PhotoSafari

I'm moving.....

2009-03-14T23:53:00.007-05:00

This blog off Blogger.... Please come see me at my new digs....

http://www.erniesphotosafari.com

I think this will be a good thing. I've reworked my wedding photography blog and copied a few of these recent posts over to it so that it has some other content besides just weddings.

I'm not changing my photo diary blog... at least not at this time... but I may. :)

The basics... of what?

2009-03-01T13:54:00.020-06:00

So here some more of those photos that I shot from that last shoot with Alli. These are decidedly more sexy and more along the lines of what we typically think of as high key. It seems that recently fashion has been going back to high key and gray backgrounds or gray backgrounds with colored gels on them. It’s simple and clean so I can understand it.

When Alli mentioned gluing lace to her body I liked the idea and was sure we could make some very cool shots with it if we could keep it from becoming too much like cheesy glamour. I think we managed to keep that from happening, even though she’s not wearing much they still have a fashion feel to me. Maybe we can call it basic or primitive fashion.

I like that term “primitive” fashion, because that’s exactly what we did in our next set. We were going to do two separate sets using paint the first was tribal and the next set I’ll show you in the next update.

She put her hair up and I painted some vaguely tribal patterns on her face, arms, upper chest and back in blue paint. I hoped the blue would stand out well against her hair and make her eyes stand out. It occurred to me while we were shooting that I liked the designs on the left side of her face more than the ones on her right side.

Alli did a wonderful job of being aggressive and powerful in these photos. She knows how to pose and project emotions and feelings. I really do love working with her. Part of that is because we know each other very well and pretty much know what the other will like.

Because the blue paint is a primary color it made contrasty black and white conversions where the paint was near to black very easy and striking.

I was going to put the next set in with these but there were just too many photos that I wanted to show you so I broke them up.

ASU v. Denver... the Ladies were on the court today.

2009-02-22T19:52:00.003-06:00

So we played Denver again today, but it was our ladies on the court instead of the men. It was a good game. Lots of action, literally a fast paced scrap from the beginning. Much better than yesterday. And to make it better we won the game.

Unfortunately this is probably going to be the last game of the season that I can shoot. Which is a bummer, I love shooting basketball.

ASU v. Denver

2009-02-21T22:52:00.003-06:00

For one reason of another I haven't been able to shoot as much basketball ball as I generally like to but I got myself a fix tonight. Unfortunately we lost though.

At halftime the dance team brought out some little ones from a dance camp they had that day. It actually a pretty good show watching them.

And these two are in what I think they called the Pop Squad. They did a very good job also

Corner Work

2009-02-08T22:20:00.021-06:00

Well, as you know I haven’t been shooting much to make sure I have time to study and it’s paying off. I got an A on my first test and I’m very happy about that.

So here are some photos from my last shoot with Alli. She mentioned liking the set for the clockwork orange promo photos, so I set something like that up. It worked very well for these photos.

They aren’t terribly high key, but enough so that they are interesting.

The zebra stripes and red worked well with this setup, the white of the dress was lighter and brighter than the wall which worked well for separating her white from it’s white. The lighting was very simple, a 27 inch silver beauty dish for even but specular light, the corner filled itself very well.

I was looking for something different here and I’m pretty sure that I’ve accomplished it. They are high key, without being the normal high key that everyone else is putting out. The corner was actually very nice for posing in.

Of the variety of photos we shot this day, I’m particularly happy with the ones in the black dress. It flowed very well and shows off Alli’s legs very well.

I’ve got more of Alli to show you from this session, but I need to read chapter 5, it’s about libel. Specifically about proof of fault in a libel case…….

The beautiful Kristi

2009-01-25T14:41:00.011-06:00

This is Kristi, she’s a good friend of mine that I periodically make photos of. It seems like it’s only once every couple years, but it's a quality not quantity thing I guess you could say.

As a mater of fact, I've been shooting photos with Kristi so long that I have many rolls of film with her on it. She's always fun to be around and work with... we actually tease each other mercilessly.... it's lots of fun. :)
I guess I should make the effort to photos with her more often shouldn't I.

I’m not sure where the idea for these photos came from any more; most likely it was some movie showing someone getting ready at a makeup mirror. I thought about how to style and shoot it and knew she would be perfect for it. I’m extremely happy with the resulting photos and she tells me she loves them so all is well. I love it when a plan comes together.
The makeup photos were kind of a bonus really; she needed to do the makeup anyway for the portraits. Or maybe the portraits at the end were the bonus for the makeup shoot. However you see it, once we had the makeup done it was time to do some glamorous portraits.

I wanted to them to be classy, for them to be beautiful and elegant with very flattering light on her face. I used a gelled background light to separate her hair from the background and add a bit of color to the photo.

I also knew I wanted to convert some of them to a brown toned B&W that I am partial to. That’s why I used a warm brown for the background light instead of something like red to match the lipstick so the brown toned photos will fit well with the full color photos.

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I updated, but I’ve enrolled in school to work on a Masters degree so I’m kind of busy right now. I’ll do my best to keep this up but I may have to consolidate some blogs. I’m still thinking about that though.

Red Wolves 63 : Privateers 61

2009-01-06T10:04:00.003-06:00

The Red Wolves beat UNO Sunday afternoon by 2 free throw points scored by sophomore forward Shay Scott in the last second of the game. That's right... the last second... The other photogs and I were anticipating overtime when ASU Scott went in for a layup and missed with the tie game, but she was fouled. We were all please.... just one point.... and she gave us two. :)

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T00:38:00.004-06:00

Kortney and I wanted to do something Christmas themed for the upcoming holidays and we thought paying homage to the Playboy photo of Betty Paige with a Christmas tree would be appropriate. If you aren’t familiar with it do a Google image search on it. We used pink, they used green, I like mine better.:)

I thought about using them as Christmas cards but never got around to it.

Some of my favorite model work from 2008

2008-12-24T19:31:00.011-06:00

OK, so even though it's not the end of 2008.... I've got another session this weekend so I might have to revise it some.... here are some of my favorite photos I've made this year that were not shoot for someone else. I do my best to work as much as I can but that usually means shooting what someone else wants me to shoot. I try to make sure I can shoot model or creative work as often as I can just to keep it interesting. These photos are in alphabetical order by file name so no preferences beyond these are some of my favorites, not necessarily the best ones, but my favorites. :)

Find out what they want

2008-12-14T21:06:00.009-06:00

Amanda contacted me wanting to shoot something fashiony and cool. That’s a pretty vague target but I tried to hit it as best I could. She told me that she loved them so I’m happy too. When someone contacts me about doing photos I try to find out what they want, how they want to look. Some people want to look sexy, some want to be made beautiful and some just want photos where they look cool.

Once I know what they want the photos to look like we talk about wardrobe and sets and if we want to do a theme. I sometimes recommend things that I’ve wanted to shoot if they fit in with what they want to do.

I try to make the session about them, if we make the photos that they want to make, they will like the photos much more than if we just shoot what I want to shoot. Believe me when I say that it’s always good to make sure your customer is happy and the best way to do that is to give them what they want.

So back to Amanda and her cool fashion like photos, I say fashion like because though they have elements of fashion, they are about her, not what she is wearing. Amanda was very interested in making different photos, she wanted to spice up her portfolio. It was our first time to work together and she did a very good job.

Red Riding Hood and that Wolf are at it again

2008-12-06T21:35:00.007-06:00

OK, I can’t help myself. I think sessions like this are fun and I love doing them. I mean, think about it… if you do it right, it should be outrageous and cool... How can that not be fun?

I think part of the reason that I love them is that I take my photography and lighting seriously (OK, you could call me an obsessive perfectionist if you want to) and a session like this is like playing while you work. And this lighting is actually very simple and forgiving for movement (which is why I used it) so all I really had to do was direct my models. BTW, if you can’t recognize her Alli is Little Red Riding Hood and Malissa is our Big Bad Wolf.

The most important part of fun photos like this are the models. You need great actresses and these two have that in spades. And here’s a link to how I lit these if you are interested.

Me…. Edgy…. Wow….

2008-11-28T20:02:00.015-06:00

An old friend who is a former model and a photographer found me on Facebook the other day (my Facebook page) and she told me that my style has changed a lot and that it’s very edgy. And that kind of floored me. But I think it’s got a lot to do with my interest in fashion photography.

So why am I so interested in the concept of shooting fashion. I don’t know exactly, but I think it’s a combination of several things but here are 2 of my favorites. First it doesn’t have to be pretty, second it’s usually conceptual or abstract which usually also means it’s fun to shoot.

Why doesn’t it have to be pretty? By pretty I mean it doesn’t have to be a smiling portrait photo. First, the goal of fashion photography is to sell something, jewelry, clothing, purses… whatever. So that is the focus of the photo, not the person in the photo. Now I don’t usually use an item as the subject, I just work it as if the clothing is the subject.

Why is it conceptual or abstract? You don’t expect them to just make a photo of the item exactly the way it looks like and add text above it that says BUY THIS do you? First you have to make a photo that is going to catch the interest of the viewer, showing them how good it looks and then convince them they will look good wearing it. So that’s where the conceptual and abstract come from…. The fun part of that is creating it, the hard part is making it make some sense to the person viewing the photo.

So now that I’ve babbled about this for a while, lets talk about Alli. Now I had started playing with fashion before I met Alli. But I didn’t really understand it, I probably still don’t really, but Alli does and I’ve learned so much from her that my photography has significantly changed since I started collaborating with her. Think of it this way, for the most part my photos looked a lot like senior photos before I met her.

We made these photos on my last trip to Little Rock, and I wish I could find my way back there. Because cool locations make much more interesting photos than boring ones, and this was a great location. I just wish the building had a concrete floor in it so we could go into it and shoot. We shot these around 1pm, and though usually the light this time of day is crappy for photos, it was perfect for what I wanted to shoot. Because of the harsh and contrasty light I used a silver beauty dish (wish produces contrasty light) on my Ranger pack. You don't want to use a softbox which produces soft light when shooting in this type of light, it just doesn't look right. :)

I think Malissa burned the weenies.

2008-11-19T23:20:00.003-06:00

OK, so she didn’t burn them all, and I was distracting her with my camera and flashes going off in her face. I wanted to make some photos that were decidedly odd, or at least kinda different. She mentioned grilling out when I came down and I thought that we could use that for a shoot. So what do you do with a grill? Have fun with it of course. I thought about putting her in a huge apron with charcoal all over her. But that was too boring, so how about someone dressed up for a night out. Malissa did an excellent job of playing her part, and this was her second set of the day.

Anyway, it was fun. And just about the time we were done the charcoal was ready for the pork steaks that her boyfriend grilled up for us. That was the best pork I’ve ever had on a grill. And yeah, I got the recipe and tried it myself… it wasn’t as good though. Oh well.

I used 2 SB-800’s to light these photos, I bounced the main light out of a silver umbrella just to camera left and used a bare headed flash with a ½ CTO gel on it behind her and to camera right. The gel was to warm her up a little and make the edge light look a little more like sunlight.

How many sets can I squeeze into a session?

