by successfulbob | Lumix GH4, Lumix Lounge, musician photography, people photography, photography education
There’s a new inductee into (onto??) the Sound Bites Grill Wall of Fame.
Renee Patrick has a marvelous voice. She was performing with the Steve Sandner Jazz Trio as a guest during Jazz and Juice that has been a Sound Bites Sunday evening staple for a while now.
Renee live on stage followed by an artistic treatment…
Original image captured with the Lumix GH4 1/25th sec f3.2 ISO 1600. The lens is one of my favorites for capturing individual artists on stage the Lumix Vario f2.8. A better camera setting would have been ISO 3200 at f2.8 to give me a bit more sharpness although I do like the movement captured here with her hand slightly blurry… With those settings I would also set the exposure compensation down about 2/3rds to a stop to make sure to not loose the highlights in the LED stage lighting.
Jazz and Juice is Live Jazz with 1/2 price bottles of wine with dinner. My wife Holly and I enjoy catching the Jazz music, good food and a great price on the wine!
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | fine art photography, landscape photography, Lumix GH4, Lumix Lounge, people photography, photography, photography education, photography gear
Ocotillo.
That’s not a word you hear everyday… Even if you live in the Southwest where these very interesting cactus reside. Ocotillo are long stalks that most of the year look like they are a bit worse for wear and have moved on past the living stage.
BUT, when nature’s green paint brush, AKA rain, moves through the area at the right time of year these seemingly greyish brown sticks with thorns turn green and put on a show with bright crimson blooms.
Kinda gives you hope when you see this process. And that’s where a phrase you hear even less, the name of this post, Dance of the Ocotillo. Which I think is easier to say than Dance of the Fouquieria splendens which is it’s binomial name.
My model friend Pash Galbavy said she really enjoys these plants and wanted to be photographed with them when in bloom. “Was I game to get up and hike into the wild before the sun chose to make an appearance?” “Sure,” I said. “Always up for a challenge and creating some art.”
Pash made individual dance moves around the cactus. Camera was mounted on a tripod and multiple exposures were blended together using Layers and Masks in Adobe’s Photoshop.
This is an alternate version I enjoy even more created using multiple NIK filters. Included in the mix were Pro Contrast, Glamour Glow, Sepia Toning, Edge Efx and Film Noise.
I used the Lumix GH4 with the Vario 12-35mm f2.8 lens mounted on a tripod. I wanted to capture motion on each movement but I couldn’t get the shutter speed slow enough without some extra help. Camera settings 19mm, 2 sec, f22 ISO 200 manual mode.
Getting the shutter speed this slow required the help of a 2 stop neutral density filter. I had just received a set of very inexpensive filters from Neewer because I wanted to experiment with them for water effects. The kit is less than 25 bucks and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. I just happened to throw them in my kit before this shoot… Who knew??
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – If you want to talk about someone dedicated to her art here is a photo of Pash dressed in clothing more appropriate to the per-dawn temperature!
Pash dressed for the 47 degree pre-dawn temps we were working in.
PPS – Making purchases on Amazon and through other links helps support the education on the Successful-Photographer web site… TIA.
by successfulbob | commercial photography, Lumix GH4, photography, photography education
Having a camera with you all the time allows you to see a quick moment and record it. This enables you to learn how different objects look in different lighting situations. I do a fair amount of commercial photography and product and often clients are looking for a natural setting photograph that has the feel as if not set up for an ad. Making little studies like this keeps me sharp when figuring out details for future shoots.
Captured with the Lumix GH4 and 35-100mm Vario f2.8 lens 1/15 sec f2.8 ISO 1600
I really enjoy the warmth of this image. Light was coming from the sky through sliding glass doors. The repeating orange light gives this a lot of depth. If I was photographing this for a client I would have added some more controlled light onto the wine bottle with very soft edged highlights and perhaps have added a glass of wine to the set-up.
But since I was there enjoying the music and having dinner with my wife I didn’t push it toooooo much.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, Lumix GH4, Lumix Lounge, people photography, photography, photography gear
Pretty amazing what we get to learn as photographers…
I was asked by a model friend, Pash Galbavy, (see her site and work with other artists here) to help document a life drawing modeling session she was doing utilizing Butoh posing.
