Studio Fun - Character Studies.

Yes the holiday's are pretty much over, but they've surely kept me busy. I have not had any time to update my blog since November and a lot has happened since then. This is a quick post and I promise to post something else and with more details very soon. But for now - these studio pictures were taken as I ventured into "Character Studies". It was a fun shoot. I like the dramatic lighting so I went for that look for these characters. Enjoy!

Gaytan Productions Workshop - Ambient Light + Flash and Posing.

What a great day yesterday. Spent the day at Ramiro Gaytan's, "Ambient Light + Flash and Posing" workshop. We had three gorgeous models doing their thing, a makeup artist, a Ferrari and of course El Maestro. It was a fun filled day with a lot of teaching and learning going on, it was simply impressive.

I came away with a new understanding of lighting, and posing. I can go on forever on that, but let's get to the fun stuff... here are some of the images I captured in the workshop, I will try to add more pictures, especially the beach shots! I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed creating them, cheers.

Dramatic Sunset at Santa Monica, CA. Model, Consuelo.

 Little red Ferrari, baby your much too fast!

I was going to leave the color in on this one, but when I made it black and white, it looked so much better to me. Model, Mariana.

Watch out, this beauty comes with a warning! "HIGH VOLTAGE"! ;)

 

Ashley by the red door... What a natural beauty.

She looks like she belongs in that car!

And that's it for now folks... keep tuned in... And thank you for your visit.

Friends and Family Photo shoot

I gave myself a project this month putting together a friends and family photo shoot for the holidays (sort of). Although I could not get everyone in on the first session, I am very satisfied with the results of the shoot and look forward to the next one.

Below are some of my favorites from each of the sessions. 

I setup the studio lighting with the main light set to F8 and worked my way from there. I used a total of 4 lights, however midway through I turned one off to get a warmer, fuller lighting affect. Most pics are shot at F11 to get that warm feeling I prefer and love. 

This session was mainly shot as follows: ISO 100, 1/125 @ F11. The beautiful thing about studio sessions is the control you have over the light, like making cookies using your best cookware and cookie cutters... or at least that's what my wife says! ;-)

First up, Eleazar's family:

 

I love this shot of Eleazar - a Mexican singer, he's ready for his debut album.

I really love this photo...

Then we have JR's family:

Lovely family portrait. I love the fact they matched their outfits color, they're all very different, but then alike.

The girls were so easy to work with, they both loved seeing the pictures afterwards, kids love the camera if you show them the results...

Then we have Alvin and Courtney, these two are funny together...

What a great couple, look how beautiful they look together, but my favorite pic follows this one...

And here it is, I had a hard time containing myself after seeing this picture, it became one of my all time favorites immediately! I'm thinking I'll call the picture, "Love, Together".

Here we have Ruby and her rambunctious baby girl, it was a fun shot. In this shot, she was all but done and didn't want me shooting her anymore, I offered her a dollar if I could take a few more pictures of her, I asked her to try and look at herself in the 'mirror' (my lens) and she gave me this look. Immediately a winner.

Although I'm putting these out of order here, the following shot was at the start of Ruby's session, so both of the girls were ready. Look how beautiful they are...

Finally Ruby's daughter was done with me, so I took Ruby out of her mommy mode and placed her into the sexy mode, oh yeah Ruby, work it baby, work it! ;-)

Wedding with Master Photographer Ramiro Gaytan

I was both humbled and honored to be asked to join Ramiro Gaytan of Gaytan Productions to be his second photographer/ behind the scenes shooter recently. The event occurred on Sept. 30, 2010 and it was an all day event. My morning started at 6:00AM, after working a full night shift and getting about (maybe) 5 hours of sleep; and I'd do it all over again in a flash!

Ramiro is one of my instructors at our local Community Photography Center, an awesome resource for beginning, advanced and professional photographers, Tri-Community is  a blessing around these areas. To say that Ramiro understands the fundamentals of photography is an understatement. Ramiro is the type of energetic, approachable, willing to share his knowledge kind of guy, simply put, he's very good at what he does! He can step into a room, or outdoors for that matter, read the light simply by sight and call out ISO, F-Stop and shutter speed (and flash settings if needed) for any given light situation and be spot-on the exposure of that particular image; truely amazing.