2008-11-09T23:59:00.010-06:00

Lets see how many different looks I can squeeze into one blog post shall we. When Alli comes up to visit me she usually brings several outfits to do several different sets because it’s a long drive here from Little Rock and we want to make the most of the trip. This works fairly well because I’m a pretty fast shooter. Once I decide how I want the photos to look I don’t waste time…. I set up quick and shoot them quick. I set up the studio while the subject changes, get my lights set pretty close to where I think they need to be, tidy up from the last set if need be then wait for them to finish whatever it is they need to finish. Sometimes I even work on other people’s photos after I get the next setup done and need to kill time.

So how do I do this?
First, I know my equipment and how to use it. This comes with experience and unfortunately that isn’t something you can get without spending a lot of time using that equipment.

Second, I get there early so that I can unpack any equipment that I need to and put it together (ie. Setting up the lights, softboxes and scrims) and check my camera and clean the sensor if needed.

Third, I try to visualize the photos before hand. If you know what you want, you don’t have to spend a bunch of time later figuring it out. But sometimes I change my mind, I look at the photo on the back of camera decide that what I wanted it to look like either doesn’t look as good as I want it to look or it isn’t what I want… so being flexible is important.

Fourth, I have a lot of experience in photography. I’ve spent a lot of time studying photos and photographers to see what they have done or are doing. I’ve spent a lot of time playing with light so that I know what will look good and experimenting with technique and style to learn what happens when I do this or that. Though there are shortcuts for learning how to do something like this, you still have study it.

Fifth, I have confidence in my photography. It helps the subject to be and look confident when you are sure about yourself and what you are doing. If you aren’t confident, it shows in the photos. I know this makes me sound a little like a megalomaniac, but it is important. If they feel confident they will look good it shows and you get the shots you need more quickly.

Anyway, these photos here with Alli represent a time period from around 2pm to 7pm.

So what brought this up? I had a photo session with someone yesterday and she only brought 4 changes of clothing. So we had to improvise some.

Carrie Underwood and Little Big Town

2008-11-05T10:49:00.006-06:00

I was the house photographer for the Carrie Underwood and Little Big Town concert last week. It was a pretty good show and the music was pretty good... but it sounded much better with earplugs. :)

It was probably the darkest concert stage I've had to deal with, plus the place was full of smoke... neither thing is conducive to good photos. Oh well. :)

This last photo is of a couple friend of mine from high school and their children.

Harlan and Nerma

2008-10-26T15:18:00.003-05:00

Harlan and Nerma asked me to do their bridal and couples portraits even though I wasn’t available to shoot their wedding. Nerma is a good friend and former co-worker and I was more than happy to do the photos for them. I wish them the best of luck and happiness; I think they are made for each other.

So what makes a good photo?

2008-10-11T12:25:00.015-05:00

So what is it that makes a great or at least an interesting photo? Several things contribute to this and they all have to come together. Some are technical like focus, depth of field, lens selection, lighting and some are esthetic like compelling subject matter, environment/background, point of view, and composition (I’m not altogether sure that point of view and composition are completely separate, they heavily influence each other), plus other things we like to call creative devices. Creative devices are things like repeating patterns, deliberate distortions and color use.
Well for now I want to talk about a couple of those esthetic bits… composition and environment and the use thereof.

One of the things that bug me most about photos that I see made in great locations is the complete lack of its use in the photo. Lets take these photos I made of Kortney and Alli in the stream for example. I could have gotten in close and filled the frames with them. I mean they are good subjects, but if I fill the frame with just them…. What’s the point of traveling to a cool location for photos if you don’t make use of it (BTW, the same thing holds true in the studio, make an attempt to create an interesting set for your photos.)?

I used a couple flashes to add light to them so they would stand out against the environ- ment they were in, I could have sped up my shutter speed to drop the amount of ambient light making it into the camera and made the background much darker…. But WHY would I want to do that? Remember, I want to showcase the environment. Here's a lighting diagram for the shot at the top if you are interested BTW.

Since I want to showcase the environment I have to compose the photos in such a way as to make the photos interesting since my subject isn’t particularly the sole point of interest ….now wait a minute, doesn’t the word subject mean that point of interest?.... Let’s just say that I’m going to use the environment to enhance the subject.

One of the most basic rules of composition is the rule of thirds and I use it fairly often. I find that it works great for creating balanced and interesting photos, especially when I’m trying to work with the environ- ment. Place your subject in one of the intersection points or along one of the lines and then place the background elements or environment in such a way that it makes use of the other intersections, especially the opposite one. And you can also put empty space in that opposite intersection such as the photo of Kortney lying in the water.

Regardless of whatever else you want to do with a photo, placing the subject in the center of the photo is typically boring. Make use of the entire frame and don't be chained to where the Auto Focus points of your camera are located. ;-)

Classically Wet

2008-10-05T11:59:00.005-05:00

After the formal wear we tried a more classical theme, white dresses and rocks. These weren’t supposed to be fashion based, just beautiful… but still kind of landscape oriented.

I think I’ve pretty much discussed most of what was going on here in these photos, same problems as with the last session and same lighting setup. Just with a different feel to them.

These photos are probably the closest I’ve come to shooting something that can be described as classic art photography. I really like their look. I’m considering trying something like this again with my 4x5 camera and B&W film. But I’m not altogether sure either of these ladies will want to get into that water again. :-)

Kort and Alli are all wet.

2008-10-02T20:59:00.010-05:00

About 2 months ago I went with Alli and Kortney to a stream near Heber Springs for some photos. And the location was absolutely perfect… totally beautiful, with lots of possibilities including hypothermia. I’m continually amazed at what both these young women will put up with for good photos. That water was very cold, so we did it tag team fashion. I shoot one in the water for a few min then get her out to warm up while I shot the other…. Of course this meant my feet were mostly refrigerated, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as what these two were going through.

I really wanted these photos to have a classic landscape photography feel to them with a fashion slant. I wanted Alli and Kort to be the focus of the photos, but I also wanted the scene/background/location/environment (whatever you want to call it) to be clearly visible and to be a contributing part of the photo. I used flashes to add light to the scene but I didn’t over power the scene and make the scene excessively dark.

I love the colorful formal wear they wore into the water. It really makes them stand out, and not just because of the color contrast but also because of the unusualness of it…it’s formal wear in the middle of a stream for pete’s sake.. ;-)

I lit these with a pair of SB-800’s at 1/8 power into a silver umbrella in a light duty stand that I synced with Pock Wizard remotes. I used 2 flashes at 1/8 instead of 1 at 1/4 so that I would have shorter recycle times. They would start giving me dirty looks if I wasn’t prompt with the photos for some reason…. I don't think they wanted to stay in that freezing water for some reason. ;-)

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated. I’ll try and be better about it.

Debbie, I love the look of that tractor... lets use it.

2008-09-18T12:22:00.002-05:00

I shot bridal portraits for Debbie Douglas a few months ago. We used one of her friends’ homes for location work. The house was very nice but nothing as cool as the pond or the old tractor out behind the house. Her wedding to Hunter West was a little while ago so I can show you these photos now that we don’t have to worry about him seeing the photos anymore.

Football Saturday night.... Astate vs. Southern Miss

2008-09-14T10:20:00.004-05:00

ASU lost the game 27-24, but it was a very good game right down to the last minuet of play. Even with the rain...

Red Wolves Volleyball

2008-09-02T23:15:00.004-05:00

Well the ASU Red Wolves Volleyball team won tonight 3-0 against the UT Martin Skyhawks. Which means that the Red Wolves Athletics are still undefeated. Now that's cool. :) So anyway, here are some shots from the game. :)

It's soccer time again

2008-08-30T16:06:00.003-05:00

I love shooting Soccer. The light is usually any where from pretty good to great for shooting and I can usually get quite a few very good photos from a game. Soccer isn't easy to shoot and it helps to know the game pretty well to shoot it. But to tell the truth, I don't know the game well at all. But I'm pretty good a following the action and the ball so I make do. :)

Anyway, Arkansas State scored seven goals, five in the first half.... to defeat University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, 7-0 at the ASU Soccer Complex Friday.

And this kids haircut was absolutely hilarious. :)

Briand and Erin's wedding day

2008-08-26T21:04:00.008-05:00

Brian and Erin were married at her sisters home in the country near Steele Mo. It was a very nice wedding as well as a very hot wedding. It was in the middle of July. :-) I did enjoy myself, and for the record.... Brian is an excellent cook. ;-)

Brian and Erin, before the wedding

2008-08-24T00:24:00.004-05:00

In preparation for Brian and Erin’s wedding we did several photo session. An engagement session, photos of her dress fitting, and then her bridal photos, which is what I have to show you today. I got enough photos from each session that I could easily make each session into and individual update, but that would be overkill. ;-)

Brian and Erin were a very nice couple to work with and Erin made an absolutely beautiful bride. And if you two are reading this guys, thank you for making me part of your wedding.

Some of my commercial work

2008-08-23T13:10:00.011-05:00

I want to show you some photos from the work that I do to pay the bills. Most of the photos I put in here tend to be model based portfolio type work. These are fun to do and I get to experiment with light and make unusual photos. But I also do quite a few boudoir sessions for women who want sexy photos of themselves as gifts for husbands, boyfriends or just as treats for themselves. The photo above is part of an anniversary gift to her husband. I usually don’t show those photos here, but she can’t be identified from this shot.

It may not look like I shoot anything besides beautiful women, but I also shoot family sessions and senior photos. I don’t do that many senior sessions any more, the market is flooded with “uncle Joe with his $800 digital camera who can shoot your senior photos for free” type shooters, but that’s all right I can deal with them… I actually teach a lot of them at ASU. ;-) Justin over there on the left wanted something that looked tough and cool.

And then there was Liz who wanted photos that weren’t all smile and fluff, she wanted photos that showed her personality. And I think we managed that nicely.
And here we have Chase and Julie Henderson (I shot their wedding early last year) who brought their baby girl Charlie in for family photos not too long after she was born a couple months ago. I really like doing this kind of photo work, especially with babies. Babies, puppies and kittens are usually great subjects… The down side is that they tend to poop on the floor when you least expect it. ;-) You think I’m kidding don’t you.

I call it Gritty Hotel

2008-08-04T00:09:00.006-05:00

I’m not sure anymore where I came up with the idea of shooting in a sleazy hotel and making it look sleazier if I could. It’s been creeping around in my mind for a while… several years at least. I think some of it came from a book called Motel Fetish (it’s not as bad as it sounds) and some comments a model made about the cheap motel she was staying at.

It took a little while for the idea to completely gel for me, which was fine because I really didn’t have an appropriate subject for the photos at the time either. As soon as I mentioned it to Lollie she loved the idea, and she even had a pretty good idea where we could do the photos.

So why do I call it gritty hotel? To tell the truth, I have no idea. It may be something that I heard someone else use. OK, so what is gritty hotel? It’s part high ISO noise, part ruddy incandescent light; part whatever you think goes on in those really cheap nasty hotel/motel rooms. If I were still shooting film I’d have used 1600 Fuji film, which would have given me the grain and color saturation that I like.

As it is, I shot these at ISO 400, I know I should have gone higher, but 400 gave me the settings I wanted with the photos with the bathrooms hot light and I didn’t change it once I got started.

All in all, I’m very pleased with these photos. And I’m definitely going to shoot photos like this again. I think maybe the next time I’ll light some of them so that I can get better looking B&W’s from the photos and shoot some available light at high ISO.

