I spent the day out at the race track last weekend and wanted to share what I saw... enjoy!
Monday, July 12, 2010
A day at the races
Hey there followers -
I spent the day out at the race track last weekend and wanted to share what I saw... enjoy!
I spent the day out at the race track last weekend and wanted to share what I saw... enjoy!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Christophersonsalon.com and Vanilla Bean Cafe
As per normal, its been far too long since my last post (they all start out that way don't they?)
Earlier this year I came to know Kelley through a mutual friend and I learned he was starting his own salon here in Tacoma. His space is inside the Vanilla Bean Cafe on St. Helens and after getting to know each other, we quickly decided to get to work on a project together.
Kelly and his sister Tobe had purchased some advertising space and wanted a shot to use for the advertisement. We knew that we were going to be working with an open minded audience so we decided for an edgier look. We wanted to stand out and the goal was to leap off the page and look different than anything else in the magazine. We experimented with a few different things but in the end decided to go with the 'Cigarette Ad' as we came to call it.
Over the course of our shoot, we tried a number of different looks and towards the end of the night I spotted a pack of smokes on the counter and said, 'experiment with this'
Whats the lesson here? Even if you have a number of shots fully planed out in your mind and on paper, don't be afraid to deviate slightly and experiment. When you're in the middle of shooting and the creative mind is working at full speed, don't be afraid to try something different, it might just end up being your final image.
Before long the shot was in the bag and we were putting Tobe's Cafe back to the way we found it. Its true, 90% of photography really is moving furniture.
Here are a couple different shots from the night and what was eventually printed.
Big thanks to Kelley, Tobe and especially my girlfriend Liz for helping direct the shoot.
Our second favorite shot, ultimately unused
Earlier this year I came to know Kelley through a mutual friend and I learned he was starting his own salon here in Tacoma. His space is inside the Vanilla Bean Cafe on St. Helens and after getting to know each other, we quickly decided to get to work on a project together.
Kelly and his sister Tobe had purchased some advertising space and wanted a shot to use for the advertisement. We knew that we were going to be working with an open minded audience so we decided for an edgier look. We wanted to stand out and the goal was to leap off the page and look different than anything else in the magazine. We experimented with a few different things but in the end decided to go with the 'Cigarette Ad' as we came to call it.
Over the course of our shoot, we tried a number of different looks and towards the end of the night I spotted a pack of smokes on the counter and said, 'experiment with this'
Whats the lesson here? Even if you have a number of shots fully planed out in your mind and on paper, don't be afraid to deviate slightly and experiment. When you're in the middle of shooting and the creative mind is working at full speed, don't be afraid to try something different, it might just end up being your final image.
Before long the shot was in the bag and we were putting Tobe's Cafe back to the way we found it. Its true, 90% of photography really is moving furniture.
Here are a couple different shots from the night and what was eventually printed.
Big thanks to Kelley, Tobe and especially my girlfriend Liz for helping direct the shoot.
Our second favorite shot, ultimately unused
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Mickaiayla - MM#463673
Had an opportunity to work with Mickaiayla (model mayhem #463676) again last night and we had an awesome time together. Last summer we worked together on one of my first shoots and we had a great time straight away. It was more of the same this time around as I expected. Our time together went fast (as it always seems to), not helped by the good music we had filling the room.
I experimented with a couple different shooting modes and struck gold. My 'keeper' ratio increased significantly so that was a big win. I also stumbled onto a new trick in CS3 while editing tonight that really helped me to maintain consistency without saving an action.
All in all, a great shoot and I learned a ton that will serve me well in the future.
Enjoy!
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__________________
COLOR TO START
BLACK AND WHITE
I experimented with a couple different shooting modes and struck gold. My 'keeper' ratio increased significantly so that was a big win. I also stumbled onto a new trick in CS3 while editing tonight that really helped me to maintain consistency without saving an action.
All in all, a great shoot and I learned a ton that will serve me well in the future.
