photography

Thu - August 21, 2008

Tricia and Nick, sitting in a tree...

Tricia got married last weekend. I don't shoot weddings, but I was put in charge of the photobooth. I ended up shooting in the same style I use for magazines and album covers since that's what I'm comfortable with. I could not believe how much fun people had! It wasn't even open bar! I was only set up for 2-4 people at a time, but groups crowded in anyways and since the music was so loud, it was all I could do to get everyone under the light. I wish I could show you all of them, but here's a sampler. These aren't photoshopped, they're pretty much right out of the camera. Who has time to photoshop 350 pictures?

oh and I did grab a handful of shots.. here's one I liked shot with the 50f1.2:

Posted at 09:26 PM

Tue - August 5, 2008

Seeing RED

Isn't this a nice shot of my wife? Looks a lot like my normal photography. So why is it in final cut and not photoshop? Because I didn't shoot it with my Canon 5D. It's a single frame from a 24fps sequence from my RED camera. You should see it in motion, it looks amazing. It's like a 5D that shoots 24fps all the way up to 120fps. I've barely scratched the surface. Just wait till I really learn to use it. Of course, no one is waiting for me, I shoot my first music video in 2 weeks. Gah!

Sorry blogging has dropped off, I've been cramming 4 years of film school into 4 months worth of time.

oh.. and producing the newsboys record with my fellow monk gocher.

Posted at 01:47 AM

Tue - June 17, 2008

Sara

I was finishing up some edits and came across this lovely shot. Sadly, the Sara Groves cover shoot for Radiant was shelved after Radiant was discontinued so they never did end up using these shots. Nonetheless, I did enjoy the shoot and wish I had time to shoot the cover for her Christmas record. I was right in the middle of finishing up our record when they asked so I had to pass. Here's hoping I'll get to work with them again. Sara is gorgeous and amazingly charming and it's hard to believe she had the same awkward high school stories we all did, but she does. Ugly ducklings do grow up to be swans.

lots of stuff going on over here. I'm backed up 3 records already. Crazy.

For you shooters, this is my old standbye. One flash off camera through an umbrella. Expose manually for background. Bring the flash up to taste. Shoot RAW. Edit to taste.

Posted at 01:19 AM

Tue - May 27, 2008

Haley n Wes

Had some fun this weekend with some friends of ours. This is a crop of a horizontal shot since the details got lost when shrunk down to the size I usually use on this blog. The full picture is better but I couldn't stand for you to miss the expression on his face. They've been married a couple weeks. :)

For you photo guys, if you couldn't guess, it's one umbrella off to camera right, although in addition to my normal sb800, I had a vivitar 285hv in there to give it more juice. By the time we shot this, we didn't need both flashes since the sun had gone down, but I used them both anyways. I split them with a cheap pc cord splitter. Incidentally, the 285HV seems like it was made by the people who make cereal box toys, but it puts out light just the same. If you need a flash and don't have much to spend: 285HV. I got the white of the dress and the black of the pants to co-exist by opening multiple raw versions, -1, -2 stops in this case and painting in what I liked about each exposure. RAW has more dynamic range than jpeg so I always shoot RAW. I might not if I was a wedding shooter with 2000 shots a day to wade through. I think this was my 16-35 but I'm not sure. I was shooting with my 50mm 1.2 at 1.2 originally but man I had trouble getting it to focus properly shooting into the sunlight.

Posted at 12:17 AM

Tue - February 5, 2008

to touch the sky...

Blogging may drop off a bit here as we are getting into the deep deep phase of recording. We're trying to get as much done before the band leaves for tour, so it's pretty much 11 hours a day every day for the next month and a half. yah baby. When we're done with this, we're all going to be wearing gold plated diapers. Here's a teaser shot that has something to do with the next record, but it's secret for now...

Posted at 10:08 AM

Tue - December 4, 2007

the great depression

Some friends of mine love vintage pictures so we shot this family pic for them. The smiles don't really go with the era, but ah well, what can you do? I feel like this caption sums it up:

Having made a fortune in real estate, the Phillips family considered the great depression a bit of lark actually.

