Paul Pardue

the process

2009-05-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

This seems to be a topic of particular discussion these days, in my mind basically ignoring the image and exerting more prominence on the process rather than the end product. If I were to try and make an analogy I might say something witty and try and explain things away that way, but I'm tired of trying. So, I'll just tell you my process.

First of all, and this is probably a big point to make here, the bulk majority of people who are making these claims are 99% of the time ONLY talking about black and white photography. Yet they fail to understand this, or frankly are unaware of or oblivious to this.

As a little lesson in color photography, it is a very very very tricky process with very specific and inherent complications. Unlike black and white printing, a color dark room is for all intense purposes pitch black, there are no safe lights. You are working very much in the blind as any color, even that from a safe light, will affect the paper. Secondly, chemicals MUST be kept at a near exact temperature, there is little margin of error. Thirdly, and most importantly, the special processing and filters that you can do with black and white films does not, for the most part, exist for color photography.

Now, with all that said and done, my process is actually quite complex and methodical. The process from the click to the final print isn't a two step process. So, for the sake of being informative and helpful I'm going to walk you through my process...

Everything for me starts in the camera. this is perhaps a holdover from my film days when I strove to get the best in camera and on film as I could. The same holds through for my digital processing. i have a very specific and regular style of shooting in which I meter for the highlights and add about a third of a stop to the exposure. This is the same in basic affect to how you shoot for slide film, only that I add a slight bump to the exposure. the reason i do this is because of the way the digital capture system works and it produces less noise in the shadows.

After I get the photos onto my computer I do basic adjustments, if needed, for color balance, exposure, and saturation. these are global adjustments made in raw. once I'm done I can move to doing the local corrections using photoshop. this is generally a complex process involving many many layers and specific adjustments. My record holds at over 8 hours, perhaps even more then 10, on a single photo.

The process here is as you can see quite imposing for a single photo, however, I'll attempt to explain it as best I can.

The bottom most layer is the original photo, or in this case, the exposure for the clouds. Layer 1 above that is exposure used for the ground. Often i'll do two raw 'exposures' for single file which I liken to dodging and burning in the dark room. For this one however, I did use two frames exposed at 2 stops difference for the scene.

layer 1 has an image mask which masks out the top portion of scene so that only the ground layer is visible with the clouds transparent to the layer below.

layer 3 is a sharpening layer. It is blended to the layers below through a blend mode which sharpens the images below.

layer 2 is a spotting layer to remove any dust artifacts. This is done dust by dust.

Color balance 1 pulls a bit of the red out of the clouds and a little out of the ground, and gives the sky specifically a more vibrant blue.

Curves 1 uses a blending mode and mask to give the sky a tad more contrast.

channel mixer 1 uses a different blend mode to darken parts of the image, and is painted in much the same as traditional burning would be done.

group 2 contains group 1 and channel mixer 2 and channel mixer 2 copy. channel mixer 2 does a black and white conversion for the ground and a slightly different mix is used in channel mixer 2 copy for the sky. Each of the channel mixers is masked for it's respective area and the mix is tailored to the different tonalities in the image. This would be like using a red filter for the sky and a different filter for the ground.

group 1 is the tone group that gives the photo it's warm brownish look. Curves 2 is a custom green curve set with a color blend mode, whilst curves 3 is a custom red curve set with softlight blend mode. The group as a whole is set at 50% opacity to lessen the effect.

When all comes together, the image is much different and more involved than a simple black and white conversion. And, the time spent on it is considerable. This print took probably upwards of an hour of processing time, if not closer to two.

The process for this photo isn't simply a quick conversion, nor is that the case for any of my photos.

And as a last point I should add that the whole process is carefully calibrated and controlled. My monitor is calibrated to display colors accurately and the lab that I use to print my photos is calibrated and offers color correction to their system. Within a very very small margin of error the colors and processing I do on my screen makes it to the final print. Further, all my prints are done on archival chemical photo paper and UV coated for longevity. I don't believe in offering any prints on anything printed off of an inkjet printer.

