Photography

Jurgita – Informal Photo Sessions

11 Mar ’10Model ShootsJurgita, Model, portrait

Probably the most frustrating thing about shooting with someone is that you generally only get to do it once. You notice things during a shoot and afterwards, and often time I wish I could shoot more with folks like Demari Vi Syth, Margarita or Arctica, but one lives in England, the other is based in the Ukraine, the third is in Germany, and being models, they’re often traveling to different shoots anyways. So if I were able to shoot with any of them more than once a year, it would be a miracle.

That’s why it’s always awesome to have a local model to shoot with, and to develop a body of work with. When a model is living right next door you have the freedom to plan and re-shoot concepts as needed. You also come understand one another in a way, the shooting style, the posing methods, and this can bring a greater depth to a shoot and concepts. That’s why I’m eternally grateful that Jurgita lives next door.

I met Jurgita over the summer while shooting with Margarita, and we’ve since met to shoot on different occasions, either with a specific idea or just to produce some more imagery. We shoot in the studio and I’ve shot Jurgita around the Sulzer-Areal of Winterthur, that fabulous urban location every photographer in Winterthur and Zurich knows about. You go there on a sunny day in spring or summer and there’s always a wedding shoot, skate shoot, urban portrait thing or another going on.

Having access to the Areal is like having access to a large urban movie set. There’s a large parking garage to shoot in, which is mainly empty on the weekends and after 5pm on other days. I seems like you can basically do whatever you like there, including dry tooling (but probably you’d better not). There’s also a lot of small areas in the Sulzer-Areal complex including parking spaces, walls, staircases, and an illuminated bridge, all of which gives a vast canvas for the nimble photographer and model to play within.

On location and in the studio Jurgita is open and easy to work with. She has a certain look, a subtle shadow of knowing in her facial features and cheekbone structure which give a certain something to the images. Shadows curve around her eyes like the the old songs of a mystic fire dance. She also has an eye for style and posing, which makes the shoot all more natural and authentic (sometimes difficult to find).

Since both Jurgita and I like to shoot and model around, it’s been fun playing with lighting gear and concepts. For example, using an Orbis ringflash to add some shadow texture to the face, in a poorly-lit parking area. Or perhaps using a gridded octabox to define a lighting poem for the whole image, or just stepping out of that constrictive Strobist-Mindset and shooting with the natural street lights.

If you stagnate, your creativity and drive dies with your indecision and only the mediocre sentiments of lonely idea will sit upon your mind for a second before flying off into eternity. So stop hesitating and shoot, develop something and challenge yourself to be something which society has taught you that you’re not. My mind is a blank and the words have run on into obscurity so that I’ve forgotten the point.

If you’d like to work with Jurgita she’s on Model-Kartei…

Jurgita on Model-Kartei

Web Portraits Zurich – Mathias Shoot

26 Feb ’10Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, portrait, WPZ

The first willing subject for the Web Portraits Zurich project was Mathias Möller, Editor and Community Manager at Amazee who agreed to have his portrait taken.

The shoot was relaxed, the way a portrait shooting session should be. We had had a concept meeting a few weeks before, and organized some ideas on Google Wave, so there was a clear direction for the shoot. Grungy and not too bright, a little counter culture and gritty. This wasn’t a high pressure shoot, Mathias just dropped by the apartment studio and we talked about random stuff like the Spores (a band out of L.A.) and imagery from Joy Division. An observer might call this “connecting with the subject” but I just call it a fun time talking with an interesting person. There were two main looks we went with during the session, Mathias had a vintage Swiss Army jacket and a cool band denim jacket. I was shooting on white seamless with a few lights and reflectors.

Lighting Philosophy

Mathias wanted some darker sort of photos, which is what I’ve sort of developed a style shooting, so our expectations worked well together. For me this meant creating lighting with shadows and darkness, while allowing the main features of Mathias be revealed. This meant some directional lighting on the face, casting dark shadows across his body, and a grungy post-processing philosophy. I worked primarily with my Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobes and a Sunpak 383, with Lastolite Trilite reflectors and a large 5-in-1 silver reflector.

For the portrait with a Swiss Army jacket I put a BxRi in an extra small Photoflex octabox, and used this to create a large contrast on his face. A sort of Yin-and-Yang, darkside/lightside sort of lighting. A reflector and Orbis ringflash (with Sunpak 383) were used to maintain lighting detail of his cool vintage jacket. For post-processing I used some industrial grunge, including compositing Mathias into the old abandoned Packard car plant in Detroit, Michigan. Other background images and textures were shot around Zurich and Winterthur in Switzerland.

For a cleaner look, I shot Mathias with a BxRi flash in a large Creative Light softbox (60x90cm) with a grid, and added some fill using the Photoflex extra small octabox. The Creative Light softbox was placed on the side, and gave a lot of bright directional light, which works well for creating defined shadows with smooth but small transitions.

Visual Results

The idea with Mathias was to create images with a certain grungy darkness to them. This was accomplished via lighting and post-processing in Photoshop using layers of concrete and industrial scenes. Overall I think we accomplished the not-to-bright and not-to-sterile look without making Mathias look like a grungy gangster from the Zurich hood.

I’m always looking for new faces to shoot, if you’re interested in the idea of documenting the people from the Zurich startup and web scene it’s easy to get in contact with me to set up a concept meeting. More about the Web Portraits Zurich project can be found on Amazee.com or the articles here:

Web Portraits Zurich – Amazee Project
Web Portraits Zurich on the blog

Shooting the Psychotic Sister of the Girl Next Door

18 Feb ’10Model ShootsDemari Vi Syth, Model, Shoot

Demari Vi Syth describes herself as the “The beautiful girl next door’s psychotic little sister!” on her ModelMayhem page. So when she contacted me to see if I was interested in booking a shoot date, I found it hard to resist. She was in the Zurich/Winterthur area for a week, so it was just all to convenient for her to stop by my place to shoot.