UPDATE: completely forgot, this was my favorite image from the shoot, almost makes me want to have kids.

Posted at 01:37 AM

Tue - October 30, 2007

Sara

I was in Minneapolis last week shooting Sara Groves for a magazine cover. Sara's new album sounds fantastic and she and her husband Troy are about the nicest people I've ever met. Unfortunately for my outdoor location, the crazy winds played havoc with her hair and inverted one of my umbrellas. This isn't the cover shot or setup, but it's one of my favorites.

Lighting setup: Nikon SB800 into umbrella, camera left.

Posted at 10:33 PM

Mon - October 22, 2007

woof

The girls brought their dogs to a vocal session the other day....This snapshot of trish is existing light (window) and I used a high pass filter to give it a little pow, which is one of my favorite tricks right now. In photoshop, duplicate your layer, run a high pass filter on the duplicate and then set the duplicate layer to overlay. Instant contrast and pop in the highlights. It really makes the details crisp without oversharpening.

Posted at 09:46 AM

Sun - August 19, 2007

12 days of Shane and Shane

It's christmas! Actually it's not, but to stay on top of their publishing schedules, magazines are shooting their christmas covers now. It's challenging to do a christmas themed magazine cover in 106 degree weather. On friday we found out the band could do it sunday and we'd have 5 hours total from 2-7. A little brainstorming later and here's what we got. Considering the budget and time constraints I was pretty happy we got anything at all. If you don't know, this is Shane and Shane and they have a very cool earthy folk rock thing going on. For christmas I thought I'd punch it up a bit. I originally wanted to dress them as the blues brothers but that idea got shot down. This is my first assigned magazine cover and at christmas, you can see for yourself what magazine it is. The Shanes were a hoot to work with, I wish I could show you all the outakes, they are not afraid to throw down some magnum. Or blue steel.

Same crew, same good job: Abby, Evan, Sharon, Blake and Shara.

Posted at 11:00 PM

Mon - July 30, 2007

Lanae

Shot another new artist for Centricity, her name is Lanae and she's an interesting singer/songwriter being produced by the prolific and talented Mark Hammond. Mark's done a lot of stuff for Disney and he knows how to make a vocal shine and seriously is a really nice guy. You might think that I say everyone in the music business is "a really nice guy" based on how often I say it, but actually, if they're not really nice people, I just don't mention them. Today was an experiment in daylight fill flash and if you read this blog, you know by now that it's lit with one nikon flash through an umbrella. Same procedure as shooting sunsets, expose for the ambient, then creep the flash up till you're happy with it, which in this case was ALL the way up. Speaking of sunsets, I was hoping to get a nice one, but it wasn't meant to be, so I borrowed a trick from Frank Ockenfels 3 and made a sunset via the SB800. I haven't really tweaked these yet, so you can still see the light stand if you look close. Pretty much the whole day, all I used was my trusty nikon flash.

Nice work Steve, Abby, Evan and Lanae!

Posted at 02:11 AM

Mon - June 18, 2007

Field lighting

I was at historic Churchill Downs for my good friend Lee's wedding and while I normally travel with a Westcott double fold shoot-through umbrella, all I had with me for lighting was an SB800. My significant other wanted a snapshot and without an umbrella or reflector I wasn't sure what to do. After walking around outside a bit, it occurred to me that the exterior walls at Churchill were white enough to serve as a huge diffuser, so with some strange looking photo yoga, I was able to get the shot I wanted. I set the exposure manually for the ambient light and then crept the flash up manually. It's 1600 ISO so it's a touch grainy, but with one hand holding the camera and the other pointing the flash behind me over my shoulder, 1/50th was all I could manage to hold steady. A nearby couple promptly handed me their point and shoot, but I sure hope they weren't expecting similar results. I've gotten so used to setting up reflectors and diffusers that I almost overlooked the really obvious solution. I read recently on strobist about how you can even use someone wearing a white shirt as an impromptu bounce diffuser.

