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.

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.

A more "Vintage" feel

So I been playing around more with editing now that I cut back my hours at work and I been having this horrendous photo bug which makes me want to shoot all the time and it has been helping me develop my style even further. Which is good and bad because now I am becoming ultra finicky about certain dumb things but these were on my 35mm f/2.  I have just ordered my 50mm f/1.4 which I am extremely excited for. This will be my fastest lens to date which is pretty cool. Once I have gotten the 5d Mark 3 it will become my base lens as well. So for something that fast as my kit lens will be pretty awesome.

Brenizer Method

 So these images are rather old now, they were shot back when I still lived in Downtown San Francisco. The end of last Spring is closer to the time they were shot. I think but these were shot with my 85mm f/1.8. What is cool though is that the depth of field is much more than a 1.8 generally is. This is because of the Brenizer effect. Basically it is panorama portraits which when stitched together are these HUGE images that depending on how decent your computer might take about a half hour to process.

These were fun shoots all together but there are multiple things I would change about each one of these images. Minor background things for a lot of the images but small lighting techniques as well.

General Update and Some Portraits

   So it has been a long time since my last post. I want to blame this on me being busy with work and having mainly printing classes this semester which is partially the case. The other part is that I have been extremely unhappy with my old Canon 50D. I have been shooting a lot of film but sadly since I have moved and gotten rid of my older film scanner I been waiting on a desk I ordered that never came in since the website I ordered it from never completed the transaction even though I got a delivery date. Eventually I will get a new film scanner though and show off some newer stuff from the past couple of months but I am unsure of which one to get. Before I had the Epson v300 but I am probably going for the v600 model now. So eventually there will be some nice film scans of my older medium format images that I never been able to get online, let alone printed because I shot them extremely thin. There will be some awesome stuff up in the future and it will be glorious.

   Recently I have gotten a few emails every so often about the stuff I have been using. So starting now I will be linking the items I am playing around with in the blog so you can see the stuff I am talking about or thinking of getting for myself. So don't fret about the links they will just take you to the product on the Adorama website.

  So there are a couple of things I am slowly beginning to work on now that I have began to drastically improve my use of any high end printer. The first is my straight up image quality. Which wasn't "bad" before but it has improved to the point where I am dissatisfied with a lot of the stuff I have done in the past which is really a step in the wrong direction for me. The only recent images I have made in the last couple of months on digital are the two in this post. The first one of my friend Johanna and the second of Mahkayla.

   The image of Johanna was shot on my ol' 50D which still has a good quality to it but it isn't anything I am satisfied with, since I know it could be much cleaner if it wasn't for the noise I get at the mid range ISO's on it. It was taken using my 85mm lens, and honestly looks great because of it. The other image of Mahkayla is using the holga lens, for a Canon EF mount. You are able to get them in the different mounts depending on your own camera system but I actually found out that using this digitally is almost as fun as shooting with a real holga. The lens is awesome considering it is a chunk of slightly over priced plastic. Eventually I will start having images with my new Lensbaby Composer that I bought myself for my birthday but I am so picky with the images I have taken for it that it is unreal. For some reason I can't get my focus dead on even with being able to pick my sweet spot. The Composer is a lot easier to use than The Muse but I just am not willing to not use f/2.8 I guess.

Vortographs the Third

     Well I sort of lied to you guys, my faithful readers. This entry will also be about my exploration in Vortographs. I am beginning to really love shooting like this and all of the editing you will see on the blog has been done in camera raw so nothing crazy. The infrared tutorial will happen this month. Probably this weekend but the next few entries will be on Vorotgraphs.


     Now some of you might wonder who invented the Vortograph? Well that is Alvin Langdon Coburn he did the series for about a year and some tried to replicate his style and his equipment used to make the images. Now I have an item I used that has a similar effect, but it isn't the same. It isn't suppose to be the same though, it is suppose to give me the abstracted qualities, but that is it. It does just that, and I am thankful when I took the leap into doing this project everything has been running smoothly with it.

   That being said I have tons of these images now. Between school and work I don't have a lot of time to study it a lot then work on it in bursts like I used to study things so now my study on Vortographs will hopefully extend into years. I would love to surpass Alvin Coburn in understanding how they work and in getting new and more exciting images from my riggings.

   All the images from my second post about Vortographs onwards are stuff I am working into a photoset and hopefully will be on another website that will be linked to after it is finished. It is going to be about abstracted details of San Francisco. The title is still in progress but it is going to focus on shape and color more than anything else. The Vortographs can alter the shapes and the reality around us. In a way it feels very cubist as a form of photography.



 

Vortographs Continued

The first attempted at seeing if the vortograph optic I made work is here. Now that I have a working optic I took it out on a walk from the Ferry building in San Francisco to my apartment a little over a mile or so away. So these images are for my final in PH100 none of these are finalized yet for the final product but they might be used in the project. These vortographs are a lot better than the first couple I did out front of my apartment window.

