Jason Tag Photography

Ella - Nude on a rock!

Today’s shoot with Ella was fantabulous!  It was so good that I had to make up a word just to describe it!  Ok really.  It went very well and we both had a great time working with each other again.  I just hope that she’ll be able to get back to Hawaii soon so we can work together again.

The location we used was a beach on the eastern shore of Kauai.  A place that is known for it’s natural beauty and a lack of a crowd.  We had a little trouble finding the parking area but it wasn’t too terrible.  Once we got onto the beach I had a feeling that this was going to be a great morning.  We headed toward an area of the beach that was mostly rocks with a little bit of sand.  And that’s where we started the shoot.

After playing with the rocks that were dry we decided to play around with some rocks closer to the water.  Ella got splashed a few times from the small shore break and I tried to time the shots so that we were shooting inbetween waves.  Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

A very cool tree to be nude in!

We ended up having to duck out of sight a couple of times due to people making their way onto the beach ad going about their activities.  We made the best of it though.  When we saw a fisherman getting his net ready, Ella put on a sarong that she brought with her and we continued to shoot.

On another occasion we ducked into a tree and shot there for a few minutes.  The tree ended up being very cool and no one bothered us at all.  I was glad for that.  I had read a few stories of people being harrased on Kauai for being nude.

Ella in lingerie on the beach

Towards the end of the shoot there was one woman who got pretty close to where we were so Ella pulled out an cute lingerie outfit that she brought.  It turns out that she’s just as beautiful clothed as she is au natural!  Who’d a thunk it!

All in all it was  a gorgeous morning spent in a beautiful place creating beautiful images with a beautiful person!  Not a bad way to spend a sunday morning…

Aloha,
Jason Tag

Peaceful Morning

Over the weekend I got the chance to shoot with Sylvia on Oahu. I was so stoked to be able to shoot with her on my island for a change. The ideas that talked about for this shoot was to shoot in and around water. so we headed to a location I’ve shot at several times. Instead of staying near the trails we hiked up the stream and into areas where not alot of people would normally go. We were rewarded for being adventurous with an amazing pool of water and a few small waterfalls. It was a gorgeous setting and a place that not too many people have seen before. Which makes it such a special place for me.

Flowing Water

One of the things I wanted to capture was water flowing around Sylvia. I wanted to try to slow down the water so that it appeared as a blurry mist flowing around her body. So we spent a great deal of time on it. One of the problems I found was that it wasn’t easy to get the camera to go dark enough to allow me to get a long enough exposure time. Even with the aperture set at ƒ22 I was still getting overexposure at .5 second exposure times. I knew that in order to really blur the water I’d need at least 1 second exposure times maybe longer.

When it wasn’t working at one part of the stream we headed further upstream and we did find another great place to shoot this idea. All in all it was a great morning creating art!

Sarah E. - September 10 2008

I had another shoot today. This time with the extremely beautiful Sarah E. She was a model I had worked with early on and she ended up moving to Florida before I had the chance to work with her again. She was so much fun to work with and hang out with that I was rather bummed when she moved. So imagine my excitement when She wrote me saying that she would be coming back to Hawaii!

Sarah E. - September 10 2008

Today’s shoot we went to an area that I had scouted before but I was unsure about whether it would work as a location to shoot nudes. It’s a popular hiking trail and is usually less popular on weekday mornings. We we’re very lucky that weren’t interrupted by people walking by or stumbling in as we we’re shooting. We only ran into other hikers as me moved from one part of the location to another. Sarah wore a sarong to cover herself between setups. So none of the hikers ever caught her in the nude. Very lucky indeed.

Sarah E. - September 10 2008

This shoot was done with the new lens and I have to say that it performed well. I think I figured out the issue with it not focusing properly. I was re-framing my shots before it was done focusing! I feel rather silly about it. So today what I did was let it finish focusing then I checked my focus to make sure and then I took the picture. I’m glad I got it figured out I was worried that I’d have to take the lens back since it is quite a good lens.