Here's a ringlight experiment with the alien bees ringlight. It looks rather lovely on my calibrated screen but completely loses all the detail in the blacks on an uncalibrated macbook so you'll just have to either take my word for it or go buy a Pantone Huey and calibrate your monitor. More on that in a later post. This shot was taken before the wedding, and the groom, Lee "rock and roll" bridges, is the stunned looking fellow in the middle. :)

Marking a very rare occasion, I was actually a groomsman, which as Lee explained, "was the only way to get Max to show up". It was a lovely wedding actually and I wish Erin and Lee the very best.

note: I didn't shoot the wedding, bands are enough pressure for me already thanks! If you screw up an album cover you can always do it again....

Posted at 01:47 AM

Tue - May 29, 2007

the lonely hearts

I did some shots for alt country band; the lonely hearts. Here's a test shot of the lead singer; Will and his brother; Josiah. I really like this shot. I'm a huge fan of the portraiture of Yann Arthus-Bertrand and I think that's reflected in this photo. The band wanted something romantic and timeless and so we crafted this look. I try very hard to capture the look of the band, not to impose a look upon them.

What I like to do, especially for newer bands is to have a test day before the big shoot. It's a low pressure day where I make sure I know how to best light each person and we also get everyone's basic camera anxiety out of the way. The band knows me by shoot day, I know how to best light them, what angles flatter what person and they're comfortable in front of the camera. It then lets us concentrate on the shoot, which if I'm shooting against a sunset, may have only a 20 minute window. It adds a day to the shoot and it's probably not financially profitable, but I do it anyways. I like to over prepare. Plus typically on test day, we frequently get surprising and useable results.

This shot was lit with alien bees. I gave up on the JTL everlights. I'll come back to continuos light soon, probably with kinoflows or cool lights, but the JTLs failed me one too many times on a shoot. They're just not reliable. Plus, Buckley doesn't have fingerprints on one hand due to an unfortunate failure to remember the light was hot. So I bought me some more alien bees, including the sexy new ring light, which absolutely didn't get used on this shoot. This was lit with one AB800 through a gridded softbox. I tried several lights, but in the end, the 2 foot square gridded softbox let me put the light where I wanted it and only where I wanted it. You can see how the light is confined to an area but still soft. I love the look. Not a lot of post on this one, just tweaks. I also got the alien bees wired remote and while I've got a couple cheaper wireless systems, the wired remote lets me adjust the power of the light (up to 4 separate) from the remote and it fired every time. It pre-fired a couple times but I was able to track that down to the canon STE-2 that I use for focus assist in low-light. Next time I'll put the dummy plug in the back of the AB800 to stop it from triggering optically, since the STE2 is obviously firing an infrared trigger which I forgot about since I use it only for focus assist these days.

The alien bees stuff isn't profoto gear, but for the money, man these things rock.

Posted at 01:25 AM

Thu - March 8, 2007

Keeping it unreal.

How to add kung pow to your photos

There's a new look going around lately and if you're interested in adding this color to your palette, it's really not as hard as people have been making it out to be. Matt was over today as we're working on the next Superchick record, so I dragged him outside to try this. The bottom shot is the original and the top shot is the extra crispy. Here's how I shot and processed this in about 3 hours total.

WARNING: This assumes a basic knowledge of your camera, flash and photoshop.

Shoot:
I used a 12-24mm sigma on a canon 5d with a nikon sb-800 connected via pc sync. Everything on manual. I set an exposure for the ambient (background) light then just manually turned the flash up till I balanced the ambient with the flash. It's one flash through a 48 inch shoot through umbrella. My sister was drafted into holding it. You can read up on this kind of lighting at www.strobist.com where they practically wrote the book on this kind of guerilla lighting. Too bad I had to figure it out on my own before I found strobist. Fortunately you don't have to. The sigma 12mm lens is awesome for clouds but tends to make people look "hobbity" so to counter this, I center them where there's the least amount of distortion. The lighting set up is not expensive, nor do you need a 5D for this.

Create an HDR
I shoot RAW and part of why I shoot RAW is because you can actually pull out a couple stops of extra exposure. I opened the file in photoshop and saved 3 tiffs; normal, one stop under and two stops over in this case. I then opened the tiffs in a program called photomatix. Photoshop cs2 has an HDR function but I'm used to photomatix. Inside photomatix I created an HDR by combining all 3 exposures and then tonemapped it till I liked the result. This is much easier than it sounds. Download photomatix, the demo is free. What you have then is a very effecty looking but low contrast picture. Save it as a tiff. UPDATE: another way to get this look is to use the shadow/highlight function in photoshop.