Now that should have been a given that the images would be better considering more effort had been put into making them but the first images were proof of concept that the optic worked!

So these are apart of a larger project called Details of the City. There will be a lot more images eventually because this is just the start of the entire project. This project will look at some of the details in a lot of the buildings and possibly streets of San Francisco. It all depends on how it plays out but there will be more things to come dealing with the project and some other projects.

Coming up will be some editing tutorials. Hopefully the next entry will be the Infrared tutorial.

Assignment 1 - PH 100

So here is my first assignment for PH100 at AAU. It was basically free range with no editing. It was just suppose to have proper exposure so I decided to play with my macro lens. I haven't had a lot of practice using this as a macro lens but I feel like I was able to get a good texture quality with it with a strong depth of field which is really nice. I am going to start uploading all my assignments on here along with my personal work and other things to catalog everything that I have been doing. This is just the only boring portion telling you guys what I am doing.

So the first image was of my new wonderful friend Mahkayla's jeans, the second image is of my foot. Yes, I know it is a nice fancy wrinkly foot but my feet are strong. The third is of my favorite pair of pants.  These are just a preview of my first assignment but there will be more and more interesting class work a head.

Sasha Cardinale-Weinberg Photoshoot

     This blog post is long overdue considering I took these photos right after Fanime. I been busy getting ready for my move to San Fransisco so my posting has been very infrequent unlike when I first started the blog. I been slightly engrossed in the Homestuck Fandom and by my self made gamefly get all your money's worth game schedule I have put myself on. Soon I should have another post with my little sisters graduation shots and probably another set that I took a while back. Soon I will be doing a self portrait set and some other silly little things before I abscond from Arizona.

 Right here is going to be some shameless self promotion for you guys on facebook to like my photography page: Taylor Claiborne Photography on Facebook.

Anyway here are the photos I took of my dear friend and future roommate Sasha featuring her little sister in the second image.


This was a fun shoot in Aptos, California since it was after Fanime we were all a little tired but the trip was amazing. I have never wandering in an actual forest until then. Since a lot of minor details and major events are still fuzzy from the lack of sleep and the hikes I can't comment about it too much but it was an amazing adventure.  I have a feeling my black and white style is getting to be more favorable to me. I know the caffenol scans probably aren't as good as they could be so that will be a trip on it's own to get that properly done but this is just the start of that still.

Renee Gherman Photoshoot

     So this shoot I got to play with both of my new wireless receivers, which work like a charm in the day. The only real issue was the auto focus at night which over half of the shoot was at night. I did get some nice light. I was using my 580exII as a main flash with my spotlight and a 430ex as the kicker light. It was a fun shoot that got some awesome ice cream and creamsicle rooibos tea. I would like to do more wireless strobes in the near future but for now I need to save up for my 5dmII.

 

 Things I did while writing this blog post:

Chatted it up about changing my hair

Uploaded the photos to flickr

 Watched some Tele

Josh Evans' Promo Shoot

     Alright here is the second part update of the day with Josh Evans and Mindy Duponte's photoshoot. The same technical mumbo jumbo this post is going to be much shorter than the last. This photo shoot was a lot of fun though. Great location, and the off camera flash was awesome.

     I did get a new receiver, so now I can use both flashes I own off camera. Which is awesome because I can now add more depth to my images, and play with lighting things in different ways. I also grabbed a Flip video camera to record some of the shoot and possibly make some video of them and make like a cool montage or something. It is almost 4 a.m. and I am getting sleepy, I can't remember what else I had to talk about.

Things I did while writing this blog post:

-Tried not passing out

-Chatted with a friend

-Didn't get distracted by T.V.

Mindy Duponte Photoshoot

     Well today I have done a couple of photo shoots. One with Josh Evans and one with Mindy Duponte. I finally got to uploading some images from Heaven Vs. Hell 4. With this super busy Sunday I have hardly had a lot of time to do other work fortunately  I was able to get these edits done, tomorrow I will be working on more tomorrow for Josh and working on some other blog posts. This is just a small preview of what is to come for this week.

     To get to the nitty gritty of this post now, these were shot with my spotlight and my wireless transmitters. Soon I should be getting my new transmitter so I can be working my 430 and the 580 off camera and that should add a bit more of depth to the images or at least add some awesome back lighting effects along side of a hard light.

     Soon I might also be putting on some edited video on the blog as well. Once I get my 5dmII the quality of the video will be drastically raised but since my purchase of my MacBook Pro I am able to run final cut so I might be able to do some video logs of some of my adventures and photoshoots.

