The Crew: A look behind a newly formed group of friends and a new family.
Allright, to get this new year started, I'll be sharing you a recent adventure day with my friends; A wonderful music video production team/ adventurist and artistic group of people. After my good friend Joshua Luna came to Hawaii for Christmas break, we started working on our second music video for his song, "How Can I Live Without You." With this music video came together a group of talented and creative people, we then later formed a close knit group that will continue to keep on going for many years to come.
About this group; we are made up of close friends from high school and new friends we met from our first music video production. With this formation, we brought together an amazing crew of talent and creative minds. All of these traits and each of our own personalities helped with making Josh's second music video a huge success. We learned from our first video and applied everything along with new ideas to this one. So who's in the group? In case you're asking, our group members are: Joshua Luna, Holo Kahiki Toves, Khol Kitagawa, Natasha Ogata, Whitney Maglangit and Alex Young.
This music video shoot brought us together to reform some old friendships and start a new one, while at the same time creating one of the best groups of people I have ever known. Im not going to get too technical with everyone but I'll just let you know that were probably going to be one EPIC production crew for the next music video or any other photography / video related projects.
Now I'll just post some of our photos from our recent adventure trip and explain some background stories on some of the photos.
Mars Luna (Joshua Luna) Casually strolling through lol. I was catching candid shots of everyone while we were doing our photos at Tantalus. We planned to take some photos on Friday morning at Tantalus, not sure what we would do but we all brought are A game and equipment just incase.
I always like to get photos of my friends, especially if its a day where we get to just go non stop on taking photos. The enjoyment we all have and the reactions they get when I get a epic shot of them, makes me want to continue my photography for as long as I can.
The girls were making a boomerang with Holo so I took a few snaps of them to capture that "Care Free" moment they had. It was an Aloha Friday so we all had to let loose for once, even when we all had this day off and free to hang out.
Making Whitney model-status famous.
New album cover for Josh?
We headed out to search for bunkers in Ewa beach side to shoot at but were unsuccessful, however we did managed to find the railway tracks and graffiti spot, thanks to Kohl. We came around the Kapolei area right before sunset and we rushed out to start shooting immediately. With the sun setting, there was enough light for us all to get shots of each other. We then moved onto the graffiti spot where it was spectacularly beautiful. I could see why people would want to come here and take photos or get epic street art done. Our group covered quite a lot of photos in here and I was able to put my Lume Cube light to the test. This was definitely a Friday to remember, hanging out with all of these amazing people, it made me realize how much meaning my life has and why I need to continue doing photography.
This drainage canal laced with graffiti art gives this spot a perfect backdrop for urban style photo shoots or just someplace different to explore on the island. There are quite a lot of places like this but majority are places that are best left kept a secret, to protect artists and their turfs and work or to keep undated people out who don't appreciate graffiti art and other reasons. Im pretty sure this place is well known since its close by businesses and many people came here to do photo shoots.
Buddy Kohl posing in front of a few pieces of artwork. I know damn well I can't make something like that with spray paint cans, that takes skills.
Whitney and Alex, a super couple! Catching some candid shots while they went exploring around.
Holo and Natasha posing around giving off that 50's vibe. Both them and Josh were wearing almost the same outfit, its like everyone unexpectedly decided to go for the 50's look that day.
Using the railway, we were getting creative with our photos and made Whitney like she was a lone traveler on a journey.
Lighting is key for low light shots and with this one, we came up with the idea that Alex and Whitney use the blanket while they were holding hands, to create an intimate photo. I had Natasha hold the Lume Cube behind them so that the light shines through the blanket. The results was this type of photo.
For my next series of shots, I had Kohl, Josh, and Natasha stand in the tunnel with the Lume Cube lighting them up. My idea was to get photos of a person in complete darkness with the only exception of being illuminated by a single light source to create a different type of scene. Here are the results below.
With the Lume Cube lights, theres so much you can do with it and its so portable its beats having to lug around heavy, huge, and expensive lighting sources if you're rolling on a budget or need portability.
Finally our last series of photos ended off with Natasha waving around our last colored smoke grenade. We saved one grenade from our last shoot we did with those and it came in handy for a final use. We had Natasha use the purple smoke grenade to create images with colored smoke, this time in the dark. I did the same concept again, using my Lume Cubeto light her up because with the flash running at the same time, it overpowered the image and the smoke couldn't be seen as well. She was dancing to a song while at the same time waving around the grenade as the smoke went off. We were all taking photos and I tried to get as many as I could before the smoke ran out. I was funny watching her dance, its like we never did see this side of her but she was in the moment and it made the shots come out perfect.
As the day came to an end, it was time to say our goodbyes to Josh and Natasha since they were going back to the mainland to finish up school. We had so many great memories and left some funny and good impressions with each other. I think it was mostly a laughable time together with all of them, mostly because of that game we kept playing on the tv hahaha. In all seriousness, we hope to keep this group together strong and reunite again for the next video because we know what to expect again and come out even better and stronger. As for the rest of us who are still here, we'll probably link up again soon and work on our own projects to keep our creative minds fresh and up to date.
Thank you everyone for being a part of my life, especially this newly formed group, its been the best working with everyone this past two weeks and I can't wait to have a reunion and work on the next big project. May we keep this connection strong and keep on filming and taking photos \m/