Through and through my prints are true photographic prints of the highest standards. The technical aspects aside, photography is truly only about the final image, the process is only a side to that. advances in the process have come through the years and only those reluctant to adapt to new technologies herald the traditional processes as being the only process. Art isn't so much about being traditional as it is in moving forward and adapting to new ideas concepts and techniques. The digital aspect of photography is as much all of those combined into one.

in final a note, i leave you with the following quote:

"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practioner will again strive to comprehend and control them" (Ansel Adams, March 1981, "The Negative") Introduction, page xiii.

pictorilsim revisisted

2009-05-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I personally think it's about time that we revisit the early days of photography. The effects of the hyper-real, super sharp photos have finally left me very very distraught. f.64 would be rolling in their respective graves, but photo-secession is back.

I started this project well over a year ago but never really understood WHY I had. Nor did I understand exactly what I was doing photographically and esthetically, but I think that after a year I've finally figured out my goals as a photographer.

To me, photography should mimic the art world yet have it's own dynamics. The irony is that a good painting strives for realism, where as in my photos I'm striving for a painterly quality.

I've had a photographic crush on Anne Brigman's work for now about a year, ever since I was first introduced to her. In my recent research I've found that she was part of a movement called pictorilism and belonged to a group of mostly east coast photographers who called themselves photo-secessionists.

It seems as if I fall in line with their way of thinking quite well indeed. And that brings us back to my most recent photo shoot. All in all it was a very decent shoot, but I'm drawn to a few shots about mid way through that I took of the model and to some degree could care less about the rest of the day's shooting. A year ago i started the nude in the field but out of focus series and about 6 months ago or less I started the vintage nude series though never really shoot anything for it. Yesterday I think I finally figured it out by blending the two together...

Aside from some weathering and vintage effects that I've custom built based off of a HUGE library of vintage images I've downloaded from the internet the photo is pretty darn close to as shot. I used the grasses in the foreground as the focal point and left the model in the back softly out of focus. The green tone was made by me using my reference library to design a custom curve file to do the conversion; I have about half a dozen different versions with different colors and tonalities.

http://www.paulparduephotography.com/

print available at http://parduepictures.etsy.com

Dead art

2009-04-25T12:03:00.001-07:00

So I shot a girl after I had her dig her own grave. And yes, it was that morbid. But just so you know, she drove away totally unharmed. I'd seen a shot a few weeks back that i really thought was well executed and thought I'd try my hand at doing something similar; you might get away with calling it a copy cat killer photo. ha ha. okay, I think I should lay off of the bad puns before i end up digging my own grave.

So, for the shot I ended up setting up my gear as she helped dig a small ditch enough to lay mostly in. I lost my light meter on my shoot a while back and can't afford to replace that piece of equipment yet. At 500 dollars it's a bit out of my budget, even though it is nearly indispensable to me. Without it, it took a bit longer to set up and I had to mostly guess at my flash settings but I think that in the end I got it about where I wanted it.

I balanced the ambient and flash so that the ambient was a half to full stop under so that the flash would pop on her but not look to much like flash. I was going for a look of just a hint of light over the background to separate her just enough and I think I did it fairly well under the circumstances.

As for the post processing I did very little in terms of retouching and stuck mostly to working with the color and general tonality. I've fallen in love with a new warm tone curve that I've developed, the mixture between two curves that I created for the vintage series I have been wanting to work on. They two curves are done as adjustment layers (as always) and I've played with the blending modes so they act differently then their original design. it's one of the things that I love about working digitally is that there is a world of processing that can be done in post.

I had originally considered doing a pure black and white (well, brown and white to be more specific) but decided that a hint of color gave it just the right touch of uneasiness that i was looking for. Since the black and white and warm tone conversion felt a bit static, I lowered the opacity of the conversion to let a hint of the color version back in. This created a nice duotune look that had warm shadows but cool highlights which I'm particularly fond of for this shot.

All in all I love the eerie look to this photo; and while it isn't something that i've dealt with in the past, my head is now racing with ideas that i would like to try. I think it helps to break out of the box once in a while to try new things and experiment and I think that this is one experiment that even a mad scientist would be proud of.

http://www.paulparduephotography.com/

print available at http://parduepictures.etsy.com

Shot for susipie.etsy.com

2009-03-08T23:01:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite subjects to work with and always a pleasure to spend time with, I shot for sushipie's shop this afternoon. She's a great girl, and her knitted goods are pretty cool, plus, she always seems to have an odd if not eclectic vintage outfit.

