Glamour Photography and Hensel Lighting
August 2005
www.rolandogomez.com
www.garageglamour.com
Samy's series of articles and interviews featuring professional photographers brings us this month, Photojournalist and Glamour Photographer, Rolando Gomez.
Michelle Ryther : Good afternoon and thank you very much for allowing me to interview you on behalf of Samy's Camera's readers & customers. I visited your website and was impressed. It's a really exciting site. Tell us a little about yourself and your work.
Rolando Gomez : Hi. I'm a photojournalist of two-plus-decades of experience in photography who started dabbling more into glamour photography back in 1999-and glamour photography has provided me some great success, otherwise I'd probably just be another by-line.
Even though I've worked as a PJ in 39 different countries and co-illustrated a cover story for Parade magazine back in 1999 with Eddie Adams, I took to the Internet my passion for glamour and the Internet being the "great equalizer" has created all my attention for my glamour work-over 500,000 unique visitors frequent our site each month.
In the past 42 months I've conducted 55 consecutively sold-out glamour photography workshops-one last year in Cozumel sold-out at $2,500 per person with no magazine advertising, only my website. Most workshops, like the one last May in Los Angeles, only cost a tenth of that per attendee, and most sell-out months in advance.
Most recently, my DVD, "Glamour Made Simple" has been selling like hot-cakes, off the web only. We're just now getting it out on Amazon.com and other places. One of the producers was the Gary Bernstein, a great glamour and celebrity photographer whose glamour books I remember buying.
Glamour has taken off with magazines like Maxim, FHM and the acceptance of Victoria Secrets into our retail markets for women and the Internet has added to that mix. As an example Jerry Avenaim and I spoke in 2004 at the Photo Imaging and Design Expo in San Diego on Hollywood style glamour portraiture and it was a big hit.
While I live in Texas and not Los Angeles, my glamour photography is less celebrity and more private, in-home glamour for those customers that don't want to go into the malls for glamour photos. My average customer pays substantial for me to come to their home - I think this is an untapped market with tons of potential - a purple cow, not a brown cow as Seth Godin illustrates in his book, The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (2003).
This year at Photo Imaging and Design Expo they split Jerry and I up since we did so well last year. Jerry had a successful and packed crowd to his celebrity topic, and my topic was on "The Art of Lighting for Impact" and it was a huge hit too-they stopped letting people in the seminar room at the San Diego Convention Center because it had over-filled-they stopped us because of fire-code limits. While I had no mention of glamour in my title, over half the questions during the Q&A were on my glamour photography, and over half of them were from female photographers. I was shocked at the turn-out.
Glamour photography is a genre that is a huge hit with a huge following of people, most aren't even pro photographers with studios, they are doctors, lawyers, taxi drivers, engineers, etc., and they want to shoot glamour as good as Jerry, Douglas, myself and others and they are willing to spend the dollars for the right equipment. You now see glamour or forms of it in wedding photography, portraits, and celebrity shoots (where it came from), and even in fashion, I call it "Flamour."
MR : What were a couple of your favorite shoots and why?
RG : One of my favorite shots was when I was in Cozumel last July scouting the location for an upcoming workshop. We took a boat ride to the far end of the island that was inaccessible by car. We get there, the assistants build the California Sunbounce scrim and fill the sand bags, and realize they didn't bring the stands to hold the scrim-so they held the scrim up, an 8 x 8-foot scrim, by hand all day. At the end of the day they were dogged, sure I gave them breaks, but they learned a valuable lesson and were tired. To give them a break, we went out in the water and shot the model in the water with a beautiful sunset (see pic below), but I also wanted to show the shore behind us, on the left to show we were in the water. What an image, and we took all precautions as this is dangerous too with portable flash, but for the assistants, all the play this image has received, they feel vindicated and are happy to be featured in the photo.
