Inspiration Station- Merry Christmas!

In this month's installment we are going to take a look at the creation of a specialized image designed for the use of a promotional mailer. Since it's Christmas time, I wanted something that would be fun and quirky and still match the feel of the holiday season. But where to look for inspiration?
INSPIRATION-
I love, love, love the classic holiday movie "A Christmas Story". Something about Ralphie's plight to obtain the coveted Red Rider Beebee gun tugs at my heartstrings every year. My only problem was how do I relay the feel of this movie visually into my own style and personality. The answer came while strolling through a local department store last month. As I was pondering whether or not to even do a mailer, I noticed an all too familiar lamp towards the back of the display. It was the infamous "leg" lamp ! My mind feverishly worked up a visual that would both pay homage to this delightly tacky symbol of one of the greatest Christmas movies ever made, as well as maintaining a consistent visual presence with my clients. I thought a humorous approach would be best, leaving a lasting impression (hopefully) with the viewer. How to do this? Include myself of course (being that I am one of the most ridiculous looking people that I know!)

CASTING-
As I just mentioned, casting was pretty much taken care of. All I needed was the perfect foil to my character so it wouldn't look like I was just a creepy guy staring at an illuminated leg! I enlisted the help of my wife, who was all to willing to make me look all the more foolish. We set the shoot date, bought the props, and set off for the studio.
PRODUCTION-
Not a whole lot of production for this one. I put a slab of formica countertop that we had at the studio on two sawhorses and that pretty much created my work surface for the shoot. I placed the lamp in the middle and blacked out the background with felt to control any ambient light. The hardest part was making sure that I was in the right portion of the frame given the composition and angle. In order to do this, it was essential that I have immediate visual feedback of where I was. I ended up shooting tethered into my powerbook laptop, with the images popping up instantenously through lightroom. The camera was set to timer mode and within 15 minutes I had the compostion and angle nailed down.

LIGHTING-
Lighting wasn't even that big a deal for this one in terms of complexity. I wanted a really warm, glowy, Christmasy feel to the whole thing, so I relied mainly on the illumination from the lamp itself. The exposure ended up being somewhere around .8 sec, so I was able to hold still long enough to light up my face. To add some separation from the background I used a speedotron strobe with a small bowl reflector about 4' up and aimed down, with a yellow gel to simulate the incandescent light. The light itself added a nice rimming effect and would aid me later for compositing. I shot myself, my wife, the lamp, and the background all separately. This allowed me to light each component appropriately and alloted for more creative control. My wife I lit very similar to myself. When I photographed the background plate, I used whatever ambient was in the room minus 1 stop exposure. This gave me enough detail in the scene without completely destroying the christmas lights. It also added to the overall falloff of light from the lamp.

POSING-
The posing was pretty critical in that I was trying to portray a humorous setting. I photographed myself until I got something that I was happy with both in the pose and in the expression. My wife took a bit longer in that she normally isn't in front of the lens and isn't , ahem, all that fond of being there :). After a few attempts and many laughs we finally got something that I thought would work out really well. She was a really great sport about the whole thing and I thank her for that!

POSTPRODUCTION-
Once I had all the components photographed, it was time to start compositing them in Photoshop. I use Photoshop CS3 and as a generall rule I like to work nondestructively as much as possible. What I mean by that is I make duplicate layers of everything and any changes that are made are easily reverted by going back to the original layer. For this type of work, selections need to be critically accurate in order to get that believability factor. I find the best way to do that is to use the pen tool and draw out each individual path on a separate path layer. For example, I made separate pen paths for the light, myself, and my wife. This way if I need to move something or shade something, I just call up the needed path and change it into a feathered selection. Believe me, it makes my life so much easier doing it this way rather than relying on individual selections. Once all the elements were in place, it was time to start matching up the lighting levels. Since I was particular about the lighting in the first place, there wasn't a whole lot of adjustment that was needed. A few curve layers to blend in the foreground to the background was about it. After this it was just a matter of some blending modes mixed with some select sharpening and we were set.

RECEPTION-
I had the final image sent out to be printed as a postcard with the intention of sending them out to current and future clients. My hope is that it will generate some buzz about my photography and keep my name fresh in everybody's mind. As of right now, the response has been minimal but good. My wife sent one to her sister and she called the next day to let me know that she didn't even realize that it was Julie and I in the picture! She thought it was wonderful and very well done, which is the conclusion I'm hoping everybody comes to as well. Check back after the New Year, I will post more responses as they come in.