Ok, so if you haven't already guessed by my continued admiration of Ramiro's work, style and overall personality, he is one of my inspirations, and I strive to one day (when I grow up) to be like him!

Some of the following images are the property of Ramiro Gaytan, copy-right Gaytan Productions, Inc. and are being used here with permission to show his work on my blog.

We started the with the groom Bryan, and his grooms men the morning of the wedding. We were welcomed into a complete strangers home and felt immediately the warmth of the day to come. It was an exciting and happy feeling floating in the household. 

I love the angle of the shot, the open space to the right and the dramatic clouds. It had just finished raining (it actually poured), we thought we might not be able to get outdoors shots, but the rain stopped enough to allow us to step outside.

And below is my behind the scenes of this exact same shoot. As you can see, Ramiro does whatever it take to get the shoot. My image is not enhanced, it is unedited; straight out of my camera. I want to show the rawness of behind the scenes with my pictures for this post...

Here the chaps line up for a groom's men picture, I love the way Ramiro directly Bryan's swagger, it makes him standout, look at the pride he captured.

My behind the scenes below of the same shot showing Ramiro getting his image:

And my personal favorites, I was holding one of the flashes for the shots, so I don't have a behind the scene's. However I have a few leading up to the shots...

I was amazed again by how Ramiro captured these images. Had I not been there myself to see the end results, I would have said, "these images were totally manipulated in photoshop" - but very little editing took place. These are practically identical to what was captured on location by correctly exposing the images in the camera by El Maestro! The tones, and blacks enhanced a bit and a little dodging was all that was done to these as I understand it. One word: WOW.

Here are my behind the scenes leading up to the bridge and groom's spectacular photos:

And as all good things, this post comes to an end, I leave you with one of my shots of the end of the rainbow from that day, what a wonderful day, what a great experience, I hope to be able to again soon. Cheers.

Kim Head shot session

This is Kim, an aspiring teenage actress who dreams of making the big time, she's very talented and funny. We headed out to one of the many beautiful Los Angeles parks to capture new head-shots for her portfolio. She was a little shy at first, but she quickly got over that and opened up during the photo shoot. What a fun day this was.

I love the photo with the sun glare in it. it's very vintage looking to me -  besides she 'owns' that look, work it! ;-)

In this shot we were going for, 'blow those bangs out of the way' look... I think we did a good job capturing that, don't you?

This is her Cleopatra look: 

Nice...

Sporty, but not too spicy, just right! This is a good look on her.

We didn't have much time to work with the available light, we had a late start (traffic slowed Kim and her big sister down). But my reflector helped a great deal. We also had a few outfit changes. To save time, Kim just piled on outfits on top of the previous one, very funny but it worked. I hope her agent likes her new pics!? 


Cheers.

Models at the Gardens in Covina, CA

My first ever post, wow! Ok, I will be doing as so many of my favorite photographers are doing these and creating a blog to constantly update what I am doing, and who and what I'm shooting. The goal is to show case a little of my work here. Please feel free to comment and drop me an email if you have any questions about hiring me to be your photographer.

Allow me to introduce myself - my name is Cesar Ayala and I am a photographer from the greater Los Angeles area. I have been photographing for quite some time, but only recently started professionally. It started out wanting to capture every moment of my daughter's life and I found I had a passion for it. It's an extension of my creative past, I used to paint, draw, play music (base and guitar) and write poetry in my younger days.

Here you can expect to see some of my work as I trot along and make way through the fray of the photography world. You're welcomed to comment, stay hang out and basically enjoy the views (as it where)... 

Sincerely,

Cesar

For the life of me, I cannot remember this gal's name, but every time I hear it, It's like, "oh yeah, how could I forget!". Anyhow, sweetie if you see this post, please forgive me, you were a wonderful model to work with; you are a natural! She plays drums and I'm yet to hear her play, but I've been told she 'rocks'.

Here's another shot of her, I just love her boldness, she looks like a drummer, doesn't she?

Fate, what a wonderful cheerful young lady. She was a blast of freshness the day of this shoot. After the shoot, she changed into her 'regular' cloths and she totally looks different from this look here. I would love to shot her again in her, 'just herself' look as it's very edgy and playful.

I love this shot of her, she has a great look to her. Her eyes are very intense and lovely.

My third and final model for this photo shoot was Elizabeth. She's a knock out as you can see.

 

What a wonderful smile, wouldn't you agree?