I talk to some of the attendees of our photo shoot on the beach in Cabo San Lucas. Unfortunately the batteries died in the middle of recording, so it ends abruptly and without an ending.

The sound of the ocean in the background is REAL. I promise.

Anyone who follows The Bui Brothers’ photography at all has probably noticed that we don’t really shoot many guys. We’ve done some headshots here and there and shot Schlomo earlier this year… but we’re REALLY lacking in guy photos outside of wedding/engagement shoots. Apparently we do fashion photography of women only.

Tracie not only pointed this out… but also offered a start to the solution. Micah is her friend and she set up a shoot for us and came up with the theme for the day as well… a silent film actor. Never much one for using a shoot day for only one look… I decided on 3 we all liked… and environmental portrait of Micah in his “element”, a fashion photography set, and the silent film set which was the point of the whole shoot.

The first was a simple environmental portrait. It shows Micah in his room… in front of a bookcase full of DVDs and small collectibles… and topped with a movie poster for Vertigo.

We then went out to the yard-ish area for a few “post-apocalyptic” (if the apocalypse destroyed everything but a nice stash of clean clothes and a garden gnome) fashion photography shots.

After this we hopped out front of the house for an shot lit from the front by a street light… with backlighting of the telephone pole, satellite dish and tree provided by the security lights of the restaurant out at the main street.

Then… for the main set… Micah changed into an interesting looking suit and Tracie applied a bit of makeup to create “creepy silent film Micah”. He was a lot like regular Micah except for the extreme creepiness and eye liner. We went down to Old Town Orange for these ones… the architecture there fit perfectly.

The video gives a small behind the scenes glance (literally just a glance) at the shoot. This is Tracie’s first video (she shot almost all of it AND edited the whole thing on her new MacBook Pro) and I think it does a good job (mostly due to the excellent choice of music) of properly creating a mood for the photos. Oh, and the video was shot entirely on the iPhone 3GS. Enjoy!

I received my new Alien Bees ABR800 ringflash last Wednesday… and have anxiously waited to have time to try it out. Finally yesterday I came over to Lan and Bonny’s garage… set up some lights… and did a quick shoot. So far I really like it. I do need to make sure to not overuse it… but when you have something new that’s inevitable. All the shots below are with the ringflash and 2 strobes behind and to the left and right of Bonny… at about a 45 degree angle or so. It took some time to get it right, and I was adjusting throughout… but I’m pretty happy with the way they are turning out.

One thing I didn’t realize that I’m going to have to rectify is that I definitely need an ND filter… many of the shots were done with the ringflash set to minimum power (1/32). Some were still too bright, at ISO 100 f/16. It definitely reminded me that I need to clean my sensor, though. Damn that thing’s dirty… shooting wide open all the time I tend to forget that.

Eddie Grey is an awesome personal trainer out of Studio 1 on 1 in Venice. Keats, Lan and I shot promotional photos of him on Thursday, and here are some of my favorites.

As it turns out, the body builder types we see gracing the covers of insecurity-inducing magazines at the checkout stand typically go through quite a bit for a couple weeks before a photo shoot… Eddie educated me a little bit on this. No amount of carb dropping or forced dehydration, however, can fake what’s not there… Eddie is the MAN and he is in SHAPE.

You can also see Lan’s images here.