Merry Christmas everybody!!

Good times

Having a good time on vacation, all is right in my little world!

baby cam

So I'm planning a trip to somewhere much warmer than Pittsburgh and I decided it was time to buy a decent point and shoot camera. I bought a point and shoot for my wife the last time we went on vacation and I found the resulting images to be less than stellar (more due to the limitations of the camera than anything else). I knew I didn't want to lug around my big ol 5D + lens+flash to all the theme parks, so I decided to get something that would still allow me to shoot in Raw and manual modes, just so I wasn't missing all the functionality.
I ended up with a used Canon G9, mainly because it had all the bells and whistles I was looking for and it was small enough to stow in my pocket. It came yesterday and I've been playing with it all day today. So far, I must say I am pleasantly surprised by the image quality. In manual mode, shooting in Raw, between iso 80-400 I can get a decent image with not a lot of noise-even going as low as 2 stops below the exposure and pulling it back in through my Raw editor. So far so good, I'll share some of the images from the vacation when I get back.

Red Five I'm going in...

So I was making my daily rounds on the blogsphere this morning and I came across this little gem over at Chase Jarvis. Apparently the people at Red Camera have blown the proverbial lid off of the DSLR kettle. Take about evolution of the species! I wonder how many photographers will make the jump though at that price point. As Han Solo said, " Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good DSLR, er, blaster at your side, kid".

Inspiration station- November

I recently was reading a blog posting from a fellow photographer friend of mine in which he was talking about student photographers staying motivated. Having been out of school now for the past six months, staying motivated and shooting new material can often times be problematic. When your in school or when you have a steady gig, there are assignments to be done, deadlines to be met, and peers to bounce your ideas off of. Out in the real world these situations are not as forth coming and it's easy to start falling into bad habits. To combat this, I've decided to focus on one creative self assignment a month. This will become a monthly post entitled "Inspiration Station" and we will go over everything from concept to casting, production to processing, and everything in between. My hope is to show you how I work, why I do what I do, and how that work is perceived. Everybody ready? OK then, on with the show!

INSPIRATION-
For my first post in this endeavour we will discuss a photoshoot I completed over the weekend. The inspiration for the shoot came from two places: the first being from a series of books that my wife has been reading (the Twilight series for all of those who are interested) and from a posting on a model website from a model wanting to shoot a vampire themed photograph. I ended up reading the Twilight series and it produced a strong visual narrative for me to work from. I visualized a dark, edgy world where everything was cold and moody. I wanted the photograph to portray a sense of danger but at the same time I wanted it to have a neo punk style to it a well.

CASTING-
Once I had the intial visual picture in my head I contacted the model who posted the original inquiry (the fabulous Lori D) to see if she was interested in my personal style and the vision I had for the final product. I think it's essential to have everybody on the same page when your trying to produce a stylized production; this way everybody knows what the expectations are and they strive to put their best foot forward in meeting that goal. Lori's ideas for the shoot fell pretty much in line with what I was thinking. She added the concept of a second model playing the role of the victim to add another dimension to the production. Since Lori has such a unique look, we needed a male model to compliment both her and the overall production. I came up with a list of potential models who I thought could fit the profile, ranging from a conservative look to the more extreme end of the spectrum. I showed Lori the list and we both agreed on two of the models who's looks, age, and location fit in with our production parameters. We ended up going with Sean based on availability and interest in the project.

PRODUCTION-
With the casting out of the way we moved on to production. First up was location. Originally we thought shooting it on a decrepit broken down brick wall would work (in fact I went out and photographed a background plate for just such a thing) but upon thinking about later I decided that keeping the background simple and clean lent more to the edginess of the look. We ended up just photographing it on a plain grey wall in my studio ,with a splash of colored light (I will speak more on that later). Once the location was set we needed to decide on the wardrobe. We both love the work of local fashion designer Ali Pace and we thought her look would be appropriate for this shoot. We relayed to Ali the look and feel of what we were after and Ali ran with it. When I saw the final costume I knew Ali had nailed it on the head. Lori added to the look with some realistic looking vampire fangs, crosses, and other accouterments. Sean's outfit was simple in contrast, we really wanted to keep his look clean and uncluttered so I decided he would just wear a solid dark color shirt and pants.