Butoh posing?? What the heck is that? And the continuing education of this photographer goes on…
Butohis a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo. The art form is known to “resist fixity” and be difficult to define. If you’d like to learn more check Wikipedia here.
Pash Galbavy of Sedona at Elephantine in an art rendition using textures and colors photographed at the same time.
Pash wore clay and twined straw into her hair to enhance the Butoh look.
Pash is absolutely amazing as a model. She’s able to hold poses for a long period of time with no motion
yet still able to bring emotion forward.
Images were captured with the Lumix GH4 and the Lumix Vario 35-100mm f2.8 lens. ISO’s were from 1600 to 3200…
Images were then taken into Adobe Photoshop where I added layers of color textures from photos and used Blend Modes, Selections and Masks to create the final artwork. In working this way I have numerous renditions with different amounts of color. or lack thereof for each of these images. This is the technique I’ve dubbed ‘Photo-Synthesis’.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – If you are ever in the Sedona, Arizona area and need a life model who is incredibly talented make sure you see if Pash is available. She’s truly a work of art in her own right with her posing ability.
by successfulbob | black & white, Lumix GH4, Lumix Lounge, people photography, photography education, photography gear, photography software, photoshop tutorial
I’m working on a video for a future seminar being hosted by the Arizona Professional Photographers Association (AZPPA) in the fall and here is an image of one of the character actors expected to join us in a western setting. Steve AKA the ‘Sheriff’ is a pleasure to work with as are all the people who will be dressed in period costumes at the event.
‘Sheriff’ Steve in costume.
Steve was captured with the Lumix GH4 and the 35-100mm f2.8 Lumix Vario Lens. Natural light from a somewhat overcast but bright day coming through a doorway camera right and behind Steve so I could shoot into the shadow side of his face to add depth, dimension and drama to his features.1/15th sec f3.2 ISO 1600 in Aperture Priority with a slight bump in Exposure Compensation to open shadows just a bit.
Post processing often plays into the creation of my images. As Ansel Adams proclaimed, “The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.” So here is the original digital capture with no adjustments.
Straight Out of Camera (SOOC)
Top Image was processed in Silver FX Pro 2 to convert to Black and White.
Then some small retouching moves, mostly dodging and burning to control the contrast of the scene.
NIK Color FX Pro 4 Bleach Bypass Filter. Used a Layer Mask to bring back some detail that got whacked.
Back into NIK Color FX Pro 4 to use the Tonal Contrast Filter to highlight details and bump contrast.Layer Mask to control specific areas.
Added a Soft vingette.
Soft Light Blend Mode Layer added to retouch and add extra life to his eyes.
Then a conversion to Sepia Tone using a Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer with the settings Hue 30 Saturation 10 Lightness 0 and Colorize checked. (Got this recipe, or something very similar, about 15 years ago from longtime photographer friend Tom Cheswick)
Link to NIK Plugins
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | landscape photography, Lumix GH4, Lumix Lounge, panorama, photography, photography education, photography gear
Sometimes you just want more pixels in an image.
Do you have to buy a new more expensive camera? Nope. You just have to learn how to sew… I mean stitch.
Basically even with the 16MP micro 4/3rds chip we are working with in the Lumix line of cameras we have multi-megapixel (like 100MP plus) cameras in our hands if we take multiple images and overlap them. Here is an example.
This is 13 images overlapped with the camera held in the vertical orientation. This file comes in at 385MB after processing in Photoshop.
I could easily print this image 26 inches by 158 inches. That’s about 2 feet by 13 feet!
Here’s another version with 2 rows of 10 images overlapped with camera held in vertical orientation. This file is almost 400MB after processing. Could easily be printed to 3 feet by 10 feet…
This technique can be used with large group portraits, architecture and any stationary subjects.
Images were captured with the Lumix GH4 and the Lumix Vario 35-100mm f2.8 lens at ISO 200 f10 1/320th sec. The built in level on the GH4 helps to keep the horizon straight during this hand held capture to make the panorama stitching easier in the software. My overlap of individual images is about 30%. Any less than that and you’ll tend to find stitching errors in the final image.
So you’ve heard the expression “Go big or go home!” Now you can with whatever gear you are working with….
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – using links on this site to make your gear purchases help to support this web site and the education being shared. Thanks in advance!