Pop the contrast
In photoshop I then opened the HDR tiff. I opened the original picture as well and copied that as a layer over the HDR. Here's a bit of benfrank (www.benfrankdesign.com) kung fu: Turn the saturation all the way down on the original picture layer than change the layer setting from normal to overlay. Adjust the percentage to get as contrasty as you like. Magic! If I die after this post under mysterious circumstances, it will be because I have violated the laws of the temple and given away a secret that ben frank may have to kill me to protect.

Fake and bake
I liked what I had after that but I was looking for more drama so I took some other clouds that I'd shot at the same focal length and mixed them in the background. I straightened the horizon and after I'd flattened the picture I used the photoshop render lighting effects to spotlight his face to draw attention to it.

pow. finished. total time from picking up the camera to finishing post processing: under 3 hours.

Now did we get much songwriting done? not really.

I promise, I am writing a nice long blog about studio acoustics. I just got distracted today.

Posted at 11:50 PM

Fri - January 26, 2007

Balancing ambient light and strobe

Shot this pic for Centricity of new artist Daniel Kirkley. Some slight photoshopping to darken the edges, remove distracting white threads on shirt and shrink overly dilated pupils. Otherwise it came out of the camera pretty much like that. It was lit by a single nikon sb800 through a shoot-through umbrella. You can get more on this kind of lighting at strobist.com, they've got a lot of info on this kind of guerilla shooting. This was a relatively simple set-up, but it was thought out well in advance so when I had that crucial 10-20 minutes of perfect light, we were in place and ready to go. We had to delay the shoot a week to get the weather to co-operate but it was well worth it as you can see. If you're trying to re-create this, you manually dial in your exposure for the ambient light and then you creep the flash power up on your subject till you like what you see. Just be sorted out in advance because the light changes literally every 5 minutes as the sun sets. I use nikon flashes cause they're much easier to dial in manual mode. I connect them to the 5D with a pc sync cord. If you don't have pc sync on your camera, you can get a hotshoe-pc sync adapter. The pc sync cables are cheaper than the canon or nikon off shoe cords. No metering or fancy information exchange, but I pretty much shoot everything full manual, flash and camera. I have fancier better lights, but I needed to keep it light and simple on the balcony and didn't want anything heavy out there that might fall off. If I had to do it again, I would have used an L.E.D. flashlight pointed at the subject for modeling light and mostly to keep his pupils from dilating. I had the canon IR focus module on the camera which wasn't triggering anything but served as focus assist, since it was dark. Camera was a 5D and the lens was the 24-70f2.8L. Gotta love that 5D for skin tones. Although this particular shot was handheld, I picked up an acratech ultimate ballhead. It's pretty lovely and has that expensively made feel to it. For what it costs, it had better have that expensive feel to it.

you can see this shot in hi res at

http://homepage.mac.com/maxwax11/PhotoAlbum45.html

I'm gonna be in guatemala starting monday for next week, so no love on the cell, but I might be able to check my email. peace yo.

Posted at 12:13 AM

Wed - December 20, 2006

family ford 5

I don't usually shoot family portraits. For what it costs to have me come out, you can buy your own gear (see the xmas guide) and shoot shoot shoot all year round. Plus you get the joy of learning photography which I think most people can do if they try. It's sort of like playing piano. If you grew up asian, you played piano AND something. Most of the creatives I know make records AND shoot pictures. The other plus of shooting your own pics is you get to re-shoot if someone has a bad hair day and your family is much more comfortable with you than a professional shooter. The camera can only shoot what's in front of it and the more relaxed the person is, the more relaxed the picture will be. This is important if you're prone to chandler face; that rictus of a grin that happens if you're not comfortable in front of the camera.

