For the last two years I’ve decided to ease up on street photography and take what inspired me from shooting street and carefully craft my photos from it. Each session I try new things and develop new techniques. I had an idea in the beginning to shoot using a petrol generator to power a set of colored fluorescent lights. Now I’ve built a whole kit out of these colored fluorescent lights and use a small portable battery to power them. I really owe my models a lot for taking the time to come out and do these photo sessions with me, and for being super patient while I experiment with these lights, the scene and all the props I bring along.

The latest shoot was with the professional and beautiful Dana Safia. We spent the evening walking through Lavender, which is a sort of industrial park. My friends Rachel, Guy and Dan joined along for the shoot and after a few drinks we hit the streets to make some art.

We had a lot of fun, despite a sudden lightning storm interrupting the shoot, we nailed a lot of shots that I was quite happy with. It was also nice to make a new friend that evening and hear about her experiences modeling. This is not easy stuff, and we were all exhausted by the end of the shoot. Dana is just so cool, she had a lot of ideas and the shoot simply worked because of her.

My kit for this shoot was the Nikon D810, Sigma 24mm f1.4 ART lens, Nikkor 50mm f1.2 ai-s, Nikkor 85mm f1.4 AF-D and a Samyang 14mm f2.8. I use PTLens to correct the moustache distortion of the Samyang in post-pro. The battery I use to power the fluorescent lights lasts about 2 hours, so I need to be careful not to just leave them on during a shoot. I have a few other lights which are a bit of a secret, experimental lighting is really becoming my thing I suppose.