Enjoy!
Follow me on TWITTER
My Flickr Stream
__________________
COLOR TO START
BLACK AND WHITE
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Pt. Defiance Park - Tacoma
Liz and I took full advantage of our awesome weather and headed down to Pt. Defiance Park here in Tacoma on Saturday. Here's a bit of what I saw.
Throughout our time at the park, I was teaching Liz to shoot in manual mode on my second camera body...she's going to be a fierce photog...more details on the shots below so have a scroll down and read!
_____________________
A young family were trying to take some pics together but the father was having a hard time with his camera so Liz, eager to try on some of her new camera skillz, offered to take a few shots of them. I handed the father my card (so we can email him our shots) and then took a few quick shots myself.
Taking pics of daffodils is so metal. Seriously. Ok not really. I hate taking pics of flowers but found myself doing it anyway...I dig sun flare too!
Liz disappeared for a bit and I found her under a tree on a path making friends.
Cliche' couples shot but whatevs - yes, her eyes are that blue. Srsly.
Throughout our time at the park, I was teaching Liz to shoot in manual mode on my second camera body...she's going to be a fierce photog...more details on the shots below so have a scroll down and read!
_____________________
A young family were trying to take some pics together but the father was having a hard time with his camera so Liz, eager to try on some of her new camera skillz, offered to take a few shots of them. I handed the father my card (so we can email him our shots) and then took a few quick shots myself.
Taking pics of daffodils is so metal. Seriously. Ok not really. I hate taking pics of flowers but found myself doing it anyway...I dig sun flare too!
Liz disappeared for a bit and I found her under a tree on a path making friends.
Cliche' couples shot but whatevs - yes, her eyes are that blue. Srsly.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Weekend Shots
Spent the weekend in Seattle - Here's some of what I saw
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Seattle from Magnolia
Magnolia Sunset
Magnolia Sunset part deux
Why I was in Magnolia
Books I've not read
Follow me on TWITTER
My Flickr Stream
Seattle from Magnolia
Magnolia Sunset
Magnolia Sunset part deux
Why I was in Magnolia
Books I've not read
Monday, February 15, 2010
Project - F R I E N D S
First - Background
Last summer, I was in San Francisco and was able to see the Richard Avedon exhibit at the SF-MOMA. If you haven't seen it, it'll stop you in your tracks and you should keep an eye out to see if its coming to a city near you. The exhibit is comprised of the most amazing black and white portraits of essentially everyone who's played a significant part in 20th century. Writers, composers, artists, models, actors/actresses, politicians, musicians, heads of state...average Americans in their own back yard. I HIGHLY encourage you to spend a few minutes reviewing Avedon's work HERE.
Seeing his work, full size - I'm talking, the size of your front window - was hugely inspiring to me and got me thinking about how I would like to complete a project inspired by Avedon's work.
I'm not proclaiming to be an original with my approach but I'm confident that I'll be able to accomplish, and create something special. The project is inspired by Avedon and it is not my intention to copy his work. This is about more than just taking pictures; its about getting to know you and capturing our conversation.
So what is this about? How are you involved and how does this work? Whats the end result?
This is about you and me and a couple hours together, a conversation that covers the good, the bad and everything in between...maybe a drink or two. I plan to record our conversation while we talk and I snap away. The goal here is to draw out emotion, capture it and learn a bit more about each other in the process.
All you need to do is sit on a stool, and have a good time.
Once I have all the content, it will be time to sort through the shots, edit them and select a choice line from our conversation to companion the selected photo. The goal here is to add a little more depth and meaning to the image.
How will this be presented?
My vision is to ultimately create a book once I have everyone's photos. Each page will have a photo on one side, and the selected text on the other. Clean and simple. As the work evolves, I may elect to present the work in progress on my blog just to keep interested parties up to speed on the progress of the effort.
I've done a proof of concept for the look and feel that I'm targeting. You can view that HERE
So who's interested?
