Quattrofoto

Busy Times

quattrofoto — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 13:39:31 +0000

I’m afraid we’ve been a little rubbish at keeping this blog up to date recently. We’ve been quite busy with photoshoots, with a third fantasy shoot in our studio, weddings and even a food shoot. Keep an eye out for our next installment where we’ll bring this page right back up to date.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Russ

quattrofoto — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:24:45 +0000

AA0X0587-Edit-1, a photo by Quattrofoto on Flickr.

And finally, I just couldn’t resist doing a quick portrait of Russ

Filed under: General Tagged: lighting, Photography, portrait, studio

Gareth

quattrofoto — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:23:55 +0000

AA0X0492-Edit-1, a photo by Quattrofoto on Flickr.

Another one from our studio fantasy shoot

Filed under: Shoots Tagged: black and white, black background, fantasy, fantasy character, gaming, lighting, outfit, Photography, studio, sword

The Knight

quattrofoto — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:23:18 +0000

AA0X0431-Edit-1, a photo by Quattrofoto on Flickr.

One from our second studio fantasy shoot.

Filed under: Shoots Tagged: armour, fantasy, fantasy character, knight, lighting, outfit, studio, sword

Victorian Fashions

quattrofoto — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 11:34:17 +0000

We were approached recently by Wise Rabbit, who wanted some shots of their excellent period fashions for their website. It was another long day in our studio, but thoroughly enjoyable. There were three basic outfits to photograph on the day, a full length black 1880 period dress, a period underwear set complete with corset, and a period/steampunk inspired evening gown.

The Black Dress

The difficulty here was the detail within the fabric of the dress. Abi, our model (and the driving force behind Wise Rabbit) wanted us to show this detail as best we could and so we had to do something a little bit special with our lighting methods.

Abi is lit with a large softbox as the key, this is a nice flattering and pleasing light but not great at showing the detail. We accomplished this by adding two smaller softboxes, further away and placed to create shadows within the fabric which then brings out the detail. We could have created a much harder light but the use of the smaller softboxes allowed us to control ‘spill’ by feathering the light and we did still want to keep a nice soft look to the light overall.

The Underwear

We then turned our attention to the period underwear. Lighting was a much easier task this time as we simply used the large softbox on its own to create that nice soft light. We decided to use a high back leather chair we have in the studio to help balance the photographs and to help Abi relax and pose. This head and shoulders shot, although not used for the initial brief has made a very good facebook profile picture for Abi. We also shot full and three quarter length shots with this setup and included detail shots of the back of the corset, showing the lacing.

Steampunk Evening Gown

For the last dress we used much the same lighting setup as the underwear shots, only this time we added a warmed backlight to give more structure and depth to the shots. We also used a completely black background as we wanted to give the shots a more intimate feel.

We really enjoyed the whole shoot and are looking forward to working with Abi again with future projects. Once again we were blessed – although she had no previous modeling experience Abi followed our instruction perfectly and we came away with some superb images.

All costume and outfits by Wise Rabbit.

Filed under: Shoots Tagged: fashion, lighting, studio, victorian, wiserabbit

Majestic

quattrofoto — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:08:10 +0000

We recently visited Yorkshire Wildlife Park. Our work mainly involves photographing people, this is the sort of thing we like to do in our spare time!

Filed under: General Tagged: black and white, high iso, lion, majestic, Photography, roar, Wildlife, Wildlife Photography, yawn, yorkshire wildlife park

The Druid and the Empress

quattrofoto — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 22:53:55 +0000

It’s not everyday you get to shoot an undead empress, or a druid for that matter. This was the situation we found ourselves in recently after being approached to carry out a fantasy character shoot.

The brief was fairly simple, the client needed images of fantasy based characters of his creation (he is a writer) for publicity and possible publishing purposes. The job would evolve into two separate shoots, possibly more over time as models, costume and props become available. Our first assignment would be studio based – this would involve just two characters and they’d be set against a black background.

The first character would be an undead empress – it was our model Jessica’s very first assignment but we couldn’t have hoped for better she really pulled out the stops and gave it her all. The lighting took some time to get right, she remained upbeat and willing to keep at it throughout and we’d like to thank her for all her efforts.

Our second character was to be another first time ever model Andy, who would be our druid. Once again we could not complain as he did everything we asked of him and more besides – again we’d like to express our gratitude. Lighting was once more difficult to get right and as we’re perfectionists we didn’t skimp on the finer details, even going as far as hiding a flash within a small wooden box for effect.

The images here are quick edits – they’re practically straight out of camera with just a few minor tweaks. Our editor Izzy is currently working her magic and giving the images the full fantasy treatment and we hope to update our gallery very soon to include a few more from this shoot.

Filed under: Shoots Tagged: black background, druid, empress, fantasy character, gaming, lighting, studio, undead

Hello from Quattrofoto

quattrofoto — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 14:26:51 +0000

Hello and welcome to Quattrofoto’s blog.

We will try to keep this up to date and give an insight into our world of photography. Meanwhile, please feel free to contact us if you’d like to discuss anything to do with our photography services.

Filed under: General