romantic ideas

© Joselito Briones

remember when i said the people from stocksy sometimes suggest what to shoot?  i was gonna do a gay-themed series of photos, but there wasn't necessarily an inspiration board for this, so i thought, why not just do the moodboard for couples?  here's what the editors of stocksy think are good couple photos. great, right?  i thought, those are mostly young (except for one) white (except for one) hetero (except for two?) couples. what if just try to recreate those moments, but with a gay black couple? (photo above, they're models of course, and may or may not be gay in real life).  i was curious to see if they'll be perceived to be just as romantic (not at all? even more so?).

© Joselito Briones

but then there were just so many hours in a session and i ran out of steam, so i continued the next day with another pair of models (photo above).

the results, plus a lot of variations (i tend to veer off path when shooting), are in this gallery (first day) and this gallery (second day). they're not all there yet as i'm still going through the photos and might actually do a third day of shoot for the set-ups that i missed, but they'll end up in those galleries.

this, for example, is a lame attempt at "a touch to the lips" - i should've gone closer, over the shoulder of the guy touching the other, more intimate - ah well.  and this, which i like, is a combination of "love at every age" and "roof".


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Lea

© Joselito Briones

Most of the people I know seem to have their birthdays around these three months. Either that or it just so happens that the people born during these first three months are the most willing victims to my camera's experimentations.

Pictured above, of course, is much more than someone I know. She's my Inay. Her name's Lea (yep, like the princess), but everybody in our neighborhood calls her "Aling Sile". I didn't even take this photo of her. It's a studio portrait taken in the first year or two when she moved to California, about 20 years ago. I tried to make it look like a painting, hence the visible photoshop effects.


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Alyssa

© Joselito Briones

Remember I told you earlier that I've been posting photos in flickr? Turns out that the most popular so far among the photos I've posted is this one of Alyssa, one I took in New York.


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