by successfulbob | graphic design, people photography, photography, photography education, photoshop tutorial
Pierre Stephenson was presenting a program on photographing underwater portraits. So being the shy guy that I am I asked if he could grab one of me cause I was looking for something different… And boy did I get that.
Pierre immediately said, “Yeah that would be great! I see you in a cross legged Buddha pose.” I’m all over it so off to the pool we go…
Because it was very hard to hold position this is two combined photos. One for the legs and lower half of the body and one for the upper half and reflection. Image © Pierre Stephenson used with permission.
When I showed Pierre the image (he gave me the files to play with) He said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you were in a grotto?” I remembered a photo in my files of a set of arches from a shoot in Tuscany and started work blending it into the underwater photo image.
Added the ‘Grotto-ish’ background using masks and blend modes in Adobe Photoshop.
With a bit more Adobe Photoshop tweaking and color work this is pretty close…
This is a case of playing with an idea and developing it through playing with ideas. Is this complete? Not yet. It needs some refining as most of this was done on small files with very quick selections. I’m going to check in and see if Pierre likes the direction I hope he likes it…
Yours in Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | Lumix GH4, Lumix Lounge, people photography, photography, photography education
I was working with a new lens the Lumix G Leica DG NOCTICRON 42.5mm/F1.2 Lens and is it sweet and fast. In this play session after a couple days of judging and presenting at the Tennessee Professional Photographers Association convention thought I’d try some fun stuff with Sarah Wykhuis. She was a great subject. It started in the hall when she was standing near a light. I set the camera for a high contrast black and white look.
Sarah in the hall. Kind of a Julia Roberts look don’t you think?
Then we went outside to shoot in the dark to see what we could see. It was pitch dark so we used the building lighting and fellow photographer and presenter Pierre Stephenson used his IPhone to add a bit of fill light.
I shot in RAW plus jpeg so I could get to all the info presented to the camera and was surprised at how much detail I was able to pull form the file. Camera was Lumix GH4.
I always advocate getting out to play. You learn the limits of your equipment, sharpen your skills and discover new ways of doing creative imagery.
Yours in Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | Lumix GH4, Lumix Lounge, people photography, photography
It was a blast creating images for the Greenfield/Weems real estate team photo session. While they need to project professionalism they want to add personality to their ad campaigns. Here’s an image that is just a bit different going all out for the personality!
Jolynn, Robin and Jackie from Greenfield/Weems Real Estate office.
I work in a fairly small (16’x16′) shooting studio so I take advantage of that and use my walls as lighting modifiers. In this shoot there’s one Paul C Buff light with a 7 inch reflector just to camera right pointing to the corner and ceiling of the room. This is metered to be about 2/3rds of a stop less than the main light. Another PCB light is forward of camera left just in front of the clients and pointing straight toward the wall. The reflecting light from these surfaces gives solid modeling and very soft shadow edge transitions. If I was photographing males or wanted a more dramatic lighting pattern I could lower the power on the fill light or increase the power on the main light or both. Since these images are going to be cut out I used a Super White background paper from Savage. Camera was the Lumix GH4 with a 12mm-35mm f2.8 Lumix Vario Lens. (24mm-70mm 35mm equivalent)
The clients were stripped out from the background and a soft drop shadow added.
Yours in Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | Lumix GH4, musician photography, people photography, photography, photography education
Sound Bites Grill is the new home for Estaban… Turning Sedona into home base is now a reality for guitarist Estaban and his violinist daughter Teresa Joy. They are joined on stage by Percussionist Emilio Santiago. (this guy has the fastest drumming hands I’ve ever seen!)
And they asked me to start documenting and creating images for marketing and promotion. We started out in the Village of Oak Creek about five miles south of Sedona where the red rocks begin. The weather cooperated better than I could have hoped for during our rainy monsoon season. Clouds protected the talent (and me!) from getting overheated, but allowed the sun to keep peaking through to light up the red rocks nicely.
Estaban in front of Courthouse Butte in the Village of Oak Creek Sedona, Arizona
Guitar great Estaban & his daughter, violinist Teresa Joy in front of Castle Rock.Gateway to Sedona with Estaban and Teresa Joy showing off the sign to their new home base.The Estaban show live on stage at Sound Bites Grill with Emilio Santiago on Percussion.
I choose to use the Lumix GH4 for this shoot because I would be working on a tripod. The lens which seemed to work for the entire shoot was the Lumix Vario 35-100mm f2.8 at ISO 200. Aperture for the outdoor images was at f11 because the story we are telling is of Estaban making Sedona his home. If I was trying for more ‘artsy’ images I would have chosen a wider aperture. A lot of noise has been made about the GH4 and the fact that it does 4K video. Well I gotta tell ya it’s a hell of a still camera too. I love the touch screen focus. The screen is bright enough to see in almost any light but it also has a live view eyepiece. It’s picked up and extra stop of density and can shoot RAW files at 12 fps (not that I needed that with this shoot!).
Lighting was supplemented with an Ultra Zap 1600 Paul C Buff flash powered with a Vagabond Mini-Lithium battery. It’s great to have studio powered flash in the field! I added a shoot through umbrella and kept it just out of frame. The shoot-through allows to ht the light source closer to the subject which gives softer shadow edge transitions. Here I was trying to make sure the light on the performers was really clean yet natural.
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Yours in Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | people photography, photography, photography - art quote, photography education
Wikipedia on photography reports, “The word “photography” was created from the Greek roots φωτός (phōtos), genitive of φῶς (phōs), “light” and γραφή (graphé) “representation by means of lines” or “drawing”,together meaning “drawing with light”
Many of us have heard the term stretched a little bit more as ‘Painting with Light’. Whichever definition you use LIGHT IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT… And today’s Photo/Art Quote comes from someone who knew quite a bit about light.
“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” – George Eastman
I think we become more aware and stronger as photographers when we give a language to light. Check out the portrait of Eastman from the Wikipedia web site. Can you talk about the quality of the light? Can you give a ratio to the light? Describe the lighting pattern on his face? How large is your lighting vocabulary? Why is it good? Or Not?
Photographic portrait of George Eastman from Wikipedia web site.
Once the brain learns more words for lighting it can offer more thoughts and combinations, mixing ideas and allowing you to see light in a new light if you’ll pardon the expression. I will be having more blog posts about the ‘Language of Light’ here on Successful-Photographer and I hope you’ll join in. In the meantime study the photograph of George and see what you photography vocabulary is like. Drop your thoughts in the comments here to get the dialog started. I’ll revisit this in a couple days with my thoughts in another post.
Yours in Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | people photography
I am one of the ‘Faces Of PPA’!
Professional Photographers of America (PPA) asked, and is asking, its members to provide a self portrait for the Faces of PPA campaign. I went to one of my favorite places for photography in Sedona – Cathedral Rock at Crescent Moon State Park and made this by setting my camera up on a tripod and asking a passerby to fire the shutter. This is a still from a series of images that created an animated GIF with Oak Creek running underfoot… Always have to take it step further when I can.
From the ‘Faces of PPA’ campaign. Here’s a link to a larger version on Facebook.
If you are a member of PPA why not get your image and comments in to the Faces campaign???
Yours in Photography, Bob