Shoot a ton today of her, almost 200 which isn't something I do on very many occasions. I'm of the mind set that it's best to get 1 good shot then 100 crappy shots but we were having so much fun shooting around what is affectionately dubbed 'the death star'. it's one of the buildings on the UC Davis campus, and is very much kin to it's name.

Unfortunately, one of my favorite shots doesn't really show any of the location at all, but trust me it's a really weird building. It's almost a 3d maze of a building.

The lens myth explained

2008-10-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

It's a common misconception that the shorter a lens, the more distortion the image will receive. And while this may seem like what happens based on what we see, the simple fact remains that it is the object's relationship to the field of view that affects the final representation in the camera.

If we can assume an object to extend out beyond it's edge on a plane lying perpendicular to the camera lens we can extrapolate the size of that object's plane in relationship to the field of view and further express that as a percentage of the camera's frame.

Basically, at any given distance from the camera we want to find out how long of a length is covered perpendicular to the lens. We can then use that information to determine the percentage that a given object has in relation to the fame size.

In the above diagram there are 4 "cameras" and 3 "objects". The red camera and the blue camera share the same field of view but a different position. The charts below show the effective size and the percentages of each of the objects in relationship to that specific camera's field of view.

The important thing to note is that while the objects remain stationary and their lengths unchanged, the relationship they exhibit to one another changes in a scalar form as the distance between the object and the lens changes. This is most apparent with the red and blue cameras which both share the same angular field of view with only a change in the distance from the objects.

As we move our position (the camera) from the position of the red camera to the position of the blue camera the difference in relationship of each of the objects to the field of view changes until eventually each of the objects has a 100% of the frame's size in which each object overlaps the one behind them totally.

Continuing on, as we approach the green and subsequently the purple camera positions the effect of each object in relationship to each other continues until we reach the point where the difference in each field of view becomes greatly distorted. At the point we reach the position of the purple camera the 2nd object which is 150% the size of the first object becomes distorted to appear to be half the size (or thinking of it in reverse, the smaller object appears twice as large as the (in reality) larger object.

This happens simply because the object fills less of the frame since it's relationship to the field of view represents a smaller percentage within the total coverage for an object at that distance.

(it should be noted that the view's for the green and purple camera's have a cut out in the top left 1/4 of the first object to show where the subsequent objects would fall in relationship. The blue and red cameras both show a representation of how the objects would stack normally)

What we can get from this is that in order for an object of the same size to fill the same amount of space in the camera's frame we must use a wider lens as we move closer and a longer lens as we move away. In fact, both the red camera and the green camera represent object 1 as 66% of the frame. This is evidenced by both the charts as well as the first diagram where the intersection of object 1's plane is shared by both the red camera and the green camera's field of view.

An interesting change in the relationship happens however if we were to move the purple camera to the position of the red camera (a distance 6 times as far). If we move the purple camera object one will fill 0.083 percent of the frame, object 2 0.093 percent, and object 3 0.1 percent of the frame. The reason this is interesting is that the relationship of the sizes of each object remains roughly equivalent. 66% is 83% of 80%, whereas 0.083% is 83% of 0.1%, therefore the relationship of objects at any distance remains roughly equivalent at any given field of view.

Intermediate photoshop

2008-09-12T00:48:00.000-07:00

This tutorial assumes that you have some basic knowledge of photoshop and are looking for a bit more on the technical side. In my previous tutorial I went over some basics with levels. Today is going to be centered around layers and masks.

First off, I must point out that I never work on a photo unless it's by using layers and masks. It does at to the complexities of the work, but also grants you a huge increase in abilities. I am using a photo provided by jrdnart.etsy.com of a sunflower. It's a good photo but we're going to make it better through a little photoshop processing. Remember that I never touch the original, that stays intact at all times. And, the added benefit of using layers that if I screw something up I can always dump the layer and start over with a clean layer and not have to worry about redoing a ton of work.

First off, notice the layers palette. There are a couple things I'd like to point out here.

Background: this is the original untouched image.

Sharpen: this is the layer I add sharpening too, I add it to this layer rather then the original because I want to leave the original untouched in case I need an unmodified image.

Healing brush: As the name implies this was the layer I used to heal a part of the image... It's important to use the brush on a clean layer and to select "current and below" from the drop down menu at the top.