I think if you have kids, it's especially important to document them as they grow up, so maybe a digital rebel xt is the family xmas gift. You also never know when your kid will pick it up and launch a career. I didn't intend to shoot professionally and now I'm getting $2500 a shoot so a camera might end up being like college... but much much cheaper. Hmm... $600 digital rebel vs. $60,000 college......of course, it's important to have a stable day job. I have a day job. It's called producing/songwriting. eeek. I am an asian parents nightmare. My brother was telling me about a guy in denver who's shot some Time magazine covers and until recently his asian mother's understanding of his photography career was that he worked in a photomat somewhere.

While I don't shoot family portraits professionally, I do enjoy shooting my friends and If Steve wasn't my good friend, the fact that's he's been the marketing director for 500,000 Superchick records would probably be incentive enough. I really like this picture of Steve and kids because it captures each of their personalities with Steve playing the longsuffering Dad to a perfect T. It's not hard to achieve results like this; it's lit with one 4 foot umbrella and could probably be approximated with a white ceiling. All you have to do is bounce a flash off a white sheet and remove anything distracting in the background. I don't have any furniture yet, so that was as simple as putting the TV on the floor and flipping a couch around. Digital photography is great because you can blow through a lot of shots without spending money and get everyone relaxed enough to be themselves. Pick a color theme so people don't clash, enlist one of the girls to do makeup touchups and you're shooting family portraits.

Really, it's that easy.

BTW, for me it was piano AND french horn. The french horn thing didn't work out so well.

UPDATE: I was told it's actually around 520,000 records and Stand in the Rain is holding it's 9th week as #1 CHR song. woo hoo! BfP and BfP 1.1 combined have hit around 210,000 records. That's a lot for us!

The picture above is begging for a caption, so send em in... I'll post the funniest ones. I'm talking to you Dan Shike, mr. funnyman!

Posted at 12:04 PM

Fri - December 1, 2006

DK

Steve asked me to shoot another new artist for centricity. I had everyone over today to brainstorm the shoot and while we were talking the massive storm that's blanketing the midwest was making the light very interesting. I took everyone outside and POW! I don't know if they're going to use these shots since they're completely not what we were talking about, but I like them a lot. The shot above was done with the sigma 12-24mm at 12mm and I just love the panoramic look it gives. I did do some perspective correction and crop. I'm glad I had my camera ready to go. The best quote I've heard about the "canon/nikon wars is that the best camera is THE ONE YOU HAVE WITH YOU.

It's not just that you have the camera either, it's that you've shot enough to know it inside and out, so when you get a chance to shoot you get what you need. The light was changing every 30 seconds today and I was balancing a strobe through an umbrella and ambient. Fortunately I had Jim Scherer to hold the umbrella and since we'd shot in St. Petersburg using the same lighting rig, it was easy.

Get out there, pick a side, start shooting. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Nothing gets you better like doing it, doing it and doing it.

That being said, I love love love this canon 5D. It almost feels like cheating it's so great.
Working on a couple things right now, gotta a ThumpMonks remix for the Newsboys brewing in my partner's studio in N.J. it's hott. ThumpMonks 1st single going to mix soon. Made Avail single string arrangements and new Superchick. Busy busy busy. I'll be in Seattle this weekend. Call the cell.

Posted at 02:00 AM

Sun - November 26, 2006

More photoshop fun

Ben Frank was over the other day and he let me in on some of his post processing photoshop fun. I can't even begin to touch Ben's photoshop wizardry skills, but it was fun to swap some ideas with him. After he showed me some of his signature kung fu, I pulled up some archived stuff, started messing with it and hey presto it's 3 in the morning, resulting in this heavily processed picture of Shaun, channeling tarantino. Anyways, though Ben is a big deal designer, he's turning his brain towards photography. you can find his pictures at:

www.benfrankphotography.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benfrank/sets/

Ben and I had an interesting debate over whether it was good to share trade secrets or to keep them to maintain your signature look. I know I've spent the last year trying to learn how to shoot like a photographer I much admire, but in the process I've learned to shoot like him and not like me, so now I'm going to stop studying his photos and start broadening my influences.

