Eat, Sleep, Breathe-Photography

When you find yourself up late at night, trolling flickr for some cool stuff to look at, following every photographer you can find on twitter, and have a stack of photo magazines thicker than that other stack of other magazines, you're probably pretty into this stuff.

Welcome to the club.

I'm lucky enough to do photography all day, every day. I don't take vacations, I take trips with my camera. I don't call in sick for work, I do research in bed. And I certainly don't dread waking up every morning, unless it's really really early, and even then I manage to get pumped for the days shoot.

In other words, like many other people out there, I eat, sleep and breathe photography. If you're unsure if you have the symptoms, here's a quick diagnosis after the break.

EAT: Like consuming photography? Do you have bookcases full of how-to books, tech spec, gear pron and specialty magazines? Lists of contacts on flickr, following on twitter, fan of on facebook and every other social media site imaginable for you to check out their work? Are you subscribed to blogs like this one? Then you're a photo consumer, and an active one at that. Consuming photos is almost as important as taking them, it gives you ideas and direction, shows you things you may have never thought of on your own. Just don't forget to go out and try them too.

SLEEP: In addition to being at that age where pulling all-nighters is both necessary and possible, I'll spend more time thinking about photography before I go to sleep than any other time of the day-even when I'm working. Most artists I know keep a journal or notepad next to their bed, just in case inspiration strikes. Since my bed is currently 6 feet off the ground, I have to climb down and get on my computer, but you can use some looseleaf if you want to.

BREATHE: If I've learned one thing about photographers, it's that we love to talk. About photography. All day. While I was running the awesome Ann Arbor Strobist meetups, we talked about tools and techniques non-stop before, during and after our meetings. Even when the discussion drifted away from what we were doing, it would land right back down on another area of photography.

And that's why social media has found a huge amount of success in photography, or vice versa. We all love to share how we create images, what drives us to do it, and what's next on our list to conquer. The internet in general made it that much easier to do so, and moved the discussion out of the camera store and into the homes of photographers everywhere. Everyone from a first time shooter to a full time pro has something they want to share.

So, do you eat, sleep and breathe photography? If you're already here, I think we know the answer.

Phase 3, part 2

My self portrait-mom just loves it.

At what we first thought was going to be the end of phase 3 here at Hallmark, we got a few more assignments or "additional personal submissions" to do before we leave on spring break. A chance to break free, dust off our creativity that we may have left neglected in the corner, and shoot whatever appealed to us, keeping our final portfolio in mind.

My combo sports/action and portrait kept me fairly busy, waiting for the weather to break, which it fortunately did, and scheduling in some people to play the sports I really wanted to photograph. While it's always interesting to go find people online that will follow directions (i.e. please have the equipment required for the sport you want to portray), I did manage to find some great shots, in and out of the studio.

Another big thanks goes to Bob at Bikes Unlimited for continuing to let me borrow equipment to shoot at school. Here's some of my favorites after the break.


This shot was a rehash of my first attempt at shooting a bike in the studio. Going in the opposite direction for the background and then throwing in some props to support it. The first bike was held in place with 20lbs fishing line, which mysteriously disappeared, only to be replaced by 4lbs line for this shot. A whole lot of fishing line was used to make this shot stand up straight, as well as hold the helmet and shoes in their individual shots.


With my career plan wildly adjusted at the last minute to consider job prospects in LA instead of NY, I figured movie posters and celebrity portraits would be a good idea to have in my portfolio. A decidely Max Payne feel to this portrait inspired some cool art and graphics for other shots, but this quietly insane portrait of my buddy Wojo was just right for what I wanted to turn in.







A not so quiet shot, or series to shoot, Mike Esposito got angry for this and had the chance to practice his evil eye. The lighting for this was super simple, just two profoto striplights on the side, and a grid on his face to bring him up a little. I've been trying to avoid doing all low-key shots, a habit of mine from working in areas with less than attractive backgrounds, but I wanted a villain shot to mix things up a little bit.



And since I wanted to show versatility in both indoors and outdoors photography, with and without lights and equipment, this au-natural picture from the Mountain Dew Tour is getting put into the mix. This was during a practice run, when the athletes were more concerned with hitting the spot right in front of us for some face time than getting huge air. This was taken on a borrowed Nikon D3 and a 70-200 f/2.8, the lighting was provided by the curve of the halfpipe reflecting the sun right behind him, giving me some blisteringly fast shutter speeds and perfect sandwich lighting.

