New Zealand photographer, Fiona Quinn, is back to bring us the quinn-tesential look in her recent beauty editorial shoots. The first utterly gorgeous shoot is care of an editorial Fiona shot for M2 Woman’s Magazine, titled ‘A Brighter Shade of Pale’. This was shot with the 28″ Mola Setti…

+ you can read Fiona’s thoughts on her blog post here from this shoot.

the second shoot was titled “Model Muse – Casey Lee” and was shot with the 22″ Mola Demi…

+ you can read Fiona’s thoughts on her blog post here from this second shoot.

WORKSHOP: Fiona will be running a photographic workshop next month at the end of October in Auckland, New Zealand. A few more details are available here on her blog.

We head back into the Southern Hemisphere again to catchup on some work by Sydney fashion and wedding photographer Jonathan Dear. Catching the last remaining autumn colours before they fade into winter, he organises a personal shoot with his model / muse, Nicole.

“I love the softness I can pull out of the Demi. It makes one amazing modifier for moving around a lot on location due to its size and weight. I find it is super efficient which allows me to shoot with lighter less powerful equipment which my assistants love!”

Here he is using a white Mola 22″ demi with stacked OPAL + PAD central diffusers with a white diffusion sock to compliment his ambient background. The demi and strobe-head was mounted on a boomstick for his assistant to walk around with.

and in this next shot, Jonathan turns the lights off and uses the white socked face of the demi as a small reflector to bounce natural light back into the model’s face.

Read up on his thoughts and some more shots on his blog post here. And his new website; www.jonathandear.com.

Fiona Quinn is back to bring us some stunning images from what she calls “…one of the most favourite shoot I have done”. Working with animals is never easy, especially with noisy equipment like smoke machines but “Othello was so chilled out we got away with it”. In this ethereal shoot, Fiona uses a socked 22″ Mola Demi as a gorgeous subtle fill light.

“I wanted the shoot to evoke the crisp chilly mornings of Spring when there is mist and magic in the air and a colour palette of light neutral tones with accents of metallics and peach.” If that was the brief a photographer was given, then Fiona nailed it and beyond!

Read up on Fiona’s personal thoughts and process behind this surreal shoot on her blogpost here.

and thanks Fiona for a behind-the-scenes pullback from the shoot…

Fiona Quinn and Team
(Model: Anmari, Makeup: Amber Haldane, Hair: Miguel lledo, Styling: Courtney Sanders, Retouching: Monica Chamorro)
www.fionaquinn.co.nz

spotted!

We spot a mola 22″ demi used by super NY photographer Brad Trent as he lights up Terry Lundgren, CEO of Macy’s. What we love to see here is Brad’s ingenuity in finding and setting up Mr Lundgren in an unsual backdrop, a pleasant escape from the typical commercial stand-in-amongst-your-business shots that a lot of execs have.

Here we see Brad use a big fill light to illuminate the scene and a gridded mola demi to provide the key light on the subject. In this way he puts the shadows where he wants them (i.e. on the subjects face) and has even soft illumination for his background and rest of the subject. Keeping the lights at a similar angle and distance helps eliminate competing shadows.

You can read about his thought processes from this shoot on his own blog post here and visit www.bradtrent.com.

spotted!

Today we spot a Mola 43″ Mantti and Mola 28″ Setti being used by the fabulous John van der Schilden for Elle Canada Magazine. In this July 2011 issue we see Tanzanian born model, Herieth Paul, grace the cover at only 17 years old. John takes to the rooftop with the big Mantti and smaller setti to create these gorgeous images. Location lighting and Mola equipment was provided by S1 Studios in Toronto.

and assistant Paolo Croistante making sure the Mantti didnt go anywhere…

more of John’s work over on his website:  www.johnvanderschildenphotography.com and sign up to the s1 studio newsletter to see more location shoots like this.

Heading back to New Zealand we check up on some more of Fiona Quinn’s latest beautiful work. Recently Fiona’s been very busy shooting outdoor editorials before the NZ winter sets in.
The shoot below was for M2 Woman’s Magazine. Fiona calling this editorial shoot ‘The Distance’, drawing on inspiration from a location she sourced literally by the side of the road. Head over to her blogpost on this shoot to read her thoughts and process.