Drop me a line, let me know you want to be a part of this project with me. I'll be reaching out to folks individually HOWEVER DON"T HESITATE TO RAISE YOUR HAND! This is about getting to know people better than I already do and creating something together. I'm happy to work with anybody - so don't sit and wait to hear from me if you're itching to be a part of this.
We'll be in touch!
rick.donohue@gmail.com
Last summer, I was in San Francisco and was able to see the Richard Avedon exhibit at the SF-MOMA. If you haven't seen it, it'll stop you in your tracks and you should keep an eye out to see if its coming to a city near you. The exhibit is comprised of the most amazing black and white portraits of essentially everyone who's played a significant part in 20th century. Writers, composers, artists, models, actors/actresses, politicians, musicians, heads of state...average Americans in their own back yard. I HIGHLY encourage you to spend a few minutes reviewing Avedon's work HERE.
Seeing his work, full size - I'm talking, the size of your front window - was hugely inspiring to me and got me thinking about how I would like to complete a project inspired by Avedon's work.
I'm not proclaiming to be an original with my approach but I'm confident that I'll be able to accomplish, and create something special. The project is inspired by Avedon and it is not my intention to copy his work. This is about more than just taking pictures; its about getting to know you and capturing our conversation.
So what is this about? How are you involved and how does this work? Whats the end result?
This is about you and me and a couple hours together, a conversation that covers the good, the bad and everything in between...maybe a drink or two. I plan to record our conversation while we talk and I snap away. The goal here is to draw out emotion, capture it and learn a bit more about each other in the process.
All you need to do is sit on a stool, and have a good time.
Once I have all the content, it will be time to sort through the shots, edit them and select a choice line from our conversation to companion the selected photo. The goal here is to add a little more depth and meaning to the image.
How will this be presented?
My vision is to ultimately create a book once I have everyone's photos. Each page will have a photo on one side, and the selected text on the other. Clean and simple. As the work evolves, I may elect to present the work in progress on my blog just to keep interested parties up to speed on the progress of the effort.
I've done a proof of concept for the look and feel that I'm targeting. You can view that HERE
So who's interested?
Drop me a line, let me know you want to be a part of this project with me. I'll be reaching out to folks individually HOWEVER DON"T HESITATE TO RAISE YOUR HAND! This is about getting to know people better than I already do and creating something together. I'm happy to work with anybody - so don't sit and wait to hear from me if you're itching to be a part of this.
We'll be in touch!
rick.donohue@gmail.com
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Re-thinking the old stuff
I admit it - I've been a bit lazy and havn't been shooting nearly enough as of late but that hasn't stopped my desire to fiddle in photoshop. My good friend Carly posted an old shot of mine of she and her finance on her Facebook page. I'd forgotten all about the evening we took those photos so I went back through the set and found tons of great shots that I'd forgotten about.
Nick and Carly are a very dynamic couple, and its rare that there's a serious look on either of their faces at the same time and as you'd expect, I found many shots where Nick was being a goof ball and Carly was looking rather angelic.
I came across this image and liked Carly's expression very much, but Nick had his finger up his nose (ok, not really).
Time then, for some work in Photoshop.
Here's what I did -
I took the original, and cropped Nick out (sorry man).
I then copied it into a new document leaving me with a much smaller image than I wanted, more square than landscape. I widened the canvas and selected a strip of canvas with the marquee tool. I then used the free transform to stretch out the white wall on the left side of the image and finished with a little blending using a soft brush to deal with the artifacting that the Free transform left me with.
From there, I moved onto cleaning up the rest of the image and making it a bit more presentable. You can see my various layers and layer masks on the right that I've used to complete the final image.
Here's a shot of the work flow:
Generally, I was looking to add a little punch and sharpness to the image. It was taken on my old 30D, 28-135mm lens and my 580EX bounced off the ceiling. I needed to fiddle with the levels, and he hues a bit to offer a more accurate representation of Carly's skin. All in all, pretty basic on the editing front, nothing particularly crazy going on. I did learn a bit more about using layer masks, something that I've really not used to this point in my work flow process.