The self portrait way at the top was shot with four lights, two striplights on the sides, gridded background light, and beauty dish high right. The $1.20 grape flavored cigar from the Exxon station was lit in photoshop, and the hammer and sickle pin added in as well in post. The love of Vodka was not added in photoshop.

Next is spring break for a week, where I'll be shooting some video in Aspen, CO. and then trying my hand at Final Cut Express to learn editing techniques for an upcoming promotional video I'll be shooting at school on the 5dMKII, so be sure to keep checking back for more posts on what's in the pipe.

Phase 3 Roundup

Didn't manage to write much at all during our phase 3 at Hallmark, but it's been paying off to do nothing but photography all day, every day, with a little bit of sleep thrown in there. The 15 assignments were a mix of portraits, both on location and in studio, product photography and a bit of design thrown in for good measure.

The headliner here is a low-key portrait, done in studio. We're supposed to orient our portfolios to a certain field, and having to choose a direction helped more than I expected. While some students are still up in the air what they'll be doing after graduation, I managed to narrow mine down to sports and lifestyle oriented advertising. Just putting a name on it helped, even though I've been working towards it this whole time. See the highlights from my phase 3 portfolio and some personal work after the jump.

The last shot I did for phase 3 is one of my favorites. It came out almost exactly how I had envisioned it, and it looks like it should be blown up to 30x50 feet and slapped on a billboard. If they used billboards to advertise mountain bikes that is. The bike was shot as part of a design assignment, creating a brochure for a local business. Bikes-Unlimited's owner Bob was a great guy to chat with while I shot picture of him and his store to create their brochure, and even loaned me some equipment, including this bike to take back to school and shoot.

The other shot done for the inside spread of the brochure was again equipment on loan from Bob, and made me remember that I could really use some new ski boots, especially with some of the work I did this winter. If you want to shoot athletes on the mountain, you'd better be able to keep up with them.

But there's no way I'm keeping up with this guy, from the Mountain Dew Tour held up in Vermont at Mt. Snow. Freestyle skiing and snowboarding coupled with some fast cameras and front row seats makes some intense pictures.

A new friend that just happened to be from MSU back home and had made her way to Mass. ended up as a great replacement for some pictures I did a while ago when I was just starting out in sports advertising. The weather didn't want to cooperate, but that lead to a great tagline and some ideas for an entire campaign for me to shoot for practice.

And while our previous assignments did cover how to shoot glass in general, this picture, which ended up as my advertisement after being cut out was anything but simple. Turns out you have to drink the beer FIRST, otherwise the colors on the bottle go everywhere.

And of course, nothing goes better with that last picture than this still life, comprised of over a dozen shots. While food photography isn't on my top list of things to do, it's a lot of fun to eat while you're working. I like this one a lot better than my last food assignment, mostly because I actually don't eat the scallops or caviar featured in that.

Equipment wise, a lot of these were done with the Toyo 4x5's and leaf backs, including the bike, boot, beer and hamburger. The 5DmkII is getting it's fair share of time as well for the location portraits, and I even test drove a Nikon D3 for the freestyle skiing. That just cemented the need for me to be getting a 1 Series camera pretty soon, despite the Nikon being a great camera as well.

Portfolio review starts tomorrow for some students, along with a rumored 8 assignments to be shot in two weeks, this time of our choice. It's coming down to phase 4 and beyond pretty soon, and it's promising to be even more intense and demanding. New websites (including this one) are going up, contacts are being made, and careers are planned as the Hallmark class of '10 gets ready to break out.

Paul Mobley- Santa Fe Workshop

Paul Mobley is a commercial advertising photographer I assisted over the summer back in Michigan, before I moved out to Massachusetts. He's a phenomenal portrait photographer as well, and his book 'American Farmer' is an amazing collection of images from all over the US.

And coming up in March, Paul is teaching a workshop in Santa Fe on the art of the portrait. It's something that I'm sorely regretting that I won't be able to get to do, but that doesn't mean you guys should miss out. It's a pretty nominal cost to hang out with a great photographer who's willing to teach how he works, and to hang out away from your presumably cold hometown, if you're from my neck of the woods.