Just for fun

2008-07-28T12:34:00.007-05:00

I wanted to show you guys some photos that I shot with Alli that were basically just for fun. I have a habit of shooting something just because I see something in a store or in an ad and I think it would be fun to do. And I also like to make photos that look different or at least unusual. For one thing this usually leads me into the realm of new lighting situations and creative challenges.

Why do I do this, well it’s very hard to keep creating new and interesting photos. I see tons of photographers who keep shooting the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over…….
I guess if it works for them and they are happy, that’s fine FOR THEM, but not for me. BTW, this is one of the reasons that I resist the urge to open a studio. I hate it when someone comes to me and asks if I can shoot something just like what I shot of her cousin. I would much rather create something unique for them than copy something else, even my own work. I do keep idea files of photos I like, but I don’t copy them…. I may base my photo on them but it won’t look just the same.

So where did the ideas come from in these photos? Well Alli found some fake snow somewhere and high key winter like sweater photos came to mind. Maybe it’s cliché, but I haven’t shot it before and I like the photos. And the prom portrait shoot idea I got looking through some old photos where I saw one of my prom photos. Where the photographer has a place set up and everybody goes in and has his or her photo made in front of whatever it is. This got me to thinking about a weird prom portrait session.

Over all I think we got some unusual photos out of it. Are they fabulous works of art, no… not really. But I like them.

Color vs B&W and some cool retro's of Kortney

2008-07-23T20:51:00.003-05:00

Just to show you what I mean about the color photos being very good, but the black and white photos being even better here are two versions of the same photo, one the original color and the other a B&W version.
If you think about it the color version is almost void of color, the only color in it is Kortney’s skin tone. So why does the B&W jump out more?

The closest I can come to putting it in words is that it may be because B&W leaves more room for the imagination. Because B&W photos have more ambiguity than color photos, it is easier to project what we want to see into the photographs. Since more is "given" in a color photo there is less work for the imagination to do so we project less of ourselves into it. Anyway I hope that makes sense. ;-)

Ok, since I’ve shown you lots of low key photos (lots of black), how about some high key photos (lots of white). This set was Kortneys’ idea, and we both looked all over the place for string curtains. Neither of us could find any so she made one with a wooden dowel and black yarn, while she was driving here…now that’s dedication.

Anyway, I thought the idea was very cool and I think they a very fabulous 70’s fashion vibe to them. Not sure why that is… they just do. :-)

On a side note as I publish this I now have a word verification thingy under the post editor. Apparently blogger has decided that this is a spam blog.... I had to read their help section to figure that out... a spam blog is more or less a page full of links to other places.... as I have very few of those I wonder about them... Makes me want to move this blog to my personal site even more and quite messing with them.

Kortney in B&W

2008-07-12T00:19:00.014-05:00

Hello, my name is Ernie… and I am a photographer who misses B&W film. I haven’t printed in more than 4 years. OK, I know I can still do film if I really want to…. But I’m a good printer, not a great printer…. I can get better end results with digital than I can by printing it myself.

I hope you know by now that I really like noir, it’s a style of lighting typically employing hard dark shadows and low-key directional light. Think those old gangster movies like Maltese Falcon and Dark Passage, but also Alien and Sin City. Anytime you see hard light, a hero who isn't someone you would normally root for as being the good guy (anti-hero) and there is an incredibly gorgeous woman who is nothing but trouble (femme fatale) you have a movie based in film noir. :)

Hey wait a minute; this is supposed to be about Kortney isn’t it? Sorry my bad, I get sidetracked…

So I really wanted to shoot some old school noirish glam of Kortney. She’s got a fabulous figure and great skin, which is important with hard edge lighting. Edge lighting shows imperfections in the skin like you wouldn’t believe so clear skin is important for this kind of photography. I used the Frankenlight (an old school 2K Fresnel hot light that has been modified to work with Elinchrom lights) with a 1,000-watt hot light in it. The Fresnel gives the light a very special look that you can’t get anywhere else. And when you are trying to do noir lighting you don’t fill the shadows, you want hard and deep shadows.
The poses were simple… show the figure and work the shadows. Kortney was perfect for this she did a fabulous job for me. She made a great Femme Fatale, and I think she enjoyed herself while she was at it. What is a Femme Fatale? That’s the hot babe typically in a film noir movie that you know you shouldn’t mess with, but you can’t help yourself.

After the more classic shots in the tank top we made some sexier photos along the same lines, even though they aren’t really what you could call old school anymore, she is a Femme Fatale. I really wish I could show you more of these, but I can’t…. sorry.
BTW, these photos look great in color and I love them like that… but I love them more in B&W….

Brooke is back

2008-06-30T21:47:00.012-05:00

I wanted to show you some more of the photos I made of Brooke. Would you believe I shot photos in available light? Amazing isn’t it? I do know how to find light when I want to. Usually the hardest thing to get with available light is good color out of it. Unless the light is coming directly from a source (direct light) it is bouncing off something (indirect light). Light that bounces off something picks up the color characteristics of whatever it is that it bounces off of.

I.e. a green wall reflects green light, and anyone standing next to that green wall would look green on the side that faced the wall.

Thankfully I didn’t really have that problem here. My light was indirect, light bouncing off the ground outside then coming in through a large glass wall with Terra Cotta tile and brown carpet on the floor. So large source = soft light and brown tile = warmish light. So it was pretty decent shooting light.

Our last set was swimwear, sandy swimwear…. It was definitely a pain cleaning it up but the photos were well worth it I think. Nothing special in the way I shot these really, I used a beauty dish with a gold “spoon” to make the light look daylightish. I wanted to use the dish because daylight is direct, sharp and contrasty, if I’d used a softbox with a warming gel the light would have been the same color, but the light would have been diffused.

We stuck the sand on with Pam cooking spray, did you know that Pam is one of those widely know secrets among beach/swimsuit photographers? It’s non-toxic, makes the skin look great, is easy to apply and is pretty cheap. It makes them look all glisteny and sweaty with a bit of water stpritzed on them if it’s not already hot enough for her to sweat. They even tell me that it makes their skin very soft afterward. Maybe I should open up a photo studio/day spa…. What do you think?

Cooking with Alli

2008-06-26T22:51:00.019-05:00

So after our session down at River Market Park we shot at Desi’s pool house who is one of Alli’s friends. The pool house had some very interesting places to shoot. One of which was the kitchen/bar area… or maybe I should call it a kitchenette. A frying pan, a fake chicken and some attitude where all we needed to make some unusual photos.

Desi was kind enough to join Alli in some of the photos as more or less an extra or prop. He served drinks, peppered the chicken and was generally quite helpful. He even cleaned the pool so we could shoot with it.

I think my favorite location was the front of the pool house, which is more or less a wall of large double doors. The sun was my key/main light I used a flash to give a little fill on her but mainly to light the interior of the house. And on some I just turned the flash off and let the interior go dark and giving strong shadows on her from the sun.

Looking at these photos again for this blog post has reminded me how much I love them. Personally, I think these are probably some of the best “fashion” photos I’ve ever shot. They have style, energy and a sexy vibe.... The only down side to this day was the sunburn that I got. ;-)

Plus I used unmodified available light on some of these... if you've been paying attention to this blog you should know that I light EVERYTHING... well, I guess almost everything. But I have been shooting available light more often lately.... which is both fun and irritating... because available light is often not available where, when, in what direction or in the color that I want.... My favorite quote is from one of my favorite photographers, W. Eugene Smith
“Available light is any damn light that is available!”

Brooke likes to belly dance

2008-06-24T00:18:00.014-05:00

Which to me is an excellent excuse to make photos of her dancing. The set working with her dress was extremely important here. White or black seamless paper wouldn’t cut it. I happen to have a gold and blue “drape” background that was perfect.

What I wanted to do here was make the best photos I could for a client. I spent time thinking about the lighting and the set. Have you ever heard the term Crap in, Crap out! I really don’t like to just show up without knowing what I’m going to shoot. Planning, wardrobe, set, style and lighting are very important in making great photos.

I wanted contrasty light so I used beauty dishes, a 27-inch dish in front and a 22-inch behind her. I used cinefoil on the bottom of the main light to limit the light hitting the floor. The crisp light from the dishes really made the colors pop and the shiny dodads on her dress sparkle. A diffused source like an umbrella or softbox wouldn’t give that sparkle.

There was one happy booboo, my kicker light was set to a lower powered than my main so it recycled faster. I got one shot where the main didn’t fire but the kicker did. I noticed it and loved the edge light. So I shot more like it. So the moral of this story is to stay flexible.

Rocking Little Rock with Alli

2008-06-21T15:48:00.014-05:00

I’ve been shooting a ton lately and I’m pretty far behind in what I want to show you so I’m going to try and push through a bunch of work here in the next week or so.
I made a trip down to Little Rock a little while ago to do some guerrilla shooting with Alli in the River Market then some location work at one of her friend’s houses.

I wanted the photos we made at the River Market Park to be well lit, but simple enough to be direct. I lit them with an SB-800 controlled with Nikon’s CLS function. Sometimes I used it set to TTL, sometimes manual, depending on the situation.

Why is this important, and why bring it up when I really should be talking about WHY I shot it instead of how. Well, when you are shooting from the hip, trying to make it look high end with just one small flash (in other words guerrilla shooting). From the minimalist point of view, the first thing I wanted to make use of is the high-speed sync feature I can “cheat” the flash exposure some and darken the sun/sky down farther than the normal flash sync of 1/250th of a second. The second thing I wanted was portability and ease of use. All these can be had using Nikon’s CLS.

Once we when to her friend’s house I broke out the battery pack head for a broader light source than what I can get with an SB-800. The idea for the kiddy pool and toys hit me while I was in Fred’s getting a couple cheap and colorful inner tubes and air mattresses for photo props. Alli is just the sort of outrageously fun person who can pull something like this off and make it look cool.

Anyway, take it easy and thank you for visiting.

Preggers in the pool

2008-06-20T22:24:00.013-05:00

Oh man were these photos fun to shoot.

I don’t know how else to put it. They are rich in color and all kinds of redneck goodness. I love them. I tried to think of the weirdest, nay, strangest thing I could think of to do with a pregnant woman to make good photo.

I really wish she was a little farther along and showing a LOT more, because in some she just looks overweight. But all in all I think they work very well and I’m extremely happy with them.

I put blue gels on 2 SB-800’s which I hocked up to Pocket Wizard remotes for edge lights. I stuffed these into Ziplock bags so that I could lay them on the ground close to the pool without killing them. But the light from the flashes under the water line of the pool looked really weird. So I had her brother and friend hold them. I can’t say enough about carbon based, voiced activated light stands, I absolutely love it when they show up with models…. ;-)

Lets see, I used my Ranger battery pack for the main light with a 6 inch reflector with 2 layers of diffusion material to take the hard edge off the wonderfully contrasty light it was producing.

I’d like to thank Warren for letting me use his patio to shoot these, he also held a flashlight so that I could see to focus.

More Mommy

2008-06-13T23:46:00.018-05:00

Though we were mainly doing non-traditional maternity photos, we did shoot a few that could be considered traditional. This was mainly to fit my needs. I don’t mind being the guy who shoots unusual photos, but I did need new maternity photos for my portfolio that the average mommy can deal with. ☺

I got some brown cloth that came very close to matching Dani’s hair color to drape her with. I pretty much knew that I was going to be converting these photos to B&W or brown tones but I wanted them to work in color also. I think they look very good in full color, but I absolutely love them with the brown tone.

