RAINA + WILSON

RAINA KIRN – PHOTOGRAPHER BIO Raina received her first camera, a Kodak Pocket Instamatic, from her grandmother. She was eight at the time and has been obsessed with taking pictures ever since. Though her heart belongs to travel and documentary photography, she takes equal pleasure in the commercial work she currently does with longtime friend and business partner, Wilson Barry.

WILSON BARRY – PHOTOGRAPHER BIO As an only child growing up on a secluded island off the coast of British Columbia, Wilson could hardly help developing a keenly observant eye. That talent for close observation and his methodical and process driven character almost made an engineer of him, but his love of adventure ultimately turned him to photography. He is one-half of the intrepid photographic duo Raina+Wilson and, according to Raina, the favourite.

CONTACT STUDIO #402-688 Richmond Street West Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6J 1C5 +1 416 703 5290 studio@rwphotographic.com RAINA +1 416 833 7203 raina@rwphotographic.com WILSON +1 416 508 7694 wilson@rwphotographic.com AGENT Arlene Evidente +1 416 823 1713 arlene@kithandkin.ca

Iqaluit Shoot

The project in Nunavut was for the Globe and Mail style section. A fur coat fashion shoot as part of their week long feature on the arctic. The Globe partnered with Nunavut Tourism to produce the shoot. Because of the cost to get crew and equipment up to Iqaluit (about $2000 per person return from Ottawa) we couldn’t take much in the way of gear, and no assistant. The Broncolor MOVE 1200 L OUTDOOR KIT 2 was perfect for travel, super compact and efficient. The roller case made airport navigation a snap. And we used the backpack straps when hiking in the snow. We lost a whole day of shooting due to a huge snow storm (-30 and 100kM/h winds) so had to cut a few shots/locations. But we managed to pull off 7 shots in just 6 hours of daylight on our shoot day. Sunrise was at 8am, sunset was 2:30pm. We used the strobe for subtle fill to bring out the fine detail in the furs, so the final shots don’t look overly strobe lit at all. Temperatures were between -16 when we started shooting to about -25 when we finished. The colder temperatures caused the pack to shut off suddenly. But we warmed it up in a vehicle for a few minutes and it was back working again. The battery seemed to hold its charge great. We only used about 2 bars of power over the course of the days shoot. Although we were shooting at f4 around 800iso so the power on the pack was very near the bottom for subtle fill. We had a local helper with no photo experience on set. It only took a simple explanation for her to operate the power settings on the pack for us while we were shooting. She could operate the pack with gloves on too which was a bonus in the extreme cold.

Overall we were super impressed with this system, both in operation and portability. We’ve been long time Profoto users and have been considering a B4 pack but now we’re reconsidering. I’m glad we were able to check it out at Album Studio Rentals and thanks to Dean for hooking us up!

For more info and images about the shoot visit http://www.rwphotographic.com/blog/