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!