I tell new songwriters; there will always be people who can play better than you, sing better than you and write better than you. But only you can say what you have to say.

make your own art.
live your own life.

btw, haven't had much chance to shoot with the 5d, but I am loving how that camera renders pictures. skin tones! pow! Only bummer was giving up my canon 10-22 and discovering that the expensive 16-35 2.8L does not have the same crazy perspective distortion I love from a 10. I ended up buying a sigma 12-24 which is sadly only 4.5 at it's widest aperture, BUT has the distinction of being the widest, rectilinear, full frame lens in the known universe. In other words it is the lens of which no wider can be purchased.

Here's one of the finals from the Jason Gray shoot, the shoot that convinced me to mortage my soul for a 5D.

Posted at 03:49 AM

Sun - October 29, 2006

Jason Gray

Shot a singer/songwriter named Jason Gray last week. The label wanted an organic, rootsy vibe to match his music, so I shot a lot of existing light stuff instead of the big kung pao flash setups. Reid brought over a canon 5d he'd just gotten that morning and after seeing my lenses at full frame, I promptly ran away with it. I think I need a 5d. The full frame is a beautiful thing with the 24-70L and the pictures just seem more... filmlike I guess. I'm not sure if I could tell you why it's better, all I can tell you is that I'm selling my 30d, battery grip and canon 10-22 lens to get one. (anyone want that stuff?) It's just mo better. It's not in my budget right now, but I'll sell the jeep if I have to. Of course, I'm also trying to furnish a house, so if any of you (or your friends) work at ikea, west elm or macy's, (and can hook up the employee discount) let me know. I'm gonna try to buy some real furniture for the first time. I also bought an alien bees 400 which turned out to be very cool, although in retrospect, I should have gotten the 800. I like the alien bees stuff a lot. If you've been itching for pocket wizards but can't spring the big money, alien bees has a much cheaper version, which I haven't tried, but I bet is good stuff.

My pics of G.R.I.T.S. ran in CCM this month, but sadly I didn't get no credit.

These shots are mostly existing light. It was very overcast both days we shot but I rolled with it and as you can see, overcast turns the sun into a giant softbox. I did some processing for color. The middle shot, I used a shoot-through umbrella.

Thanks Jason, Steve, Josh, Reid, Buckley, Dana, Abby and Christie for helping me pull this one off.

UPDATE: I blame my british heritage on the fact that I spelled it jason grey. apparently it's jason gray. Fortunately this isn't as bad as the steve lillywhite fiasco where I lost an L somewhere on the way to the internet and he called me to tell me I'd gotten it wrong on my blog. We'll just add that to the many many most embarrassing moments in my life.

Posted at 10:52 PM

Wed - October 4, 2006

Vintage Digital

I love film. I wish I was better at shooting with it. More than resolution, highlight transition and contrast latitude, film just has a feel to it. I'm always trying to make my digital pictures feel like photos from another era. Jen Kroll (who's on the fancy pants grace ormonde list if you need wedding pictures in michigan) suggested kubota tools and I've been messing with that a bit along with Briana's suggestion of Photo Filters by Karl S. (free). I should probably turn all my tweaking into a PS action, but that's too easy, so here's my typical post technique.

1. Process the RAW.
I usually make three jpegs, typically one under, one over and one as I shot it. Photoshop, Bibble or Iphoto depending on what I'm feeling.

2. Layer
I use the 3 jpegs as layers in the camera and using the eraser paint the light where I want it. I'll use the darker one a lot to make the background fall out. Sometimes I make an HDR. Having all the dynamic range really helps.

3. Selective focus.
While I shoot very tight focus to start, typically an aperture of 2.8 or less, I'll frequently blur the background out even more. Photoshop has a lens blur plug-in that works great for this. I copy a layer, blur it and then using the eraser paint in the areas I want in focus.

4. Vignette
I love my holga. Well I loved it until zito left it on a tourbus. They don't make the polaroid back for it anymore, so if you want to see my holga photos, the only way you can is to get a copy of Beauty from Pain. Of course, it's not in stores anymore, so I guess if you already have that album you're the only people who can see them. Anyways, I usually pay homage to my holga by using the dodge tool (or is it burn?) to darken the corners. Sometimes if I really want to light the subject I'll use the photoshop render/lighting effects plug in. I copy the original layer, run the plug in and then paint in the parts I want.

