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