Geisha Shoot with Sigma

The Competition

Sigma ran a national competition in association with Amateur Photographer to offer 10 lucky winners the opportunity to photograph authentic Japanese Geisha with professional photographer Dave Kai Piper. The competition was hosted on Photocrowd and to be in with a chance of winning one had to submit your best portraits.

I was delighted to come 3rd against some very strong images.

Peewee

Peewee is one of my favourite images and I’ve been quite surprised that it has not done better in competitions..until now…!

The original photo was taken at the Padstow Steam Fair, and this chap was part of the Wild West re-enactment group. It was taken outside against a tent with only natural light.

As you can see from the original image on the right it needed it bit of work to turn it into the final image below.

Final Image and Amateur Photographer Review

The Shoot

The shoot was on the roof terrace of the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, on what was a very hot and sunny day. After a brief presentation from Sigma and Amateur Photographer we sat with Dave Kai Piper to discuss the approach and ways to overpower the very bright midday sun. We set up the camera to underexpose the background to limit the ambient light then used a pair of studio lights to push some light into the models. We each had about 15 mins with the model but we were more than welcome to continue shooting without the lighting setup when others were using it. Fortunately the parasol did a great job of shading the model from the harsh light with a bit of careful selection of the shooting position so many in the gallery below were shot without the the lighting set up – can you tell which is which?

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