I had a few goals for this shoot, one was the development of Protestlove imagery for my book, “Revolt from the Singles Table” and the second was the Barbie Hunter theme, which I originally thought up for Alexandra, who I worked with earlier in the year. Demari came with some Goth-styled latex from Jane Doe Latex a cool latex designer from London. Latex and fetish is the type of stuff I had never really desired to shoot, but figured it would be cool to experiment with (cheaper than going to art school).

Demari actually had the honor of being the first model I’ve paid to shoot with. If you’ve moved beyond the initial stages of photography, tooled around on Strobist for a while, and decided to setup a ModelMayhem account, then you’re probably looking for models to do Time for Prints (TFP) or CD shoots with, as I was (and still am). But I’m now sort of the opinion that dropping money on a model isn’t such a bad way to go. For many projects, unless you know the person before hand it’s hard to know what to expect. Pro and semi-pro models bring a certain level of professionalism and self-awareness, which is extremely valuable when time is of the essence (like if you’re taking the afternoon off from your job to shoot). You can get this from new models as well, but there’s also the question of art direction and motivations. With a TFP shoot there’s generally two motivations, that of the photographer to get their shot, and that of the model to get their look. Maybe the photographer wants head shots while the model wants full-length body shots, etc. But if the model is there on your dime (as a photographer) then it’s all about you and your vision. What can I say, I’m egotistic in this way, I want the shoot to be about my vision.

Demari also offered a new visual direction for me. Her portfolio has a lot of Goth imagery, and when you’re defining a style for yourself (which is a constant for me), then it pays to experiment with different shooting concepts. Goth is something that is actually very hard to do well and too often executed poorly by photographers who think an image will be cool and alternative just because the model is wearing skin-tight latex. Just like the misguided visionaries who think that posing a sexy woman with a gun will automatically make a strong image (they’re usually weak and lack authenticity). Good Goth imagery is hard and requires a lot of attention to detail. I wasn’t out to make these images (through my direction), but rather let Demari do her thing with posing and just shot away with different lighting setups.

I shot Demari primarily on a white seamless background, using a pair of Elinchrom BxRi 250ws strobes coupled with a Sunpak 383 in a Kacey Beauty Reflector, and a large silver reflector. I was shooting with the Elinchrom Portalite softboxes (well why not, they came with the lights). These are my main lighting tools of choice at the moment for things in the studio. Lots of light shaping ability, and easy to position without an assistant. This was the first time I was using my now favorite camera-lens setup, a Sony A900 with a Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 HSM lens. Naturally, I used Elinchrom Skyports to trigger the lights, they’re integrated in the BxRi strobes and make like oh-so-easy when fine-tuning the exposure.

The A900+Sigma 70-200 combination really leaves little room for improvement for portraits and sharpness. Focus is spot-on, and you can see the texture of the skin better than in real life. This is the reason I like the A900, I never have any problems with the camera and can focus on getting the exposure I’m looking for. I focus on the eyes, press the shutter release and know the results will be tack-sharp.

Shooting with Demari was a cool experience. She knows how to carry herself, and is aware of her pose. For me one of the most important things with a model is that they have a good awareness of their body and form. Without this awareness the images can come out looking fake, without that certain element of truth and realness which makes a portrait look real. It’s a certain talent some people have and others learn to develop, and is essential for models to have. Of course, someone is bound to say the images look contrived, but nearly every photograph is.

If you’re interested in working with Demari Vi Syth, she can be contacted via ModelMayhem (#748253).

WPZ – Mathias Concept Meeting

18 Jan ’10Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, Cacoo, Google Wave, WPZ

The Web Portraits Zurich project is moving forward. This was a project I started on Amazee to integrate photography with my interest in web technology. The first portrait shoot is with Mathias Möller, who works at Amazee and freelances for laut.de, a German music blog. The Web Portratis Zurich project is as much about exploring creative collaboration tools as it is about creating excellent portraits of people in the Zurich Web/Startup Scene. During the concept/brainstorming stage we’ve been using Google Wave, but at some point it makes scense to sit down for a face-to-face.

Face-to-Face

So, on a fine Friday night Mathias and I sat down at Cafe Sheres in Zurich discuss and get a concept direction for his portrait. I took along a sketchbook to make a mindmap while we talked. All in all it was an excellent meeting…coffee, free-flow of ideas, the stuff that brainstorming dreams are made of. The goal of our face-to-face was to throw ideas around, see what we like for the main shoot and make sure I don’t show up with a suit of Medieval armor when he imagined being photographed like a punk-rocker. A portrait is really a delicate thing, you are not making an image of a person, but rather taking an image of an idea (at least, that’s my view on it). The person is the idea, and their physical body a changing representation of only the outer shell. The key is to meld the elements of the person with the shadows of the outer shell. Maybe I think too much, but an image is usually not just a picture, and a portrait is rarely an accurate represenatation of the person in front of the camera.

The Person

During our meeting, I was sort of interviewing Mathias and the other half of the time he was talking out aloud about his ambitions and elements of his personality, which is exactly what should be going on during just such a meeting. What I learned is that Mathias is totally down with doing a cool concept portrait. Just to be safe, we’ll do a nice clean one as well (like Jill Greenberg/Platon), because it’s possible the concept fails (but it won’t). Among the various questions, I asked things like,

What movie do you see yourself in, or identify with?
What type of imagery do you like from music and album covers?
How do you want to see yourself?

These type of questions tell you a lot about a person, and I see it as more or less essential to get this background information, otherwise how will you know what elements fit the personaility of the person. Also, I don’t want to put Mathias into a concept he’e not comfortable with. The elements all have to flow together for the image to work. I learned that Mathias identifies with the Punk rock movement, doesn’t own a pair of Doc Martens, likes the dark and grungy tones in my photography, is interested in the skinhead culture, counter-culture, often sees things in a political context, likes the imagery of Sonic Youth and Morrisy, is interested in the connection between Pop and Art, wants an image that isn’t too sterile, and also not too bright.