Another image, which I consider my "keystone image" was of a model out in the pool. I shot the image at the end of another person's workshop as one of his guest speakers. When his workshop was over, we came up with this impromptu image. I wanted to add contrasting colors in the water so I used a magenta and green Rosco gel over two heads pointing into the water. It was late, and I tried, and tried to get color in the water and kept failing-when I realized-here's your sign-that magenta and green cancel each other out.
I took the green gel off and added a Rosco CTO, bam, color in the water instantly. But I really love the image cause it has what I like to call the "smile," the perfect harmony of the corners of the eyes with the corners of the lips, like La Giaconda, or what is known as the Mona Lisa.
MR : Everyone, from the serious amateur to the professional photographer, knows that the right lighting can make a huge difference in the quality of your photos. But a lot of people are dismayed by the wide variety of choices. Why did you choose Hensel?
RG : Hensel is what I like to call the Mercedes-Benz of light. Most light brands will get you to point B from point A, but I need more than that. I need reliability and need comfort the shoot will go off without a hitch-Hensel doesn't pop breakers if I decide I want to shoot fast, though I tend to shoot slow and make every shot count, I have no worries-the light will be there when I need it.
Hensel products are safe, their Porty Premium is awesome, I can control the output up to 1/10th of an F/stop without touching the pack, I just use their unique radio remote controller, which is about the size of an Oreo cookie. I also want tight color-temperature in my shots, and I tend to shoot warm via white-balance manipulation on my camera, and Hensel lighting matches my requirements with that combination with accuracy. I see too many photographers who will purchase a digital do-all camera with more mega-pixels than they need for thousands of dollars, then spend a few hundred dollars on lights-they need to think the other way, without reliable "quality" light your camera is worthless.
MR : What Hensel products do you use and why? Do you use different products for different jobs?
RG : My favorite Hensel product is there Porty Premium 1200 .What an awesome source of portable power. I've used other portable products in the past, but with the Hensel I can actually use my modeling light to see while battery powered! The battery changes out in about three seconds and the pack also has an battery saver that automatically turns the pack off when it sense no use for preset periods of time-and when you turn it back it, it set back at the settings you had before. I use this system not only with their EHT 1200 Heads, but their lightweight ring-flash too. As I said earlier, you can control the pack with their remote trigger, even turn the modeling light on with the remote without ever walking up to the pack.
My other favorite, more for the studio, is the Vela 1500 system. I use it with their beauty dish and even have a special Hensel light adapter I'm experimenting with that mounts on the front of their EHT3000 heads. The beauty of Hensel, many companies make light modifiers for them, Chimera, Larson, and others. My favorite in the studio, next to the beauty dish, is a nice 3 x 4 soft box with a honey-comb grid. Sometimes I like to use 48-strip lights too, depending on what I'm shooting.
Another product I've been using a lot lately for a book on fine-art nudes called "One Chair, One Light" I've been using the Hensel Integra Pro Plus 500 mono-lights. This art series is shot mainly with a 7-inch 10- or 20-degree grid, and the monolight is perfect, as I set it in place and make my adjustments, then walk around the model without moving the light as I shoot. Monolights are great too in their slave mode.
While I do like keeping light simple, and I do a lot of one, two and three light set-ups, I believe in using the right tool for the right job. If I'm on location, the Hensel Porty's are the way to go. In the studio, the Vela system is great. When I do private in-home glamour, I take all three and use what I need as I never know what my customer's house may look like and I don't want to worry about extension cords all over the place.
MR : Do you think of yourself as a techie type when it comes to lighting and photography?
RG : Yes I do, as I feel it's important that you must understand the quality of the light itself, as well as the light's primary and secondary source. Too many people think a soft box provides soft light-that is not true if you move that box away from your subject as the box becomes smaller and harsher-specular in nature. At the same time, I don't believe in breaking out tape measures and a compass to do a 45-degree angle with a 2:1 ratio at ten feet, not for me. I believe that if you understand the sources of light, as well as the modifiers of that light or "think like the camera will think with that light," that you'll be more successful in lighting an image.