LIGHTING-
In order to achieve the mood of the photograph, the lighting had to be definitive. It was very important to keep it controlled and be very selective as to where and how it was falling on the subjects. I decided to use a 22" beauty dish with a 20 degree grid over top both models and angled slightly to fall on their faces. This would give their faces just enough light to suggest that they were standing under a streetlight or some other light source. With a few simple posing directions I could get Lori's face to be half in shadow which lent authenticity to the feel. After that, I added another light head at a higher power setting behind both Sean and Lori with a 20 degree grid and a light blue gel. This give a wonderful rim light that highlighted both Sean's hair and Lori's cheek, adding separation from the dark background. This light also splashed a narrow beam down the side of the wall which added to the look. All that was left was to give the overall scene a bit of fill light from a third light head (this head was set at very low power with a set of barn doors to control the spill).




POSING-
Once the lighting was set, I directed Lori to lean against the wall with Sean leaning in on her. Often times when you are working with multiple models at the same time, there can be a comfort factor in terms of personal space that you need to work into gradually. Since Sean and Lori had never even met before, let alone worked together, we started slowly and eventually decreased the distance between the two of them. Both models were very professional and worked well together. They took direction well, were aware of their poses and environment, and added their own unique style to the look. There were quite a few good poses to choose from!

POSTPRODUCTION-
Once the shoot was completed, I loaded up the images into my digital asset management software of choice, lightroom. I work with Canon products (a Canon 5d to be exact) which produce a wonderfully detailed image. I shoot only in RAW which produces a file size around 10 mb. Originally I intended to shoot tethered to a Powerbook G4 laptop but the logistics of the shoot coupled with the transfer speed of the files really made this option less than ideal. I ended up shooting to CF cards and then uploading them to my desktop machine, which is a dual quad-core mac pro. Since I shoot RAW I have the luxury of setting the white balance to whatever I choose. For this particular project I wanted to have a colder, darker feeling so I manually adjusted the color temperature in lightroom until I got something that I was happy with- somewhere around 3900. This was a good start, but I wanted it even a bit bluer so I boosted the saturation and luminance sliders for the blue channel. This worked out much better and kept the overall feel cool. From here I imported the image into photoshop where I did my usual post processing techniques of various filtering and layer styles. I increased the luminosity of Lori's eye and added in a partial fang from another frame to complete the look.

RECEPTION-
Everyone involved in the project has loved the final product so far. Once the initial image was completed, it went up on various social networking and model sites such as model mayhem, flickr, and my own website www.briankaldorf.com. The overall response has been positive- I have had a couple people ask about the lighting setup and a few people say they love the overall feel of the work.

Hope you enjoyed this dissection of my photograph- if you have any questions, just drop me a line!

Happy Halloween, BUHAHAHAHAH!!!!

So the wife had a business trip up to state college the other day and me being the bored easily creative type that I am, decided that I would try my hand at 3d pumpkin carving. Overall the effect is pretty convincing and the final product isn't too bad! Have a happy halloween everybody!!

Silent Bob Speaks!

Well I finally got back home from a job in Michigan last Wednesday and what should be waiting in my email inbox but a job assignment to photograph a celebrity! Now, keep in mind that I don't normally get all starry eyed for the famous (I have on occasion worked on jobs that included famous sports figures) but this was a bit different. As many of you may or may not know, I am a huge Kevin Smith fan; I listen to his weekly podcast (entitled SMODcast), I read his daily bulletin board, basically I devour all Kevin Smith related material. As luck would have it, they were doing a premiere here in Pittsburgh for his latest movie "Zack and Miri make a Porno" and the Pittsburgh City Paper needed a picture of the Director, Kevin Smith, to run with an article about the premiere. After re-reading the email several times and then picking my jaw up off the floor I started making phone calls to the appropriate people to make this thing happen. The people at the Pittsburgh Film Office could not have been nicer and told me to come down to the theater around 8:15 p.m. and they would let me in to photograph Kevin. So that evening came and I made sure I was there early just in case anything went haywire. Apparently there was some sort of traffic issue (I know, who would of thought, traffic issues in Pittsburgh) and Kevin was running a bit late. Not a problem, I was able to find a single seat in the back row of the theater and I caught the last half hour of the movie. I can't remember laughing that hard in a long time! Finally the movie ended and it was time for the Q&A to start. By then I had secured a place right down in front to make sure I had a good angle. Well, no sooner do I get situated does the man himself come strolling down the aisle, in his trademark silent bob coat! The crowd went nuts and I started snapping away. The theater was practically a cave in terms of lighting. I had my poor metz flash working overtime by the time the night was over. I found Kevin to be quite the engaging and self deprecating speaker. He talked about everything from the inspiration behind the movie to upcoming projects to his favorite places to eat in Pittsburgh (which happened to be Gallifty's and Primani's). After the Q&A he made some time to sign autographs outside of the theater for fans who couldn't get in. All in all, he couldn't have been a nicer guy, and he didn't seem to mind me snapping away like some kind of crazed paparrazzi reject. So, for those of you keeping score:
1. I got to meet famed movie director Kevin Smith
2. I got to see the last half hour of his latest movie "Zack and Miri make a porno" before it hits theaters.
3. I got paid to do all of this.

