Location Lighting Wrap Up Post

So this is my final post of my location lighting class. I had a lot of fun in the class but it kind of made me realize what I was missing in most of my previous portraiture. It isn't more light but more control of my light. As much as I like natural lighting there is only so much natural light can do. My main goal with these lights were to create a fill light and balance out the natural light which is a goal I accomplished pretty well. The only thing I wish I did was use more of the larger lighting packs and played more with beauty dishes compared to umbrellas and bare bulb. I wish I had more time to update though the last semester but I am going to try to update on an almost weekly basis again from now on. I was extremely busy this semester which is part of the reason for the lack of updates and the lack of sleep I have been getting. I have improved my color pallet which I am extremely happy about but I don't feel like I made enough progress in other areas.

I also need to scan in my other two project or take images of them to show you guys my awesome gold leafed portraits and my shrink wrapped strange food items. Both of these projects are in books but the strange food items are pretty funny.

Anyway I am going to be doing some new projects soon so keep your eyes peeled!

A small update

 For my readers that don't follow my flickr feed here is a small update of what I have been doing digitally. I have a bunch of cyanotypes I am going to be making a post about soon but I have been busy in all of my shooting classes this semester which totally killed my new years resolution of an update a week. I am going to try to get back on that track to help keep myself better organized. I did do a couple of really cool things as well recently like build a room in my condo for coating paper and prep of liquid emulsion and tin types. I have been playing with the idea of working with fuji-lifts and fuji transfers since I picked up a day lab and a new instant film camera but I haven't had the time or slide film to do it with yet.

Anyway I been focusing a lot more on color now and trying to make my compositions a bit more interesting and different than what I have been in the past. In order to grow I must change what I am doing a bit and improve. I have found a good couple of ways to do this in post production but for some reason figuring out color has become increasingly more difficult the more I learn it. I have found ways to get the colors how I would like but I am still fine tuning the details in this process. Since each photograph is different this can sometimes lead to a massive photoshop document if I want to keep certain things looking one way. So far though I have made this semester a rousing success in terms of progressing my education in modeling shoots and in color theory even though I don't have a color class pushing myself to learn and understand it more is going to hep me long term. Which is what I want anyway, long term knowledge.

Location Lighting week three through six

So the last three weeks or so I have been completely swamped with school and work. It has been a great learning curve but I have been pretty exhausted come Friday. Since I haven't been able to update the blog as frequently as I wanted to I think I will do a couple of posts over the next week or so to give a total update of what I have been doing.


So my recent location shoot have used a Profoto 600B or Canon 580exII units for lighting. Pretty much every shoot from this point forward is going to use a 600B unless portability is going to be an issue, like in the shoot I did with Brianna. In that case I might have a couple of 580ex's but we were pretty much in the ocean shooting the images of her.

Other than that there isn't much to say about most of these images really. I been working on paying more attention to color and manipulating it to suit my needs through various different methods. Depending on how much I can figure out how to fine tune my current method I might end up doing some tutorials on it. Possibly a video tutorial so I can put my Yeti microphone to good use instead of just using it for bad league of legends videos.

Anyways the last two images are possibly going to be the last real shoots of my trusty ol' 50D. The first two images are from my new 6D. It is an amazing piece of equipment.

Location Lighting Class

So since I failed my resolution on updating once per week when school kicked in I decided now since I am working on more finished photographs instead of everything that I seem to cook up I can hopefully bring more of a quality posts.

 At any rate I started my location lighting class which is awesome and my first assignment which is shown on the right. This shot was done with the 530 exII as the master and a 430 ex on photo right for the other light source bouncing off the ceiling. Longer exposure to burn in more of the ambient light behind me. Other than that I just had them as a bare bulb. No special modifiers on them since the 430 was just laying on its back.

  The location for this particular photo was in an old church my school bought and was using for a lecture hall. I do have some more images from the shoot but none of them stand out to me very much. I will be making another post shortly with some of the film I shot last semester because there are two images in particular that I really like that I haven't been able to get online yet. Since my alt process class started as well I will have some more film prints coming out. The most recent shots are from a pinhole camera to a giant film negative. I need to clean them then print them on some fiber paper before showing off the images. The pinhole camera was made out of a tea tin so it was a pretty fun little experiment. There will be more on that and I might make an DIY pinhole camera post in the future. Hopefully I don't get swamped and can actually go through with it unlike the infrared tutorial. Which I do have the majority of the images but I am trying to get the proper film for it. Just so there will be a good base on how the final effect is suppost to look unlike how people are making it out to look. If I get my Mark 3 before I have the chance to order and shoot the film I will probably just send my 50d out to get modded into an infrared only camera which would work as well.

