Gustavo Ureña | Photography

Control-Less

Gustavo Urena — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:55:49 +0000

In my world, photography needs to talk and evoke emotions—It needs to communicate, make you feel bad, good, great… the feelings that the photographer feels when capturing that image should be transfer to the viewers when seeing it.
Enough of beauty words, this shoot is about how popular culture shape and bend emotions and turn ordinary folks into empty vessel ready to be field with the next “cool” thing. To me, the whole idea is so contagious—as much as a sneeze or the felling when seeing a love one in agony.

On this shoot I used:

Alien bees 800 for filler with a shoot-tru umbrella
Einstein E640 as main light with a 24 inch beauty dish
And a reflector to soft coon ayes

Make-up
Yomaira Beltre

Model
Desiree Gordian

Gifts = Camera Time

Gustavo Urena — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:55:31 +0000

In a suffering economy —like the one we have today, is really hard to expend your hard-earned cash on things that you may not need. But if you are one of those that believe that moments should be recorded or are looking to get professional photos for future career moves then you need to keep on reading.

At the moment, I am updating my gears and my portfolio and I came out with a quick solution that will not break your bank or mine.

Let’s go back to the time where the economy was not based on money. Everything was about honest people “trading” goods or services—If you help me I will help you.
So this is the deal: Get me any gift from my Amazon WishList® and you will get “Camera Time.” Depending on the gift, you will received time for your shoot. Every gift has a comment explaining the amount of time it will give you. Prices for the gifts goes from $75 and up so even if you are on a budget you will get camera time for your shoot. All the gifts will give you at least two hours of camera time. The more expensive, more time you will received.

So rush for it. It is a great gift for a family portrait, head shoots, fashion shoot for your portfolio or any other type of celebration.

Here is the link:

If you have any question just leave a comment

Hope to see you soon on your next shoot!

The Making Of—Red Witch Morning & Bambi’s Death

Gustavo Urena — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 03:43:26 +0000

For a long time I have been thinking about classic fairly tales for a photoshoot (like Red Riding Hood, Bambi, Snow White…) And it gets me sick-off-my-mind to think about the beauty, the happy endings and how unworldly the whole thing is to me… I mean, 7 midgets, a witch, and a prince in the middle of no-where? Come on.

So, since I do what I want —and I have great people to help me, I had a little fun adding a small twist to illustrated the story my way.

I created two stories:

1- Red Witch Morning (Red Riding Hood)
On this version, the little Red Hood is a witch that got her powers after killing and eating the wolf.
One night, the Red Witch came late from sucking blood off Dominican babies. Morning came and she began to
burn alive… (yes witches do burn like vampires).

2- Bambi’s Death (Bambi)
I never knew what sex Bambi was… But I know that in my story Bambi was
a very curious chick that loved jewelry.
Bambi one day, walking in the forest, found a magical treasure box and… CABOOOOM!
The box was a trap set by the Red Witch.

On this shoot my set up was:

-An Einstein E640 monolight as the main light with a 48 Inch Octobox diffuser
-For fillers, I used an Alien Bees B800 with a bare bolt
-PocketWizards to fire the strobes with an AC3 to manipulate lighting output
-My beloved Canon 550 body with a 16-35 mm f/2.8 l II lens mounted on a tripod and fired remotely to avoid camera shake

The Model used a 1970 vintage V-cut dress with a bed sheet as cape and real deer horns.

The whole shoot was about the dark side of a beautiful story with a touch of personal taste.

Here is the final shoot

I really want to give thanks to the people that helped me putting flesh on the bonnie structure of my story
- Yomaira Beltre (make-up)
- Omar Al-Manzar & Melvin Romero (Lighting)
- Ericka Villegas (Model)

The Covers-Part 2

Gustavo Urena — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 04:59:20 +0000

Ok, the semester is over and everybody is getting ready for Xmas. We had a great semester playing with typography and photography… Well, without any further due, here are some of the covers created by my Graphic Design class this past Fall 2011. Thanks for looking!

The Covers – Part 1

Gustavo Urena — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:00:34 +0000

I have been teaching a Graphic Design class at my local community college for the past two years. I never imagined that I would love teaching—of course, at first I was really nervous but after a few semesters things are coming out naturally… Anyways, I never mixed my teaching gig with my photography before. I don’t know why, it just never happened. But this semester an idea came up when brainstorming about what to do for the final class project.

This time I mixed my two passions; teaching and photography and made a mini portrait session for my students to be used in their magazine cover final project . This is the first part of the process, I will be posting the results once the covers are done. Stay tuned

They never said not to play with blood

Gustavo Urena — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:43:22 +0000

What do you do when bored? I usually get two guys, paint them with fake blood and let them do their thing while I get the camera.

I’m constantly trying new things to give shape to my work and to find my true view of photography. That day Leonardo and Al-manzar were the two crazy dudes that got it going with the help of my beloved friend La Guzman in the make up department—She saved the day by covering up for our make up artist that had an emergency and couldn’t contact me at the last min…

In this shoot I used: an Alien Bees 800 with a 28″ beauty disk modifier, a speedlite with a warming gel for ring light, a few old white t-shirts for contrast, a pint of home made fake blood and a great location in the woods. Here’s a few shoots for your enjoyment.

2011 Dominican Republic Vacation

Gustavo Urena — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:21:42 +0000

In the summer of 2010 we were invited to a friends wedding—Karina Peña + Jose Manuel Dominguez and I couldn’t help to bring my gear and snap some photos.

They got married at the Iberostar Resort in Puerto Plata, Dominican Rep. A beautiful place full of great dominican food and the typical of most resorts(pool, activities, more food, kids running, more food…) Anyways, Here’s a few shoots of a little session I did with my wife and her family… that now is my family too.