Yep, life is pretty good!

Rainbow Power!!!

So I have had this idea for a long time of doing a photoshoot where it would be raining smiley face balls onto a willing participent while she is under the protection of a very colorful rainbow umbrella. After the initial sketch and production notes were drawn up, I called my trusty assistant Lauren and the wonderful clothing designer Alli Pace to see if they were down with the idea. Both were enthusiastic and were ready to rock n roll. We wanted to cast for a colorful, vibrant looking model that would jive well with the theme. I decided on Miss Jenna from Ohio because her look was unique and I thought she would add that extra special "sumthin" to the overall production. As luck would have it she was available and we set up the shoot for a beautiful day in September. It was a simple two light setup with the camera angle being low to capture Jenna's expression. What I hadn't anticipated was how the bouncy balls would look in the final edit. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get them to look just right. In the end I ended up scrapping the smiley faces in lieu of a digital rainbow and some illustrated "rainbow brite" power! I really digg the illustrative aspects of this photo, it's something different that I think I would like to push towards in the future. Tell me whatcha think!

interesting article

A few weeks ago I had talked a little bit about the cost of doing business and what not. A friend of mine just sent me a link to a wonderful article about the state of editorial photography and the costs associated with it in the digital age. I find the numbers quite astonishing in that since 1984 editorial rates have risen a scant 14% while equipment costs and inflation have risen 1000% and 80% respectively. Am I the only one who thinks this is insane!? 1000% increase in the equipment we utilize to do our business and yet the rates stay virtually unchanged!? I feel like that guy in zoolander who says "Are all you people taking crazy pills?!"
It is so important right now to utilize the strengths of your photography and the the value that they present. Too many people are out there shooting for free or for publication that it is destroying the market right out from under us. People like me are having that much harder of a time getting started because someone else will do it for less. It's a sad state but its one that can be amended.

Christmas in August

Yay, they finally came! The week before I went on vacation I made a last minute order of a new (to me at least) speedotron power pack and a few strobe heads. So far I must say that I am pleased with the results and I'm hoping to add one more light to the setup. I think I will keep my AB's for location work and use this new setup strictly for studio work. I also had the great fortune of meeting Kimberly Reed, a local wedding photographer here in Pittsburgh. She was looking to get rid of a 70-200 2.8L lens. As luck would have it I had a 50 1.2 L that she was after, so we had an even swap. Sometimes things just have a way of working out!

So what did you do on your summer vacation?

So after a week long vacation to Baltimore and D.C. I am finally back home. The wife and I had a wonderful time taking in the sites and seeing some old friends. We started out the trip in Harrisburg, Pa. for a wedding of an old highschool friend of ours. It was good to see her so happy and to hear how things were going for her. As an added bonus, the wedding was taking place in Harrisburg which is where we used to live. During a break in the action we took a quick side trip to one of our favorite eating establishments, the Soda Jerk, and a short jaunt over to Hershey's Chocolate World. I know, I know, it sounds cheesy but we had a good time. While we were eating lunch at the Soda Jerk, this strange looking little car pulled up. Here it's an old electric car from the 70's that the owner liked to tool around town with, very interesting!
After the wedding we headed off to Baltimore to visit with some relatives. It was nice not having an agenda, most of the week I just sat around and read a book (the twilight series, which I must see is a decent read!) Towards the end of the week we took a trip into D.C. and went to the new Air and Space Museum hanger. The place was packed floor to ceiling with all sorts of flying contraptions, it was quite awe inspiring. Anyways, we had a good time and now it's back to the grind!