I think normal maternity photos are one of the hardest things to shoot. Mommy is often worried about looking good, and if she wants nude or semi-clothed photos then she is often very nervous about that.

Our next set had her covered in mud. It was actually the stuff they make ceramics out of, I don’t know if that is something different than clay but for the sake of brevity I’ll call it mud. These shots were pretty cool, the dried mud gave her very cool texture and the places that weren’t completely dry had a cool look to them also.

I was pretty sure that I would be converting these photos to B&W. But they look great in color also; the only problem I can find with them is the red fingernail polish. ☺ It doesn’t change the fact that I love them. But converting them to B&W makes them so much more striking and surreal. One thing that I absolutely love about Dani is that she has these amazing eyes that look stunning in color or B&W.

I think these photos ended up being a little sexier than I intended them to be. So here is a question, should maternity photos be sexy? I think they can be and probably should be a little bit, they flatter mommy, and they should make her look absolutely gorgeous. So a little sexy is not a bad thing in my opinion. ☺

Pregnant runaway bride

2008-06-05T00:01:00.020-05:00

When I spoke with Dani about maternity photos she said she wanted non-traditional maternity photos, the “non” was in capital letters. My reply of hell yes was in capital letters too. ☺

The idea of wild, crazy, colorful and fun maternity photos was exciting and I had a nice sleepless night dreaming up “stories” for photos. Why call it a story? You could call it a theme if you like but story is a better way to do it I think. I have a large streak of journalism in me and I love to try and tell stories with my photos. I sent her several story ideas and then we collaborated on fleshing out the stories.

Our first story was the pregnant runaway bride. I wanted the viewer to see one of these photos… understand it… and laugh.

A veil, cheap bouquet, and a 70’s era suitcase… pure trailer trash heaven! ☺ I really hope the story comes out in these photos the way I want it too.

These photos were fun to plan and shoot, I can’t imagine a better subject for these photos than Dani. As far as the technical part, I shot these with a DC powered flash using a 27-inch beauty dish opposite of the sun, which was going in and out of the clouds.

I'm beginning to think I should call this the Alli blog...

2008-05-19T23:04:00.008-05:00

Well here’s the last of the photos I’m going to show you of Alli from this session. These are a hodge-podge of photos from various sets lit in a variety of ways. I’ll try to let you know what I did as we come to them.

Alli and I often shoot photos just because we see something somewhere that we like the look of. Think of it as an exercise in creativity. I like to backwards engineer the photo, try to figure out how they did it. Then decide what it is I like about the shot, what I would do differently…. Sometimes why I would do it differently is because I do not have the equipment necessary, or I just don’t like how they did it. Usually it’s because I’d like to do it my way. I would like to say I want it to look like my style, but I don’t really know that I have a specific style. You know, I started this blog to help me define or at least recognize my style. I still haven’t managed do recognize it.

The first photo is something that Alli saw in a spa or skin cream ad. We both thought it was interesting so we gave it a go. I liked the setup but not the lighting they used, it didn’t look right. It is lit from overhead with a 5 foot Octabox on a boom arm with a medium strip box for edge fill along her side. The background is lit with a strobe below the table with a chocolate Rosco gel on it. We both needed something commercial looking for our portfolios and we both thought this would fit nicely. Well, for her to use this in her comp card she can’t be showing any booty, so we are going to have to reshoot it…. sans booty. Where’s the fun in that.

The swimsuit photo was shot for grins and giggles because I wanted to see what my new beach scenic background looked like. I used the beauty dish again on this one but it doesn’t fit the scene as well here. I think I should have probably used a more contrasty light source. The weird projected photo was lit with an LCD projector and shot at high ISO. A spot light right above her added enough light to her face to separate her from the projection. Alli really wanted to dress trashily, but she wanted it shot like fashion. This wasn’t a technical exercise; it was more just an exercise in fun.

The low-key shot is me trying to do a sexy bra ad, but it doesn’t really look like a commercial shot though. I seem to have a problem shooting photos that look commercial these days. Oh well, I still like it. I’m pretty sure I cross lit this with the beauty dish to front and a pair of kicker lights with standard reflectors for pretty hard light.

And the high-key shots are almost the same photo aren’t they, they just different clothing and expressions. I lit these with the Octabox on the boom and a couple strobes on the background to blow out the white seamless. All in all we had a very productive shoot and I got several different looking photos to choose from.

I’m going to be doing some maternity photos this weekend, and I think they are going to be wild… so wish me luck. ☺

So lets call this Sci-Fi Fashion

2008-05-11T20:29:00.009-05:00

We wanted to shoot something sci-fi and cool looking. Most of the stuff we shoot is at least different, but it’s rarely something that looks like science fiction. And I’m a big fan of it so I was really into it.

We both spent a lot of time looking for unusual outfits... I finally found this Aeon Flux looking outfit on eBay. We were originally going to use it with the guns we used a shoot or two back. Then she saw some photos with florescent tubes in them and she showed them to me. So I went looking for something like that. I found a circular florescent light fixture with 2 hoops at a flea market for $3. With that we had everything we needed except the attitude that Alli provided.

Lighting was somewhat different, I still used the beauty dish but I had a ½ plus green Rosco gel on it so that I could balance to the florescent light tubes. I set the camera's WB to fluorescent and didn't do anything else. One thing though, I didn't use edge lights on her like the last batch of photos. Please have a look an notice the difference.
BTW, the full plus green gel is way to green to do the job in my opinion.

I got rid of the wires from the light tubes in Photoshop. ☺ And though I enjoyed shooting them, I really didn’t care for the Photoshop work afterward.

Sexily fashionable in low key…

2008-05-10T15:39:00.011-05:00

This session was really more about fashion, but I think these shots are both fashionable and sexy. The style is more fashion based but the connection Alli has with the viewer in these photos is very sexy.

If you study the photos in fashion magazines the first thing you will notice is that the styles change very often (BTW, this means that if you try to copy those you are already behind). But what I have noticed is an overall shift toward a sexier feel or look in the photos.

A sexier look is not a bad thing; at least to me it’s not. ☺ I think this might in the long run lead toward a more voluptuous body type in fashion models. But I’m not going to hold my breath, the designers have certain sizes that make clothing to and they hire models that fit those clothes. I would say that it’s very rare for the designer to make the clothes to fit the model.

I lit these photos with a 17-inch beauty dish and 2 strip boxes to give some edge light to Alli so that she wouldn’t blend into the background too much. A beauty dish is a very unique light modifier. It produces light that is very crisp and directional but fairly low contrast. If you would like to make your own here is a link to a very nice one discussed on the Strobist Blog.

BTW, low key is a mostly black scene if you didn’t already know.

Beauty shots

2008-04-30T23:42:00.015-05:00

Alli changed her hair color and needed new photos for her comp card and headshot for her agency. We shot a large selection of photos over 2 days and it was a major hunk of work paring them down to a manageable number of photos.

She needed several styles of photos, basically shots to complement a whole new look. These are the beauty shots… plus a swim wear shot that I stuck in here because it fit in fairly well with these others.

I wanted the light for these photos to be crisp, direct and directional but not too contrasty… so I used a beauty dish to light her. If you’ve never used a beauty dish then you really should borrow one and check it out. The background for the beauty shots is a 5-foot Octabox, I wanted a nice bright active background and the Octabox was perfect for the job.

There are several more photos from this shoot that I’m going to be showing that are I think are very good photos.

You want to hear something funny? About 2 weeks after this shoot Alli signed with a larger agency that told her to dye her hair back to brown. It was more marketable… All this work by both of us and she can’t use them. Oh well, I can use them for my portfolio now can’t I. ☺

Justin and Christina Pay

2008-04-26T12:03:00.009-05:00

Here are some photos from Justin and Christina Pay's wedding a couple weeks ago. They are a very nice couple and I enjoyed spending time with them on their wedding day.

The Wizard would LOVE to see these two...

2008-04-09T10:10:00.015-05:00

While I was down in Little Rock shooting with Alli we also did a couple sets of photos with her friend Malissa. I’m not sure where the idea for Dorothy and Toto came from, but I thought it was a very fun shoot. I just wish we had a yellow brick road or for that matter some flying monkeys.

Now that I think about it I think Alli said something about the red shoes being what gave her the idea. I may be wrong about that though. ☺ These were shot in some park in the hilly area somewhere close to UALR… In other words I have no idea where we were other than close to where Malissa lives.

The lighting was very simple here, 2 SB-800’s controlled by Nikons’ CLS. One bounced out of a silver umbrella, the other direct for some nice crisp light. I wanted the woods to be darker and “murkier” than my subjects to give it a more menacing feel.

I very much enjoyed working with Malissa and Alli is always fun. They are both ready to act and have fun. These photos definitely have a very nice campy/fun feel to them, which is something that I like.

I have a couple very good ideas for our next shoot that require a couple outrageous actresses… costuming is going to be a problem though.

David and Jessica Miller

2008-03-29T13:08:00.007-05:00

I just realized that I have never shown you photos from Jessica and David's wedding back in December. They had a very nice wedding that was lit by Christmas tree lights. I was kind of worried about that, but everything turned out fine. These are some of my favorite photos from their wedding.

Expected to shoot lifestyle photos... got something else.

2008-03-25T22:54:00.005-05:00

Hey folks, I’m sorry I’ve been lax in updating lately. I’ve got plenty of photos to show you, just no motivation to do the writing part. ☺

I went down to Little Rock to do some photos that have more of a lifestyle feel to them with Alli. Well, they are a little more posed than they need to be for lifestyle, Alli and I seem to have problems making photos that don’t look fashion oriented… but I still think they are pretty good.

All these photos were shot at MacArthur Park, they have a nice park there and I like this little garden spot they have. It looks good and I’d love to do a bridal session there sometime.

I’m not sure what this little monument is supposed to be. I don’t remember if I saw I placard on it or not. I lit all these photos with 2 SB-800’s using Nikons Creative Lighting System. I didn’t want them to be overly lit so I kept it simple and used just one flash for fill. The sun came out while we were shooting around the columned thingy and I wished I’d brought a little more powerful of a flash than the SB-800 to darken the skies down a bit more. Oh well.

Sugar Rush

2008-03-16T21:05:00.009-05:00

Lollie and Tally told me they wanted to do something fun and playful. Well, their idea was completely girly. Girly as in strait from a 10 year olds slumber party full of candy, toys, teddy bears and pigtails.
I shot them against a white background so they would be light and whimsical. But I would have preferred a location like a playroom or something. Or a family room with sleeping bags, but I didn’t have those so I used white.

Lollie always has good ideas, she’s a very creative young woman and she literally grabs hold of the idea/concept/theme… whatever you want to call it, and gives you her all. I love working with her.

Now that I think about, it I enjoyed working with Tally also. We did some photos with a Christmas theme for next year that I think were Tally’s idea. And just think… all the Christmas decorations were very cheap because they were purchased after this years Christmas…

I also shot some dark and fierce photos of Lollie. I used a black background and a gridded small softbox to control the light falling on her face and chest. The edge light keeps her dark hair from blending into the background and it also brings out the colored highlights in her hair.

Anyway, thanks for looking. I’ve been busy lately shooting and working on photos and haven’t updated this blog enough lately and I’m sorry about that. I also launched my new website http://www.ernierice.com, if you haven’t seen it yet please go and have a look and let me know what you think.

