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!

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.

Visulization Final Project

 So my final project in my Visualization class is going to be more graphic versions of my Vortographs. Utilizing the similar ideas of what I have done in the past but instead of making these more of an explosion of imagery I want them to be a bit more graphic. I feel like some of these have accomplished that. This body of work does need more work to it but I feel like it is on the right track to being completed.

My New Canon 85mm 1.8

So this was one of the first images I have taken with my new 85mm 1.8 canon lens. Honestly it was a great buy for the price I got it at. At around 295, with out tax I picked up this beauty and it has been worth every penny so far. Both of these images were taken with the 85mm lens in studio. Which now getting used to the studio, which has been an awesome work space so far, I just need to get more reliable models. The ones I do get are awesome though. I can't thank Dustin and Sasha enough, you guys rock!  In other news this lens is going to be wonderful for vortographs. I will end up having more vorotgraphs in the near future utilizing this lens in the near future.