So check it out, and be sure to sign up soon before the last remaining slots are taken.

Holmes, Sherlock Holmes

Some of us just don't have the body type to be King Henry VIII, and I'd count myself lucky to be one of them. But with time running down on my art historical reference assignment, I was picking out a fat suit to go along with the outfit that was being assembled for me. A chance comment and a complete shift in directions later, I'm standing on Avenue A in Turners Falls, Massachusetts and trying very hard to pretend it was London, and I was the world's premiere detective, Sherlock Holmes.

I think all this would be too easy if I stuck to my original plan, and far less fun. King Henry as a photo subject would be stuffy, posed, and with the exception of a few wenches, likely to be uninteresting. Being able to switch gears as quickly as I did made the ideas come loose and fast, and let me leave a small mark on a literary great. Read more after the jump.

This picture was the one that will ultimately be submitted for the assignment, being based on a more modern day cover of 'The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes'. Location proved to be the only sticking point for this project. Making a small modern town look like 1800's London wasn't exactly easy. The street lamps were the main feature, and finding the right type wasn't going to happen in the short working radius I had around town.

Luckily, the buildings near a local tavern evoked a more retro feeling, with wrought iron fences, brick sidewalk and an appropriate replacement for the street lamps. While the artwork I was sampling from wasn't exactly a masterpiece, it did have good directional lighting, or at least I could imagine where the lighting should be placed. Those familiar with my other work will wonder how many lights, or how high they were turned up, but subtlety was much in play for this shot. A single profoto softbox, high up to give a sense of street lamp light was only at f/4 to make me stand out a little bit. The overall exposure was 1/25th at f/3.6. Shot on a Mamiya 645AFDII, iso 50 on the leaf 22 back.

The picture was toned in photoshop to match the colors on the cover, a little olive green. Curves darkened the sky slightly for that foggy London look, and that was it for post processing for this one.

The title picture on the other hand had serious retouching work to get exactly the right feel. A green filter on the sky knocked it down to the proper color, along with some burning to darken it even more for a much moodier feel.

Commercial Studio-Food

Food photography is one of those things I really hadn't looked into much before I came to Hallmark. I had done a shoot for a restaurant back home, but that was done more by the seat of my pants than anything.

Shooting food in the studio with a 4x5 is a completely different animal, and so is having to do the food styling by yourself. For this assignment, I wanted to go a little high class, and caviar seemed the way to go. Unfortunately, I neither like caviar, nor know anything about it. This one was going to require a little research. More after the jump.

I've never had caviar in my life, if you don't count the little orange stuff that gets served on top of most sushi. Seafood just isn't my thing, but I knew I wanted to shoot it for this assignment as soon as they detailed how they wanted to see thought and planning put into making the food look as good as possible. Caviar itself doesn't take much to look good, so you just concentrate on what you're serving it on.

That was a weeklong project, searching all over for different recipes, serving instructions, and examples. It came down to deciding between a very traditional serving, blini with sour cream and garnish, something crazy like a martini with caviar, or something in between.

I went more towards traditional to put the focus on the caviar instead of on the props or another food that the caviar would only be a small part of. Pan seared sea scallops on baby spinach with a dollop of sour cream and a mountain of caviar on top. The commercial studio went from zero to five stars when that dish was put out.

The lighting was simple, if the construction of the actual food wasn't. A single giant softbox overhead gave me nice, even lighting across the white plate, with the green vegetables, seared scallop with sour cream, and black caviar standing out in a curved pattern three deep. Most of the successful images I had seen used the repeating pattern, fading off in the background.

Positioning the food was the biggest challenge. Every time we moved a piece, the plate had to be cleaned with q-tips or paper towel. The spinach needed to be fluffed, the caviar shaped, the scallops rotated, and the plate tilted. I had a feeling going into this project that we were learning as much about photography as learning when to hire a specialist, unless you happen to be a chef. I'm not saying that I'm talentless in the culinary arts, but I'm much better at eating than cooking.

