A Fetching Fletcher
I love the Internet. It let's me meet people I most likely wouldn't have otherwise. This shoot was a great example. I listen to a guy who does a thing. Well that lead me to another guy: Mr. Scott Fletcher. Fancy businessman by day, and at night he lays down sweet nothings with a voice like baritone crack. Seriously, it gets in your head. Pretty soon you're walking around town reading signs and hearing it in his voice.
Due to the magic of the Frogpants community and Google+, Mr. Fletcher had seen my work, I knew his, and words were exchanged. He gave me a target image to shoot for, and I set to planning. Fortunately for the both of us my lovely lady has family in the same town as Scott, and we were due for a visit. So I packed up my bags and we made the three hour drive down. Between card games and hibachi with the aunts and uncles, we met with Scott downtown for a light weight shoot. With the aide of a few 430ex IIs, a handful Pocketwizards, and some light panels we had a nice compact setup that gave us studio quality lighting. I think I surprised him by what we were able to pull off on the sidewalk. I have to say I'm pretty pleased myself.
We were going for a three light setup. Technically four if you include the sun for background fill. The problem with sun on a partly cloudy day is that it changes almost literally every five seconds. If you're using reflectors and bounce light this can be a real pain. Good thing for us we weren't. Instead we were using flashes and light panels. This gave us consistency and control while allowing the backdrop to change as it would, and in the end, we ended up with a variance of background exposures to choose from.
Sometimes it's just easier to shoot a guy. Often it means less hair and less worry about how harsh light is going to show less than desirable imperfections. On women those little imperfections are sometimes unflattering. On guys a lot of the time it "adds character." In Scott's case we didn't really have to worry much about it anyway. The reason I bring it up is because if I did need to soften all the light, that would mean a diffuser for each light. On a semi-windy day that can mean a lot of sails on poles, and a lot of expensive paperweights on the concrete. Even though I love the opportunity to show of my behind-the-back-no-look-elfish-light-stand-catching skills (which were put to the test at least the once), I was glad to have Tori along to help keep an eye on things. All I can say is next time don't forget the sandbags.
Light panels can be easily adapted to most situations.
Light panels and soft boxes have a lot of similar properties, but a few key differences that can come in handy in a pinch. For example with a soft box you can't exactly step inside it to shoot with the light over your shoulder. In this case thats almost exactly where I needed to be. Without a boom arm, which was too heavy for our needs and would take up too much room on the sidewalk, I wasn't able to get the whole lighting setup high enough overhead. Instead I stood behind the light panel, and adjusted the panel cloth as needed to make room for my head and camera. With a few panel clips I had half the skrim I originally did, but essentially the same functionality for our purposes. Since I was shooting sans-tripod it also gave me a good frame of reference to come back to. Literally. On a side note we were lucky enough to have some traffic barrels already along the sidewalk. A little nudge and they gave us a nice little barrier. Not that we needed much on a lazy Saturday afternoon. It never hurts to take precautions.
As anyone who shoots in RAW can tell you, only half the fun is over once you pack up and head home. Now I try to do everything possible "for real" and in-camera. Even so, theres still a bit of processing once you're back at your desk. Expect a post on that soon to btw. Scott and I were both pretty excited to get these up and posted. In fact that's why I'm finishing this post while on the highway to Oklahoma (no worries I'm not driving). To string him along a bit and keep him patient I shot him an Instagram shot of my monitor late one night. The funny thing is it looked pretty good with the shot. Of course I had just created more work for myself as I really wanted to recreate that look, but at full size and a higher quality.
Original look with crop of instagram photo.
Instagram shot of my computer monitor at 2 am.
High resolution remake of instagram effect.
In short the extra effect didn't that long to do, but it was the photo with the most work on it. As powerful and inclusive as Lightroom is, there's something satisfying about getting back into Photoshop to play around with the final look of a photo. Thanks again to Scott Fletcher for a great afternoon. You can also find him on the Twitters @MrScottFletcher.
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- Light panels can be easily adapted to most situations.
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- Original look with crop of instagram photo
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- Instagram shot of my computer monitor at 2 am.
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- High resolution recreation of instagram effect
Getting out of your own way.
Yup, I'm one of those. Very talented guy that letting it rot away unused in a corner of my brain. Now, I don't say this to be arrogant. Far from it. I simply mean I am falling far short of my creative potential. The largest factor is I stand in my own way. I'm the type of guy that if I can't do it perfect, I don't want to do it at all. So instead I end up getting worse at my passions instead of better. Look at the date on my last post here for example. almost six months ago. Why? I started several blog posts, just never finished them. I felt like I didn't have much or anything new to say. Now some of that is true, but the catch is I'm not likely to find anything new to write if I'm not writing at all. So to that end I set up an acount on 750Words.com. Even though I've only done one post, I like the idea behind it. Just free writing, but in addition daily nudges to get you to keep thinking about it in the least.