Most importantly I found out that Mathias is interested in taking elements from himself (the person) and melding that the concept of the shoot (the idea). This was awesome to hear as it’s the way I go about developing portrait shoot concepts.

Online Collaboration Tools

One goal of the Web Portraits Zurich project is experimentation with different online tools to help the brainstoriming process and…let’s call it: Creativity Management. We started the brainstorming process on Google Wave, which worked ok to throw up some initial ideas and concept images, but it’s not about to replace the face-to-face meeting anytime soon. In the future we’ll use Wave to throw around some basic ideas, and then meet at a cafe for a sit-down brainstorming session.

For organizing workflow and mindmaps, I’ve been using MyMind on my G4 Powerbook and Cacoo, an online diagraming tool. First I took the notes from the meeting, wrote them all up in MyMind for visual organization, and then cut and pasted the main ideas to Cacoo. Cacoo works very well for making mindmaps and workflow diagrams. Since it’s online I can access my documents from any computer. These can be exported as png images to be embedding in webpages, and the maps can be shared via a url link to the online document, which makes it a very nice online tool. Above is the mind map I made up on Cacoo for Mathias, something I do for every photo shoot now. It’s an easy way to view and arrange elements of a portrait shoot, mixing concepts with the shooting requirements.

The Resulting Vision

At the moment I see Mathias standing in front of some old TVs looking a bit like Ian Curtis from Joy Division, the background is gray, layered with a bit of industrial grunge. On the TV’s are images of static and protest. He sports an awesome pair of framed glasses (the ones he wears). Part of the visual style will be influenced by Control, the definitive Joy Division flick. The point here will not be to make Mathias into Ian, but to take some visual points from that music style, and layer with Mathias, sort of like adding a grunge layer to a portrait.

The next step is finalizing the concept and doing the shoot.

Photo09 Zurich – Rejection Stings for An Instant

11 Jan ’10Photography, ZurichPhoto09, Vision09, Zurich

There’s a cool photo exhibition in Zurich each year. Depending on the year it has a new name, in 2007 it was called Photo07, in 2008 it was Photo08 and this year they’re calling it Photo09 (although it’s taking place in 2010). The concept is sort of the year in review, present the body of work of different Swiss photographers in one big show. Basically, each photographer presents their work from the past year in a giant old industrial hall. The images are the focus, and you walk through the visual menagerie stopping to check out interesting images and passing on others. It’s in the Maag event hall in Zurich, the cool thing about the show is that it features anyone, pros, amateurs, fashion photographers, hobby photographers, it’s just a really cool collection of visual imagery. All in all it’s a cool night out to attend the show. I checked out Photo07, was in Detroit during the 2008 show, and decided to submit a portfolio and image concept for Photo09.

I went about the submission process like it was an engineering conference, which means that as long as you pay the registration fee and present some work, you can show or talk about whatever you want. I figured, based on the Photo07 show that it was the same concept, present my photos of the past year in a layout which I think best represents my Vision09. The organizer of a conference like the SPIE Smart Materials get-together doesn’t know what will be ground-breaking research and what is worthless crap because they can’t predict the future and progression of science, and therefore generally won’t deny serious work (although to be fair, some conference organizations just want to make money and will take anything).

So long as the organizers think you’re on the level, you’re free to display your vision. I figured it was the same thing at Photo Zurich – and maybe it was at some point, but that was before the show got popular, and this year they had far more submissions than space to display them. So naturally, people had to be cut from the list. I submitted a portfolio and concept presentation to Photo09, which basically encompassed my year in photography for 2009. This was an interesting year since I had a nice combination of income, travel, and free time to think about life. My Vision09 includes images from Bratz in Rome and California to portrait shoots with Jurgita, her cousin Margarita, myself, and the Barbie Hunter Alexandra was there as well. It seemed like a cool collection of images which couldn’t be denied, but it was – and I’m fine with that.

It’s sort of discouraging to get a rejection letter for your first photography show, my first journal submission was accepted by Smart Materials (IOP Publishing) with barely a correction request. The divide between Art and Science is nonexistent for me, so I figured I would at least get in to Photo09, but on the other hand, I’ve had an equal number of articles rejected as published in scientific journals. It was actually a very apologetic rejection letter I received, so well-written in fact, I had to ask my girlfriend to confirm that they had indeed rejected me. The German was so eloquent to my non-fluent eyes that I didn’t know if I was being asked to not attend, or if I had gotten in and they didn’t want me to feel too good about myself. On the one hand this sucked, but on the other hand, it meant I wouldn’t need to pay the 250 CHF entrance fee plus the costs associated with printing out my display images. Which, in the end means it’ll make paying the credit card bill for that Zulu shield I ordered from South Africa much easier to rationalize (yes, it’s for a photo shoot).

Rejection from Photo09 stung for an instant. I’ve never been actively interested in what people think about what I shoot (not to the point that I would cry for not getting in a show). Each image is a failure in my mind, to accurately communicate the emotions and visions from my brain, so I wasn’t hurt that the editors at Blofeld Entertainment GmbH didn’t want to show my pictures. However, since I went through the editing process of putting together a presentation concept for Photo09 in Zurich, I figure I should display it somewhere. Since the web is one of my main platforms of choice to display imagery, I figure I’ll do it here (Vision 09 on Issuu). I’m slightly scared to see what the Vision will bring in 2010.

[issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fdark%2Flayout.xml showflipbtn=true documentid=100111205313-4caedf8cc7714e0e846ea819535be68b docname=vision09 username=Boltzmann loadinginfotext=Vision09 width=500 height=225 unit=px]

Google Wave – Photo Project Brainstorming

16 Dec ’09Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, Google, Wave, WPZ

I’m running a project on Amazee called Web Portraits Zurich. Basically it’s about creating cool portraits and images of people in the Zurich/Switzerland web and startup community. To try and be a little innovative, I started the project not just as a way to gather a lot of cool subjects to shoot with (like any selfish photographer), but also as an experiment in the online creative process. I usually do a lot of pre-shoot work for any portrait project I engage in, and I was thinking to myself, “what web tools can be used to improve the creative process?” I’ve written a lot about my Concept to Photo workflow here on the blog, and basically this includes initial brainstorming, shot logistics, and lighting design. What I was wondering was, “how can we do this online, so that multiple people can participate and really make it a community project?”

The biggest problem with brainstorming a photo shoot online is the lack of interactivity on most web platforms. Wether we’re talking about Flickr, Talenthouse, Amazee, etc. we’re always basically talking about posting messages and responses to a message board. The flow of dialogue is then static, and one has to read through the whole post of messages to figure out what was being said. That’s why I was excited to try out Google Wave and use Web Portraits Zurich as a test case for online brainstorming and as a photo shoot organizational tool.

My expectations are that we post a new Wave for each new portrait project, then people start brainstorming how to do it. Do we shoot in my studio, on location, how will the startup company play into the portrait? Do we want dramatic lighting, soft, are there example images we can use to illustrate our ideas? Can we keep the dialogue going, with people commenting on certain parts of the conversation and can we replay how the how project evolved? In short, all of this is possible with Wave – and it’s fucking awesome.

With Google Wave you have the ability to create posts, and have people add and respond to different parts of the dialogue. You can upload files like images, which is important for brainstorming a photo project, where the concept is always the most important thing (I think). The concept of the person being photographer, the concept of who they are, how they are perceived by the world, etc. With Wave a person can sketch out an idea (for posing for example) and upload it directly to the Wave. Everyone can then visually see what they mean and thereby we maintain momentum in the brainstorming process.

I started out with an example Wave to illustrate the process. This was an attempt to recreate the brainstorming process I went through to create my Urban Ninja images. With Wave I can upload sketches, concept images from Watchmen and 300 (a significant inspiration for this set), and you can see all right there on the screen how the idea evolved. People can then discuss about the concept for a portrait, post example images (like a scan from a magazine) to illustrate the type of look they want, and then we can directly discuss how to create it in reality.

The Future

Google Wave is an awesome product. I don’t say this often about we technologies. Often “new” are just regurgitated copies of a copy of a copy of an old idea. I feel that Wave is more innovative than the common “new” web thing (like Facebook), but what I see in my head is even better than what I’ve described so far. Think Android and Chrome for a second. Android is the open-source mobile operating system Google has developed for devices like smart phones. There’s the Droid, the HTC, that run on Android, and that’s only the start. Android can be used on netbooks, and soon on web tablets. This is the perfect combination in my mind for the creative professional who want’s to network.

Imagine a touch phone or net tablet running Android with Wave as an application, allowing you to interface directly with other people on your creative team anywhere in the world. Imagine creating and changing lighting diagrams intricately and posting concept sketches and having a creative director on the other side of the world adding notes. Imagine doing this on your computer at home, on the move running around during the day, and doing online conference calls to shore up all the detail. I think the possibilities are fantastically awesome for Wave and the future of mobile computing.

Web Portraits Viral Intro

4 Dec ’09Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, WPZ

The Web Portraits Zurich project got a viral presentation today. I put it together and uploaded it to SlideShare to act as a viral type of device to embed in other pages and visually communicate the main idea, inspire people, etc. The design includes a bit of the grunge look that I like, as well as a few mottos like,

“…the net is also human.”

“the web is also mortal.”

Afterall, the whole point of this project is to make that emotional connection between the creator and the users of web technology, so the mottos seem proper to use in this context. Over the past month since I launched the project I’ve been going over the organizational themes in my head before gathering people to start shooting with. The main question is how to handle the creative brainstorming. I would really love to use Googe Wave for this purpose. The main project flow will be as described in the diagram below (unless someone has an excellent alternative). Basically we’ll brainstorm some ideas for cool portraits based on who is being photographed, organize the concept, location, etc. and then produce some sweet pictures.

WPZ_Workflow

I’ve been experimenting with Googe Wave to brainstorm a portrait. It would be sweet if the Wave could be embedded hereWith Google Wave you basically have a mad-scientist cross between a forum posting, a time machine, and a normal conversation. At least, you should have all of that once it’s out of the Beta stage. At the moment I can’t upload photos, which will be pretty important when brainstorming ideas for shooting and production. I want people to be able to sketch out and upload their ideas to the discussion, and from there we get ideas on lighting and stuff, and then we have a cool tool for creative portrait brainstorming online. A person from Tokyo could suggest the makeup, one from San Diego the lighting, someone from Zurich suggests a location, etc.

Another option is to use the Wall on the Amazee project board. However, there are some limitations here, and it’s more like using a forum to post and discuss ideas, which works for some things but isn’t the idea brain storming platform in my opinion. Well, part of the project is exploring how to organize a creative project online, so whatever happens, I’m sure we’ll all learn something.

Here is the Intro Presentation

Web Portraits Zurich – The Idea

23 Nov ’09Web Portraits ZurichAmazee, Portraits, WPZ, Zurich

A few weeks ago I launched a project on Amazee called, Web Portraits Zurich.

The project is simple, easy to explain and painless to promote. I want to combine photography with the interesting people I’ve met in the Zurich web scene. While heading to events like the Swiss StartUp camp in Basel, barcamps in Berlin and Switzerland, as well as the WebMonday meetings in Zurich, I’ve met a lot of interesting people with interesting ideas. Then, after WebMonday Zurich #10 I brainstormed some lighting setups for an upcoming photoshoot – and then an idea was revealed in my head. The idea is to use Amazee to organize portraits of the people in the web and startup community around Zurich. Right now I’ve cut a few videos in my head explaining the Web Portraits Zurich concept and will cut them for real this week. These will both present and explain the Web Portraits concept and organization. This seems the most effective way to give people an idea of what to expect and to promote to interested parties.