Our teacher explained commercial studio as a game of inches, but when your subject is only inches itself, it comes down to centimeters. Poking and prodding with toothpicks slowed the shoot down to a crawl as we made adjustments, but shooting tethered to my laptop made the process much more enjoyable and successful than in the past. Leaf may not know how to explain what an "Error FB' is, but their software is straightforward and reliable.

Check back sometime soon for a video detailing another upcoming food shoot, from concept to post production.

B&J 8x10

Getting the Burke and James 8x10 up and running was more of a disassembling process than a true restore. The aperture blades on the shutter started falling out when I decided to just go whole hog and yank out the aperture controls entirely, and shoot wide open with that huge piece of glass. While it has its disadvantages, it's still an amazing process. More info and some future plans after the break.

The process of shooting with this camera right now is somewhat involved. After loading the film (in a darkroom), the lights are set, the studio is blacked out, darkslide pulled, lights popped, darkslide replaced, and then lights on to reset for another shot. It can take upwards of 5 minutes to take a shot between composing and focusing, shutting all the modeling lights off on the strobes, and struggling in the darkness to find everything.

And then, because I'm like that, theres the developing process. No tidy tanks and reels like 35mm, or even medium format. Open trays of chemicals in a cramped bathroom pulling double duty as a darkroom (though thankfully ventilated). 13 minutes in darkness, constantly agitating trays sounds more like an OCD activity instead of a relaxing hobby.

Next up is doing contact prints and developing those in the same setup. First is doing a test strip on an ad-hoc setup. A softbox put right up against the paper, negative and a sheet of glass with cardboards to isolate areas while I check what power levels give what exposures. Barring a disaster in the developing, I should have a fairly reliable way to make prints without buying an expensive enlarger for 8x10's.

Betcha can't use just one, doc...

Why use one beauty dish when you have an entire school's worth of equipment at your disposal? That seemed like sound logic to me as I ransacked the the portrait studio bays next to mine of their lights, stands and beauty dishes. I could have gotten even more, but I didn't want to appear greedy. Photographers wax poetic about how gorgeous a beauty dish can be, and how if one is good, two is better. I never did hear anyone say if two is better than three must be overkill, so I went for it.

See a lighting diagram and more info after the jump.

It started innocently enough, I booked a model to do a shoot at the request of my retoucher back in Michigan. He sent makeup concepts, we picked a girl, and we were good to go. While the original idea was to have a lip-gloss centric shoot, we thought we would expand the number of looks we could get by starting with just the basic face and eye makeup first, then adding the lips in afterwards.

In the course of doing our initial shots, I noticed that my model had exceedingly long hair. Since most of my work has been lacking a hair stylist (this time as well unfortunately), I thought we could use the hair to frame and accentuate her face. My makeup artist wrapped the hair around her neck and held it to her back while I took a few frames, but I felt that something was lacking in the lighting. We already had a fairly large setup going, but it was typical of my older work as well. I wanted to push things a little bit.

In just a few minutes, I had three beauty dishes on booms positioned within inches of the model. The lightmeter that I had initially dreaded using was telling me to shoot at f/32 at ISO 50. Thats a whole lot of light, and they weren't even turned up the whole way.

I was afraid that I was actually taking a huge step back in technique, and that I would simply be blasting my model with too much light for the sake of using too much light. But even on the cruddy screen of the Aptus back, I could tell I had finally left that behind. Turning down the power slightly on the right beauty dish gave a little shadow for some definition and depth, but the overall light is even and smooth all the way across her face.

This shot ended up being a very last-minute submission for the best of college contest after a nearly sleepless night of retouching. It still has a little ways to go before being a final, polished image though. Sometime soon-Retouching post.

120 Marathon

Taking a huge step back in size, but a just a few steps forward in technology, I thought I'd show a few of the 120 film cameras that I've been playing around with since I started photography. Starting with the pictured 1967 Hasseblad 500c, it's a completely manual, utterly analog, electricity-less camera. And gorgeous to boot. Sure it may lack metering, precision shutter or film backs that are practically foolproof, but it's an absolutely amazing kit. It was previously owned by said portrait studio photographer that the 8x10 camera was obtained from, and it's in remarkable shape.