Snow and the little devil from across the street.

2008-03-07T20:13:00.005-06:00

Well, it's been snowing today, it started around 10am here in Paragould and it's snowing now at 8:30pm. I may shoot with Audra tomorrow in the snow, I don't know about that though. :)

Anyway, I went and shot some photos of it. I used my 500mm/f8 mirror lens on the first ones, it's kinda weird and even though it says it's f:8, it's really more like f:11... so it's dark as crap looking through it.... but it makes these really great out of focus patterns... they look like doughnuts. :) And it Vignettes like a mother on the D3 too.

After a bit one of my neighbors and her youngest decided to build a snowman... maybe I should say she's building a snowman, he was running around kicking snow around and playing in it.

Trust the little stinker to start throwing snowballs, thankfully he's a bad shot. ;)

Well, I know what he's thinking...
Bad shot or not I moved before that hit my camera.

Brandon and Sara McNeil

2008-02-23T20:01:00.006-06:00

Here are a selection of photos from Brandon and Sara McNeil's wedding, I'm very happy that they chose me to do their wedding photography. I really enjoyed the time I spent with them. Brandon is a riot, he and his friends kept me guessing and were into everything.

Alien fashion Alli

2008-02-06T13:09:00.000-06:00

Alrighty then…. First I’d like to say these probably aren’t really what I should call fashion photos. Fashion is about selling a product… and that product should be clearly and accurately shown with lots of detail…. if you make the photos “glowy” you really aren’t showing that detail very well. But who cares about all this picky stuff right? ;) The glow makes these photos look cool. ☺

The driving factors in these photos are how outrageous and over the top can we go. I’d like to thank Alli again for being a creative genius with the makeup and wig. I used a large silver panel reflector as a background and red and blue gels on it for accent color.
Going back and looking at these photos and my other recent session with Alli I think we have both been so fixated on making photos that we think are cool and interesting that I think we both need to get back to the basics a bit. She’s submitting photos to agencies and I’m submitting to a stock site and both seem to want more natural “looking” photos.
Anyway, I still think the photos we got out of this session are very cool and I’m glad we made them.
BTW, have you noticed that I’ve been using silly titles that sound like the name of a Barbie doll? I thought it was kind of funny. ☺

Purple fashion Alli

2008-02-02T13:57:00.000-06:00

How can you say no to purple velvet? It’s impossible….so don’t even try.

The light on these isn’t spectacular, but it works pretty well, I considered letting the shadow side fall darker but I didn’t want to loose detail in the velvet. Velvet looks best with light moving across it, that’s when you see it’s unique texture.

These poses are more along the lines of what I call fashion demure BTW, the poses in the two previous sets had a much more aggressive stance than these.

Good models and photographers should know what poses work with a particular wardrobe or style of photography. ☺

I’m particularly happy with the color of the background. That’s white paper with a purple gel on it, I think the nice creamy purple goes with the color of the dress very well. The darker purple spots are shadows from my main light and the lighter places are where “white light” of the main has overpowered the background light. Controlling your light is very important when you light photos like this. Grids, stripboxes and gobos are very handy.

Farther along that fashion Alli

2008-01-30T22:09:00.000-06:00

After the stairwell we exchanged the guns for some different props and moved to the studio for something a little less direct. I used colored gels on white seamless paper for a more interesting background and to match the colors of the clothing a little better.

Alli did a wonderful job giving me unusual and abstract poses and really used the props well. I gave up a long time ago trying to give her specific direction, which is what I usually do for most of my subjects. What I do with Alli is just give her a general idea and let her work.
Alli is a fabulous model to work with if you hadn’t guessed already; her feedback on my photos has caused major changes in my creative process. You have to know fashion to shoot fashion.

At first I had some misgivings about using the curling iron, it was kinda nasty looking but she did a very good job of making it look like a weapon. ☺ I don’t really know how else to describe these photos. They are like a Technicolor explosion with rich and saturated colors. And I love it.

Our next set was shot against a white background, and are along a completely different line. Though the colors are somewhat subdued they are still saturated. We shot several poses with this outfit, probably more actual photos in this than any of the others.

I'm not sure where she found the vintage undies, but the pairing with those cool leggings and heels made for a very wild outfit. The hair and the whip we used in some of the photos just put them over the top. I like the photo above quite a bit but I'm wondering if it doesn't look her left leg is amputated at the knee, otherwise I think the pose is very cool. :)

Generally I think that shooting on a white background is often pretty boring, mainly because you have to make the light very flat. But sometimes wardrobes like this are perfect for it. But to tell the truth, I would absolutely love to have access to a huge abandoned building that I could shoot cool stuff like this in when I had the urge.... but I don’t. It’s hard to shoot outside in the winter but I get so bored with the studio, I’ve really got a bad case of spring fever right now. ☺

Fashion Alli

2008-01-27T11:07:00.000-06:00

Alli came to visit back in December; it was kind of cold but not too bad so we did some shots outside. It was also overcast which makes for very even, diffuse light. I didn’t light these photos, which is VERY unusual for me. I light almost everything…. Just ask the people that I’ve come near to blinding. ☺ If the sun had been out I probably would have added some light to bring down the exposure value for the sky… but the sky was boring and ugly so why darken it.

We really wanted to show life, motion and fun in these photos and I think we succeeded.

I guess you could classify these photos lifestyle fashion, but the one that is all glowy isn’t really a fashion photo. Fashion is supposed to showcase the clothing and if you blur the details like this the clothing designer i.e. “client” is going to be highly unhappy.

Once Alli got cold we moved it inside, and after a major change in makeup and hair our first session was in a stairwell. We wanted to create some photos that looked completely unusual. Between the clothes, guns, location and light I think we succeeded. The guns are 50 cent water guns I painted black and the light was from a Nikon SB-800 that I mounted on a small Bogen stand wedged into the rail. It was hard and contrasty light that created very strong, clearly defined shadows… It was just what I wanted.

I did the best I could to move around for different angles in that confined space. The D3’s full frame sensor with a 24mm lens was very handy for this because I didn’t want wide-angle distortion. I could have gotten the same angle of view with a 16mm on a DX sensor camera but it would have had a lot of distortion. I’m so happy I never got around to selling my 24mm lens when I quit using it because I didn’t like it’s angle of view with the DX format cameras. ☺

Alli really rocked this session. There were so many really great shots to choose from. I really had a hard time with these. They were all full of style, color and energy…which is what I want my photos to have. I can do the technical part of photography very well; the art and creativity part is what I struggle with when I shoot. I’m getting better at it thankfully and I think that Alli is one of the main reasons for this.

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve added anything. I’ve had the photos I wanted to use for a week or so but I’ve been kind of short on time and motivation for the writing part of it. ☺

Photographic Pretension

2008-01-05T17:58:00.000-06:00

Some of you should know by now that I've been trying to work on my creative process for a long while now.

Mainly I'm trying to develop a more artistic element in my photography and I'm trying to become more conscious of why I'm doing something. I'm doing several things to try and accomplish this. One is my 365 blog where I try to pick a random object and make as interesting a photo of it as I can. I look at the work of as many photographers as I can online and in books. I also subscribe to several podcasts that deal with the creative process, I avoid the how to podcasts though. One of my favorites is the LensWork - Photography and the creative process podcast.

It's more or less a collection of random thoughts and observations on photography by Brooks Jensen, Editor of LensWork magazine. They aren't very long and they are well thought out bits of what I consider wisdom and insight into the state of photography today. I highly recommend that you check this podcast out.

So why bring this up? I just got done listening to a batch of his podcasts and the latest was called Photographic Pretension, which struck a nerve with me. What he talks about is using grandiose language to describe a photo or a photographer to make them sound more important and/or better than they are. It's basically marketing when you get right down to it.

I think this problem mainly comes from ego. I see so many photographers use grandiose words to describe their work and how good they are. But when you look at their photos they are more often than not mediocre to horrible. I think most of that is because they haven't separated their ego from their photos yet. Because they shot it, it's automatically better than anyone else's.
Now there are great photographers out there who do this also, but not as many. I think the separation of ego and work comes with experience and the more experience you have the better you typically are as a photographer or a model for that matter.

So why did this strike a nerve? Because someone asked me to critique some photos recently and they didn't like what I had to say. As a matter of fact they got very upset. This is nothing new; I rarely critique photos these days unless I know the person or they are with me. Just because I don’t like the photo doesn’t mean that I don’t like you. And even if I like a photo there are typically things that could be done better or differently that may or may not improve it. I see the same thing in my own photos.

I like to think that I'm humble about my work. I try to let my photos speak for themselves. I shouldn't have to explain them, I shouldn't have to tell you how good or bad they are. You can judge that for yourself.

Well, I’ve written myself out. I guess this sounds like a rant… and it very well may be one… I just needed to get it out. I've included a recent shot of Alli with this post, I rather like it. And you are more than welcome to tell me what you think about it. Ideas on how I could have done a better job are ALWAYS welcome. I may not agree with you, but I'll definitely listen. :)

A basketball double header

2007-12-31T19:39:00.000-06:00

ASU hosted 2 games Sunday December 30th. The ladies played Charlotte and the men played MacMurry State right after, the ladies lost and the guys won.

With 2 games it was a fairly long time to be sitting on the floor, even with a bleacher chair my butt was numb by the end of the mens game. This is a bleacher chair if you don't know what I'm talking about, they are great and keep your lower back supported and tushy from suffering from bleacher butt. :)

So near the end of the mens game I went and sat in media row, with has nice cushioned folding chairs. It gave me a different angle to shoot from which is nice but it also gave me a busy background for shooting toward the hoop. :( But I still like the shot. ;) BTW, say hi to Hannah sitting down there on the floor. Before I moved I was sitting down there to her left.

Since ASU's cheerleaders are out for Christmas break we've been having local high school cheerleaders or members of local cheer companies in for the games. On Sunday we had Cheers Unlimited in blue uniforms for the womens game and the Arkansas Cheer Company in the red and black for the mens game. I know the people who run both organizations and they are all great folks.

To tell the truth the best part of both games were the little ones out there doing their flips and stuff. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. It was definitely one of those "Oh how CUTE!!!!" moments. :)

Audra, a Sci-Fi babe

2007-12-29T20:46:00.001-06:00

What I have here are some photos from my latest session with Audra. I really wanted these photos to look like stuff you’d see in a 50’s sci-fi movie pin-up, hence the old toy ray gun prop. Well, they ended up looking kinda 80’ish. Which is fine I guess, but I wish I’d had a different prop gun that looked more 80's. ☺

It took me several hours to glue a bunch of rhinestones onto a black seamless background paper, but I think it was worth the effort. I’ve had people tell me I should have just poked holes in the paper and then put a flash behind the paper…. Maybe that would do better, not sure…. I just think there would be way to much fall off along the edges.

Audra did a fine job as an amazon woman from space, I really appreciate her effort in these photos. She and her daughter spent quite a bit of time getting her hair fixed up like that.

On some of the photos I used blue gels to give the photos a cool feel. The hardest part in all this was getting enough light on the background for the stones to reflect back, but not enough light on the background for the black to become gray. It’s very much a balancing act. ☺

Anyway, I’m very pleased with the way these photos turned out and it has confirmed my belief that props and preparation are keys to cool looking photos.

