a call to shoot a fashion show from a company whose web site starts with “We are designers of clothing for outlanders, steampunks, reality hackers, and temporal misfits”? One very interesting night, a ton of creative energy, and some amazing things to shoot. The company is Lastwear, the site is lastwear.com if you’re interested. A couple of photos below.