But as a prelude, I’ll reveal some personal motivations behind the project. Why Web Portraits? Why organized on Amazee? After all, to just do some portraits of the web people in Zurich, I can just contacted people and shoot the portraits and than would be it. You see, with Amazee I see some inspiration to experiment with Creative Production.

The Web is also Human

The Net is also Mortal

If you shoot a portrait it might all be done by the photographer, setting up lighting, choosing a location, organizing things and then doing the shoot. In my experience the process of creating a portraits involves a few steps (or non at all): Concept Creation, Production Design, Shooting, Post-Processing, Distribution.

I want to give back, to give the opportunity to people to participate in the process of creating these portraits. Why? Because I’ve found that exercising your creative tendencies outside of your normal interests (or jobs) makes you a better, more flexible thinker and enables you to improve your ability to view the world in different ways, and that improves your ability to come up with new solutions for different problems in life.

Since the project was launched on Oct. 29th there’s been a healthy interest on Amazee, including a feature on the main page. Now it’s up to me to build on the momentum and release these videos and start shooting. If it all works out in the end there will be a sweet collection of portraits from the Zurich web scene, we’ll integrate the interesting personalities with their cool technological achievements and see what trouble we can get into along the way.

Sessions with Joey L – DVD Tutorial Review

21 Oct ’09Photography, PhotoshopJoey L, review, Sessions, Tutorial

This is a review of the Sessions with Joey L DVD Tutorial, including a break-down of the DVD content and how I feel it applies to my photographic directions and how it might be useful to other people.

Back in the fall of 2007 I was spending my days in a Tokyo dorm room playing around with Photoshop, and decided it was time to pick up some sort of tutorial DVD. Yes, you can learn and be inspired without needing to buy these things, but I break my brain trying to figure out stuff like applying Altair Optistruct optimization strategies to fatigued composite structures with barley a manual to work with. So with Photoshop I was looking for a way to relax and get a grounding in photo processing, so I bought the JoeyL Photoshop Tutorial DVD by photographer Joey Lawrence. It was well received by some, ridiculed by others, and I found it to be a good buy. However, I’m able to pull a great deal of knowledge from anything, due to my training in figuring out ball-busting simulation programs like Nastran. However, for my purposes, what was lacking from the Photoshop Tutorial DVD was the connection between lighting and shot setup and Photoshop processing. So when Mr. Lawrence released his Sessions with JoeyL DVD, I watched the trailer, and then decided to drop 200 USD on the DVD.

First some background on me

Here’s my situation. I’ve mainly focused on learning photography and lighting during the last two years. This was mainly in my spare time while finishing my Doctor of Science degree at ETH Zurich I read Strobist in between experiments, and sometimes sketched out lighting diagrams at the SPIE Smart Materials conferences. Since starting a normal job I’ve had time to develop a lighting and processing look that I like, which fits with what I see in my head. To this end I finished with taking only self-portraits and started organizing model shoots. The last piece is nearly in place and that is making a strong link between vision and reality. Taking the image in my head and easily making it a tangible medium people can hold in their hands or see for themselves. I sketch out shoot ideas, design lighting concepts, network, and do my own Photoshop. Foe me it’s all part of the process of Arience, the integration of Art and Science in my life. In my view, everyone is a poet and an engineer. I attended a Strobist seminar and picked up the Sessions DVD to get a better perspective on how other photographers work, see the process of concept to photo in other people.

The Sessions content is broken down as follows

Lighting Theory

The Vision

Lighting Theory – The Basics

Lighting Theory – Advanced Technique

The Necessary Tools

Modifiers

Photoshoots

Forbes Assignment

Monty Are I CD Artwork

Thrillogy Advertisement Shoot

Model Test Shoot

Strange Familiar

Business

Business Lecture

Trust

Misc Q&A

Travel

Travel Lecture

Ethiopia: Behind the Scenes

Photoshop

Compositing

Using Color Curves

Strange Familiar – Swapping Skies

Experimenting with Blending Modes

Black and White Conversion

Tonal Colorizing

Fixing Blown Highlights

There’s something that always floats around in my head, namely that photography isn’t difficult, and it gets easier every year. Images which took a full production studio to create 20 years ago can now be done in a bedroom quicker and with fewer resources. The thing that interests me is the process and approach a person takes to the whole idea of photography from concept to lighting to final image, and I think this has been well communicated in the Sessions DVD.

Lighting Theory: Joey explains his philosophy and how he sets up lighting. Then he moves on to modifiers and how the ones he uses to define the character of his images. If you know nothing of lights and modifiers this is a great video, if you know everything already you probably won’t buy this DVD anyways. I fall in the middle, and found this to be a very interesting section. It didn’t totally revolutionize my ideas on lighting, but did make me think a bit more outside of the Strobist softbox.

Photoshoots: Joey presents a walk-through, behind-the-scenes videos of different shoots including bands, a plastic surgeon, and a model test shoot. Throughout Joey gives explanations of lighting and concept, and you can draw a direct link between how he works and his previously described Lighting Vision. Also interesting here is seeing the photographer-model interaction. This is an important, I think the most important part of a shoot. I try to make an emotional connection with models and explain what I’m trying to create in a shoot, and it’s interesting to see the way Joey works in these different situations, working with a TFP model versus a highly successful surgeon versus a band releasing a new CD. All in all, very cool to see.