Center and Flower: both are curves adjustment layers. the black and white image on the right is the layer's mask. Make notice of the masks color here.

Skymask: is a group containing both of the above adjustments layers.

Blue Saturation: is a hue and saturation layer that I've used to make the sky pop.

1. New layer, used to create the blank layer and also create the duplicate layer by dragging an existing layer onto it.

2. Adjustment layer drop down menu.

3. New layer mask

Here is the curves dialog. Note that there are two white to black grayscales on the side and bottom as well as a histogram. The center curve is what makes everything work here. You can add a point to the curve my clicking on it and dragging. The bottom scale indicates where the tone was and the side scale indicates where the tone will be. Note that the input and output are different. This is because we have created a point that changes the tone curve of the image. A higher output than input will make the input tone brighter and a lower output than input will make the input darker.

Please make a note too of the preview button. This is available on most all dialog boxes and I strongly urge you check what the image looked like before and after adjustments by clicking that button on and off.

Here we have the hue saturation dialog box and I just wanted to point out that I've selected blue from the Edit drop down so I'm working only on the blue channel of the image. Here we can see that I only adjusted the saturation and lightness of the blue channel. I wanted to sky to pop a bit more so I added more color saturation and also darkened it at the same time. I'd like to also point out the preview button again.

I want to step back here for a second and bring you back to the layer masks. Remember the little icons from the layer's pallet above? Good, this is a point where many new photoshop users get throughly lost. Imagine a doughnut. That doughnut has a whole in the center that we can see through and the doughnut itself which we can't. Apply that logic to a layer mask. Every layer mask is like a doughnut. There are parts we can see through and parts we can't. However, when working with an adjustment layer we need to apply a bit of fuzzy logic to get it to mesh. We still have that doughnut, but this time it's a plastic doughnut we can see through. In fact, it's a red doughnut.

Imagine if we put that doughnut on a sheet of paper and look through it. Where ever there is doughnut the paper below it will be red and where ever there is a hole we will see the paper as it is. This is what we are doing with an adjustment layer. We are cutting a hole in the adjustment layer where we don't want the adjustment. So only the places we do want to be adjusted will be adjusted. Since the mask works in shades of grey and white is the shape of the doughnut and black the shape of the hole we can adjust the image below it.

In the layers pallet I have four masks, one on the hue saturation, one on the group, and two on each of the curves. If you look at the masks you can see where we've allow the adjustment through, and where we've cut a hole in it to let the unadjusted photo to show.

Double A

2008-08-10T22:11:00.001-07:00

Well grades finally came in for my English class (been waiting weeks now)... I got myself and A! And I'd gotten an A in my philosophy class which ended a month ago. It's very nice to have a semester that I not only get through, but get through with flying colors. I owe quite a lot of my success in my English class to Jessica, she helped me considerably. Everything from just printing the papers out when I was low on ink, to helping me with proofing the papers and even getting my thoughts out on to paper legibly. I honestly don't know what I'd do without her.

Now all I have to focus on is my upcoming semester. I am retaking the two architecture classes I had to drop out of, intermediate algebra (for the millionth time, Jessica I'm going to need your help here too), materials of construction (construction management technologies), and two art classes to fill time (one which I'm redoing because when I took it I didn't hold on to all the assignments and couldn't find them to turn in at the end of the semester). 21 units in total...

Photoshop 101 : Levels

2008-07-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

Last week I went over how to set up a product shot using just a few supplies from around the house. Today I am going to work on some basic image control techniques. I would like to stress a small pet peeve I have about calling this editing or photoshopping; first is that editing is the process of selection, and second is that photoshop is not needed for any of the techniques below since most any photo manipulation software can do this.

I mention that last one for those that are using photoshop elements or some other program, since the buttons and names may be different. If you aren't using photoshop or similar and would like to have a decent photo manipulating without any cost to you (and legally too), consider GIMP. I've not used it myself but it is an option to you. gimp.org

To begin our tutorial I am using a photo I took in a junk yard. Notice how the colors are lifeless and the photo is flat. For this exercise (and anytime you talk about photos), the term flat is used to denote an image that has low contrast, or range from darkest to lightest. A histogram such as the two in the levels control windows below shows a map of the concentration of values along the tonal range of the image. Sound complicated? It's not... Starting at the left of the histogram is the darkest spot and we get continuously brighter as we go further right. The far right is the brightest spot. The funny looking shape inside the window is the histogram itself, and is just a representation of the percentage of pixels that are that particular level of brightness.