5. Colorcast
I'm not real concerned with accurate color. Usually I just mess with the colors till I get something I like. Plug-ins are good here.

And that's how I breathe some vibe into my clean clean digital pictures.
Don't get me wrong, I love digital. I just can't wait till it looks more like film.

BTW that's tricia's dog sofie. Elle est tres belle n'est-ce pas?

Posted at 01:12 AM

Sat - September 30, 2006

Marathon cabs and cameras in your head.

Reid replaced the lexus with this. I think it's perfect. As you can see from the pictures, he looks like he belongs in the car. It's a marathon checker cab. It weighs 6400 pounds. If you placed it on a giant see-saw, you'd have to put 2 SUVS on the other side to balance it. It's lovely. It photographs beautifully well. These pictures basically took themselves. There's a lot of technique to learn in photography, but learning to see the potential picture before you even pick up the camera is a where it starts. Everywhere I go, I'm subconsciously location scouting. (That might be why I get lost all the time). Anything that looks interesting I mentally frame a picture around. Learning to see the beauty in the chaos is what photography is about. The most important camera is your mind. Walk around with your eyes wide open. When you shoot digital, there's no reason not to try everything. Last week I was driving by the most amazing sunset. Probably in the top 5 sunsets ever and I was in a place where I had the city skyline perfectly silhouetted against it. Did I have my camera? No. Bad bad max.

I just got photoshop CS2. It's pretty cool. Anyone got any favorite plug-ins or actions to recommend?

Posted at 12:46 PM

Wed - September 27, 2006

G.R.I.T.S in the studio.

Got a call from my longtime friend Dave Palmer to take some studio shots of hip hop duo: G.R.I.T.S. Having met the guys before, I was glad to do it. Here's a couple of shots I liked. You can see them in higher res here:

http://homepage.mac.com/maxwax11/PhotoAlbum43.html

Which I'd like you to do, since they look very nice blown up. It has come to my attention that many of you aren't clicking through to the links, including people in my own band. Yesterday Melissa and Tricia were both surprised to see the Cartoon Network panorama for the first time, so don't ignore the links! Good things happen to those who click through.

These were shot in TobyMac's studio, which was formerly a mexican joint called "on the border". I was one of the first people to mix there right after it became a studio (before toby owned it) and we kept getting interrupted by people who wanted a burrito. One lady in particular stood in the lobby with her daughter insisting that we seat her even after we told her it was a studio.

In the background of the shot, they're using auralex panels to cut reflection. A much cheaper and more effective way to do that is 703 fiberglass panels wrapped in speaker grill cloth. We'll have a tutorial on making those as soon as I get a chance.

Posted at 08:46 AM

Thu - September 21, 2006

More Experiments with Light

Josh Weaver Band was in studio putting down some ideas. Josh is a singer/songwriter from IL who writes fantastic songs and he's got over 100 of them and still writing. We actually recorded 17 of them in one weekend which we don't normally do, but it was really valuable for the band to get to hear how they sound together as a group. When you're playing, you tend to focus on what you're playing so the studio is great for hearing the big picture and also figuring out if what you're playing is actually serving the song, versus just something you figured out you could play.

It's always tough to take pics in the studio because the low lighting that musicians favor is very vibey and good for honeymoons, but terrible for pictures. To recreate the vibe I lit these pictures with a gridded softbox. In the first picture there's actually two, one softbox on the drummer and one on andy. I really like gridded softboxes because the light is soft, but you can control where it goes. If I'd used umbrellas for this, the light would have spilled everywhere. Also good for studio shooting is a very wide angle lens because there's rarely enough room to back up. These were shot with the canon 10-22mm. Almost no post work has been done to these, just a tiny contrast boost. That's pretty much how they came out of the camera. Gotta love that light.

I also made an old school composite which you can see here:

http://homepage.mac.com/maxwax11/PhotoAlbum42.html
If you keep clicking on it, eventually it will take you to a version with decent res.
If you can't be bothered to click on the link, here's a wee version. 11 shots 50mm, f1.4

UPDATE: Brian asks, if I have the 17-70mm already, why would I want the 50mm lens?