Going to the chapel!

So last weekend I had the wonderful pleasure of photographing a wonderful couple (Joe and Amy) at a wonderful country club. Everything went off without a hitch, with the exception of it being hotter than blazes and the wedding was outdoors. Not a problem, we persevered and came away with some fantastic and fun looking photographs. It makes such a difference when the people you're photographing buy into the vision you are trying to achieve. In this instance, because the Joe and Amy are fun an energetic themselves, I thought it would be appropriate to get them doing some off the wall kinda things. They went right along with it and came up with some ideas of their own that fit into the whole motif. In fact, one of the best images we got (pictured above) was their idea! I had a good time and I'm looking forward to their reaction towards the finished product.

The cost of staying in Business

It seems I get the same type of e-mail every couple of weeks from families, brides, and models asking what my rates are. I kindly tell them what to expect in terms of both finished product and money and 9 times out of 10 I never hear from them again. On this one occasion recently, however, I had some one ask me if they thought that my rate was too steep for what they wanted. I thought about it for awhile, and I came to the conclusion that I wasn't effectively conveying the value of both my time, my investment, and my talent. It's difficult to overcome the mindset that "all you do is click a button and the picture happens" in the digital age to people who aren't all that familiar with the process. What a lot of people fail to realize is that its taken a multitude of lighting tests, compositional knowledge, color theory classes, technical know-how on how to get the most out of an exposure, etc., etc. Not to mention the monetary investment in all of the necessary equipment to be able to produce the image in the first place. Add to this your time in scout location, preproduction, post production, color management, scheduling, correspondence, and time spent learning new techniques in order to make even more interesting and creative images, and you have a sizable chunk of your time and money out the door. But how do you convey all of this info to a potential client without sounding pretentious? I like to explain it as such: with my potential at creating your image, you will have a unique finished product that will utilize all of my knowledge, creativity, and technical ability. As such, in order for me to stay ahead of the curve with these traits, I need to be able to purchase new equipment, learn new techniques, etc.- hence the reason for my rates. I think if people can attach a tangible value to your photography, the battle is already half way there in your favor.

Making new Memories at Kennywood

So a couple of weeks ago I had the rare opportunity to not only work with the fabulous Ali Pace of Down with Fashion, but we also were able to do a location shoot at Kennywood, a local amusement park here in Pittsburgh. We got rolling at 8:00 in the morning to avoid any potential run-ins with incoming park guests (poor Ali, the model, and the makeup artist all got there start at 6:00 a.m.!) and the whole thing went off without a hitch. We photographed around the Merry-go-round and the kids kingdom area. The model, Chelsea, was a real pro which led to some great pictures! We were in and out of there inside of two hours, just as the days crowd was filing in.
When your dealing with an outdoor location shoot like this, its always important to try and control the available light as much as you can. In this particular instance, it was still early enough to kinda plan my angles because the sun wasn't too high in the sky yet. I had my assistant Lauren provide diffusion when we needed it to let the strobes do there job. Much thanks to Ali, Adrianna, Chelsea,Lauren and Jeff from Kennywood for making this all happen. Take a look at the pics and short video, let me

know what you think!

Just another day at the office...

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think "boy, do I love my job." Thursday was a great example of that. I got an email earlier in the week from a photographer in Missouri who was coming into town to photograph a baseball player. He was looking for an assistant for the day and as luck would have it I was available. They were going to be filming Joba Chamberlain, one of the pitchers for the New York Yankees, for a sports apparel commercial. When I got to the location there was a film crew already setting up and some curious passersby. Our job was to photograph still images of Joba in between takes for the commercial. The whole experience gave me an insight into the world of the celebrity. It seemed every minute of this young man's life was spoken for in some way or another. We had him from roughly 10:30 till 3:00 and in that time he filmed various segments for the commercial, posed for still photographs both for us and the crew, signed autographs, and met with a group of preteen admirers. The amazing thing to me was that he did all of this with such poise and togetherness, it was really something to take notice of. After we finished the film crew, the photographer, and I went to eat and digest the days experience. Everyone was in agreement that the shoot went off without a hitch and things probably couldn't have gone any better. I had a great day by meeting new people in the industry, having a minor brush with celebrity, and learning while getting paid to do so.
All in all, not a bad day of work!