So if you don't hear from me again before the end of the year, I'd like to wish you a Happy New Year and a mild hangover.

My new friends Kortney and Tessa

2007-12-19T21:11:00.000-06:00

I met Kortney and Tessa through another photographer friend who wanted me to join them for a photo session, but a nasty storm rolled through and postponed the shoot, and I was already booked for their reschedule date. So we ended up doing our own photos on a third date. Does that sound as confusing as I think it does?

Anyway, they both came with interesting ideas and we made some pretty good photos. I especially liked Kortney’s idea for the chain, and as I recall that sucker was pretty cold and we also hosed her down with Pam cooking spray. ☺

I tried mixing some light with these photos of Tessa, but it wasn’t working just right. I’m not sure why, I think I may not have had the light gobo’ed well enough for it to look the way I wanted it to. So I just did it this way, which looks great in my opinion, it’s just not what I wanted. ☺

I think some of my favorite photos are the ones with Kort on the fur rug, I lit it with my Franken light, an old Fresnel hot light that has been modified to work with my Elinchrom strobes. It produces it’s own very sweet, very directional light. I think I’m going to use it more often.

We didn’t shoot anything ground breaking, but it was a very good session and I enjoyed it. BTW, I hope you've noticed that I've changed my tags for my web photos. I wanted something newish and also something that could be completely automated. I love Photoshop actions... Anyway, thanks for reading.....Ernie ☺

Halloween photos in December?

2007-12-07T21:25:00.000-06:00

It was coming up on Halloween and I had a photo session planned with Lollie but we hadn’t really decided what we wanted to shoot and a Halloween theme sounded like a great idea. So Lollie brought her friend Tally along as a co-conspirator and victim for our photos.

I wanted to do 2 different sets, a mummy outfit and a vampire outfit. To be honest I like the vampire photos better than the mummy photos, I put a lot of work into the mummy wraps, and we couldn’t keep them wrapped up her legs or arms…. They ended up falling down around her calves and ankles looking like leg warmers. ☹ Oh well, next time I do something like this I’ll just hose her down with spray glue first. ;)

Anyway, this one mummy shot that survived my edit for the blog wasn’t even intentional. The rear flash with the red gel on it was at a lower power setting than the front flash so it recycled faster. That means that I shot this photo before the front flash was ready to go…. But I like it. ☺

All right… back to vampire photos, first of all, I’d like to thank Lollie for bringing that killer jacket. I wanted these photos to have an Anne Rice (Interview with a Vampire & The Queen of the Damned) feel to them. That jacket was perfect for our shoot!!!

And just so you know, Lollie is an excellent predator. She’s all bubbles and giggles… then when you least expect it her fangs come out and she’s all over you. ☺ She’s great and I love her, she is always fun to work and spend time with. This is the first time I have worked with Tally though we had met before. She did a very good job in the photos we made featuring her and she made a great victim too. ☺

This month is going to be a very busy one, 2 weddings and several commercial jobs, I’ll do my best to keep things updated here.

Too sexy for my blog…. Well, maybe not.

2007-11-27T14:08:00.000-06:00

I want to show you this last batch of photos from my session with Alli in the motel down in Little Rock. I love them greatly, but I’m also wondering if they aren’t a little to much for a blog which among other things I try to generate commercial and wedding business from.

These particular photos ended up being much sexier than I imagined they would be. Although Alli is more than capable of starting fires with her eyes, the looks she gave me for these photos were above and beyond what I expected.

I still wanted the gritty old school glam feel to these photos, but with less “classic” and more “ voyeurism” to make it hot and murky. I wanted her to be aware that there was a “viewer” but to be completely indifferent to them, and what they wanted. Well, she gave me that plus whatever else she could think of.

Maybe what I wanted her to do was tease us, doesn’t really matter what I wanted though. This is what I got and I love it.

Alli, you rock. ☺

Classic glam with Alli

2007-11-12T20:05:00.000-06:00

I showed you some of these photos of Alli a couple weeks ago, right after I shot them. So here are some more with a little more detail on how I wanted these photos to turn out.

I wanted the photos to look kind of gritty.... with a classic or at least sophisticated old school glam look…. With a little bit of a voyeurism thrown in for good measure.

The shower photos were Alli’s idea and were mainly for fun. I think they turned out very well. They are cool and very stylish…. I wish I’d thought about it. ☺ I lit them with an SB-800 superclamped to the shower rod and used a Pocket Wizard to fire it.

Fashion with Francesca

2007-11-03T11:41:00.000-05:00

When Francesca contacted me she told me she wanted photos that were sexy and glamorous, but still fashionable. This is getting easier to do these days; I think the style of photography called fashion is becoming more glamorous.

To break it down, fashion is about the product whether it’s a dress, coat or watch and glamour is about making the model look good. Current fashion trends are heavily influenced by glamour, and they have been for a while. Which is fine with me because I’ve been mixing these styles for a years… or at least trying to mix them. ☺

OK, enough of that, back to Franny… I asked her to look at some fashion magazines and scan some photos and email them to me. She sent me a lot of very nice photos, she has great taste in photography, and after doing the research she had some very clear ideas on the way that she wanted her photos to turn out. I love that in a client. ☺

These are from 3 of the 6 or so sets we shot that evening. I was very impressed with her ability as a model. She took direction very well, initiated her own poses periodically without direction and was very expressive.

Think of it this way, she did a much better job as a subject than many models that I’ve worked with and she didn’t come into this thinking of herself as a model.

I really enjoyed working with her and I would willingly do so again. ☺

Night of the Living Dead, a musical

2007-10-27T19:48:00.000-05:00

I went to the opening night of Night of the Living Dead, the musical last night at the Collins Theater. It was put on by the Greene County Fine Arts Council and written and directed by Gabriel Cook and based on the screenplay by George Romero (think the original Night of the Living Dead movie, the B&W one not the remake that was in color).It was very good... I enjoyed it very much and I really don’t care for musicals that much. And it is a musical based on a horror movie, how weird is that. A fair bit of the singing was off key and there were some flubs in the lines but it was a very good play.
It also got me to thinking that it would be good for me to volunteer with the Fine Arts Council. I think it might be fun to work with these guys, if nothing else it should introduce me to a many of the local creatives.

The Zombies were cool, they were walking up and down the aisles of the theater during the show, and I saw a friend and model of mine among them. You can't actually see her in this stage shot, she's in the back but she made the prettiest zombie I'd ever seen. :)

This is Gabriel and Kathy Cook, Kathy is in my photoclass this semester, I’ve seen lots of her photos from the rehearsals and she suggested that I would be interested in coming.

Pin-upish….

2007-10-25T16:34:00.000-05:00

I’ve been looking at some of the old school 40 and 50’s pun-up photography and art lately and I wanted to see if I could pull something off that had the same feel. I wasn’t really trying to recreate or copy it, just to do something with that feel.

I also looked at a lot of the art that Vargas did for different military units during World War II. Vargas did extremely good work regularly, but I think he gave a little extra in creativity for those guys.

I like the results I got, but I’m not sure I managed to pull it off the right “feel” to the photos. I think it probably has to do more with my photographic tastes than it does with actually looking like a pin-up shot.

Maybe I just like my photos darker and harder edged than what you find with old school classic pin-up work. And to tell the truth, I’m really not a big fan of the huge cheerful smile that is so prevalent in classic Pin-up styles.

There are lots of photographers out there right now doing more modern and edgier style pin-up work. But they are more often than not more alternative in their subject matter and outlook than I am. Check out Viva Van Story, she’s very, very, very good…..

I really don’t remember the specifics on how I lit these anymore, other than that I put a red gel over one of the background lights on the shots with the vintage lingerie. The vintage stuff came from eBay BTW… ☺

Alli and Lollie

2007-10-21T20:23:00.000-05:00

These are glamour photos of Alli and Alexis(otherwise known as Lollie) I shot a little while ago. They decided to team up for some pin-up photos that we shot later on, but we had some fun with this set up first.

The background is a very nice muslin I got from Backdrop Outlet, looks very nice and somewhat Victorian. It’s mostly green but if you hit it with a flash that has a red and yellow gel over on it you get a delicious sunset look on it.

I lit the girls with a single light in a small Photoflex softbox with a grid on it to keep the light nice and tight… in other words, off the background. I also put a half CTO gel on the girls flash to warm them up some. ☺

I really wanted these photos to be soft, glamorous, classy and warm toned. I hadn’t really shot anything like these in a while and it’s fun to shoot something soft and sexy periodically.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a serious update and I’m sorry about that. Part of it is the 365 blog that I’m working on. The other is that I’ve been very busy and I’m just now starting to get caught up with myself.

Something a little different

2007-10-06T10:55:00.000-05:00

I went down to Little Rock overnight to do some photos and ended up doing some shooting in my hotel room. I hope you like them as well as i do. I toned them last night on my laptop, which is something that I don't do that often any more. So I'm not that sure about the color. :)

I'm not quite sure these photos turned out quite the way I expected them to but I do like them quite a bit.

OK, I think I like the B&W's much better. :)

ASU Football vs SMU

2007-09-28T21:41:00.000-05:00

ASU vs. SMU on September 15th, ASU won 45-28. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but once the sun went down it was dark as hell.

And these are our mascots, the Indian family.... until the end of the season. We'll be something else next season... I just hope it's not something stupid...

And here are a couple of the girls on our dance team. Floyd taught me early on that when you shoot a football game that for every 2 rolls of film you shoot of the players you should shoot 3 rolls of the cheerleaders and dance team. ;)

The guy in the middle is Dustin, our office work study student. He is plastered all over this years athletic posters in a photo similar to this one. He thinks I shot it. It's very possible that it is mine, one of these days I'll look and see. I'm not actually worried about it. :)

I was shooting pretty well that night, got some good shots. I just wish they'd add a couple more light towers. It'd dark as hell down there when the sun goes down.

And this guy lost his helmet, but did he stop? Hell no, he kept going!!!! Though I think he has an "Oh crap... Oh crap... I'm about to have my skull caved in!!!" look on his face. :)

Candace's bridal session

2007-09-22T14:16:00.000-05:00

Candace didn't get her dress ready in time to do her bridal session before her wedding, so we took care of it a couple weeks ago. It was a very productive session and it was a perfect day to shoot outside with a beautiful sunset. And it always helps when you have a beautiful bride for the photos. :)

Angie part deux

2007-09-16T23:10:00.000-05:00

When I shot Angie and Perry's engagement session we talked about shooting a set of bridal photos in a cotton field when it was ready to pick. Well, that's what I did today. I was going to fix one up for my 365 blog daily update, but I ended up fixing 4 or 5. So I thought I'd put them here with Angie's other bridal shots. :)

I did a little blur/glow action on this one, I'm not sure which one I like best so you can judge.

Angie.... you did a great job today, thank you very much. And to her parents Debbie and Tony, you are both great. I appreciated you help today.

Angie's bridal session

2007-09-03T15:48:00.000-05:00

Hey guys, here are some photos from Angie Dixon’s bridal session. There’s not really a whole lot I can say about the photos other than I think they look great.