Business: Joey describes how he grew and developed as a photographer, the value of a portfolio, how he gets jobs, basically a discussion on how he works as a businessman. Again, this is great to see, and would be interesting for anyone contemplating a business (even outside photography), because he focuses on the personal drive and interaction which are needed, as opposed to just having a slick portfolio online somewhere. He also has a video on Trust and how important it is for business as well as directing shoots, again, very cool stuff to hear about.

Travel: Focus is on Ethiopia, and a lot about how he understands the culture of his subjects before blasting them with a Profoto strobe. You don’t need to be planning a trip to Africa to get a lot out of these videos, they focus on the human connection between photographer and subject, a topic often missed and usually never even brought up in internet forum discussions (well, the ones I read at least). The Travel section is great for looking at the human side of photography, and focusing less on the technical side. It’s also a great motivational video if you’re the type who always thinks of traveling but hasn’t jumped on the plane yet.

Photoshop: Here are presented a few popular techniques, many things people are always asking about on the internet. Yes, you can also find internet videos on the basic techniques, but it’s the application of those techniques in the larger puzzle which is of value here. If you want to buy the DVD just for Photoshop, you’re better off looking at something else (I recommend Skin Photoshop the book). The Photoshop section fits in very well with the rest of the DVD, bringing the vision full circle to the post processing stage. This was something I found lacking in his Photoshop DVD Tutorial, because there a strong connection wasn’t made between lighting and post-processing. Here however, you can see how the images from the Strange Familiar shoot are processed, including a new sky, and in this way you get a feeling for the whole process from start to finish.

Why I Liked It

What I like is seeing concept development in other people, and seeing how they think and work. I like understanding their philosophy of creation and ideas or their approach to concept development and how it’s realized in a final form – be it a picture or an elegant toaster. In this way, I think the Sessions DVD is fantastic, and I recommend it instead of taking a workshop (if you have to choose). Sessions gives you a feeling for the whole process from lighting philosophy, through shoot execution, the business approach to final Photoshop editing, and throughout out you get a feeling for the human connection as a main driver of the process.

Is it worth the Money?

Is $200, $250, $300 too much for a photography DVD? Maybe yes, possibly no. I paid $200 for my copy, and I’m ok with that. The Zach Arias DVD is $250, the Strobist $135, and new ones come out all the time from places like Lighting-Essentials, Scott Kelby (how many remixed Photoshop books can we release this year?) and David Honl (to name a very few). But not all are coming from a working commercial photographer who shoots stuff I find interesting. This isn’t the same as a working educator who also takes nice photos. There is a significant difference here. It’s easy to say, “you need to do this, this and this” to make cool pictures, it’s another thing to be a working photographer at this level and showing the whole process.

I consider it the difference between learning Physics from a tenured professor who hasn’t written a new publication in 2 years versus a Richard Feynman (even after he was at the top of his field, you can find some of his lectures on the net). Maybe this sounds harsh, but my main critique of 90% of the photography/Photoshop learning material I see for free from internet sources as well as some professional educators is the lack of vision, and for me that makes all the difference. The Sessions DVD is a tutorial with Vision and Heart. But maybe that’s just me? I got so bored with McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries I didn’t get half-way through it, but I love re-reading Michael Grecco’s Dramatic Portrait. It’s just what gets me off.

I’ve also reviewed and still like the JoeyL Behind the Scenes Photoshop DVD, the reason being that the focus isn’t placed on minute details of levels and curve operations, but because it focuses on process and development. This is the same philosophy I use in engineering research, so maybe that’s why I like it. The details can always be ironed out, but if you don’t have that overall big picture (that thing you’re reaching for) in your head, then you won’t have a clue about which details need to be fine-tuned. This is one thing I wasn’t getting from reading Strobist or attending a seminar – but I just learn differently than other people, and so do you. I don’t need someone to make me creative, I do that on my own, sometimes vie induced boredom. It’s just cool to see how other people are creative in the scope of their vision.

Brass Tacs

The Sessions DVD isn’t some blue pill to take with a whiskey chaser, promising you everlasting creative abilities as well as the drive to bring your vision into the world. It’s just another piece in the puzzle. Seek your knowledge in the way you know will be most effective for your own personal learning style. I get Photoshop technique inspiration by actually painting, I get lighting inspiration when I’m listening to a Web Monday talk or a smart materials presentation. No two people learn the same way, so find out what works for you and exploit it to make your own visions a reality.

Photoshop in My Analog Days

6 Oct ’09Photoshopdrawing, Phototshop

Photoshop is one of the coolest, most influential programs I’ve used in my computer life. Before I had a digital camera I had a Mac Cube, that beautifully designed simplistic computer which has never been equaled for elegance and class. It was a good time, I put contact paper on my walls and wrote on them whenever an idea took hold. Poetry, philosophy, thoughts on existence, everything that came into my head. The problem with drawing on static walls is that the ideas and pictures become locked in a certain place, a specific arrangement. Photoshop freed me from that. As soon as I got Photoshop I knew it would be pointless to use it with a mouse and picked up a Wacom Graphire tablet for $80 or something. From there I started experimenting with combining sketches and doing the color digitally.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that my background in Photoshop learning started in my Math, History, English, and Chemical Engineering classes. I wouldn’t say I was totally bored in school, but y=mx+b doesn’t need to fill the entire brain, and the vast expanse not consumed by redundant analysis of the Scarlet Letter were used to draw various things in my class notes. The problem is that you then have to run through old homework assignments on colloids to find that cool sketch of a screaming head, and much like Ulysses for writing, Photoshop has been great for giving life to random class sketches.

With Photoshop, a scanner, and a Wacom tablet, I knew I had it made. My first real attempt at creating something was a composite of hand-drawn sketches scanned with a Microtek machine and manipulated on screen. I included a portrait, taken during a biomedical engineering student meeting at Michigan State University (MSU). Somehow I guess it was the precursor to the current self-portraits on Flickr and my website.

