Kite Operations shots are up! Photos for their press release of their latest album, "Festival"!

Cool, one of my photos was selected to be used as Cafe Orlin's feature photo on Schmap. heh! fun!

check it out!

Labels: photo

Been up two day straight now, working. Haven't slept, not even a nap. Had to rush into the studio today cause the client was having a fit about wanting stuff ahead of time. Sigh, I'm so tired. I'm finally gonna get some sleep after this, two more sets to go!

I ordered two Profoto strobes after that bulb meltdown yesterday. Got me a set of Compact-R 600's with zoom reflectors and some silver beaded umbrellas. It should come in tomorrow, I'm so excited!!!

Labels: lighting, photo

So I've been really digging Andrzej Dragan's style and have been doing all of my self portraits in a hyper real technique lately. At first I would do them extremely exaggerated because the theory behind hyper real styles is that the details and features are accentuated so that there it feels almost too real. It makes it feel almost animated, slightly off about the photo. Stylized realism, sort of....


Now I realized excess exaggeration isn't necessary a good thing, unless you're going for a movie poster look. Dark and creepy is great but it's too narrow of a style, it's not diverse enough to be useful. I'm going to be focusing on details and brighter lighting, making the subject pop out.


I'm pretty happy with my progress and pace, learning through process. I'll need more subjects to shoot soon, you can only do so much with yourself.

Went to pick up some work at the studio today, some Star Wars bedding project to follow up my previous ones before the holidays. Decided to drop by B&H to grab some white satin umbrellas for my lights on the way home, so I can start testing light setup. Somehow I ended up with a Sigma 50mm EX DG Macro, I'm so going to get yelled at.

Anyway, I started my 365 days challenge today with a HDR Dragan portrait! Go check it out!

Labels: photo

Canon finally updated the 5D2's firmware!! Go grab it now! If you didn't already know, this update will address the "Black dot" phenomenon (the right side of point light sources become black) and vertical banding noise with the first production models.

Labels: photo

Fact: I only switched to digitals a few years ago. I used to use analog film SLR's for shooting. Along with that, I used to be somewhat of a purist when it came to manipulating my photos. I didn't like (photo)shopping them outside of what you could do in a dark room. I didn't even like cropping my photos. I'm not entirely sure why, might have just been the nature of film photography. I was still reluctant after switching over to digital, but since my reinvigorated interest in digital photography I've been learning more and more and the doors are just flying open. I'm learning so many new techniques and things you can't possibly achieve without some actual post processing work.

The reason I'm talking about this is because of the direction I plan on taking my photography. I've been looking into a few techniques and they really intrigue me. Advanced lighting, Draganizing (pioneered by Andrzej Dragan) and general digital rendering. All of which point towards portrait photography, something I've always been shy about in the pass. Not anymore.

Another thing that got me thinking of all this was Ulric Collette's smoke portrait. I saw it during the trip and been dying to try it out. I finally got a chance to do that earlier today with the raven shot. It's just amazingly fun. Check out his website!