Moving on...

Well its been a heck of a week. Last Friday I finally graduated from college with my bachelor's degree in photography. It had been a long time coming and I was glad to finally get it over with. As luck would have it, I ended up winning the best of show award along with the dean's merit commendation. It was both a wonderful honor to receive and a humbling experience.
Since then my life has been a nonstop train ride of incoming work oddly enough. Running down the itinerary of this past week, I did two food shoots for publication, 2 editorial locations for a city night guide, a group portrait of a party promotions company, a test shoot for a local clothing company, an assisting job with an architectural photographer, and an editorial fashion shoot for a wonderful local clothing designer. I guess my point with all of this info is that you as a photographer need to constantly be on the look out for that next opportunity. Probably 80% of the above mentioned jobs were booked well before this week, knowing that I would have a lot of free time post graduation. It's important to keep yourself motivated and moving on to that next step in your career!

Band Photography

I thought I would throw up a new video of a recent shoot I did with the band Hyperion. They were a bunch of great guys and we got some great images!
See you next week!

Self promotion commotion

We've all agonized over it. How do you as a photographer promote yourself to the world. If your like me, I'm sure you have spent many a sleepless night wondering if your approach is working. Should I change my postcard? Too simple? Not simple enough? Should I even be sending out postcards? What about business cards? Is the design effective? Is it sending the message I want it to send? All of these questions are enough to make you want to pull your hair out (and if your in my situation, there isn't that much hair to spare!) Having run this gauntlet recently I have a few thoughts on the subject that I hope you find enlightening:

1. You are a photographer, not a designer- I know, I know, you may think your day-glo blue business card with the swirly-Q font looks cool, but trust me it doesn't. I remember asking the opinion of my graphic designer what she thought of my latest design for my business card (this was before I asked her to come up with a design for me). She gave me a sympathetic look and said "why don't you just stick to photography"... Truer words could not have been spoken. Graphic designers have a plethora of knowledge when it comes to appropriate font choice, layout, color selection, etc. USE IT!!! If you can't afford a graphic designer; beg, borrow, and steal to get the services of one. I had to sell a kidney (just kidding :)

2. Be as innovative as possible- I once heard a story about an advertising company that was changing their name. They needed an innovative way to get the word out, so instead of traditional snail mail they used carrier pigeons! They attached a tiny invitation and RSVP to the pigeon's leg inviting the recipient to a renaming party. They sent out 60 pigeons over 3 days and had a 100% success rate! It's true, you can read about it here.
My point is that if you want to get someones attention, you generally have to beat them over the head with something extremely unique. I've seen some truly unique pieces, from plant beans that spell out the word "create" when fully grown to miniature portfolios that fit inside a pocketbook. The key is to find something that fits your personality. I like to use minicards. There cute, tiny, and unorthodox; just like me!

3. Make your promotion system unified- What I mean by this is you want all of your promotional material to be consistent. If you have a postcard with one font choice and a business card with another, your clientele is going to get pretty confused pretty quickly. It's good to think in terms of searing your branding into a client's brain. You want them to remember you beyond just your photography. A strong promotional system will do just that.

That's about it for now, just remember that a strong self promo is one more way to get your foot in the door.

What do you do when your in a rut?

Lately I've been getting frustrated shooting the same things day in and day out. Its not that I'm complaining, a bad day photographing is better than a good day doing anything else, its just that sometimes I run into a creative rut. My way to combat this is to photograph something totally out of my realm. Take this past week for instance, I photographed three separate genres of photography over the period of three days. The first was something more along the lines of my style with a very thought out and deliberate lighting setup. The second was much more of a high fashion feel, something that I don't normally do, and the third was straight up rock and roll, in your face band photography, which I've only ever done once before. All three shoots required a different way of looking at things. The first was more about the style and color, the second about the look and emotion, and the third about the persona. It was a great exercise in thinking outside of the box and it opened up my mind to the potential of new ideas. My point is that when you feel yourself slipping creatively, open yourself up to the possibility of stepping outside of your comfort zone. More often than not, you will surprise yourself at how rewarding these types of experiences can be and it allows you to take a step back and really evaluate how you photograph. I knew by the end of the week I was a better photographer because of it.