I called this first thing “Perspective” I guess because, well, I have no idea. I was introduced to Pink Floyd: The Wall during this time, so it made sense to include a brick type structure, which was being demolished by small worker guys with devil legs and no hair on their heads. I also like the look of Marvel and Magneto from the X-men, so I added something with muscles and a cool Spartan helmet. It started as a few separate hand sketches which were digitized, and then colored in Photoshop.

Here was the workflow:

Draw random stuff
Scan sketches with flatbed scanner
Open in Photoshop
Cut up the sketches, just taking the ones I like
Assemble sketches so they sort of fit together
Ink over with a Photoshop brush
Expand and draw other strange images
Add color on separate layers for everything
Save and forget about for 8 years

It’s been cool to look at what I do now with a sweet camera like the Sony A900 and what you can do today with Photoshop, and compare it to what I was doing nearly a decade ago in my apartment. What I edit photos today, it’s always with a Wacom tablet, adding to the shadows, manipulating the density of darkness on arms and cheek bones, using the exact same drawing techniques developed in Geometry class when I thought of how cool it would be to draw an issue of the Punisher. Photoshop is a sweet program, but like Altair Hypermesh, it hasn’t changed much in the past 10 years. There have been some essential changes, but the core philosophy has stayed the same. If you have a cool idea and some drive, you can create some tripped out stuff. It’s just the drive to create which is important and will propell you forward, not matter if you’re working on Smart Materials, a photo shoot, or a sketch during a chemical engineering class.

Stroking the Photography Ego: Published by PopPhoto For Free

3 Sep ’09PhotographyPhotography, Published

PopPhoto-02211-Edit If you spend too much time reading about Web 2.0, it’s easy to get confused with the transmission of creative goods and hopeful returns in terms of money in the internet economy. If you read Wikinomics and practice your life in a Web 2.0 way, then nearly anything you produce should be given away for free. If I produce a photo for An American Peyote Scribble article and post it to Flickr, then I’m part of the philosophical web photography industry where information exchange is the medium (as opposed to hard goods). An internet publisher writes an article, posts a photo, and thereby produces a commodity (say a digital image or story) which is consumed by a consumer (random person on the web – you, the person reading this blog article).

Via Flickr I got an email from the editor of the PopPhoto College Edition magazine about using one of my images in an upcomming issue. My first instict was to think about publication rights and compensation. At this point, there are two basic reactions flowing through your brain: one is the joy that someone likes what you did, the second is the question of monetary compensation for a creative work. When you sell or license a creative work, I’m of the impression that you’re selling or licesnsing the actual medium (digital) and as well as the concept contained within that medium. The reason for compensation is generally obvious, a magazine makes money from subscribers and advertisers (really mainly from advertisers) and therefore photographers should be paid for their work when a magazine editor calls and requests usage of a particular photo.

The image in question is a self-portrait I shot on a weekend afternoon to experiment with my new full-length reflector. I could have demanded money, but that’s not what the image was produced for. It was produced to be displayed on Flickr and my blog, and to not to be used with out consent from myself. Does allowing use of my image without monetary discourse degrade the overall economic potential of the entire photography market simply because it is being published in a freely distributed printed magazine as opposed to say, the Strobist website? Photos from Flickr are used everyday on websites that bring in advertising revenue for the site publisher, and generally no money is set aside for the creator of the image.

If your photo is posted to the Flickr Strobist Group, and used in one of the posts on the Strobist website, you’re also allowing publication to a money-generating entitiy without prior (or future) finanical compensation. The same goes for photos posted to PSDTUTS and a number of other Flickr groups. But this isn’t considered to be a bain on the entire creative industry (and shouldn’t be). You post your photo to a popular Flick-website-integrated entity and get exposure to a wide audience, the site gets content for the readers and the advertisers pay to keep the site going, since they get exposure to potential customers (the readers of that particular site). To close the economic loop, the groups which I post my images to are generally linked to my digital imaging education. I’ve learned a great deal from both the Strobist and PSDTUTS websites, so I feel like it’s a fair trade if they use my images on their site, despite the fact that I’ll receive no monetray compensation from advertisers. In the end, services and digital goods have changed brains, been absorbed, and I receive a free education as they receive rights to display my images on their sites.

For the past year I’ve mainly been shooting myself, this gets boring occasionally, and I’ve since expanded to organizing portrait parties and TFCD model shoots. Why? Because it’s a challenge. Everyone is cool and beautiful in their own way, and it’s far more challenging for a photographer to make themselves look interesting than simply photographing a stylized movie star. Some say that nothing which is free has any real value. And something which is useless can never be truly beautiful. Some practice a free photography based (non?)business model and others push a traditional photography business model. Does giving PopPhoto permission to publish my Flickr photo devalue the cumulative impact of the creative industries? Did I grant the publishing rights for my Flickr photo just so I could write this article? Perhaps, but that’s the beauty of being a Creator, you have the ability to control (to an extent) the use of your digital productions.

Heavy thoughts on any day of the week.

Margarita – Urban Location Photoshoot

7 Aug ’09Model ShootsKacey, Model, TFCD

Margarita contacted me via Stylished.com (she’s also on ModelMayhem: #1243386) and we setup a quick photo shoot in the urban area of Winterthur, just outside of Zurich, Switzerland. What follows is a break-down of the shooting process.

I conduct my photo shoots similar to the way one might assemble a portfolio of research projects. See, some research topics like Smart Materials can be rather revolutionary with a large potential pay-off, but risky. If you design a mechano-bioreactor using Electro-Active Polymers, you can (theoretically) grow and at the same time mechanically stimulate layers of skin or bone cells to engineer artificial tissue. But if you put all your energies and financing into such a risky topic, you run the risk of spending five years developing something which might not – in the end, be completely successful. So instead, you might also include less ambitions projects like active-mechanically conformable sensors for remote surgical robots and control gloves.