Looking at the levels dialogs there are

three controls under the histogram, those little triangle are the controls we are going to use for this exercise. Now, I stress that using tools like auto levels may be a one click adjustment, but in my mind it is not a solution. Auto levels picks these points for you; we are here to learn how to pick them ourselves. To do this, we need to remember that the histogram is just a range of the current image's tones, the triangles on the bottom are where our white mid and black points will be after clicking okay.

Why is this important you may ask? Well, each image and hence each histogram is different and we want to be able to learn how to move the controls appropriately. Remember those bell curves from school where the teacher took the highest grade and the lowest grades and made those the tops and bottoms of the test and your grade fell somewhere between them? Well, that's what we're going to do with levels.

In my sample image's histogram above you can see how the image is not distributed evenly, it has very little in the darkest areas. What we've done is move the dark triangle to the right. We are effectively saying that this point above the triangle is where we want the bell curve to fall. In this case, we've moved the black triangle to just slightly past the first little bit of of the hill. Why did we do this? Because moving it into the area rather then just at the beginning will give us a slightly punchier contrast which is what we want.

I also moved the grey slider a little bit to, it controls the mid point of our bell curve. We usually want to adjust our mid points to control the contrast of our highlights OR our shadows. This one is also more subjective and depends on the individual image so you should play around with this one yourself.

Lastly I felt that image looked fine tonally, but the color was a little lacking. So I opened up the hue/saturation tool and pulled in a bit more saturation here. BUT, in a step that is often over looked, I used the drop down menu to work on the red channel (and the yellow channel as well) since I felt the rest of the spectrum (blues and greens) looked fine. Here I added a small amount of saturation to the reds channel and yellows to bring out the rust of the cable and the yellow paint. This added a bit more pop to the image which to me was exactly what was needed.

In looking at the image before we did any corrections to it to our final image we can see a huge increase in the image's tone and color. We started at a washed out flat image and ended up with something that has a full contrast range and has colors that pop. End the end, we've only used two tools and a few clicks of the mouse but we've had complete control the whole time. It may be a little more then clicking auto, but in this sample clicking auto would introduce a magenta color cast and leave us with a flat image.

I hope that this tutorial has provided you with some tips and a little more info on how to use photoshop to enhance your images. I'd love to see some before and after photos.

Photography 101 : Products

2008-07-08T19:07:00.001-07:00

As an aide to those interested in shooting small objects such as jewelry or in this case a tape measure I'm going to start off my tutorials with a tabletop product shot demonstration. First thing I want to point out is I am in fact not using fancy equipment (other then my dSLR) to achieve this. Most of what you'll need you can find around the house already, or improvise where needed. So first, what is needed for this shot?

Materials:

1. Camera (any kind will do with one caveat, your life will be a million times easier if the camera has a manual mode. I'll go into this in a minute)

2. Product

3. Five sheets of typing paper

4. Table lamp.

5. Tripod (or something to rest the camera on)

6. Tape or 2 paper clips

Let's build our set shall we? First, take a sheet of paper and fold it in half widthwise. Then fold that in half what would have been lengthwise. Fold both sides of that to make a letter W (or M depending on which way you folded). You want to end up with a W shape however. Now, take another sheet of paper and tape the top edge to the arms of the W... You want this sheet to rest against your table and curve up in the back. This is the stage where your product will sit.

Take two more sheets of paper and fold each in half widthwise and set them on either side of the stage fold side up. Take your last sheet and make a small accordion fold along the center

lengthwise. Open it back up and smooth it out only a little (you should have a notch running down the paper, but you don't want it to high, this is only for structural support). Take this sheet and lay it on top of the two folded sheets on the sides, you should have the accordion fold facing up.

Take the table lamp, hopefully it's the kind that is on the arm that you can move around since what we want to do is put the light over the top sheet of paper. What we've done basically is create a tent with the product in the center. The sheet on the back swoops up so it looks like we have a white surface that goes on indefinitely, just what we want.

