nowheremangraphics

Death And Bunnies: Post-processing Tutorial

July 26, 2011

Mila Dean - Death And Bunnies

Two week ago I finally was able to do this shoot with my friend Mila and makeup artist, the amazing Jenn Hill. I had been planning this for a while, ever since I saw Mila’s vintage rabbit-fur coat. We have 2 bunnies at home; Ferris (shown here) and Cameron (badum-dum-tish) so I thought it would be a great visual to combine this amazing goth-chick in a vintage rabbit-fur coat cuddling a rabbit. I really dig the ambiguity of this story. Is she collecting the rabbits a la Cruela Deville? Is she a sort of Rabbit Protector Spirit? The Dia De Los Muertos makeup came very much later in my planning, but as soon as the idea flashed into my mind I immediately knew that it fit and that I couldn’t possibly do this shoot without it. I had been introduced to Jenn Hill via a mutual friend and I’d been wanting to work with her for months. I knew immediately that she was the perfect makeup artist for this shoot.

I’ve shown this photo around and tend to get a lot of questions about both the lighting as well as the post-processing for this shoot, so I figured I’d cover both of those here.
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Fur In Fashion

July 23, 2011

Becky Franklin - Fur In Fashion

Last weekend I had scheduled another photo shoot with the wonderful Becky Franklin. We had originally planned to shoot on-location on the streets of Seattle. Unforgivably, however, we forgot that this is Seattle and it’s got a rep to protect, so of course it was pouring down rain. We had the incredible Maddie Hibbert helping out with styling. For me this is photo-shoot gold. Both of these girls are pretty brilliant, fun, vibrant and know how to bring out some of my favorite work. I just think our styles mesh incredibly well and I love working with both of them, so having us all on one shoot was amazing. The quote of the day for this show was “They’re like wings… on her eyes.”
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Ryan & Janine’s Engagment

July 20, 2011

Preparing For Marriage

Last week I went out with my sister and her fiancée to take some engagement photos. I wanted to do an engagement session that showed what a fun couple these two are. They’ve both got a great sense of humor and they’re both into drama and theatre, so doing fun little skits was really a must with them. Plus I wanted to teach them what marriage was really like. :)


The Seven Deadly Fashion Sins

July 9, 2011

Seven Deadly Fashion Sins

I’m really excited to post these photos! It’s been a bit over-due, and those who follow me on Facebook have likely already seen these, but I’ve yet to do a full write-up on it! Becky Franklin approached me about doing a fashion-based shoot and really loved the idea of portraying the 7 Deadly Sins. I had brainstormed the idea before and had a few ideas, but this really pushed me to really flesh out all 7, rather than just 1 or 2. Fortunately, Becky was an absolutely ideal partner to do this project with. She immediately grasped the way I “saw” the Sins Project and came up with some amazing suggestions that really helped polish and complete the project, which we finished in 2 sessions.

So without further ado, I give you The Seven Deadly Fashion Sins!
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Before And After: My Portrait Retouching Workflow

May 5, 2011

Victories Are Often Hollow

I took this photo on Tuesday for a photo contest entitled “Victory” and I’ve titled this shot Victories Are Often Hollow. I wanted to have a very in-your-face gritty dark yet introspective self-portrait, and I think I pulled it off. I’ll take you through how I went through the post-processing on this photo from Lightroom into Photoshop as well as a bit of what was going through my mind.

Here’s my before and after shot:

Before And After

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Sometimes When It Doesn’t Work Out It Still Works Out

May 4, 2011

7 Sins of Fashion: Lust [v1]

I like this shot. I think it works on a couple of different levels, but it’s not at all the right shot for the assignment I’d set for myself. I’ve never been a big one for composites, so this was really a practice run at this. Sure I’ve dropped in shadows from one photo onto another, or swapped out a person’s head in one shot for another because the expression just worked better but the pose didn’t, and I think I’ve got the Photoshop chops to pull it off. But I’ve never added a person to a photo that wasn’t there, and I’ve certainly never tried to have two people interact in a photo that was composited.

This is why it’s important to test these ideas out before you try to do it for a client. If this were a client job I’d be reshooting on my own dime. I’d be paying for models and stylists to come in again to get the shot I need to get. But for self-assignments I can experiment and learn, and I learned a lot about compositing with this shot.
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“Two” and “Super Tuesday”

April 16, 2011

Super Tuesday

I’ve been doing a lot of photography for the Burien Little Theatre who have put on some really fun plays. They asked me to come take photos for the Bill And Peggy Hunt Playwrights Festival. The first two plays are Two and Super Tuesday (featured above).

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Giant Freakin’ Negatives!

February 27, 2011

Today was the first day that I went out and played with the Calumet 4×5 view camera that I got last year. Part of the problem was that I did not have any film for it, but the bigger problem is that I had never used one of those cameras and did not even know how to load the film into the trays until a friend came over to show me how.

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Nowhere To Run When It’s Inside You

February 15, 2011

I belong to a photo community that every month runs a contest where they give you a word that you need to take a photo of that relates to that word. This month’s word was “nowhere”. With a word like that, how could I resist?!? This phrase immediately popped into my mind, and I knew I had finally found a self-portrait opportunity for my Tillandsia plant, a cool little plant that grows not in soil, but resting in the canopy of trees and looks very creepy and Lovecraftian.

Nowhere To Run When It's Inside You

The lighting was very simple for this. A simple hot-shoe flash suspended over my head fired through a Lumiquest 3 Softbox with 2 pieces of black tape to flag (or block) the light from falling onto my background. I simply positioned myself under the edge of the beam of light, prefocused my camera, and set the timer for 12 seconds. Wash and repeat several dozen times. Then a bit of toning, contrast, and cleanup in Photoshop and you’re done!


Liquify… Not Just For Touching Up Models!

January 26, 2011

Most of the time you see the Liquify tool being used to fix unsightly or just distracting bulges in a model. In this photo I used it quite differently. Here’s how.

Maddie

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