We spent a great deal of time playing on and around trees, we also spent some time shooting in the stream that meanders through the location as well. We both had a lot of fun and I’m sure there’ll be more with Sarah in the future!

Tide Pools

It ended up that I had two shoots yesterday. The first shoot of the day was a sunrise shoot that turned out to be pretty awesome. We went to a location that I had shot at before. Although this time we hiked down around some tide pools that I had never seen before and got some great shots. The model looked beautiful against the volcanic rock and the ocean.

The ocean was a bit rough and a few times we had to dodge some waves crashing against the rocks we we’re shooting on. Later in the shoot we moved to a beach that was totally deserted. So we played in the shoreline and got some really cool shots there as well.

Banyan Tree - Sept. 6 2008

The second shoot of the day was with Ashleigh. I loved shooting with her so much that when the opportunity to shoot with her again came up I took it. I knew we would create some really beautiful and interesting images. We shot at a wooded location that I’ve haven’t shot at in a few months. We really had a lot of fun walking around the area and finding fun things to shoot with.

On both shoots the new lens performed beautifully. I don’t see a big difference with the shots but I can say that it made a big difference during the shoots.  I’ll write more about the lens a little later.

All in all it was a great day for shooting and both models and myself had a great time.

Elizabeth - Aug. 30 2008

Today’s shoot went very well. Elizabeth, who was visiting from Virginia, was wonderful and It was a real treat to work with her. We went to a beach that I had scouted a few weeks ago. It’s one of those beaches where there isn’t another soul around. So we had the whole beach all to ourselves.

We started out with a few basic poses using a knit top that I had found at a department store a few days ago. I loved the knit material and how it looked against her skin. after a few minutes I had her take off the knit top and we started shooting nude.

Downed Tree

We found ourselves shooting all over the beach. We tried a lot of different kinds of shots. Further down the beach we found a downed tree that made for some very interesting shots as well. We tried to get into the water for a few shots but there were some rocks just under the surface of the water that made that a no-go. But we did get some good shots in the shore break.

After playing on the beach we went into the woods where we found a really cooll tree to play with. As many of you know… I love shooting nudes in trees. There’s just something about it that makes it so interesting.

All in all we had a lot of fun and I’m hoping that she visits Hawaii soon so we can work together again.

Waimnalo, Hawaii Aug. 6 2008

Today’s shoot was with a new model. Ashleigh had never posed nude before but had always wanted to. The moment she told me this it sounded familiar. It made me realize how I started shooting nudes is pretty much the same as how she started posing for nudes. Having a desire to do it, but needing another person to help fulfill the dream. In my case it was a model. In her case, a photographer. I feel very honored that she chose me to do her first nude shoot. She is an amazingly beautiful woman. I hope that she will continue to model as I know she’ll do very well.

Waimnalo, Hawaii Aug. 6 2008

We started our shoot on the backside of Pele’s Chair. I was surprised at how comfortable she was with her body and with being nude. Considering that this was her first nude shoot, I expected her to be a little more reserved. I’m glad that she was comfortable because it seemed to give the rest of the shoot a feeling of exploration and discovery that was quite nice.

Overall, It was a lot of fun to hang out with such a beautiful person and capture beautiful images. It was a joy to work with her and I hope I’ll get to shoot with her again soon.

Aloha,
Jason Tag

I was getting worried because I wasn’t sure If I was going to be able to afford a shoot this time around.  I usually shoot about every two weeks because thats what my budget can afford at the moment.  The price of gas and all that plus bills, had me pretty worried.  But I picked up an extra gig this week that will allow me to do it.  So I scheduled a shoot for tomorrow morning.

The model has never done nude modeling before so it should make for a challenging shoot. If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ve probably figured out that I love to be challenged.  It forces me to be better.  It makes me work harder in communicating ideas and poses.  It also makes me really analyze how I shoot and how I compose the shots.  I can’t wait to work with her and see what else I might learn!

