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September 13, 2010
review: Litepanels MicroPro LED On-Camera Light
I’ve been using the Lowel ID-Light whenever I wanted the specific effect that a video light gives when used for stills photography. The not-so-gradual fall-off in the light’s spread gives a dramatic quality to images. However, the Lowel ID-light can feel clumsy with the handle and battery pack that needs to be attached via the thick power cable. So I’ve been looking at various options to replace it … or at least use at times that I need something compact and simple. Enter the Litepanels MicroPro LED video light (B&H) …
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September 12, 2010
For the last in the series of photo sessions with the Modern Gypsies on this day, we ended up here … launching two girls in costume, onto the East River inside a giant ball. It really did make sense. And you may ask yourself, how did we get here? Letting the days go by … No, really, how did we get here?
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September 10, 2010
Pinkman! More from the recent extended photo session with the Modern Gypsies. After the photo session with Martin on stilts, we moved to one of the many colorful areas in Brooklyn where we started with Dread Eye. Working in the same spot, Michael Saab fitted his character, PinkMan! out with jumping stilts. Absolute lunacy!
Working in such bright light, I thought the best approach would be to cross-light the sunlight with off-camera flash …
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September 9, 2010
Two fantastic entries to the recent Photoshop contest came from Marcia Gold, who runs a post-processing and retouching service. She said she entered just for fun, and didn’t want to be eligible for the prize. I am taking the liberty of showing her two images here anyway, since they are outstanding takes of the original image …
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I’m happy to announce the winner of the Photoshop contest from last week. The winning entry was submitted by Hanssel Galeano, and he will receive the $50 B&H voucher for this effort.
Before I let Hanssel explain his process in editing the image,
here is the original again for comparison …
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September 8, 2010
Chuck Arlund is a Fashion Photographer whose elegant photography is made even more impressive with the simplicity of his set-ups and use of lighting.
Chuck’s previous guest spot here on the topic of on-location lighting techniques using reflector & flash, was very well received. Therefore I’m very happy that Chuck is graciously sharing more of his ideas with this guest post. Also, check out Chuck’s workshops and mentoring sessions.
Inspiration and Homage,
compositing and multiple lights made to look natural
This photograph is from a recent fashion story, and has a couple of elements going on. There is an obvious Americana theme, and in that, there is the homage to Norman Rockwell. Who captured that spirit better than Norman Rockwell?
I’ll just tell the story of how the image came about and then describe the technique behind it …
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September 7, 2010
photographing the bride and bridesmaids – location and direction
One of the series of photographs that I like to “have in my pocket” are the individual photos of the bride with each bridesmaid. This is the kind of photograph you can hammer out very quickly, one after the other. The bride with a bridesmaid, hugging each other. I always make time for this. One stumbling block might be a lack of place to do this. But there is usually somewhere to do this, by isolating your subject with a long lens against an out-of-focus background …
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September 6, 2010
influences and inspiration
Triggered by the most recent post on the pin-up photo session, I thought that an on-going theme about influences and inspiration in photography would make a good topic.
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The photo above was taken during an engagement photo session. In posing Melissa and Dennis for the one sequence, I wanted to use an idea that I saw on the cover of the disc of a movie I had watched just a few days before – An Education. (Amazon)
The young actress, Carey Mulligan was nominated for an Oscar for her role in this touching coming-of-age story. Beautifully told and acted and filmed. It was based on a book written by Nick Hornby. He was also the author of ‘High Fidelity’, a book dear to my heart.
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The cover image of the DVD / Blu-Ray disc caught my attention – the two actors, elegantly posed. When I saw it, I immediately knew I would reference this image some time during upcoming photo session.
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September 3, 2010
The first time I became aware of the pin-up artwork of Alberto Vargas was with the release of the album, Candy-O, by the Cars in ’79. It was often mentioned how Vargas was brought out of semi-retirement to create this image.
With that, my interest in pin-up artwork by the legends, Vargas and by Gil Elvgren , was fired up.
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This will also explain why I’ve been a fan of the photography of Robert Alvarado ever since I first saw his work. He clearly pays homage to those two artists.
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September 2, 2010
updated Sept 09, 2010: The contest is now closed.
Here is the winning entry, as well as another notable entry.
Thank you to everyone who entered!
One of the images I took during the recent photo session with the Modern Gypsies, was this photo above. With all his antics, I had asked him to jump against the wall as if he was going to scale it. It looks pretty cool … but the mundane urban background pulls this potentially surreal image back to normality. A little bit anyway.
Then I imagined it as him scaling an impossibly high wall, rising up from an unseen area below. Pretty cool idea. However, this needs a defter hand and a more incisive understanding of Photoshop from here on than I have. Here is how far I got with my attempt at what I was envisioning …
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