Sea Spa Ad campaign shot by Maya Guez

I recently shot advertising campaign for a wonderful cosmetic and skin care company "SEA SPA" that offers natural products that contain mineral and nourishing moisturizing elements and oils from the Dead Sea, Being that I had a chance to visit this amazing place called the dead sea a few years ago - the lowest point on the planet I got to experience myself the amazing healing qualities the mud's, salts and minerals that are in the hot springs and in the sea water, This experience of connecting with nature healing powers is what inspired me to create pure feeling almost spiritual or dream like images with the glowing salts the model is laying on, beautifully blended with her aqua eyes and the sky blue backdrop... I remember I went on a midnight swim with a girlfriend in the Dead Sea... Not a sound around since no animals can live in, or drink those water and the sea is practically without waives since it is surrounded by desert mountains... The water were so warm and salty they almost felt like hot aromatic oils surrounding your body.... You naturally float on them because the amount of salt and minerals... It was a full moon that night which the white salt on the grown reflected and glowed threw the crystal clear water.... It was amazing and relaxing and that serenity is what I wanted to relay to the viewer...

You can visit one of the company web sites at : http://www.sea-spa.com/

You can also see the images featured on the merchandise boxes, bags, posters in stores and billboards in London. Model: Hayley McCourt. Photography, MUA, Art direction, Post Production: Maya Guez. Hair: Fabien Magris.

What type of photo equipment I work with?

OK time to start this blog... :-) been pushing it forever... I am going to use this blog to give updates about my work and projects as well as answer questions... it seems people have alot of questions about my work so instead of endlessly answering them individually which I really don't have time u guys can ask me and I can post answers if time allows. I am also going to use this stage to voice my opinion and personal experience about topics in the industry. So don't get mad... Also dont be mad at my spelling I am not American so English is a second language.

So first of all I'm going to answer the most common question I get from a lot of fellow photographers...

Q: What camera I use and lights?

A: I currently work with Mamiya AFD II with Phase1 medium digital back 32 mega pixel quality (16 bit per channel) this allows me to have great fine details and the high resolution is sufficient to anything u would need such as billboards, magazine covers, campaigns, and large art prints... I found that my 12.3 mega pixel Fuji camera with Nikon lenses that alot of the images on my site were taken with provided great quality but I was unhappy with the detail quality when printing above 24 by 36 inch or when shooting tall people full body, which prompted me to move to medium format digital. again the difference is not really visible on web or small prints but more in enlargements.

Lights: I use profoto light system with a variety of light shaping tools, soft boxes, spots, umbrellas and beauty dishes are all commonly used. I use less expensive strobes to light backdrops and as fill lights.

Post production: Mostly PS and I specialise in beauty retouching, I love seeing textures in skin and fabrics so my retouching is very meticulous to maintain those, I am mostly self taught and have less experience in composite work so 99% of what u see are real backgrounds and set designs even if they sometime look "computerised" I TRY TO ACHIEVE AS MUCH IN THE PHOTOGRAPHY so u don't need to retouch too much, that's where my make up skills come into play sometime u will see me doing full body make up if necessary to give that flawless look and minimize any retouching. If something doesn't look right I don't shoot it....

Experience: I BEEN DOING THIS FOR A MINUTE.... After majoring in art at school where I learned about variety of arts I took some classes in photography to get some technical information, those days- there was no digital and I worked with manual cameras and film. Also used to develop my own film and prints and had a dark room in my studio back in Israel which i cant tell u how happy I no longer do...lol all the fumes I inhaled and smelling like vinegar all the time... ones I moved into digital photography never went back to film.
I come from a family of photographers, my dad was an armature photographer and I "stole" his camera and experimented with it first when I was 17 over ten years ago... my brother went to 4 years of photography school and worked as professional in the field he hooked me up with all the dark room equipment. Who knew it would be the girl in the family that would make it a full time succsful career.