JOVIAN // Season ZERO by Michael Loder

October 9, 2015 - So one of my closest friends growing up (and now), Michael Loder, has always had an appreciation for fashion, particularly street fashion.  He's currently now attending Kwantlen Polytechnic University for Fashion Design & Technology where he is looking to make contacts, learn the business aspect as well as the technical parts of fashion and design.

When he was unable to schedule a shoot with one of his photographers, he obviously asked his photographer friend if they could help (that's me!)  I'm sure most of you know I don't really shoot fashion but I figured I'd help a friend out until they could get what they wanted/needed.  

Anyway, we set off to Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver near the ferry terminal to get some of the shots.  Here are some of them:

Mike also brought along a friend who also attended high school with us: Anna-Angela Shishmanov.  I'm usually preparing myself to direct people for posing due to my lack of shooting models, and more of the general populous for portrait work but my god, was she a natural!  It's always such a breath of fresh air when you get a surprise like that!  

I figured since it was a relatively lax shoot that I would try playing with different editing styles that I took note from popular "natural-light" photographer extraordinaire, Dani Diamond.  This means shooting only to have the highlights properly exposed and then dodging and burning the rest accordingly, making sure that you have particularly your facial lighting on point before continuing.  Although I'm by no means near his calibre, I found this to be quite useful as you can see in the images of Anna and Mike below:

All-in-all, the shoot was a lot of fun - obviously with a few beers and mountaineering through rocky terrain!  It made me come to realize that I do miss shooting people which I hope you all won't mind as I hope to eventually hone in on people and music photography.  I look forward to working with him again in the future and of course, getting some sick threads!

In the mean time, if you're interested, you can check out Jovian here, and Mike's instagram here.