See you next week!

From Start to Finish- Part 4

Alright, now on to the part that I think everyone has been waiting for...wait for it....wait for it....THE JOYS OF PHOTOSHOP!!! (echo reverberates throughout the land.) Anyways, the best way to approach something like this is to come up with some sort of gameplan as to how you're going to do it! my gameplan was to outline all the necessary components using the pen tool, punch them out from the backgrounds, and then composite them onto the background plate which was also shot separately. The pen tool is essential for something like this because it allows you to be super precise and it allows you to go back to it later on if you need to change the shape. The key to make a seemless selection with it is to utilize both the feather and smooth selection commands under the select menu. For this particular project, i generally used a feather of 1 pixel and a smooth of 2 pixels, this gave me a nice feathered edge to all of the components which made them look more natural. Once this was accomplished, there was general perspective changes that needed to be done in order to blend everything with each other. It was anything drastic as I followed the perspectives of each object pretty closely when I photographed them, but it was something that needed to be done to augment the feel of the photo. I like to use the perspective function for this (edit, transform, perspective) just because its simple to use. From here it was just a matter of getting everything where I needed it. One of the problems I was running into was that the components didn't look anchored in anyway to the background. To solve this I needed to do a shadow layer which would make things look like they had weight. There's a couple ways of doing this, you could do a dodge/burn layer and just burn in some shadows where necessary, you could do a curves adjustment layer with a mask to punch out any unnecessary areas. They way I did it was just to make an empty layer and paint in the shadows with a low opacity brush set to black. This really did the trick and made the components look like they weren't floating in the picture. Now, to get that animated look in my images is a little tougher. There are a million ways of doing this as well, of which I don't have the space to go over here. The way that I do it mostly is with several high pass filter layers, set at varying radiuses, followed by an unsharp mask layer with a high radius count, and finally a 50% gray layer set to the overlay blending mode. With this layer I paint in highlights and shadows with a low opacity black/white brush. The trick to all of this lies soley with the original lighting setup. If you don't follow the natural behavior of the lighting, your shadows won't make sense and your highlights will look strange. That's really all there is to it, it's been a great project (even my wife, the "Lois Lane" in the picture, had a good time helping me with this one.) and I'm looking forward to the next one!
See you next week!

From Start to Finish- Part 3

When last we met our hero shot had progressed to the point where principle photography was about to begin. This would include the green screen shots of myself and some of the extra goodies like the suitcoat and glasses. I wanted to keep it simple but at the same time keep the lighting in line with what I did for the phone booth. I decided to do a reflective umbrella on camera left for the main illumination and a grid spot to pick up highlights on the shirt and the side of my face. To round it out, I added a third light to make sure the background was nice and shadow free. This was my first attempt at using a green screen and I must say I was pleasantly suprised at how well it worked. The whole point of using the chromakey background was to make it easier later on when I went to isolate the subjects from the background. The only problem I ran into was having a bit of the green walls reflect in my wig, which I solved by moving myself further from the background. After that it was just a simple matter of taking the shot, reviewing it in the camera to see if it was going to match the angle and lighting, rinse and repeat. The same could be said for the suitcoat, glasses, and newspaper, just a simple matter of matching angles and lighting again.
Next week: the joys of photoshop!

From Start to Finish- Part 2

Ok, so last week I left off with the sketch. This week I'm going to go over some of the pre production work that went into making this setup. First of all I needed to find a suitable phone booth. In this modern day of cell phones, this was a pretty tall order to come by. I happened to stumble across one a couple of months back when I was walking through a local park. The phone had been ripped out ages ago but the basic form was still intact. The next step involved getting the local parks conservancy office on the phone to obtain the right permit to photograph in their park. I talked to the man in charge, told him what I was doing and when I wanted to do it, and if it was possible to shoot in their area. He said sure and he would send me a permit in the mail. After a couple days of waiting on the mail, the permit showed up and I was off to shoot this phone booth. The only problem was that the booth had mysteriously vanished since last time I saw it. After much searching of the area, I found it buried under a bunch of weeds and debris in a corner of the park. It wasn't much but it was a start. Lighting was pretty simple, a single alien bee 800 set at max power shot into a reflective umbrella off to camera left with the exposure dialed in to allow the ambient light to peak in as well. I stood on the top step of my step stool to get the angle (you should have seen the looks I was getting from people driving by, very interesting.) All in all, the whole thing lasted 20 minutes tops. The next step was to get ahold of a convincing Clark Kent ensemble. After some initial playing in the mirror with my hair (yeah, not gonna work) I decided on a vinyl superman wig I found on ebay. A white button down, colorful tie, sensible slacks, and those all so important spectacles and superman shirt rounded out the look. With all of the attire out of the way, it was time to begin experimenting with green screen!
See you next week!

