New portfolio work: Girl Fight

I've been working on a street fighting themed series lately. I find it a really interesting subject to explore from the standpoint of story driven location lighting. You can view my earlier work in the series here and here. The latest iteration of this series focuses on a woman as the central character, reminiscent of the great movie 'Girl Fight'. In the same way that 'Girl Fight' benefited from the casting of Michelle Rodriguez as the main character, I was lucky enough to have a great model who really helped make the shoot such a success (Thanks Maria!).

Through a combination of stark lighting and post-processing techniques we were able to transform a simple suburban garage into a dramatic theater - it constantly amazes me what light can do.

Workplace Hazards!

The Tokay Gecko (Gekko gecko) is one of the most commonly encountered reptiles in Southeast Asia (This one is from Thailand, near the Burmese border). They frequent houses and man-made structures, coming out at night to hunt for insects and smaller geckos. They are quite enormous for a gecko, reaching lengths over a foot long!

Tokays are renowned for their their loud vocalizations. Their mating call, a loud croak, is variously described as sounding like 'tokeh' or 'gekk-gekk', from which both the common and the scientific name are derived.

Now this information is all well and good. What they don't tell you in the text books is that Tokay Geckos have extremely strong jaws (as can be seen from the well developed jaw muscles) and really enjoy to bite anything they perceive as a threat. Fair enough. Not only do they like to bite, what they really enjoy is to bite and then hold on - chewing on their victim the whole time.

I found this out the hard way, after my hand came too close to a Tokay and we both decided to mount a small scientific experiment into bite strength...