I saw this video on the Sorel website the other day and thought it was just lovely. I love so many things about this video from the slow-motion crashing to the vintage musket, to the wonderful mood lighting, to that gorgeous dress she’s wearing.
And for the nerds here’s a short Behind The Scenes Video.
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I’m a big fan of doing very small personal projects, really more along the lines of an exercise I suppose then a project. I recently started a new exercise with the hopes of using it for one of my gifts that I give out for the Holiday season to friends and family, and I feel like it would make a good Creative Mondays post. The secret here is you want to come up with a exercise that will expand the way you see, not just give you something to do. This should hopefully make sense when I give you my example.
My project was pretty simple. I wanted to make a collage of images where each image is a letter that I could use to form words a la the classic ransom note. The catch is that I couldn’t take photos of things that were inherently letters. So if I wanted a “B” I had to find an object that was in the shape of a “B” and not, say, a Starbucks sign or a graffiti tag by “Boyo”. Another restriction is that I couldn’t use manipulation tricks on the image in post-production to make the letter. I could only use cropping tricks to create the letters. Dodge and burning or cloning out pieces of a brick wall to enhance or obscure the image to create the letter was a no-go. Also, the subjects all had to be “found items”. I had to use what was around me and not manipulate my surroundings to create the letter. For instance, I couldn’t find two soda cans and a 2×4 and line them up to form a “B” shape and shoot that… unless I chanced along and found those items in that configuration. And I gave myself a further restriction. For each gift I could not use the same image twice. So for instance, if my image was the word “messy” I had to have two separate images for “s”.
So what could I do? I can rotate, flip, or mirror an image. I could sweep away dust or dirt that was obscuring the subject, or rotate it to create a more pleasing light or angle (but not in order to create the letter). I can re-use images for letters that mirror or crop. For instance flip and “M” upside down and you get a “W”. Cut a “W” in half and you have a “U” or a “V”. You can even flip a “V” upside down and use it as an “A”. I just can’t use the same subject in a finished piece twice. So if I were making the word “AV Club” I’d have to use two separate images for “A” and “V”. I also was not restricted to capital letters. So if I could find an “r” but not an “R” that was okay.
This was a really fun challenge. It really forced me to look at objects in a new way. It also forced me to think about typography and letter design. It helps that I’m a designer who works with a myriad of fonts all day long, so I’m used to seeing different letter shapes, but anyone can do it. It forced me to look for patterns and shapes and to really plan ahead and to find a location which would afford me a wealth of different textures and shapes.
Oh, and a tip? Brickwork is your friend! I can use photo above for 10 different letters. Had I shot it a little wider I could add 3 more to that. Just that little meta-exercise is a great tool in itself to training your eyes to see differently!
My friend Si told me about this amazing new camera, called Lytro which essentially takes a photo at every plane of focus and allows you to literally choose your focus point in post-processing! The technology is pretty amazing and exciting and hopefully it will at some point filter into DSLRs.
I’m curious if you can actually control how MUCH depth the photo has. In theory there’s no reason I can think of why not, but the video doesn’t expressly say you can control it.
I’ve been asked to take some portfolio photos for a local tattoo artist, Jibo Barrow of my favorite tattoo shop, Diamond Tattoo in Renton. This is Mike who’s got a fantastic chest tattoo. The swallows up near his clavicle are new and still healing but you’d never tell as it’s healing so beautifully. Totally jealous! I’m plotting some more ink myself, but it’s going to have to wait till the new year, methinks!
If you’re wanting some ink done I highly recommend the folks down at Diamond. They’re all-round awesome people. I’ve got several pieces by Majenta, but absolutely every one of their artists is phenomenal. Tell them I sent ya!
I’d meant to post these on Friday night but I found myself without a decent internet connection, so you get it today! 
This is a continuation of the preview post I made earlier in the week of the photo shoot I did with Katya up in the Capital Hill neighborhood of Seattle about a month ago. We wanted to do a street-fashion editorial look, and I think it came off beautifully.
I’ve spent a lot of time in a studio environment lately and I wanted to spend some time with just a stripped-down minimalist gear. I brought a flash with me but I barely pulled it out. I really wanted to focus on using natural light and only pulled out the flash to use as a bit of fill right at the end of the shoot.
The fun thing about shooting in the city is the number of the wonderful backgrounds, textures, and colors available within a small area. We walked about 3 blocks and we shot against a wooden door, a steel fence, 2 graffiti walls, a mural, a metal door, a stair-case, and a rusty doorway.