Well Brian, I'm glad you asked:
While you will have 50mm in your zoom range and you will be able to frame the picture identically, you won't get quite the same results, here's why:

the 50mm lens has a maximum aperture of f1.8 or f1.4 depending on which 50mm it is. (they even make a 50mm f.1.0 if you feel like spending $3000) It allows you to shoot in very low light enviroments and the very wide maximum aperture gives you a shallow depth of field that's good for portraiture. The 50 is also popular for a couple other reasons, 1. it approxmates the focal length of the human eye and 2. It's very compact and lightweight.

The 50mm lens is also a prime. (single focal length) Typically, you can get excellent lenses in primes at less cost than you can a good zoom because primes are simpler and cheaper to make. If you're starting on a budget many people recommend getting primes first. They force you to zoom with your feet which is how you're supposed to do it. Using the zoom should be an intentional decision to pick a focal length. It should never be because you didn't feel like walking. Remember the focal length of a zoom or prime changes the way the picture looks. We should probably have a tutorial on this later...

The 50mm is also very popular because in the f1.8 version it's under $100 and I recommend this to people as their first lens they buy after they get the camera. You can shoot in low light without flash with this setup and it's a good point to start learning. However, if all you do is landscapes outside at high noon, you don't need this lens. I personally love my 50mm 1.4 for low light unobtrusive shooting.

Posted at 08:52 PM

Tue - September 12, 2006

Mon - September 11, 2006

More experiments with portable lighting

In my quest for portable studio quality lighting, I continue to make frankenlighting rigs, mating bits and pieces that were not meant to be together. This is much like what they're doing with all the poodle variants; Cockapoo anyone? Ugly, but functional, my portable ceiling still fits in a backpack but now takes too much time to set up. I do like the results I'm getting though, here's some shots I grabbed during soundcheck. No post production on these except some minor sharpening. I really like the quality of the light and the ability to control where it goes, my previous set up would have spilled light all over the place. I was getting frustrated with the canon IR triggering system so I took a chance on some cheap chinese-made wireless flash triggers from ebay and while they are cheaply made and interfere with my home security system, they get the job done without requiring line of sight like the $200 canon system. Best of all I can use my nikon flashes in full manual mode again. Total cost on the chinese transmitters was about $40. Perhaps some day I will achieve the ideal design and perfect the pointable portable ceiling, as elegant a union as a reese's peanut butter cup. I leave you with this quote from Andrew of Georgetown masters on the reese's peanut butter cup:

It's peanut butter, in a cup........ but....... the cup is made of chocolate.

Posted at 02:18 AM

Fri - August 4, 2006

Beauty Dish vs. Gridded Softbox Cage Match!!

Battle of the diffusers!

So I've been very curious about beauty dishes lately and out of nowhere Jess goes "I have 2 in my car!". I promptly set up a cage match. In one corner, JTl everlights with gridded softbox, in the other alien bees 400 with beauty dish. What I really should have done is used the same light source and changed only the diffuser for it to be fair. I didn't think of that till later. I've read that continuos light is creamier than strobes and I'll test that some other day. Really what I wanted to see was if I just had to have a beauty dish, to see if it did something my gridded softbox did not. Beauty dishes supposedly have a slightly brighter center which is good for portraits. These shots are at the same aperture and jpegs right out of the camera (no post). These are not how I light normally, but I kept it to one light to see more clearly how each light works. Jamie was very gracious in sitting for me and her boyfriend Will sat for me too since he's almost as beautiful. In the above shot, Jamie is lit with the gridded softbox. In the shot below she's lit with a beauty dish. As you can see, besides the color temp difference, they're very similar. The light is both directional and diffuse for both. They're both flattering portrait lights. In the end I declared the gridded softbox the winner because it was just the tiniest bit smoother on the skin. Either one works though and would have different applications for different things. Incidentally, the JTLs are pretty much crap lights, (we blew 2 fuses and 3 bulbs on 2 shoots) while the alien bees are pretty good value for the money. If you want what the pros use, it's called... wait for it... profoto...