Place the camera on a tripod or other steady surface (we want the camera above the item and looking down on it). It helps to to back up and zoom in rather then stay close. Make sure you aren't catching any of the edges of the sheets. Having the camera on a tripod or steady surface helps to eliminate motion blur since we're not usually getting a ton of light from the lamp.

Now for that caveat I mentioned about the camera. You can get through this even if your camera doesn't have a manual (or at least exposure compensation) function. The problem is that we want to overexpose the scene. The camera takes an average of what it sees and guesses at the exposure. It tries to put this at a mid grey exposure, so that large area of white is going to look grey if you let the camera do it's thing without intervention. If we can let in more light now we can save ourselves some trouble in having to adjust it in the computer later. If your camera doesn't let you change the exposure we can adjust that in the next tutorial.

That's it. We've just taken our first product shot and if you've done everything right you probably won't need to do much post-processing work. If you do, we'll cover that in the next tutorial.

I would love to know if you use this technique, leave a link in the comments section.

Thanks, Paul

what's old is new

2008-06-24T04:27:00.000-07:00

I sold a print on etsy yesterday, actually two. It's a nice feeling. I had to plug in my external drive with my old library on it to get the images prepped for printing. In doing so I decided to go through and revisit some of my older work. I came across a series of photos I did years ago while on the way to San Francisco that I had done nothing with. I thought that they looked good together so I did some black and white processing on them and am presenting 3 of them as a series. I really want to get these printed large and have them to hang up. I'm in love with these photos

The path of being a genius

2008-06-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

is oft shared with that of being insane. Case in point... Ripping apart a 20 dollar plastic toy camera, folding up some paper bellows and rubber banding it all together to a digital camera body.

Not that anyone could ever consider it to be a quality camera or well crafted, but that's a holga for you. But, anyone one taking it apart and putting the lens onto a camera that costs 75 times as much is shear lunacy. What do I expect out of this? Probably not much more then bragging rights. Lens is crap, the bellows are held on by rubber bands, and the exposure is all over the place. It was fun and gave me something to do on father's day since no one did anything for me.

edited for posterity, Jonah did call at 9:12 to wish me a happy fathers day

I want to be a starving artist

2008-06-04T17:35:00.001-07:00

I think I've finally come to the realization that I really don't care an awful lot about money. Maybe I'm naive or just plain silly; and don't get me wrong, I know that money makes the world go round; but why stress over it? What I do know, is that don't like the concept of punching a clock. Why should every day of a persons' life be devoted to waking up, putting on a tie, and playing a role. Why must we slave over a job we don't like doing so we can have the weekends free to do the things we actually do like doing. I'm not talking about sitting on a beach, the cool, blue waves lapping gently at our sandy toes, sipping on some fruity drink. Everybody wants that, and I'm sure it will come along.

I'm talking about doing a job you love, on your time, and by your rules. Want to take a tuesday off, then go ahead, you can. I don't want a job where it's work. Now, if your favorite thing in the world is to push around numbers all day, then go ahead, by all means get a job as an accountant or some number cruncher for some corporation. If you love hiking then get a job in a state park. But, for the love of all that is good in this world, why work?

We aren't placed onto this world to spend all of our time waiting for the weekends to come. Opportunity is sailing off into the distance; every moment getting further and further away. It's up to us to decide when we jump in the water and start swimming. Personally, I've decided in my life that I would rather live it then watch it go by. Bless me with enough fortitude to get by comfortably and let me live my life enjoying what I do, not dreading it.

Weddings

2008-06-02T10:43:00.001-07:00

I don't have a picture for today's post, but I'll get to that... Everybody that knows me knows that weddings are not something I would call the pinnacle of photography. In fact I would probably lump wedding photography more towards the bottom of the barrel, maybe only one step up from senior portraits. Of course, that's only on my list of things I'd want to do for a living. In reality, I don't mind weddings, as long of course as I'm not the one doing all the lame posing and stupid shots of grandmas.

Well, Saturday I did my first official wedding as primary photographer. I went out untrained, with equipment I've never had the benefit of using before, to shoot something I don't care to shoot. For the first wedding out on my own, I wouldn't have considered that I did too bad. But, I still got yelled at for minor details. Some things were my own fault, somethings for a first wedding were unavoidable, others, were lack of instruction and knowhow of equipment.