What’s the connection from biomedical research to photography? In short, when planning a photo shoot you balance out the shot concepts. Start with ones you know will be cool and work out as intended, and then experiment and spend some time with new poses or lighting scenarios.

The Shoot Setup

I met Margarita in the industrial area of Winterthur to do some Urban Location shooting. I’ve shot here before when I was playing around with Urban Dry Tooling concepts. I picked the location and worked up a few location ideas in my head, but I knew this shoot would be more spontaneous than, for example my previous studio shoot with Alexandra. Margarita came in a car with herself, a small wardrobe, and her cousin on a cool motorcycle. Since the shoot would be more flexible and off-the-cuff, I planned for a small location lighting setup. The weather was beautiful with strong afternoon sunshine, and I just needed lighting to be mobile and produce the desired effects.

Camera:
Sony A900
Minolta 7D
Sigma 70-200 HSM

Lighting:
Sunpak 120J
Sunpak 383
TR-II battery pack
Kacey Beauty Reflector
Orbis Ring Flash adapter
Gadget Infinity 16 channel radio triggers

Margarita brought three or four different clothing combinations. So, essentially she defined the initial visual concept via the wardrobe and I placed her in the right urban location to full define the shot. We ended up with four strong looks including: Jeans and T-Shirt, Elegant Dress, Form Fitted and a Fox Head, Urban Chair, and Urban Cowgirl (woman).

Jeans and T-Shirt

We started with a jeans and T-shirt look in an old factory-turned-parking-garage. The simple wardrobe would work well with the processing I had in mind and let Margarita be the focus, not her clothes. This would give me an idea of how she posed and carried herself, and make subsequent shots come out better as I would know more how to direct her, already having a feeling for how well she could direct herself. For lighting I setup a 120J in the Kacey reflector on a stand, this produced a nice directed, slightly hard light source, placed 3-5 meters away from Margarita. First we shot against the cinderblock walls, some of which had cool scribbles. Then we did a few shots backlit by the sun from the large windows. I shot with the Sony A900 and Minolta 7D. The 7D with the lower pixel count (6 megapixels) produces files with a different shadow texture, and can work better than the 24 megapixel A900 for certain looks. These shots leant themselves well to grunge texturing in the post-processing stage.

Long Elegant Dress

After the first set Margarita chose a long, elegant dress. This was perfect to contrast against the large steel columns which support the roof of the old factory. We did a few distant headshot captures, then I posed Margarita against one of the steel columns. The 120J-Kacey combination was used in both instances, first to add just a tad of fill on the head shots, and then to illuminate the scene from the side. This allowed me to capture the texture of the steel and also give excellent light on Margarita’s face and upper torso. As I was using a lot of natural light, so I could open up my aperture and diffuse the background behind the steel column. This added a nice dimension to the final images.

Form-fitted and a Fox Head

For this shot, we were really experimenting. Margarita came out dressed in a form-fitted top and leggings. Additionally, there was a fox handwarmer. This had a certain strange appeal, so naturally I approved and we used it. For lighting, I setup the 120J-Kacey dish, as well as a Sunpak 383 in the Orbis ring flash. I wanted a hard sort of steel look. Generally convention dictates that the photographer should know what they want and direct the model in a specific way to produce great results. But to be honest, the foxhead was unexpected and we set about experimenting with different looks. Fox head on her head, to the side, is it the main focus of the image, is it a concept, does it “mean” something? I don’t know if anyone can answer these questions, and probably they require no clarification.

Sitting on the Chained Chair

Winterthur is like a giant kick-ass photo studio. Next to the old factory-turned-parking-garage there are some very posh apartments, which have chained chairs sitting on the rocky courtyard. This location gives a nice feeling with the desolate gravel ground and random chairs, it makes me think of a Pink Floyd video. We did two more sets in the setting sun and shade of the buildings, which stretched across the courtyard. In the first set Margarita sat in a chair and I bumped the 120J up to full power and placed it just out of frame in the Kacey dish. Naturally I wanted to balance out the exposure of the dying sunlight in the background. Again, I can’t say enough about the awesomeness of the Kacey dish, it’s a tad large to take around but well worth the inconvenience. It’s awesome on location, and when you use it with a Sunpak 120J and TR-II battery pack it’s a flexible, very powerful and fantastic lighting tool. But we were not finished, Margarita had a final look she wanted and ran off to change.

Classic Urban Cowgirl

Margarita came back dressed in white with fun cowgirl boots and the same fantastic smile from the past two hours, undaunted by the time we’d spent posing. For this set I left the flashes standing at a distance and used natural sunlight, which was being reflected off of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the posh apartment buildings where I wish I had a place. In the gravel courtyard were a few shallow pools, and I used the full capabilities of my Sigma 70-200, shooting images of Margarita posing across the water. Here I got down low to the ground and pick up Margarita’s reflection in the pool.

Post-Processing

The combination of Margarita and the industrial background worked nicely with my imagination and visual tendencies to blur the divide the line between visual reality, painting, and graffiti. When processing photos from a location shoot I generally use textures from that specific location. I’ve spent a few days shooting around the old industrial walls and cracked concrete in Winterthur and have a nice library of low-rez 6 and high-rez 24 megapixel texture files to work with. The post-processing philosophy included blending concrete layers with Margarita and manipulating the shadows of the images.

Wrap Up

Margarita is a pretty awesome model to work with. She has a dynamic personality and has a good sense of form and posing. Margarita’s cousin came along for the shot. Some photographers shy away from the idea of a model bringing along a friend, but I think it’s great. Margarita and her cousin discussed poses and she could watch from the back and throw out suggestions in Lithuanian while I was shooting, it was awesome.

My Sony A900 User Review
My Kacey Beauty Reflector Review
Kacey Beauty Reflector – Kacey Enterprises
Kacey Dish on Location – Swiss Strobist