At any rate let me know how you guys like the image on here or on flickr! It would be great to start getting more input on what I been doing.

Garage Project

 So recently I started to clean out my garage, this small undertaking was mainly done so I would stop getting parking tickets for being in my own driveway and it turned out into something a little bit cooler than that. For the readers who don't know I live in a condo in San Francisco which has been around for ages. The garage has essentially just been a storage place for things for probably the past fifty or so years easy. So there is just tons of stuff and a lot of garbage in it. Which will be recycled, thrown away and possibly sold.

Which is all good and dandy but before that I wanted to catalog some of the items and play around with lighting a little bit since I haven't been able to use my alien bee strobe as much as I have been wanting to. All the images were shot at f/22 as well which I have been on the total opposite side of the spectrum playing with f/1.4 - f/2 for the past 4 months or so. I figured this would be a good exercise as well to remind me to not niche myself so frequently just because I like a certain look.

Which since I did that I am happy with how these have turned out so far. I am still going to do more when I have more space for some larger items but the surroundings of these with the straight clarity but still looking like there is a small bit of depth of field is pretty awesome in my opinion. These aren't super refined though as the horizons could be a level and there are some hot spots on the paint brush but beyond minor refinement and looking at just the ascetic I really appreciate the look this has brought.

So beyond expanding on this project I will also be applying this to portraits as well and I might be going to an extreme with it. I am not too sure since the idea flow for portraits is a lot different than going with something as simple as looking at some forgotten tools and cleaning supplies from my garage. I do have more access to some more models now, which the next one might be used in an upcoming shoot soon. It will probably be something silly but I need to go to the idea book and figure out some stuff before badgering them to do it.

From Mesa to San Francisco

So recently I went down to Mesa, Arizona to pick up my car from my mother since I haven't had a place to park it up here in San Francisco. So naturally I brought my trusty old 50d along for the ride. After a couple hours on an airplane and a short drive I was in Arizona again after being out of the state for about a year. Since I just got my brand spankin' new 50mm 1.4 I couldn't resist the urge to use it constantly as my kit lens for the journey. Now I started using the lens just recently for a concert in my last post featuring Critical Bliss but this si the first time I got to use the lens with a decent lighting situation, and honestly it preformed with an amazing ease that I was not expecting for a lens of it's price. The first image here is of Mahkayla in a book store on Venice Beach, which to me the depth of field is spot on and there are a few small things I would fix if it was a studio shot or not so much as a snap shot like the hair leading to her eye on the right and the small hot spot in the lower left hand corner but other than that which are my fault really the quality of the image is stunning.

Soon I am going to be starting on a small project called "In my Garage" where I will be photographing items under a studio light set up of what items I have found in my garage that I am cleaning in my new place here in San Francisco. I think it has the potential to be really cool, I am starting to figure out how I am going to be shooting the project but I am probably just going to clear a space in the garage and shoot it from top down or eye level to the items. Since it will be a small series on still lives it should be a pretty interesting shoot.

Critical Bliss

Here are a couple of images from the Critical Bliss concert last night at Martuni's martini bar. It was a great night out and one of the few reasons I still venture to downtown San Francisco. I probably should get out more than just work and random excursions but I am very happy where I am currently and until I pick up my car from Arizona next Tuesday I will probably just be day dreaming about a warm beach. Anyway this post specifically will be about the 50mm 1.4 Canon lens.

If I had to give it a rating it would be game of the year. The lens itself is solid, unlike the f/1.8 which makes it a good deal heavier but at triple the cost it damn well better be. The lens performance is also a lot higher than the f/1.8 and since it has eight leafs in its aperture the backgrounds are a lot creamier looking. That sounds crazy, it looks like a more realistic blur. Anyway the blur looks a lot better. It is one of the things that you wouldn't expect to make a big difference but it really does. It is easily seen in the out of focus highlights though. Crazy lens though, it will become my kit lens on the 5d Mark 3 to replace the 35mm lens I use all the time now.