Angie is a beautiful woman and it’s hard to take a bad photo of her. She has a strong face and vivid eyes… she just jumps off the screen. Plus her dad is a shutterbug so she’s been in front of a camera pretty much all her life and she’s used to it. ☺

Candace and Matthew

2007-08-16T22:39:00.000-05:00

I shot their wedding a couple weeks ago in Marked Tree and delivered their prints last Saturday at another wedding they were attending. I wanted to show these to you earlier in the week but I hurt my right hand on Monday and working in Photoshop and for that matter typing is currently problematic. So I'm not going to write anything else, I'll just put up some photos. :)

One year old

2007-08-12T14:21:00.000-05:00

I started this blog one year ago yesterday, and when I started it I didn't think I'd be able to keep it up, but in this last year I've made 73 entries which is not too shabby. I meant to write something about this yesterday, but I shot a wedding and that pretty much mushed up my brain... It's still kinda mushy as a matter of fact.

Anyway, I think I kind of enjoy this blogging thing. I was doing so well with this blog that I started another blog about a month ago as a 365 project, so far I'm doing pretty well with it. I'm using it as a visual diary, instead of making "art" out of paper clips 5 minuets to midnight for something to post. I try to make as interesting a photo as I can of whatever I happen to be doing that day.

Anyway, thanks for reading.... if there is anybody in fact reading this. :)

Pretty in Pink

2007-08-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

Yeah, they look just like a Victoria’s Secret ad don’t they.

But I like those ads so leave me alone. ;-)

Not a lot to say here, they are pretty self-explanatory…. at least to me they are. You should know what I was thinking about, the VS Pink ads, and making her body look as good as I could.

Lighting is pretty simple also, the ones with the darker shadow are a single light, a small softbox with a grid on it and the photos with the lighter shadows has a medium stripbox adding light for fill. ☺ See, simple.

Ashlyn with the ringflash

2007-08-06T17:16:00.001-05:00

Here are some more of the photos that I shot of Ashlyn, I showed you a few of the photos from Craighead Forrest park a couple weeks ago. BTW, Ashlyn and I both got poison ivy out there….

When we got back to the studio we did a couple sets with an Alien Bees ringflash. The very cool thing about ring flashes is that it really does a good job of hiding skin blemishes, not that Ashlyn has many (she has very few actually) but it does cause problems with shiny foreheads and noses.

Ringflashes also make typical lighting concerns go away, the flash is around the lens so you don’t have to worry about things like fall off, direction, or specularity. But you have to approach the shoot in a different manner (which I’m still figuring out). You also should do different posses, think of it as trying to accentuate the oddness of the light the flash produces.

I’m very much still learning how to use it. I don’t actually like the unit (the actual flash) that much, but I love the light. I just bought a different one from eBay that I hope I like much more.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get something up here. Some of it is the 365 project I’m doing. I’m spending time thinking about what to shoot each day and then making the photo. But it shouldn’t be taking up this much time really…..maybe I’m just being lazy.

:)
Ernie

Stuff....

2007-07-27T12:11:00.002-05:00

While my computer is doing batch RAW conversions I’ve been cleaning up the studio. While bored out of my noggin I noticed a pile of the stuff that I regularly use in my studio for this or that that might be of interest to others. None of it is “photographic equipment” but all very useful in a studio and I thought I would share it.

-Utility clamps from Home Depot, $1 each for the big ones, used to hang backgrounds, hold reflectors, and drape cloth… whatever.

-Velcro cable ties, used to keep control of my cords. I tried Eagle clamps but they kept breaking. These work perfectly and take up less space and don’t break.

-Binder clip, great for adjusting the fit of clothes and holding gobos and gels.

-Bungee Balls, great for strapping things together. The rest of the world uses them to tie down tarps and stuff.

-Clothespins for just about anything… I used one last weekend to “adjust the fit” of a bikini bottom. I prefer the wooden ones; the plastic ones melt if they get too hot.

-Freebie letter opener that I use for cutting background paper.

Something I didn’t think about adding to the photo till just now… I use magnets to hold gels and stuff like gauze to reflectors. If your reflectors won't attract a magnet get some magnetic sticky strips to stick to them and then attach your magnets to the strips.

All this stuff can be gotten at hardware stores, Wal-Mart, office supply stores or in some cases free…. like the letter opener.

:)

Ashlyn in the park

2007-07-23T09:24:00.002-05:00

I did some models portfolio work with Ashlyn on Saturday out at Craighead Park. Nothing complicated, but quite a bit of fun.

Mainly I started out balancing the flash to the sun to get the lake in the background, then I uped the flash power and put her directly in front of the sun and the reflection of it on the water. Then we did some shots balanced with the sun in the trees.

With the colors of the bathing suit she was wearing I knew the warm colors from the sun and the shadow areas of the trees would look great.

Everything here worked in our favor, the suit, her skin tone, her hair and the sun. Saturday was a beautiful day to be shoot outside.

This was Ashlyn's first time in front of a camera modeling and she did a very good job.

OK, another color….

2007-07-18T23:50:00.001-05:00

Here I am again playing with color and Alli, at least it’s a different one huh. ☺ I don’t have any huge overriding reason why I lit these like this other than I thought it’d look cool.

The background is black seamless paper with a magenta gel on it, which gives lots of rich color. The color changes are from me moving around and getting the purple pool at different angles.

Alli has been doing some work for me as a makeup artist. I highly recommend her if you are in the area and need a makeup artist, especially if you need makeup that is unusual. ☺ This particular session was after we got done with some senior photos for a pair of sisters. At least one of the girls absolutely loved Alli, especially after the extremely cool makeup job Alli did for her.

Ernie365

2007-07-17T23:49:00.004-05:00

Melanie has talked me into doing a 365 project with her. A 365 project is that you make at least one photo per day and post it to your blog or journal. So that’s what I’m going to try to do. Sounds fun and it’s given me an excuse to get myself a pocket sized point and shoot camera. I’ve called this new blog Ernie365, come have a look and please jump on my case when I fail to keep up with it. ☺

My first installment was a photo of some flowers in my front yard shot with the wide angel adapter for my Lensbaby the nice UPS guy left me today.

Wish me luck. ☺

And a slightly different color….

2007-07-17T23:19:00.002-05:00

So our next stop was the studio were we did some photos with a Mardi Gras mask. I hit a grey background with a red gel and again used the small softbox with a grid on it and a black bounce to control the light hitting her. I didn’t want any of the white light hitting the background.

Here again I wanted strong color, but I wanted the light more dramatic and overall… stronger. I haven’t got much to say beyond this other than I loved working with Alli, she is always fun. ☺

A little more color…

2007-07-10T19:50:00.002-05:00

After I got tired of watching Alli almost pass out from lack of air, I helped her loosen the corset and we got rid of the feather boa. After she got her breath we did a few more photos using the same set up, but focused more on her than the environment. Mainly because If I backed up and showed more of her you would see the corset flaring out at the hips and under her arms because it was loose. ☺

So take it easy peeps…..
Ernie

MMMMMMMM Color.....

2007-07-04T23:51:00.001-05:00

OK, now that I’ve gotten the movie thing out of my system… although I did go see Transformers last night. I loved it though there were some weird continuity errors in it.

So after the softball shots Alli and I did some photos using an orange outfit. She could barely breath in that thing; I think she nearly passed out at least once because of that corset and heat from the feathers around her neck.

I’m not sure I can explain how I wanted these to look other than that I wanted her VIVID and COLORFUL with everything else kinda flat and dull. That’s as mainly a choice in location, but it can be helped with lighting. Control your light so that it doesn’t fall in other areas. So I used the small Photoflex softbox with the fabric grid again…. Yeah, yeah…. I know…. I use it a lot don’t I? But it works sooooo well. ☺

I also bumped up the saturation a bit for grins and giggles, but I didn’t have to bump it up much, just a teeny bit.

OK, I think I'm going to play movie critic for a while.

2007-06-29T21:30:00.001-05:00

First if you haven't seen the movie Mr. Brooks yet, go. It's a very good movie. Kevin Costner and William Hurt make a great team. I loved it and so did the others who were with me.

And just for grins and giggles, I watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre again for the first time in several years tonight. The original is much better than the remake in my opinion BTW. But you know what I noticed, it's creepy but it's not gory. You see blood all over the walls, but you never see it gushing out of the "victims". These days, if they show a killer hanging someone on a meat hook there is blood squirting all over the place.

Why did I notice this? I've just spent the last 2 weeks doing photos for a summer camp for high school students based on the CSI TV show.
The campers are given a murder to solve, from investigating and collecting evidence at a crime scene then to analyzing the evidence they collected to put a case together to present to a real prosecuting attorney in a mock grand jury.

This is my 3rd year shooting this camp and I thoroughly enjoy spending time with them. I always manage to make some new friends, even if they splash me with fake blood while they are learning about blood spatter. ;-) It's only corn syrup, water and red food coloring... and it tastes kinda like marshmallows...

I went to see Mr. Brooks with them, I'm glad one of the campers talked me into it.

Batter Up!!!

2007-06-29T20:40:00.001-05:00

So before I shot with Audra I did some photos of Alli. Think of it as one of those days were you get to work with 2 great subjects. Then consider that I was shooting from about 10am to 12:30 am that night. I love the photos that I got from both of them, it was an exceedingly productive day. ☺

Alli loves themes, and they can actually make for very good photos if you work on the details. You give her something to go with and she’s great at acting it out and working with it. It’s much better than doing “OK now just stand there and be pretty.”

She wanted to do a baseball set, she’d gotten the socks and shorts somewhere and wanted to shoot with them. I found the shirt and hat at the Salvation Army store (yes, I washed both), and the bat and ball are courtesy of the neighbor’s kid who loaned them to me.

I metered the sky, then set up my flash and set my exposure for the flash to be about 3/4ths of a stop brighter than the sky, I didn’t want the sky to be really dark, but I wanted it a little darker than her so the clouds would show up. The sun was basically my fill light for the photos at the plate.

When we got to the water fountain I re-metered and balanced the exposure with the sun and did a classic cross light. Though looking at them later I wish I’d used a small softbox on her face and torso for the shots at the fountain instead of the octabox. But they still work. ☺

Perry and Angie

2007-06-25T15:11:00.002-05:00

Remember a couple weeks ago when I showed you some photos from my trip to Keiser Arkansas? I was there to do their engagement photos…. So here they are. ☺

They were cool to work with; they let me roll them around on the ground and trusted me to make a gnarly old tree look interesting.

They also let me do some silly photos of them like this one. At least I thought it was fun. ;) They are both fun loving and I think it will be a very nice wedding.

Thank you both for choosing me as your photographer.

These may or may not be fashion, but they’re cool!

2007-06-22T21:17:00.001-05:00

So Audra and I went looking for cool stuff at the Salvation Army store and some other places. We actually found a couple neat things (I found a Mountain Smith "Tour" waist pack for $2, they are great camera bags if you put a Domke insert into it…. ☺) and this dress for $10. The first thing I thought about was a cracked out prom queen.

Then I thought about something a friend of mine by the name of Mark mentioned in one of our frequent forum conversations about doing a set of photos along a story line. Kind of like a storyboard without the text.

This is more or less my original plan… girl getting ready for prom, leaving for prom, crossing an alley, getting mugged, crying, getting to the party, laughed at, drunk…. I tossed the idea after a while; the transitions would have been a pain and finding extras to do the other parts just to much trouble.