From Start to Finish- Part 1

Due to circumstances beyond my, ahem, control (curse you playstation 3!) I'm a day behind on my blog post. So, in the interest of keeping things moving forward I am going to try something a bit different. I have been working on a project now for the past month and I thought it would be interesting to document the whole thing from beginning to end. This will be a multi-part blog-a-thon over the next couple of weeks so stay tuned to get to the final image.
Okay, let's start at square one. I have come up with this idea of doing a book of editorial portraits of some friends of mine. Each one of these people (and they know who they are!) has a unique characteristic about their personality that would translate really well over to the visual media that we know and love as photography. So, I mentioned this idea to a couple of said friends and the response was luke warm. Hmm, how do I get them more excited about having their picture taken, you ask. Simple, I will take one of myself first! I guess I will need an idea. Well considering that these will be editorial illustrative portraits, it really was a no brainer for me to do something Superman related (for those that don't know me, I am a huge superman fan, in fact I have a whole bedroom in my house chock full of superman memorabilia.) Ok, so I have an idea, how do I do it. The only way that this was going to work in my eyes was a composite. I wanted something that would look cartoony and distorted and down right fun. So my initial thought was to have me flying through the city up up and away style. Well, once I ran through the logistics of the composite it just wasn't going to happen. I finally settled on a more classic pose of superman coming out of a phone booth mid wardrobe change only to be discovered by a very surprised Lois lane (more on this later, I told you it would pay to stick around!) So, without further ado, here is the initial sketch


lovely, isn't it.... Ok, Ok, so it's not a picasso but it gets the point across. Next week I'll go over the ins and outs of prop location! See ya then

When your given lemons...

I recently had an editorial portrait published that has an interesting story. I was contacted for an assignment that involved photographing a local artisan working on some of his jewelry. Ok, no problem, pretty standard stuff. All the art director wanted was a shot of him working on some of his pieces in his workshop. I loaded up the SUV and headed over thinking this would take me all of 30 minutes tops. I even hesitated bringing some of the lighting, thinking that I would just throw on a hotshoe flash on a stand ala "strobist" style and grab something quick. Well, as luck would have it, when I got there the artist informed me that his workshop was in the process of being dismantled so we couldn't get a shot of him working. Ok, no problem (again), I would just have to think of something quick in lieu of the workshop shot. So we got to talking and it just so happens that he has a particular idea that he would be interested in trying out if I'm game for it. Being the adventurous type, I said sure and the next thing you know I'm photographing him in his bathtub! The shoot lasted over an hour and we got some fantastic images. The moral of the story is always keep an open mind and sometimes the best images will just come to you.

See you next week!

Ok, so I've gotten a few questions about how I did one of my photographs so I thought I would post the before and after. The bulk of the image was done with latex makeup and the remainder was done in photoshop using the clone stamp tool with the opacity and flow set to around 40 percent. When your doing something like this, it's important to just take your time and go over the area with the clone tool several times at a low opacity. This gives the image a much more realistic look and you have more control over the final product.

Thanks for looking!

CD cover for a talented local artist

Just finished up with some post production work on the upcoming CD for the very talented miss Molly Maiolo. I would define her music as alt-classical rock, if that is a classification! Definitely worth a listen to, check her out at profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=281367712
Well, as luck would have it, Miss Molly is good friends with one of the makeup artists that I have worked with in the past and one thing led to another and lo and behold we have some great images for her CD cover! We all had great time frolicking about in the 20 degree weather while the Miss Molly humored my scatterbrained ideas (she was such a good sport!)

Check them out and talk amongst yourselves.

ta ta for now

First post, Photoshoot!

Hey guys, since this is my first post for the new blog, I thought I would kick it off with a small video of a photo shoot I did not too long ago with the beautiful Miss Brooke! Take a look and tell me what you think.
P.S., Welcome to the site!