Rahsaan also brought along local cyclist Stella Tong as well to model the women’s outfits. She was like the Asian MacGyver, she had a reflector (reflective car sun shade), flashlight and a bike shop in the back of her Xterra. Also big thanks to Roxie for assisting, Nick Saglimbeni for letting me borrow his AMAZING Canon 85mm 1.2L lens, and my boy Luke Munnell for letting me borrow… everything else! That’s right I didn’t even use my own camera or lights for this shoot.

A few items are available to purchase here.

On a serious note… on the day of the shoot, Rahsaan got word that his first cycling coach that brought him out of trouble, and on to a bike of limitless opportunity, had passed away. The cheetah marks on his uniform are symbolic of his coach nicknaming Rahsaan “little cheetah.” Pedal on big cheetah, you’re an inspiration to myself and many others.

“Ahhhhhhhh!!! The world is coming to an end!! Bring out ALL of the artillery! I don’t care if it’s from WWII, Desert Storm, or Grandma’s attic! FIRE!!… Oh and call Rokhsan in too, she’ll handle it.” Rokhsan “Roxie” Shafiei, her sister (Nabaht) and I got trigger happy and decided to work on a personal project. I’d never put Roxie in the line of fire of an Apache fighter helicopter. So obviously these images were pieced together brick by brick. The 3 guns attached to Roxie were loaned to me by my friend Ti Tong (who was obviously should have been born during the Wild West era), the dress was bought by yours truly at Ross, the ground is from the Salton Sea, sky from Anaheim, tanks from the Patton Museum, and lastly I couldn’t get an Apache helicopter and HUGE explosion picture without US Government clearance, so I opted for a stock image. Once pieced together the image came out to 1.22GB, possibly a new personal record.

My buddy Jeff Creech, the cover car photographer for this issue, proposed for me to do a step-by-step guide on how the Import Tuner covers are pieced together. The idea had been itching the back of my brain for a while so this felt like the perfect opportunity. I’ve done a lot of covers in my 5 year span of being an Art Director, so why not go an extra step.

Since the Import Tuner covers literally take 4-5 days to complete because of back and forth company approvals and basically lots-o-work, screenshots were taken over the time period and pieced together later instead of doing a time-lapse video. It’s a lot to cover in just 7 minutes.

…and yes I know I accidentally said “if you have any questions, hit me up, i’ll try to ASK any and all that I can” at the end, sigh lol.

At the time of this blog post, this issue is on newsstands.

For this shoot we collaborated for a jumping shot. Once the shoot was confirmed, I ran down to Big 5 to buy a trampoline… and how sick would it be to hit the rooftop button on the elevator and have the shoot on top of LA? Yea that’s what I thought too. Obviously these are highly photoshopped for the end look.

We tried a couple of outfits, the white “dress” worked best for the composition. I used 2 gridded Alien Bee 1600s flanking the model, and the Alien Bee ringflash for front fill… next on my ever-growing gear list are a couple of softboxes. It’s easier to see why the pros need assistants!

Introducing Marchesa, being honored with the FINAL shoot using the family of speedlights. And I can’t think of a better farewell shoot. After getting Marchesa’s (Mar-ches-ah) name right over the phone, we were volleying ideas back and forth about our upcoming shoot. I’ve been dying to try this spot out down by the Long Beach ports. The area is an industrial playground, so when I saw this small patch of vegetation under a freeway underpass, my mind was racing.

After some testing around with the lights and compositions, I was hooked on these pipes surrounded by palm bushes.

Shooting through the palms, which gives the photo more depth. Oh ya I shaved my head mom.

Moving a little further back, and Marchesa being a little more brave, I aimed for a super wide angle shot. Personally I think it’s much more challenging to pull off a successful image where the subject is small, rather than filling most of the frame.

Again big props to Marchesa for getting a little dirty to make the shot. It’s not as easy as it looks.

A setup shot showing the scene. The forward-facing tripod had to be edited out in the final version.

One happy customer! Looking for a tall model? Well, I’m 6’4″ if that tells you anything. You get the idea.

The next shoot you see will be with my new lighting setup. View my website for high-res shots of this shoot.

Next on my short list of models is the young and very talented Chelsea Knights. This was our first shoot, and conveniently, she lives just a few minutes away from me in Long Beach, so this shoot acted more as an ice-breaker. What was planned as an elaborate on-location shoot turned into a quick session behind my place in the alley of Belmont Shore! Not such a bad location, but expect to see Chelsea in front of my lens again very soon!

A lot of bloggable blogs were skipped when making the transition from one blog to another blog. (just trying to see how many times I can use the word “blog” in one sentence) Speaking of transition, I’ve strayed away from automotive photography, and hit the ground running with model photography. I have the equipment, I critique model photography everyday submitted to Import Tuner, now I just need to put up or shut up! I’m PUMPED! BRING IT ON!

SO moving on. I made friends with John Batte, a young photographer in SoCal, and him and his friend Nick lined up a “famous Asian model” for an impromtu shoot. I just wanted experience, so I joined, with my plethora of flashes, fully charged batteries, and a small family of lenses.

The “famous Asian model” shows up, and it’s Eri Moriyama! How could this be?!? It took me a second to finally register in my pea brain, but she’s quite well known for being a spokesmodel for Pepsi, Falken and Mitsubishi Security. What is she doing here, meeting us under a bridge in downtown LA doing a guerrilla photoshoot?

Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for John, he was the “cook in the kitchen” for this photoshoot. I was doing more of the creative direction. However I managed to get off a few shots behind the camera. I learned a lot my first time out on location for an on-location model shoot. Eri was incredibly professional and nice… so much that if she calls me at 3:25am because she needs an emergency ride to the LAX airport, I’ll have the car started in 2 minutes haha.

Eri doing her thing with Falken at Formula D Long Beach

One perk of working for a magazine is I get to meet a lot of amazing talented photographers and artists. On a shoot for Lowrider GIRLS (another magazine I design), we got to work with Nick Saglimbeni, a reknowned fashion/glamor photographer. His client list includes Maxim, SHOW, T.I., The Game, Vida Guerra, Kim Kardashian (what is she famous for again?) to name a few. Straight out of the camera the pictures are amazing, but that’s just the beginning. Don’t listen to me though, check out his newly redesigned site slickforce.com and his personal portfolio at nicksaglimbeni.com