I'll admit that the Hasselblad has an allure about it, in part due to its lunar pedigree, and the current 50+ megapixel digital. And being primarily a Canon shooter, Carl Zeiss lenses are few and far between. This camera gave me the chance to use some vintage glass that promises to be even better than some modern day lenses. More toys, and a step in the other direction after the jump.

In complete and utter contrast to the Hasselblad's legendary mechanics and glass, we have my Holga CFN, which just decided to die sometime today. This was the first 120 film camera I ever owned, picked up between train stops from Hikone to Osaka, Japan. The 'dreamy', soft, messed up shots that emanated from this camera were more of a source of amusement for me than a real working camera, but weighing next to nothing made it easy to take along with me everywhere. While the shutter inside the lens is still working, the lack of a flash feature has doomed this camera to be disassembled, where its repair may be dubious.

My first twin lens reflex camera was this Rolleicord, a member of the Rolleiflex family. Slightly more compact than the Hasselblad, this came with a complete kit-leather case, meter, filters, lens adapters, and even one original magnesium-filled flashbulb. This was the first 120 camera that I would take outside to use as a normal point and shoot due to the surprisingly accurate analog light meter that bayonets onto the front. I also shot only black and white film, and used it to practice developing, with some help from my girlfriend.

But one of my favorite cameras is my RZ67, for several reasons. Not only did Annie Leibovitz use this type of camera for a huge amount of her studio work, I bought this while out in Seattle checking out Chase Jarvis' studio. I use this camera a lot of my own studio work, and it's so simple to use that I almost regretted getting my new Mamiya 645 for school. If I could have gotten my hands on the necessary adapter, I'd be using this camera instead. It has some of the best intuitive controls that I've seen on camera's like this, and the simplicity makes using it effortless. While it may be a bit of a beast in its weight class, I can comfortably handhold for an entire roll.

These are just my 120 MF film cameras, and while some may argue that it's even more irrelevant to have so many different ones when the only difference that matters is the film, I still feel that they're all appropriate for different situations, have different feels and even subject impact. The Rolleiflex gets stares and questions, the Mamiya makes people run the other way, and the Holga is ignored as if it were a cheap disposable camera.

Film may be dying out professionally, even as I start my career. But a surprising number of students still enjoy shooting film, and even some of them still develop in at-home darkrooms. Whether for nostalgia or for fun, film isn't going away quite yet. The people that still shoot film are the ones that will eventually be instrumental in saving it from extinction, just like in the impossible project's efforts to bring back Polaroid film to the huddled masses, but that's for another post.

It's Alive...

If film is dead, I want to be Dr. Frankenstein. I've been on such a film kick for the past year, it's kind of crazy. I've lost track of how many film cameras I have now, but I just added two very nice retro jewels to my collection. Pictured here is a Burke and James 8x10 view camera. this thing is a beast, I don't even have a picture of the full setup with the rolling stand yet. The camera itself weighs about 20lbs, is solid wood, and has definitely seen better days. But luckily enough for me, it still operates, sort of, and only took $1.04 in parts to get it back together.

Ever since our guest speaker at Hallmark, Barbara Bordnick talked about doing portraits with Polaroid 8x10's, I've been a little obsessed with the idea. The images she showed us were hauntingly beautiful, and I think that film is undoubtedly a more sincere way of capturing a true portrait. Sure its easier with digital, and sure no one may be able to tell the difference, or care, but its an entirely personal thing to me. This is as close to my photography as I can get.

Finding a cheap, used 8x10 camera was easy in my mind, but it took a little bit of searching. It wasn't until a craigslist ad listing cheap hasselblad film bodies did I even stumble upon this one. And to sweeten the deal, the photographer selling this equipment knew my portrait teacher here at Hallmark, Rich Barnes. The whole deal turned into a steal for me, and I wasn't even expecting to get what I really wanted. It was almost in passing that a pack of polaroid 8x10's, a processor and a holder were thrown in.

A couple of wood screws and some fiddling later, the camera is temperamental, sticky, and still just as heavy, but I can see an image on the ground glass. An 8x10 film holder is definitely needed before I try out what may be one of the few remaining packs of 8x10 polaroid in the world. But now, all thats left to do is check to see if the packard shutter behind the lens will sync with some pocket wizards.

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. -Victor Frankenstein