Darius (Wilhelmina) - in Ralph Lauren Polo

I've known Darius since about 2008 when he used to live here.  At that time he wasn't a professional model and was in the process of building his portfolio.   I was new to shooting fashion and models, so finding interested models wasn't easy,  Darius was one of the few models willing to take a chance and shoot with me.
We shot 3 or 4 times between 2008 and 2009.   In 2010 he left Bermuda to model professionally in South Africa and is now signed with Wilhelmina in California.

We bumped into each other last week,  at the model workshop where he was a guest speaker.   At one point he handed out his comp cards to the models and to my surprise one of the four images on the back was one of the shots we'd taken way back in 2008.  Later on he showed me his printed portfolio which also includes an image that I took. I actually still use this image in my model mayhem portfolio.  Here is a Link



After the workshop was over we had a chat and decided that if both of us could find some free time during the busy Fashion Week that we would try to get together for a quick shoot.  The free time ended up being on the Monday evening after the weekend of the main show.   I had just finished posting all the images from the show and was pretty tired, having slept only 11 hours out of the last 82. (about 3 hours a day for the last 4 days).

Darius had modeled the AS Coopers collection in the show, so asked them if he could borrow some of the Polo Line for this shoot.   When we arrived at the location the lighting was really nice.  The sun was just starting to set and was filtering through the trees.  This meant that nothing was needed lighting wise.  All these images are shot with just the camera, no flash, no reflectors.  Being so tired it meant as long as Darius was positioned in a good spot all I had to do was point and shoot.  Fortunately Troy Jennings was also shooting with us, so he was also able to find locations where the lighting was good.  We started at Southlands Beach and shot the first 2 collections there.  Once the beach became in full shade we drove to Horseshoe Beach where the cliffs are lower and there was still good light.

Very little editing was required for these images.  Being its a male shoot I dont like to smooth the skin in the same way I would with a female model.  Rough, hairy skin is much more acceptable for a guy.  So most of the editing was just removing a few obvious blemishes and scars.   Darius had asked if I could do some black and whites as well.  So what I did was edit 19 images and then apply some Lightroom presets to those images to give some different styles.  

Edited Image on the left.  Edited image with Lightroom preset applied on the right.

Click Image to Enlarge

 

 

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