While Hensel gives me the security of quality light, my knowledge of the modifier I put in front of that Hensel EHT 3000 head is important too. Same if I put a Hensel Beauty Dish in front of any Hensel light head, you must understand what the head will do for you. The Beauty Dish is a great example, Hensel makes the only one where you can replace the center with a 7-inch grid, that is important for me when I do my grid-type lighting for impact. I get the grid-spot effect that is feathered by the rest of the beauty dish-two lights in one.
Lights are funny, they are long-term investments, cameras, especially today, are more short-term. Again, why spend pennies on poor lighting equipment when you have such an expensive camera, a camera that will last maybe a quarter of what your lights will before you replace them. Part of being techie is understanding you made a great investment in lights and why-not because you want the best, but because you want what you need to get the job done-remember, lights are long-term.
MR : How has Hensel helped you?
RG : I feel using Hensel lighting has propelled me to the next level. Hensel gives me the tools I need to excel to that next step-it's an investment that is paying off even more. Photography is like a pyramid, at the top are the Gorman's that use Hensel, at the bottom are the beginners that use whatever is inexpensive and goes pop, and most of those stay at the bottom for a long time as they don't make investments to progress in their photography. You have to invest in this career, from seminars to equipment, technology changes every Monday when the Board of Directors meet, and Hensel is very technologically advanced-how many flash units give you the ability to control your power output to a tenth of an F/stop, after you set your lights the way you want without moving your lights? While still giving you tight color-balance (Kelvin temperature). This is a digital age, Hensel is digital!
MR : Do you use any light modifiers?
RG :I use Hensel on occasion, softboxes often, my favorites are the 3x4, 4x6, and 48-inch strips, I use the 7-inch grids and the Hensel 22-inch beauty dish white.
MR : Do you have any advice for someone trying to decide what type of lighting to get?
RG : Think of lighting as a long-term investment. Buy a great system, like the Hensel Vela 1500 where you can start to "build-up" and add to it. The Integra Pro Plus 500 are great monolights too, and very inexpensive for the quality of the product.
MR : One last thing, I promise! I'd like to go back to the California Sunbounce. When I'm at your website, you gave some really thrilling descriptions of that shoot in Cozumel and working with the California Sunbounce. I'd like to quote a couple of lines from that article. Here's a quote that sounds like it comes right off a Mythbuster's episode or some other reality TV show. You said
"I thought my trip was ruined when on the first shooting day we were faced with storm clouds, thunder and rain throughout, though we still managed to get one beautiful sunset in, the image above, and thanks to the California Sunbounce Mini with a silver fabric, we limited the danger in the shoot to one light, as we used the Mini as a fill source from the flash unit--this image included all the necessary precautions, so please don't attempt this unless you have proper training."
MR : So it sounded like the California Sunbounce really helped saved the day on that shoot. And it really cracked me up when you go to say later in the article,
"While most creatives, including cinema industry folks in Hollywood use California Sunbounce products on location outdoors, I like it both ways - indoors and outdoors. Why not? The fabrics incorporated in the California Sunbounce system are interchangeable, from zebra, white, gold, silver and more, and you can even take their translucent material from their Sun-Swatter or scrims and shoot your light through them like a soft box."
RG : I'm glad you enjoyed that. Quotes are no problem. I actually have a 2-page article coming out in the August issue of Studio Photography & Design that features the California Sunbounce and Hensel lighting. Here's some links to look at too:
http://www.garageglamour.com/private/holley/hlightfren.jpg
http://www.garageglamour.com/private/holley/hlightbd10.jpg
http://www.garageglamour.com/private/holley/hlightbd.jpg
http://www.garageglamour.com/private/holley/holley973.jpg
My Favorite Beauty Dish
http://www.garageglamour.com/private/holley/holley988.jpg
All images are Copyright © Rolando Gomez.
www.rolandogomez.com
www.garageglamour.com
Join Rolando Gomez at Photo Plus Expo as he reveals California Sunbounce techniques at "The Art of Lighting for Impact-Make Thousands with the Glamour Attitude" seminar.