All things considered, I learned something that I already knew; I don't like shooting weddings. It's not on my list things I want to do for a career. With the stress involved with shooting the wedding in someone else's style, and the stress involved when I get yelled at for someone else's incompetence; it doesn't really add up to me wanting to shoot more weddings.

Lastly, of the few weddings I've shot this year, I've yet to see any of my images or do anything with them for my own portfolio. My website will sit in perpetuity with year old shots. I've long considered removing the wedding portfolio from my website in it's entirety. Not that I'm not proud so to speak of my work, but it's not what I would consider the apex of my creativity and ability...

Give me a wedding and let me shoot it in my style and under my terms and I'll do fine. Let me turn it into a portrait session with just the bride and groom; add in a little flavor here and there and I'll gladly shoot it. Just don't ask me to shoot the family and all the friends, or be forced to sit through a lame ceremony so I can snap shots of lighting the candle or make sure I've got the kiss. In all honesty, I'd like to shoot wedding shoots DAYS after the wedding. Just the two of you.

Field of dreams

2008-05-27T21:20:00.001-07:00

So, I've officially named my project. It's still a working title for now, but whatever. I'm having WAY more luck in getting models for these projects then I am for the fashion stuff. On one hand, it's easier to find someone that fits the model profile for this project, since there is no profile. In fashion, you're always looking for the tall skinny girls because that's what the designers design for. My project has no guidelines, anyone can be a model.

To me, I find it so ironic that we as people take for granted the natural world and consider ourselves to be lords of the earth when in fact we are nothing but a small part. The series has a certain play on that theme by placing the models in fields but focusing on the surroundings and not on the model.

We are born naked and it is only our distaste for nature, our lust for 'civilization', and our shame of our own self's that we choose to cover up and hide away our true nature. We are a part of this earth, and we must learn to live in balance with her.

In metaphor I've chosen to place the focus of the imagery on nature, and humanity as a prominent but not key element. Humanity may be a significant factor, a deadly and destructive factor at that, but in the end, we are nothing more then a footnote on the pages of time.

Whether through our own self infliction or the course of time, earth will prevail long after humanity is gone. The question is how much are we going to leave behind.

Self portraits are lame

2008-05-20T01:58:00.001-07:00

It's one of those lame things that you're almost invariably asked to do for a photo class. Why? What purpose does shooting yourself have in the grand scheme of the world? Do I learn anything in setting up a shot and putting the camera on a timer? Doubtful.

To err is human

2008-05-14T16:34:00.000-07:00

They say that to err is human. Well, I must be human then. Jessica was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life. I wish I could go back in time and undo everything. Not because she was a mistake, but because I made the mistake of not treating her the way she deserved when I had the chance. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

In any regard, she's still my number one model, a true muse. Something about her eyes her really jump out at me. My photo instructor for the class I'm in has thus far really only had one complaint or criticism about my work and that's my models lack f connection to the camera. He's said that they have no story behind their eyes, nothing to tell. Jessica here has such a powerful connection to the viewer, but I think it's because of the connect her and I once shared. I need to figure out how to pull that same connection from the rest of my models.

April 14 2008

2008-04-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

I finally got to work with the wonderful Amber Kloss; it's been probably at least a year if not more since we first started talking about to do a shoot. Amber has wonderful and abundent selection of vintage outfits so the plan was to shoot something for my class's 'Time Machine' assignment. When she got here and we got to talking about the assignment, she asked if the assignment could be from the future rather then the past and pulled out the crazy red outfit. We ended up shooting both time periods, 1960 and 2060. Ha ha, I'm so cool.

April 6 2008

2008-04-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, working with someone who is so close to you can be a hardship, and with jessica it's no different. It's hard to get the opportunities to work with her because jealousy seems to run around like a naked toddler escaping a new diaper; kicking and screaming and flinging poo everywhere.

Actually, I may have exaggerated there, but I loved the visual I created in my mind in doing so. In all honesty, working with Jessica is amazing because not only is she an incredible person, a great mother to my child, and a beautiful woman, but she's also quite handy with the knitting needles.

In fact, the sweater she is wearing she knitted herself. I guess though that if I had the luxury of staying at home 24 hours a day without worrying about money or work or concerns of those nature, I'd have more time to pursue that what I am interested in. Can you imagine me, having no concern for money being able to just shoot when and where and what I wanted? Amazing! That's all I can think.

