Posts tagged creative

Self Portraits

0

Ever since I started taking pictures, it was inevitable that I would occasionally become the subject matter. Usually it was testing a technique or someone else controlling the camera. This isn’t to say I’m camera shy, but I just don’t point it at myself as often as I do everything else. Anyway, I went through my old archives and dug up some pictures of myself. Most of them haven’t been seen before, or some that have been seen I edited them in a completely different way. This will likely be my only self-portrait post, but it was interesting going through the process. It’s strange looking at pictures of yourself for a while. It starts to seem like you’re looking at a different person.

So this is my self-portrait selection. My brain works in weird ways, so I tried to make these reflect that.

Extreme Honesty

0

Over the past few years I’ve come across some seriously fantastic portrait photography. For a while I tried to figure out how to create the “epic face” look. This look is one of extreme honesty. No detail of the face goes undiscovered. Every little wrinkle, sunspot, hair and even pore is brought to the viewer. Back then I thought it took several steps in Photoshop and a couple hours per edit. After accidentally stumbling upon some things, I discovered a relatively simple way to make highly dynamic portraits. These shots give a sense of deep emotion. They portray an image of a long life, full of experience and ready to tell a story.

I know I said the last post was one of my favorites, but this one is pretty high up there too.

Note to photographers: I don’t use Photoshop often. Rarely in fact. If you’re not using Lightroom, you’re doing it wrong.


Dream in White

0

It’s been about a month and a half since my last post, but I think this makes up for it. Sometimes I have a vision of a certain look I want to go for, and then decide who I want to work with to accomplish it. My vision for this shoot was white. White clothing on a white background; very clean and bright.

Back in March I shot a friend on the beach who I thought had a lot of potential. It was her first photoshoot and I put her out in front of the beach crowd. That shoot turned out a few nice shots, but ultimately it served to give her a little experience with posing and getting over the awkwardness. I thought the red hair and sexy personality would be the perfect match for this shoot. I ended up being right, but I had no idea how much I would love this set until I opened it up and began post-processing.

All my shoots have their own unique characteristics, but this one stands out to me as one of the best.

Misc.

0

This past weekend I was running around all over town and had my camera with me most of the time. I went to Ft De Soto beach to scout out a location for a future shoot (which will be pretty awesome) and stumbled across a couple interesting shots.

Later that day I went to my friend’s parents house who live on a lake. My intent was to do some astrophotography, but there was just too much light in the sky. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to photograph the Milky Way. I ended up just taking a couple shots of the lake and even did some light drawing. It was nothing too complex, but was still kinda fun.

On the way home after that I stopped and did yet another long traffic exposure. Nothing new but I enjoy doing long exposures of traffic at night. Also, the first shot is a portrait I did of a friend a couple months ago which turned out nicely.

Act Natural

1

When dealing with models I’ve run into a common problem. Basically we both get arranged, I tell them where to stand, then a lot of times the question comes up: “what should I do?”

While that seems like such a basic question, it’s not very easy to answer. Some people go into a series of poses they know look good, but those won’t necessarily work for everybody. I used an interesting tactic to get what I wanted this time. I just decided to give no direction. Eventually she started just playing around and acting natural. For her it was the perfect look.

Go to Top