Yesterday I started vocal lessons with my friend Stephan. He's a third year voice major and just beginning to learn to teach voice. It works out well for both of us as I get affordable, flexible voice lessons (as well as music theory) and he gets a guinea pig with resilience. Hopefully all the embarrassment and awkwardness that you experience in something so revealing as vocal training will help me get over my "perfect or nothing" work mentality. I've got a lot of creativity bottled up inside me and it's starting to give me a headache. From illustration, to music, to photography.
On another note I've decided to take this blog in another direction. Even though I only have the few posts, they've all been directly photography related. I've realized that's part of my frustration on posting. I've felt as if it's not a new revelation on photography and my work, it's not worth posting. Incremental changes and progress weren't enough. So in an effort to post more often, I'm going to just make this a general blog. Most likely I'll expand it into multiple pages for photography, blog, business, etc, and this page may end up becoming a secondary one. In any case it feels good just to get a post up. Even as I finish it I hear this playing in my head.
Photos 360
My chance for "real" photography has been sparing lately to say the least. With the Holiday rush, preparing for midwest winter, and friends coming in to town for long over due visits, time has been stretched thin. My one savior in all this has been my trusty iPhone 4. In the six months I've had it, I've done what I could to put it through its paces. While not a full studio dSLR, I feel no need to carry a point-and-shoot when I have my phone. Unlike like previous generations It's an interesting time for such products. When smart phones have begun to fit so many different needs, they've left other products scrambling. Many app's now offer features like "live panoramic," where-in you simply wave our camera in a line or circle and it will magically stich together a pano for you. Of course these simple pano's won't hold a candle to a carefully crafted one, in many situations they evoke the dreaded phrase "good enough." Plus, sometimes goofy overlapped photos can be fun!
Here we've got an out-take from dinner with some of my visiting World of Warcraft guildies. You know its a table full of geeks when you have 16 (mostly) midwestern white folks, all successfully using chopsticks for the entire meal.
The Fail Square at Shogun. A tepppanyaki-style steakhouse. (click for larger photo)
Pano taken with 360 Pano. It's a really nice little pano app. It utilizes the all of the iPhone 4's motion sensors to help place the overlapping photos. It's not perfect because handheld, but does a very good job. I sat in the opening of a U shaped grill. the outside of the edges of this photo are actually connected. I'm covering the entrance to the center. The other thing that is great about this camera is it pulled all this off in just ambient light. While the color balance is debatable I've got to say not bad for little more that what was essentially candle light. It takes decent video in low light as well.
And now, some random photos taken with my 1Ds. I let my friend Sara play with it and this is what she got.
What? We're in a photo together?!
Brothers separated at birth? (I took this one)
The night before we just Geeked around my apt. for a while. I set up a couple flashes pointed at the ceiling and let her have at it.
Laptops ahoy!
Stephan rocking one of his new PSPs
Only way I get in photos, give someone else the camera.
(Andrew) Linder and his girl Bre. Linder was running people over with Darkhorse in Red Dead Redemption.
Odd Photos Out
One of the things that can be really fun when doing a carefully planned out and intentional shoot is the odd photo out. The shot taken at a random moment in prep when you're still working out lights and tweaking things for the final shot. Sometimes you get something you really end up liking.
My friend Erin Guenzler (Or Erae Gunslinger as I call her) came to me with a project she's working on. It being date sensitive I won't post anything about that yet (expect more to come), although I can say we spent a couple hours laughing ourselves hysterical while she played dress up. However, I did want to share this excerpt from our shoot. In this case the lens flair offered a nice effect, and Erin's inattentiveness to what I was doing, a great pose. It's quite a contrast to the overall tone of the rest of the photos, and really stood out. Just goes to show that always watching your subject pays off.
Hottie Headshots
You may recognize this face from an earlier post. She happens to be my girlfriend, so deal. Now I try not to post to many photos of the same person, but I think two is ok.
Tori is an actress, majoring in theatre of all things, headed to Columbia in the fall. As such she needed a refresh on her headshots. Tori was looking for a little less "traditional" background. Railroad tracks and brick walls just don't appeal to her tastes. She was looking for something a little more aged. I just so happen to have an old dilapidated barn/shed building on the premises with peeling paint, crooked boards, and rusty tin.
The fun part for me was playing with the amount of Depth of Field to provide a balance between keeping the focus strong on her eyes, while still supplying an interesting background. Then there was the fun puzzle of figuring out the gaffing with both Tori and myself on ladders to get the tin roof in the background.
In return for photos Tori let me run her ragged testing out different lighting setups for pretty much the entire afternoon. Don't be afraid to try "crazy" things. It only takes a few minutes and you can end up with some surprisingly cool results.
I'm also fortunate to have a boss and his wife that're cool enough to come out and do the grunt work on my shoots 
Finding Inspiration In The End of an Era
Recently an acquaintance of mine, Stan Jirman, finished up a major project in collaboration with two other photographers: Scott Andrews and his son Phillip Scott Andrews. They spent six weeks documenting the second-to-last launch of the Space Shuttle "Discovery." The results are quite spectacular and represent one of the main reasons I love photography as much as I do.