Things I did while writing this blog post:

- Chatted on Skype

- Pokemon White version (nuff said)

Hellen Sorry For Screaming

     For the people who are unaware of my roots in the Arizona metal band Hellen they have their CD release show this Saturday. A full length CD has been long awaited from the group. I did take photos for the CD and the Hellen social networking websites. I will show the photo in the CD, but the event was absolutely amazing, the  intimacy with the crowd at Joe's Grotto is always wonderful! Last Step Down and Hellen absolutely abolished the other bands that were going to play later on that night. I write this as I am finally home from a long day of shooting, arranging and general working.

     This mostly took place at night and with Miles for his infrared photography, gathering models and traveling to locations. I will eventually post images I took from that in a different blog post with a link to Miles's blog and/or images when he gets them online. Other than that enjoy the images from Hellen's CD release party "Sorry For Screaming"!

Things I did while writing this blog post:

- Chatted with a friend

- Took a shower

- Uploaded photos

End of Febuary Events

     First I would like to wish a happy birthday to my dear friends Brianna Martinez and Renee Gherman. Normally I would do one post for each event that I shoot at but this week I have been extraordinarily busy. Thankfully I don't see a good reason to do that for the last couple events I have been to so I am going to summarize the events that have happened around the last weekend of February all in one post. Now most of the events I shoot at don't end up in the blog, but I am trying to get more to appear in here but it also means I have to write and do other work for the event beyond posing photos. Plus if it takes me about 4 days before I am able to write the post I might as well just skip it at the moment.

      Anyway beyond my own crazy thought process I did shoot a roll of black and white film for my Caffenol development so as soon as I get my development times for the film brand I am using there will a blog post about that and my current findings with my Caffenol development. If everything goes as planned there will be Caffenol paper prints made as well but it is all up to getting together a small group to use the darkroom. I might wait until I shoot another roll of the film to have two rolls shot because of my tank size but I guess I will see.

     As for the photos these are for Renee's birthday part and Just Keep Raving 4. I tried out my wireless flash transmitters and doing some different things with the dj shots and overall I liked the effect.The event was fun like it has been the other 4 times. ( 1 , 2 ,  3,  3.5). Renee's birthday was had great music , mirth and merriment. So I will shut up and show you guys four photos.

Things I did while writing this post:

- Chatted with a friend

- Tried to not pass out on my laptop

- Drooled everywhere when thinking of food

Twist Thursdays @ Myst

    Well it is officially four days after this event, possibly 5 depending on how you want to view the days. They are semi-relevant to my interest right now but  I am going to break my landscape picture OCD that I have been posting on the blog to show you a picture taken in portrait format. What is this fucking atrocity, it isn't horizontal you bastard. I can't believe this lump of horse shit goddamn.

     ANYWAYS I guess breaking the norm is a good thing every now and again. Which I guess I am slowly breaking my mold in a sense. Which could be considered a good thing when now all I feel like doing is bitching or figuring out a new way to not do homework. The good news is now I have the film for the caffenol development, but it was raining all weekend so unless I did some serious experimenting wasting film it would never be developed properly. So I have the Arista brand film which is rumored to be like re-branded Tri-X (don't quote me on that). So once the weather lightens up I am going to be taking some photos and seeing what comes from it. Hopefully I will be able to develop some paper from it as well but we will see what the powers of coffee are.

     So anyway back to the images at hand and my overall feeling of the night. It was a pretty fun night, I had a horribly awkward situation happen to me. Which can be explained upon request but I won't explain it in the blog. Myst as a club is pretty awesome, I would love to do a location shoot there sometime. Great music and a good time, and across the street was pizza! Anyways I will shut up and here are the photos.

Things I did while writing this blog post:

- Helped with some fashion stuff

- Dicked around on Tumblr

- Read http://www.corporateskull.com/ 's first comic (it is wonderful)

-Wondered if anyone actually reads the entirety of my posts

PowerSurge 4

Well where to begin on Power Surge 4, easiest way to describe the night was intense. Beyond just my ankle killing me, the Tesla Coils, and a bunch of crazy kids. The night went along well, got a nice burger from chilli's before the show. Tried out shooting with "live view" which is interesting because for no-flash night shots it gives you a rough idea of the ambient light. It was nice but very strange in the way of how I held my camera. I can see it being useful in HDR photography. For the people who don't know what HDR is it is High Dynamic Range, so basically it is suppose to look more like we see the world, but people push and pull and fuck with it to be semi bland and gross. That is my opinion on it at least, but I would like to try it out and understand it more.

Other than that boring lecture I played a bit with the multi-strobe function on my flash which a resulting image of that strobe play in the last photo.

Things I did while making this blog post:

- Talked about room mates bringing in tons of stuff

- Listened to 2 drum and bass tunes

- Learned what a ha'ole and kawa'i are