I think the point here is that just because you don't like the WHOLE original image, it doesn't mean you can't take part of it, and make something out of it. I really think this is a weakness of mine that I really need to work on. Too often, I write off an image looking at the whole thing, rather than thinking in terms of what actually is pretty good about it, and then moving forward with that aspect of the image and creating something pretty good.
Finally, I'd advocate for taking a second look through your old work - Too many times, I'll shoot, and disregard most of the work and only use a couple shots rather than thinking a bit more dynamically about what I captured.
Thats all for now!
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My Flickr Stream
Nick and Carly are a very dynamic couple, and its rare that there's a serious look on either of their faces at the same time and as you'd expect, I found many shots where Nick was being a goof ball and Carly was looking rather angelic.
I came across this image and liked Carly's expression very much, but Nick had his finger up his nose (ok, not really).
Time then, for some work in Photoshop.
Here's what I did -
I took the original, and cropped Nick out (sorry man).
I then copied it into a new document leaving me with a much smaller image than I wanted, more square than landscape. I widened the canvas and selected a strip of canvas with the marquee tool. I then used the free transform to stretch out the white wall on the left side of the image and finished with a little blending using a soft brush to deal with the artifacting that the Free transform left me with.
From there, I moved onto cleaning up the rest of the image and making it a bit more presentable. You can see my various layers and layer masks on the right that I've used to complete the final image.
Here's a shot of the work flow:
Generally, I was looking to add a little punch and sharpness to the image. It was taken on my old 30D, 28-135mm lens and my 580EX bounced off the ceiling. I needed to fiddle with the levels, and he hues a bit to offer a more accurate representation of Carly's skin. All in all, pretty basic on the editing front, nothing particularly crazy going on. I did learn a bit more about using layer masks, something that I've really not used to this point in my work flow process.
I think the point here is that just because you don't like the WHOLE original image, it doesn't mean you can't take part of it, and make something out of it. I really think this is a weakness of mine that I really need to work on. Too often, I write off an image looking at the whole thing, rather than thinking in terms of what actually is pretty good about it, and then moving forward with that aspect of the image and creating something pretty good.
Finally, I'd advocate for taking a second look through your old work - Too many times, I'll shoot, and disregard most of the work and only use a couple shots rather than thinking a bit more dynamically about what I captured.
Thats all for now!
Follow me on TWITTER
My Flickr Stream
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Beard Removal Project - Technical
For my more technical followers, here's the breakdown on the setup for my Mini Project in Black and White.
The setup and work flow is really fairly simple for this set/project. My main goal was to go for simplicity because I wanted each shot to look exactly the same as far as the post treatment/black and white conversions went.
First, the camera/light setup:
Look here for some additional notes on the setup:
The flash was high just right of the camera; The flash tripod and the camera tripod were RIGHT next to each other. The flash was a 580EX at 1/8 +.7 power through a white shoot through 42in umbrella. White reflector below for fill. I had a large white roll of tag board behind me for the backdrop.
Camera settings were...
Canon 5D
50mm 1.8
f/4.5
125th
ISO125
"Standard" in camera processing
shot in raw
I dumped the shots into CS3 and the fiddled in the canon Raw editor, documenting my settings (secret! ha!) and then opened in CS3. I created an action with the look and feel I wanted and then applied it to all the shots for consistency.
To create the grid, I opened a new blank canvas in CS3 with the required dimensions to leave a space between (1200x800 times 3 in each direction with an extra 200 pixels on either end totaling 3800x2600) the shots and then just copied each shot and pasted onto the blank canvas. I Merged the layers and did a final tweak on the levels for a little more punch.
Here's the final -
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The setup and work flow is really fairly simple for this set/project. My main goal was to go for simplicity because I wanted each shot to look exactly the same as far as the post treatment/black and white conversions went.
