We had a nice little fashion shoot this week for Sense of Independence.  A women’s clothing store on Eglington Ave.  Some behind the scenes footage is below as well as 2 of the final shots they decided to use in their advertising.  It was actually a really fun shoot for me.  After a lot of initial setting up, we had the model simply stand on a queue and I fired the camera’s shutter off remotely the rest of the time.  Probably as easy an actual shoot as it gets in terms of camera operation.  Although the set up took a bit of time and was certainly not easy since I lacked a very necessary assistant on the day.  

On the topic of this shoot, we got to use our new Profoto 600 Compact monolights.  I was very happy to get to use these new lights.  They are especially awesome and they did not disappoint!  Certainly a great addition to the system.  We also plan on using these lights this weekend when shooting our on-water portion of Olympic athlete Jane Rumball.  We will be using them in conjunction with Alien Bee’s portable power units.  Should help us get all the portable lighting we’ll need for this shoot!

Our website is still under construction, I appreciate any feedback while we’re in the building phase and encourage anyone to make any suggestions.  Keeping in mind that work is still required on every single page of the site though.

Shooting in progress

View of the setup

Client reviewing live feed from camera

Thank you for reading!

David Dvir

Today was essentially our first gig as a group.  Crew of three, one model, and an amazing facility at our disposal.  All in all the shoot was pretty great.  I had a lot of fun, and I think we got just about everything we were hoping for, if not a bit extra.  Next weekend will be the closing end to this project shooting at the Rowing club.  Facing a few challenges about shooting on water, all the while looking forward to figuring them out.  

It’s an interesting thing this jumping into new challenges business.  I find the best way for me to learn is to get a small grip on things, and dive in head first.  It’s always going to come with stumbles, but from my experience I learn to walk a lot faster, and remember how to for much longer than by really  taking too much time learning.  Critics may disagree, and that’s fine as I really shouldn’t be giving advice anyhow, but for me.. I find everything much more fulfilling after figuring it out for myself.  Today being a prime example.  Next weekend’s shoot will likely be smoother, and even better.  So I’m comfortable with how well today went.  

Another point I should mention is exactly how impressed and honoured I feel in regards to my friends and family’s support.  Accolades are one thing, but really feeling like you’re making the right decision is an amazing feeling.  Something that has eluded me for a long time.  So thank you all.

Been a long weekend, looking forward to a nice long sleep tonight.  Behind the scenes footage, and the final cuts of the project to come once all shooting has finished next weekend.  In the mean time, a few more shoots are booked for this week including a very fun one on Monday (skateboard park), and a couple of others later.

Until then – dreaming of my studio…

Thank you for reading!

David Dvir

Had yet another long day today. I am not even certain what happened other than I got my first real great sneak peak at my studio, talked with the architect and really began planning on where everything will be. He asked if I will need any drainage out from the studio itself, and I wasn’t really prepared to answer. Will I ever need to simulate rain or use any sort of excessive water effects in any shoots? I’ll have to mull that one over.

Tomorrow I will finalize arrangement for shooting at the RAWC, and I will also scout since shooting will begin Saturday morning at 5:30 AM, and we will only have about one hour to capture everything we’d like. That means we’ll need a game plan. Ideally we will only need about 40 minutes of shooting, but I would still prefer to have as much extra as I can. The rowing shots will have to wait until either later in the day on Saturday, or perhaps the following weekend. After two days of shooting in total, I expect to have all the material we’d need to finish the project.

In the mean time, happy new year to all those fellow new years having peeps out there. I will likely be a little too busy to post anything in the next 48 hours, but hopefully I’ll have plenty of behind the scenes footage to add after the first shoot is done.

Here are some photographs of the studio to be!

Thank you for reading!

David Dvir

Sunday September 17th 2009 – Recovered from Blogger

A lot has happened in the last two days. I will have a website built hopefully by weeks end, I have secured a site for my studio, which should begin construction in under one month, and I have learned a lot of commercial-pre-photography as well.

Currently I am unhappy with my website. I’d like to great a simpler layout and something that I can use interactively to upload things like videos and posts. Luckily I have already found a friend willing to help out with this, and work has already begun!

There was much debate about the location of our studio. A lot of concerns about location in relation to surrounding population, as well as practicality of studio space itself. In the end, I’m happy with the choices we’ve made. The studio will be located on 740 Supertest Rd, Toronto Ontario. Pictures of the site and construction will come in the following weeks/months. Looks like our state of the art studio will be comfortably large, at a small cost to the convenience of location to our smaller retail clients. Hopefully they’ll be willing to make a slightly longer trek out to see us! If not, we’d still be more than happy to see them ;).

As of today, we have secured access to the University of Toronto at Mississauga’s Recreation, Wellness, and Athletics centre RAWC for some shots of our rower in their facility. This will be very helpful to add a lot of impact to our photographs. Imagine having our athlete working out with any number of sweaty goons behind her, their musky sheens spoiling my shot… gross.

Lastly, today we had a gig for a Corporate ‘Learn-to-Row’ at the Don Rowing Club for part of a corporate retreat. It was a fairly last minute job but turned out quite well. The best part is that thanks to my catching up with my editing over the past week. I was able to completely edit all the photos from today’s event and will hopefully be able to complete the transaction with my clients in the next couple of days. Fantastic turnover for photography :). (Some pictures of the corporate event below)

Thank you for reading!

David Dvir

Sunday September 16th 2009 – Recovered from Blogger

So this week is going to be pretty busy. I will be shooting an athlete (rower) this Saturday morning hoping to get some great shots for her to use for her sponsorship package, as well as some great shots for me to use in my commercial portfolio.
Planning for the week begins with a few items. First I’ve got to make sure I know what I’m going to be shooting and that the site is available for the day of the shoot. Luckily I’ll be using the Don Rowing Club, of which I am already a member, and I’m very family with the layout and course. So that saves me on steps one and two (scouting). I will have to think of all the shots I’d like to get ahead of time and make sure that everyone and everything that I need for the shot to happen are going to be there the day of the shoot. This probably means renting some gear as I’m waiting for a few more weeks until I get the toys I need to do this sort of shoot on my own. I’ll be renting battery powered lights and likely a camera and lens (Nikon D700 and 14-24 2.8 or 4.0). Since I’ve got 5 days until the shoot I might try some dry runs with what gear I’ve got now in order to make sure I don’t waste any time when we’re on on Saturday. For the day of, my production manager, Eitan, will be there assisting me as well as my friend Ben and perhaps some others. I still need to find an operator for a coach boat so that I can get some shots of my athlete from the water. So I’m hoping for a crew of 4 including myself and not including the talent of course.

In the mean time, I’ve got a lot of editing to work on since I’ve been a bit lazy in that department and I hope to get all of it done by tomorrow’s end since I’ve got a corporate event booked on Wednesday and I’d really like to have a clear plate from that shoot onwards. As I get busier it’s clear to me that time management is going to be a large factor to my success.

Lastly, I’d like to add that today I picked up my first Magic arm and I’m really enjoying the thoughts and ideas that are coming into my head just thinking about what I can do with this thing. Pictures to come shortly!

Thank you for reading!

David Dvir

So, this will be my first blog entry. For the most part, I’m going to keep these entries’ focus on photography, and everything I’m doing toward becoming a better photographer and hopefully successful at that!

Essentially this first post is just my way of making sure all of my networking programs like facebook and twitter and in a short bit of time my website are all updating this blog seamlessly and everything runs nice and neat. More posts to come shortly – hopefully about something photography related!

Thank you for reading,

David Dvir

Sunday September 13th 2009 – Recovered from Blogger