I’ll be updating the site as I usually do after every shoot so stay tuned…

So if your wondering, Yes I did change the theme on the site. It was really starting to annoy me that when I create a post, it never looks the way it did on the site as when I was creating it. I would spend an hour creating a beautifully laid out post with images to break up the text and then I publish it, and all that layout work would be gone. The problem as I discovered was the theme I was using was stripping all of that out. I chose to simply change my theme rather than trying to muck around with the code for the other theme.

All of the same stuff is still here though. I added a navigation area on the right just under the donate button so If your looking for the portfolio page or something else on the site… it’s probably over there.

Now onto more interesting things…

Ginger

Today I got to edit a few more photos from the shoot on Sunday and came across the image below. I love how the colors just pop. It’s really the shad of red that blows my mind away. However now that I think about it, we should have done the shot with out the bikini bottom. I’ll just have to do another shoot to get that shot….

Yesterday’s shoot with Julia was a lot of fun. We had great conversations and came up with some beautiful images as well.

The shoot began at the summit of a mountain near Honolulu. The weather was overcast and it did rain a few times during the shoot. Julia was quite adventurous and was willing to shoot in the rain. We weren’t going to let something like a little rain stop us.

We started shooting with a concrete structure that I’ve used on another shoot. I kinda wanted to start somewhere familiar to get to know her and figure out how best to work with her. Once we got started things went fairly smooth. The main problem I kept having was due to the low light of an early morning coupled with the overcast sky. I’m glad I brought my flash with me. I had tried to use on the shoot with Rose but couldn’t get it to give me what I wanted so I gave up on that shoot. However during this shoot, I really needed more light and the reflectors were definetly not enough for the job.

So I forced myself to use the flash and make it work. I got a few shots that are obvious flash shots but I soon got the hang of using the flash for fill and this diffused skylight for main light. It was trick because I had to check every shot and make sure that the light balance was correct. Something I never had to worry about before.

One other problem that came up during the shoot was that since she had never posed for nude photography before I found that I had to really think about poses and try to describe what I wanted her to do. I found it quite challenging and in some cases I don’t think I translated what I saw in my head very well. That’s something I’m going to need to work on.

During the second half of the shoot we ventured off to a part of the location I had never been to before. Part of my thinking was to shoot in a part of that location I didn’t know so that I cold possibly come up with ideas for it prior to the shoot. I wanted to test myself as to how well I create on the fly. In some cases I thought I did well and others…not so good. But there’s always room for improvement.

All in all we had a great time. I’m very glad I got the chance to meet her and get to know her a little as well as creating some beautiful images with her.

Yesterday I did a shoot with the amazingly beautiful Rose. I’ve known her for a few years although we don’t get to hang out as much as I’d like. I was quite nervous going into this shoot because she’s one of my friends. Most other models I’ve worked with I’ve become friends with because of this experiment. So I was worried that she’d be uncomfortable or that it would be weird for her to be seen nude by a friend. I was also worried that I wouldn’t be good enough or that somehow the shoot would go horribly wrong and she’d never speak to me again. Well that was my fear talking, the same fear that kept me from shooting nudes for 15 years.

Well all my fears were proven unfounded. It turned out that because we were friends that we already had a rapport and there were no trust issues. We had complete confidence in each other and that turned out to be a nice bonus on this shoot. This shoot really felt like we were just hanging out and the shots were secondary.

We shot at a location that I hadn’t scouted previously so I was also worried that the location wouldn’t be all that great. So it ended up being a surprise and it also became a shoot about discovering the shots and the moments as we lived them. My favorite way to shoot. that way there can be no preconceived notions and it’s really up to me and the model to find the shots.

We found a couple of really cool trees to play with and on fallen tree that was a lot of fun to work with. We also came across power line towers that were also neat to pose against. There’s just something about metal and skin that I find interesting.

We had a lot of fun and I hope that I’ll be able to work with her again soon.

Aloha,
Jason Tag