Mastering tools and technique to render a directed, finely tuned, sculpted reality from the broader reality we exist in. It's more than just snapping a pretty picture to slap on your desktop. It's more than just pointing your camera at something spectacular and letting the subject do all the work for you. It's about identifying a story or a concept, and delivering it in such a way that the other 6.8 billion people on the planet receive your vision. Even if they interpret it in light of their own experiences and unique personality, a skilled artist can guide an individual to a place of a shared experience. It's photographic projects like this that put a little steam back in my engine and inspire me to push my craft ever further, ever onward.
To be honest I get a little burned out and bogged down time to time from all the "Flickerators" with the money to buy a camera and the contact list to furnish a list of models willing to put on a bikini and chocolate sauce just to have the chance to have their picture taken. I'm not saying you can't have great fun, great art, and great photos that come out of that. But when the bulk of a "photographers" work relies solely on their subjects beauty and very little if at all on their own skill, I don't know that I'd call that photography. The subjects independent beauty will exist and fade regardless of whether John or Jane snap some shots in a brick alley way at high noon.
I believe it is our job, if we want the right to tout the title of Photographer, to enhance things that exist in such a way that the viewer notices something they may have missed otherwise. Whether it be the ballet orchestrated by hoisting 2,000 tons of metal on to booster rockets, or the little crinkle in a toddler's grin. This means choosing what to highlight, and what to hide. Much like writing, of which I certainly do not claim to be a master craftsman, including too much information can often distract from the focus of the message.
So I say, "Job well done and hat's off," to these three photographers. And if you know me personally, I never take my hat off.
Steph and E-TTL
Got a few new pieces of equipment lately and needed to test them out. Fortunately I'm lucky enough to usually have a friend willing to jump in for some quick photo sessions on short notice. We're soon going to be doing engagement photos for her and her fiance, who just happens to be one of my best friends.
With the addition of some actual Canon flashes I finally got to play around with E-TTL. Not only that, but with the Pocketwizard FlexTT5, I got to use it wirelessly. Which was a great bonus in an uneven prairie field. Some people say it doesn't work. I'd beg to differ. This was the first time I had the opportunity to use it. Straight out of the box, no playing with flash or Pocketwizard settings, this is what it gave me.
Photo Gear: √
Location? √
Pretty lady? √
Time? Crap! Only 30 minutes?!
I have a friend named Lisa, and she is a crazy nut.
My friend Lisa recently took part in the St. Baldrick's charity event for children's cancer. Similar to a sponsored run or Jump-Rope for Heart, the premise is to gather a group of sponsors that will pay their donations once you get a haircut. The catch is you must cut all your hair, as in shave it. Knowing Lisa had a ridiculous amount of hair I told her we had to do a photo shoot. To my surprise she brought not only two more people who were participating, but an entire crew who was coming to visit (more on that later).
I decided on a two-part shoot, a simple before and after concept. The first shoot was easy enough: setup up some lights, jump around, have some fun, and we have our photos. Obviously the emphasis here was to show off as much hair as possible. Again a full studio setup with lighting came in handy. We had plenty of room to move and plenty of light to catch it with.
The second half of the shoot is where it got crazy. We ended up with quite the variety of shots to choose from, and I'm quite sure I ended up with a portfolio arrangement in there. I've had a hard time it down to what I have here. I'll further reduce the selection once I form a portfolio out of it but for now I was a little more liberal with my selects. Again a big thanks to Hans Rupert for the insight and even hand here or there. There are four different galleries within which you'll find both the Hairy and Bald shots alike.
Enjoy!
Gallery: Lisa Curry
Gallery: Colleen Smith
Gallery: Kyle Springman
Gallery: The Crew
Sneak Peek.
It's been a while since my last update. It makes me feel a bit behind. So in an attempt to remedy that and hopefully sate some curiosity I thought I'd give you a preview of our latest shoot.
Florida Fairy Tale
Tori steps out of Neverland
It's not too frequent I get a chance to use a Banyan tree as a backdrop. So of course I had to take the opportunity. I was lucky enough to have my lovely girlfriend Tori along for the trip, and she was kind enough to be my model for the day. It's handy to have a gorgeous girlfriend 
Again I started off with the awesome light panel system and one Promaster 7000M Flash. It's a lot of fun to see what kind of lighting you can get out of such a simple setup. Takes no time at all to setup or tear down. It's also great if you're not so sure you're supposed to be there or not - easy escape!
I don't know if it's just me or not, but I really get a kick out of seeing the behind the scenes photos from photo or video shoots. One of the really cool features of the tree we were working with was that it had a nice little cove in the middle of it. The aerial prop roots created a handy little curtain on both sides of our workspace. To be quite honest I was little excited to use this spot, just to defy that sign in the middle of the awesome little cove.
Sometimes it's what you don't see that makes the difference!
As a side note, I've started a specific twitter just for my photography. - User Name: AaronSpainPhoto