About the time I was coming to this conclusion Audra suggested a shoot about a jilted woman who gets all screwed up. Like maybe a certain “heiress” after a couple weeks in jail and been disowned by the family, screwed out of her money then left to fend for her screwed up self in a back alley with pills and a bottle of vodka…. So stoned she rolling around in the dirt. Now that’s entertainment.

But I don’t think she quite understood what I meant by getting her dirty. ☺ But once she got the idea she was all for it.

I shot these with my D200 and 2 SB-800 flashes using the D200’s flash set to commander mode to control them. I set the exposure modes to manual, mostly I had them set to ¼ power for the flash without the gel and the other with a magenta gel was set to ½ power. The only time I had problems is when I got the control flash into a position where something was blocking the remote flashes sensor from the control flash. BTW, I set the flash on the D200 to not fire and contribute to the exposure… I didn’t want any direct flash killing my carefully prepared light.

A handy pile of fine black ash was perfect to get her dirty and a bottle of water not only kept us from getting thirsty, it also helped me clean the ash of my hands and provided water for tear streaks…. And believe me, getting her dirty was fun. ☺

I used one of my old Rx bottles with a mocked up label full of Cinnamon Tic Tacs for a prop. Unfortunately I completely forgot the vodka bottle I was going to bring to go along with it. Props help make these photos, and they can easily enhance any photo. So don’t neglect them.

Anyway, Audra completely rocked this shoot and we made some excellent photos. I love them.

Matt and Candace

2007-06-21T16:21:00.002-05:00

From talking with them after this setting I think it will be a fun wedding. If you two are reading this, thank you again for choosing me to do your wedding photography. ☺

This is going to be a short installment folks, all I was trying to do here was show their love for each other. And it wasn’t that hard to do really, I just needed to get them to relax some.

Braving the wilds of Little Rock again....

2007-06-15T21:57:00.002-05:00

Hmmm, lets see. I’ve got a bunch of photos I shot of Alli a couple weeks ago I want to show you. I went down to Little Rock for some street shooting…. Yeah, I do that fairly often… This time one of my buddies Brian Rodriguez joined us for a little while before he had to go to work. His blog is linked over there on the right somewhere, don’t be a stranger why don't you go visit him.

The first place we shot was this weird broken glass arch, it was interesting but I was afraid Alli would cut herself on it. I wanted her umbrella to be lit from behind by the sun and to almost “glow”. This type of lighting is called cross lighting. I’m kinda wondering now if I should have used a grid spot to just put light onto her face. Oh well, too late now isn’t it. ☺

Next she absolutely HAD to shoot in this schoolgirl outfit she had put together. Apparently she had gone through a lot of trouble to “appropriate” the “catholic boys school only” tie from someone. So what do you do when you are playing hooky from school? I guess you could go down to the tracks…. Sounded plausible to me. ☺

The sun wasn’t the best place for these photos, which is one of the things I hate about available light. It’s often not available where you want it if you know what I mean. So we improvised a bit on the lighting, here again I wanted to set up a cross light so that I could use the sun as a kicker light. But the sun was more or less right down the tracks. So I set the light to camera right and went from there.

And then we went to some cool over pass and shot some Techno Amazon Babe photos under it… I don’t know what else to call them. ☺ I did get to use ye oldie cheap flea market sword though. I did make sure that I dulled down the already dull sword before I let her near it though. ☺

One thing about these photos, they really remind me a lot of the art in my old D&D books. I especially loved Boris Vallejo’s work. I’ve put in a link to some of his art; it’s very cool you should go look at it. This over pass is pretty cool by the way; there was a sort of enclosed area that someone had made a grill for cooking out of a grocery cart… I wonder if I could talk someone into a hobo shoot?

I shot these photos with the sword using a small gridded softbox to limit where the light fell, I didn't want to light the place up. I thought about just using a gridded reflector but that PVC waist cincher was too shiny for that.

Anyway, below is a photo of Brian shooting Alli with my Ranger battery pack. ☺ I tried giving that 5-foot octabox away because it was so blue in color but I couldn’t get any takers.

I took my nice and somewhat expensive octabox on location a while back and it blew over... and if what it landed on had been sharp it would have put a nice hole in it. So I don’t think I’ll be using the good one on location any more....
So I stained the front of the cheap bluish box with some Lipton tea and it now has a pretty nice tone to it and I don’t give a crap what happens to IT. ;-)

Killing Time....

2007-06-10T19:20:00.001-05:00

I went to Keiser, AR. to do some engagement photos for Angie and Perry.... which I'll show you later.... I had never been to Keiser before so I left early to give myself plenty of time to get there. Well, I found the place easily enough and didn't get lost.

So I ended up looking around a bit and I saw their old high school building. This place is damn near ready to fall down but it looks sooo cool. This is another of those places that begged for B&W.

After I poked around the school for a while I went "downtown" ;-) and found this pay phone. It was pretty jacked up but it doesn't look that old. I'd wish it had been an ancient one, but it still looked pretty cool.

Anyway, take it easy people... I need to get back to working on these engagement photos.

Relaxing....

2007-06-09T18:38:00.001-05:00

I spent some time last weekend down in Mountain View and throughly enjoyed myself. Listened to good music, some great music and some OK to bad music.... depending on the skill level of the people playing.

Even when I'm on a "holiday" I carry a camera around and shoot whatever strikes me as interesting.

I really don't know what I would do with myself if I didn't have a camera handy. It's kind of like an extension of my arm or something.

Anyway, while I was walking around making these, I knew I was going to convert them to B&W, they just gave that vibe. Some things look better in color, but these just begged for monotones.... :)

Lets control some light people....

2007-05-31T21:26:00.001-05:00

Hey people, so how many of you think that light control is just about how high you put it and at what angle you position it?

Today I want to talk about light control. Putting however much light you want, where you want it, and only where you want it is a skill that every photographer should have. There are quite a few things you can use to control light, some of the main ones are grids, snoots, barn doors, gobo’s… there are lots more, but those are the basics.

A grid is a control that restricts the spread of light; they come in many different values, usually defined in degrees. You can also get them in many different sizes, so that you can have a large light source that does not spread very much.

A snoot is literally a cone that fits over your flash head that restricts the spread of light. They are always going to create very small light sources. You can make them with cardboard if you like. I prefer cinefoil, a type of heavy-duty aluminum foil that is matte black.

A barn doors is a frame that sits in front of your light source and has moveable sides that can be closed down to limit where the light falls.

And a gobo is something that goes between (hence the name gobo) the light source and whatever you don’t want the light to fall on and they are usually black. I use black foam core boards.

Anyway, now that you have the basics lets talk about why you should use them. Anybody can set up a light but it takes skill to control that light. I started out using just umbrellas because they are easy and I didn’t know any better. You really can’t control an umbrella very much, the light is all over the place. That’s good sometime, but not for everything.

So now that you know what you can use to control your light, lets talk about why. If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know that I’ve really been digging the concept of noir for a while. And you can’t shoot noir unless you can control your light. Controlled light creates shadows where you want them, highlights what you want highlighted and makes what you don’t want paid attention to dark.

The photos made on the stairway were lit through a small Photoflex softbox with a 40-degree fabric grid on it. You gotta keep the light close so that the light doesn’t spread too much, if it spreads too much then you might as well just take the grid off. The photos against the wall were made with a snoot attachment. I could have used a grid here also, but when you are showing the edge of the light like in these a grid can give you an odd pattern from the grid along that light edge.

Also, the height of the light cam make a huge difference on how the photo looks, that directionality that you have with controlled light lets you do all sorts of fun things. ☺

To ringflash or not to ringflash

2007-05-20T22:07:00.002-05:00

…. yes and no… well maybe!

I bought an AlienBees ABR800 ringflash about a month ago. I love the look you get with a ringflash but the unit that is made by the manufacturer of the rest of my flashes costs $1,300 and I’m not paying that much for something that I’m not sure that I would use very much. Lets face it, even if I like the look it gives I’m not going to be using it that often. I mean, it only does ONE thing, you can’t do that for everything now can you.

At $399 I thought the AlienBees unit would be a something that I could get to see if I REALLY wanted one (If I lived somewhere where I could rent one when I wanted it I’d just do that). Well here’s what I decided. I like the look, I’m not going to use it very much, it's very limited and I loath the design of the AB800.

The best thing that I can say about the ABR800 is that it is inexpensive. I mean $399 for the whole thing. That’s cheap when the Elinchrom ringflash is $1,300 without the power pack that you have to use it (that’s another $2,400 BTW).

Good points:
-Inexpensive
-It is all one unit, all you need to use it besides what come in the box is a camera.
-It is lightweight, but there is a price to be paid for all that plastic.
-It has 2 extra modeling light bulbs included and an adapter to use the ringflash with an umbrella on top of a stand as a normal studio light.
-The camera mount platform has a standard light stand mount that swivels (for when you want to use it on a light stand) as well as a ¼”-20 mount for use with a tripod.
-It seems to have consistent output. I.e. the exposures were consistent between bursts.
-It produced the look I wanted. I love the shadow all around...

Bad points:
-Horrible color!!!!! It’s very blue, even shooting with the camera WB set to 6700 Kelvin the color was still bluish (maybe more of a cyan… not sure yet), but not a blue that you can fix with adjusting the WB.
-Flimsy construction!
-The camera mount platform again…. The stand mount gets in the way sometimes.
-The plug and power switch are in bad spots, when hand holding it they are in the way.
-Also the paper label with the serial number is located in the same area as the plug and switch. Skin oil will screw it up sooner or later.
-The platform that the camera mounts to requires a screwdriver.
-The screwy (maybe ingenious) mount system for the camera to the flash is kinda wobbly. If it was made out of something a little more sturdy than plastic it would probably be much more solid.

Anyway, I’ve owned Paul Buff’s equipment before. I used to have a pair of Ultra Zap 1600’s and a Zap 1000 monolight. The AlienBees units for all intents and purposes are the flashes that replaced the UltraZap’s, though they are not as well built as the UZ’s or the higher end Ultras that Buff makes.

I sold them because they were inconsistent in light output and color temperature through their power range. The Elinchrom flashes that I replaced them with are more or less the lower end up the upper class of flashes and they don’t have these problems. So I was very concerned about buying another of Buffs products. It seems that the flash output is pretty consistent so maybe they got that problem worked out. Not sure about how color “fast” it is as I haven’t messed about much with using it at different power settings yet.

I’m going to try putting some gels over the flash tubes and see if I can neutralize the wonky color. Not sure yet, maybe a bastard amber would do it.

So I guess if you gotta have a ringflash and don’t want to part with a HUGE amount of cash for a high quality unit, the ABR800 will do the job but it's not that great.

Anyway, the victim… oops, model for this inaugural session with the ringflash is Audra. It’s a setup I’ve wanted to do for a while and the ringflash was a perfect excuse to do it. I say victim because the model is often looking right into it. She said she couldn’t see me any more after a little while. :-) If you will notice the color is still a little weird, and slightly blue. I worked the highlights, midtones and shadows trying to find it and never did. I tried several presets and temperature settings to get a neutral color. The best I found was doing a custom White Balance, but even it seemed a bit strange.

I feel like I’m kinda short changing her by not writing more about her and the session. The limits of the flash kept her from moving around too much so the poses all look more or less similar.

I'm still on the fence about keeping the AB800, as I don't care for it. I'll play around with it some more and make a decision later. Next I'm going to play with using it as a fill light instead of using is as the main or only light.