April 4 2008

2008-04-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

I'm posting a few for today because I've kind of fallen a little behind.

One of the great things about being a photographer is working with really cool models. Monika is one such person. Not only is she a great model but she is also such a pleasure to talk with.

Also, I found a really cool place to shoot, and will most likely come back here more then a few times. You can turn around or walk a few feet and be in a totally different environment. This is one of those places that I really wish I had a car so I could just go shoot at on my own time too. The cool trestle, cracked mud, dirt paths, and over-grown plant life are just super cool... I'd love to come back out and do some of my more artsy photography in this spot.

Picture of the day 30 March 2008

2008-03-30T22:34:00.005-07:00

It's rare that I find so many ironies in life... I had put up an ad on craigslist looking for some models for my class. I had been in contact with this girl for about a week, we had tentatively set up a date in the middle of the week to shoot on friday but nothing ever got nailed down. I send a text to her this morning since today was our fall back day to see if we were still going to shoot. At first, she texted me back that she had gone out last night and hand a hangover this morning and that she probably wasn't going to do a great job... I texted back that it was no big deal; I had no pressing reasons to shoot, no deadlines et cetera; so it wasn't a big deal.

A few minutes later I get a text from her. And here is where it starts to get weird. See, a few years back I had taken a class at school with this guy named tim who since then has gone on and is working for a company shooting graduations and proms and stuff like that... Well, a month or so ago I get an email from him asking if I would be interested in shooting with him. Of course, being as cool as I am I say yes. Well, flash forward to today and her text; Tim is there with her and says hi! Of course, I seize on the opportunity to exploit Tim and text her back telling her to tell him to tell her to shoot with me. YAY, we set up a time for later in the day.

We are shooting and Tim mentions that not only is she a photographer too, but she's also going to be working for him too... And, to make things even weirder, her and I are probably going to be shooting together in 2 weeks.

Now, my question of the day (along with my picture of the day) is how small exactly is the world?

Picture of the day 23 March 2008

2008-03-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

I've been in a funk recently in regards to my photography. I haven't been finding the time to finish all that I've needed to get done for my class. Models as they liked to be called keep flaking out, I've been sick, et cetera. I've shot this whole weekend though, and I'm starting to feel accomplished again.

Shot Friday, stuff didn't quite go how I wanted and ended up spending hours on post on one image. Shot saturday and the images came back much much better. Shot this today and must say that it's not often that I am really floored by what I've shot. There are a few turning points or markers in my path that I recognize as mile stones. This image, in lack of better words, is simply stunning to me. To each their own though I guess, it's a love it or leave it kind of image.

Picture of the day 22 March 2008

2008-03-22T19:20:00.000-07:00

Shot a much better set then Friday's. I really love this image from the set. I can't really justify using the crappy cover shot that I mocked up, I think this one is worlds better. In fact, I'm kind of ashamed of the other shot.

I only dream I could shoot for anthropologie. Damn, that's something to pin on the cork-board.

Picture of the day 21 March 2008

2008-03-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

For this photo class I'm in one of the assignments is to mock up a cover. The magazine doesn't have to be a real magazine so I made one up. Most of the cover text I pulled from the April Vogue just so I wouldn't have to think of stuff on my own. The image used in the background was shot under Sodium Vapor lights (the ugly yellow kind you see in parking garages). Since I did in-fact shoot this in a parking garage, the blue tint is from the ambient daylight coming in, the blue background behind her is actually a white concrete wall. Isn't color temperature amazing? Not when I spent at least 4 hours working on the color, I have probably somewhere around 2 dozen adjustment layers, and I'm still not horribly satisfied.

Picture of the day 20 March 2008

2008-03-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

Repair underway under the freeway. Near Old Sacramento and the Amtrak station. Really liked the sun coming in from the side and the linearness of the elements.

4 groups with layer masks, 5 adjustment layers, 2 layers. Probably about 1-1.5 hours time wasted.

Picture of the day 20 March 2008

2008-03-20T23:34:00.001-07:00

Since I've been falling behind in posting, I'm posting a few pictures from my little excursion to Old Sacramento. I may end up following suit, i.e., posting at least one picture a day, and more if I can.

No photoshop retouching on this, only minor raw adjustments in Aperture.