First, the camera/light setup:
Look here for some additional notes on the setup:
The flash was high just right of the camera; The flash tripod and the camera tripod were RIGHT next to each other. The flash was a 580EX at 1/8 +.7 power through a white shoot through 42in umbrella. White reflector below for fill. I had a large white roll of tag board behind me for the backdrop.
Camera settings were...
Canon 5D
50mm 1.8
f/4.5
125th
ISO125
"Standard" in camera processing
shot in raw
I dumped the shots into CS3 and the fiddled in the canon Raw editor, documenting my settings (secret! ha!) and then opened in CS3. I created an action with the look and feel I wanted and then applied it to all the shots for consistency.
To create the grid, I opened a new blank canvas in CS3 with the required dimensions to leave a space between (1200x800 times 3 in each direction with an extra 200 pixels on either end totaling 3800x2600) the shots and then just copied each shot and pasted onto the blank canvas. I Merged the layers and did a final tweak on the levels for a little more punch.
Here's the final -
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Mini Project in Black and White
Well its been some time now since I offered a proper write up on my photography doings and this little project is more than enough reason, and its got a nice little story to go along...so here goes.
I grew a beard. It itched. I was lazy and didn't feel like shaving it off and my girlfriend kinda liked the look so I kept it around despite a few odd looks and comments at the office. Time passed, moons came and went (ok well maybe just one) and so it was time to shave it off.
I don't share many traits with elephants but a good memory is one of them (my friends may disagree with me on this) and I recalled my good friend Nick who after having been sick for a week and had a solid start on a beard, thought to shave it off in stages, taking cell phone pics along the way. I decided to steal his idea when the time came to shave of my beard and here's what we've got.
I consulted my girlfriend on the idea and she was super excited to help. This mini project also would be a great chance to test out a lighting setup for another project 'Friends' that I'm about to start (more on that later). So we disassembled my apartment and got my 'studio' setup and Liz thought of some questions. She did an awesome job at asking me provoking questions and timing the shots getting some awesome expressions. I've never had so many 'keepers' in a single set of shots - huge thanks to Liz for this.
We had a great time getting the shots and watching her reactions to my various states of facial hair was awesome (she apparently doesn't like goatee's - she about ran out of the room when she saw me with it).
Today we finally had a bit of time to settle down and pick out the shots to use and I dumped them into photoshop and did the (rather simple) edits. I will make another post on the lighting setup and the work flow breakdown for this project in a separate post.
Enjoy!
Follow me on TWITTER
My Flickr Stream
_____________________________
I grew a beard. It itched. I was lazy and didn't feel like shaving it off and my girlfriend kinda liked the look so I kept it around despite a few odd looks and comments at the office. Time passed, moons came and went (ok well maybe just one) and so it was time to shave it off.
I don't share many traits with elephants but a good memory is one of them (my friends may disagree with me on this) and I recalled my good friend Nick who after having been sick for a week and had a solid start on a beard, thought to shave it off in stages, taking cell phone pics along the way. I decided to steal his idea when the time came to shave of my beard and here's what we've got.
I consulted my girlfriend on the idea and she was super excited to help. This mini project also would be a great chance to test out a lighting setup for another project 'Friends' that I'm about to start (more on that later). So we disassembled my apartment and got my 'studio' setup and Liz thought of some questions. She did an awesome job at asking me provoking questions and timing the shots getting some awesome expressions. I've never had so many 'keepers' in a single set of shots - huge thanks to Liz for this.
We had a great time getting the shots and watching her reactions to my various states of facial hair was awesome (she apparently doesn't like goatee's - she about ran out of the room when she saw me with it).
Today we finally had a bit of time to settle down and pick out the shots to use and I dumped them into photoshop and did the (rather simple) edits. I will make another post on the lighting setup and the work flow breakdown for this project in a separate post.
Enjoy!
Follow me on TWITTER
My Flickr Stream
_____________________________
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