One of the things to consider when shooting outdoors during the non-golden-hour times is that open shade is your friend. There are so many things for the light to bounce off of that it creates a pleasingly fashionable flat light and nice soft transitions.
Katya’s boyfriend, Matt came along and he was awesome and even helped me do some couples-modeling which isn’t something I’ve got a good deal of experience with.
My friend Katya wanted to do a shoot, so we recently got together up on Capital Hill and did a very simple fashion shoot just out on the street, almost all natural light (I think I might have used a bit of fill flash at the very end).
Also, we couldn’t help but yell “Baby Tigers!” after seeing that graffiti
A little while ago I did a shoot with my good friend Leigh who wanted to do a shoot together. We roped in our mutual friend, Priya (who with her sister were my Water Bearers) who did a fantastic job on the outfit as well as the hair and makeup styling.
We wanted to tell the story of a wood nymph who is obsessed with fashion, who sneaks out and steals purses, boots, and shoes for her collection.
More photos under the cut.
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I recently helped out a local non-profit, Seattle Atheists, with some photography for their up-coming bus campaign ad entitled “1 in 4“. This was a really tight-deadline job. We ended up shooting 3 scenes on the same day as well as delivering post-processed images that night to the designer who was finishing up the ads. It was a lot of work, but I feel like we really knocked it out of the park. It was really important for the group to show a diversity of age, race, sex, and activity. It was also important that the ads not come off as antagonistic. Overall the message was one of positivity and not hostility.
These 3 ads (and hopefully more to come soon!) will be displayed on busses around the Seattle area starting mid-December, so keep an eye out!
I recently found this fantastic Steampunk Time Machine by Steampunker.de on the fabulous DIY site Instructibles. It’s utterly fantastic and would absolutely love to get my hands on one of these to shoot.
Design by Kyle HepworthIn my “real life” I’m a graphic designer, which in many ways is a very similar occupation to being a commercial photographer. It’s client-driven work and you’re working directly with the image of another entity, so there’s always a bit of give-and-take. Part of the creative process from the perspective of working for a client is getting good Creative Direction. Think of Creative Direction as the road-map for the project. It helps to keep you on track and not to get side-tracked by all the different possibilities, and it’s absolutely critical for a project where you’re working with a team, rather then in a one-on-one situation (and I highly recommend it even in those situations).
I fell into this pitfall recently where I was asked to build a Flash program for a client. Up-front I asked for a set of story-boards, or at least a mock-up of exactly what I needed to deliver at the end. This was a rush-job and the timeline was rather short, hence the reason I was brought in at all. I was never give a design file that showed what I needed to deliver. Instead I was given several different pieces with the implication that I could put it together from them. Because of the tight time-frame I made a critical error and decided to proceed without the roadmap based on what I understood of the project. When I delivered the project with some time to spare there was a confusion about what was included in the project and what wasn’t, which caused several hours of panic before we figured out a good resolution to the project. An important lesson here is that blame doesn’t just rest on the person overseeing the project, but at every level of the team everyone needs to be sure at the outset that everyone is on the same page. The fault was just as much mine as anyone else’s.
Some people confuse having Creative Direction with being turned into a technical shooter and sucking all the creativity out of a job. I disagree with this view. There certainly are some folks who take giving Creative Direction to the extreme of controlling every aspect of the shoot away from the photographer (or other creative), but truly good Creative Directors know that to get the best work from their team they need to trust in their team to produce and they’re just there to make sure we end up where we’re aiming to go.
A good example of Creative Direction is for an ad campaign I shot recently for a local non-profit, 1in4wa.org which is raising awareness of the non-theist community. They laid out their central message for me as well as several different examples of the “scenes” they wanted to shoot. We brainstormed ways of improving the message to make it tighter and stronger, and then laid out a plan to shoot 4 of the scenes all in one day at 2 main locations (we ended up only shoot 3 due to staffing issues). Having the roadmap there, knowing the aspect ratio of the final campaigns and roughly how the text was laid out let really helped me organize the scene in my head, and far from constraining me, it really helped set me free. I could focus on directing my models, getting the emotions, and finding the right locations and angles. I didn’t have to worry so much about the technical. I took some on-the-set Creative Direction but on-set my role was switched. On-set I’m the Creative Director because the project manager trusted that I knew the requirements and that our visions were in sync.
You’ll be able to see the rest of those ad campaigns as soon as I’m release to put them out there!
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