Fiona uses a white 22″ demi up high with double diffusion (i.e. 2 diffusion socks) as some subtle fill for these shots. She shoots with the Hensel Porty Lithium 12.

Thanks for showing us your stunning work Fiona.
Visit her website; www.fionaquinn.co.nz and her blog; blog.fionaquinn.co.nz for more inspirational work.

Today we head downunder to Australia to visit Matt Lanham’s stunning work. Matt contacted us recently thanking us for creating the Mola Setti which he …”really started to fall in love with…” when using it on a recent swimwear shoot. The mola he was using was the 28″ Setti.

In his blog post from this shoot Matt comments;

“I purchased a Mola 28″ Setti a little while ago, and was quite fond of it, but it truly came out on its own in this shoot. It was fantastic at brightening up the overpowering sunlight, without destroying the sun’s strong shadow shapes. It also helped to brighten up Chelsea’s face and make her look incredibly glamorous. I could not think of any other modifier I would have preferred to use on this shoot other than the Setti.”

and here is some of his images from the shoot.
Make sure you hit his blogpost – http://mattlanham.com/2011-03/illustrious.html to read his further thoughts on the shoot.

thanks for the email and wonderful photos Matt!

Today we look at the stunning Mola work from Garigosa Studios in Barcelona.

Behind Garrigosa Studio we find Joan Garrigosa (Photographer) and Alex Torrens (postproduction), a collaboration that exceeds 12 years. Both have adapted very well to the fast change from traditional photography to digital photography, where in the demanding world of advertising is taking more weight, especially with the entrance of the postproduction.

Joan began as a photographer doing social reportage, followed by industrial photo work. Gradually he started collaborating with some advertising agencies in Barcelona. After a while, greater versatility has allowed him to work in all photo fields and for all types of clients and projects, both domestic and international.

Make sure you check out their website: www.garrigosastudio.com

Garigosa Studios shoots regularly with 3 of the Mola Softlights, the 28″ Silver Setti, 33.5″ White Euro and the 43.5″ White Mantti.

Here is some stellar images from 2 of their recent campaigns;

website: www.garrigosastudio.com

Thanks Joan and Alex for your incredible images!

Today we peek into the gallery of uber talented editorial photographer, Brad Trent. Just from the small sample of images Brad provided us below, you can see he is in high demand with his portrait work. Brad runs a New York studio called Damn Ugly Photography but his images are anything but.

We initially stumbled onto him back on a strobist blog post here, and found he had these words to say about Mola Softlights…

“I own… a 22″ Mola ‘Demi’, and we regularly rent the larger Mola Setti (28″) and Euro (33″) dishes. To me, they give you a much more interesting quality of light than simply tossing up a bank and they don’t generally have the problem of turning into sails when you find yourself out on a windy day! And with the Mola’s, the way they’re designed makes it much easier to get a soft light that still has a directional contrast to it. There is nothing I hate more than that ‘wall of light’ look….but then, when you look at my pictures you probably already guessed that!”

Visit his website – www.bradtrent.com and bookmark his blog – damnuglyphotography.wordpress.com to view some more stunning images.

Mola 22″ Demi – Bon Jovi

Mola 28″ Setti – Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Mola 28″ Setti – Edie Falco

Mola 33″ Euro – Astronauts

Mola 43.5″ Mantti – Steven Spielberg

Thanks for the fantastic share Brad!

Today we look at some more gorgeous images from Toronto based fashion photographer Matt Baxter. Matt is a freelance photographer specialising in beauty, fashion and editorial work. He has a long list of clients spanning from over a decade of creating amazing imagery.

This time the following images were produced using both the white 22″ Mola Demi and the 33″ Mola Euro together.

Visit his website – www.mattbaxerphoto.com and his blog – www.mattbaxterphoto.blogspot.com to see some more awesome examples.

thanks Matt for your stunning images!