Consuming-Video Post

I ran across this video on The Daily What and thought of a few things. First of all, the visuals are just stunning. The muted gray with shocks of black and white, how quiet the tonality is, how loud the subjects are, gorgeous. You could pick nearly any frame out of it and it would stand alone as a great picture.

Second, with the exceptions being studio space and resources, many still cameras are in fact turning into capable video cameras. While I'm sure this was shot on something a bit more sophisticated, my own camera is capable of 60fps at a moderate resolution, more than enough for some demos or web videos.

Since video has already become so prevalent as a skill needed by even still photographers, it's worth knowing the basics when the time comes to collaborate on a project. Even if you (or I) lack the technical know-how and the equipment, the ability to visualize and direct video can be extraordinarily similar to still photography. The job of the Director of Photography on a major motion picture set includes lighting, framing and technical aspects that are basically interchangeable with photography.

So if you're the kind of photographer that can look at a movie frame and see the light and compose an image, you may have a small stepping stone to working on video for a variety of projects. After all, photographers do in one frame what videographers have to do in 24.

Woodkid - Iron from WOODKID on Vimeo.

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Guest Post for Douglas Sonders

I recently wrote a guest post over at my friend Doug's site, and thought I'd re-post it here as well.

Hi, my name is Alex Minkin, I’m a 2010 graduate of the Hallmark Institute of Photography where I concentrated on advertising and cinematic photography. My work has been published in ads in my hometown of Detroit, Best of College Photography Contest, and in various blogs for industry leaders. I’ve sold work to companies like Adidas and ad agencies nation wide, and shot still unit photography for Anthony Zuiker, the executive producer of CSI in Los Angeles.

By the time I left Hallmark, several extraordinary stokes of luck had positioned me further ahead of what I had ever imagined possible. Profoto’s blog had done a write-up about me, Adidas wanted to purchase the rights to a picture I had done, and my website was lighting up like crazy from my first direct mailer campaign.

Then, I realized I was moving to New York but had sent my mailers to California. Adidas was taking its time with the paperwork, and I had stopped using my equipment so I could pack up and move into a tiny bedroom almost off the edge of Manhattan.

So, nearly a year after school, I’m not quite doing exactly what I want to be. I’m taking shoots that aren’t even remotely interesting. I have a side job for a fine art consulting company, but every hour of every day, I’m working for myself. It’s at the same time the most rewarding and frustrating thing I’ve ever done in my life.

The dedication that’s necessary to be even a moderate success story in this field can be intimidating. It can be hard to throw yourself into it, to go for broke and screw the consequences. I thought that I was putting in a lot of work before I finished school, but now I’m spending my entire day making new mass email promos, doing market research, scouting new things to shoot, and writing emails trying to squeeze my way into something nobody wants to pay me to shoot.

I learned not to get discouraged when things take forever to accomplish, or if they fail to happen at all. I’ve made a nuisance of myself for one company for nearly a year before they finally agreed to set something up, a year of back and forth for one shoot. I’ve overpriced, underpriced, gotten rejected and been ignored, but I also learned that there’s nearly no mistake I can’t step away from and make it a positive move towards what I want to be doing.

And even though it was hard for me to believe, and maybe it is for others as well, I learned that other photographers are going to be a more valuable resource than a client that pays well and pays on time. We’re such a strange group of people, and overwhelmingly, we seem to love it when our friends get ahead.

Sure I’m jealous that Doug is shooting F/A-18’s while I shoot some interiors, but he lets me ask all sorts of stupid questions that they never fully explained in school. Questions like ‘how the %#($ do you build up a mailing list of 10,000+ people?’ or ‘where do I get insurance so I can rent a real studio instead of working in my living room?’ The photographers and companies I have been working for have been the best resource imaginable.

So, if you’re still at school and reading this, I have a few things that might help you out in a small way. Spend every waking moment shooting. Shoot everything you want to do and make it fit an assignment. Ask questions, even if it seems like everyone else knows the answer. You’re already a professional photographer; now make the portfolio to prove it. School will give you everything you put into it and more, but you still have to do the work first. And lastly, call or email the photographers you admire. You might get yelled at, but you might end up guest blogging for someone else down the road.


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Rebrand-Rebadge

Sometimes a reinvention is as easy as a new font. Sometimes it's a new font, logo, design scheme, promo cards, business cards and marketing plan.

With the site undergoing construction, promo cards being designed and business cards on the way, I'm also stoked to be listed on PDN online's Photo Serve, which promotes photographers to creative art buyers and art directors all over the country.



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Alex Minkin Promo Video

Alex Minkin Promo Video
Originally uploaded by Alex Minkin

Finally got a promo video up of some of my work from the past year

You've got to check this out

This is the newly released trailer from the project I helped photograph over the summer, CSI's Anthony Zuiker delivers a huge action packed digi novel- Level 26: Dark Origins. The series of cyber-bridges was shot exclusively on the 5dmkII, the same camera I was using at the time to capture behind the scene stills and video to be used in the upcoming iPad app. Be sure to check it out and pre-order the book or catch it in stores.




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Old Shots-Jen and Wojo

This was a shot from back in school, and was one of my somewhat ridiculously large setups. Seven lights are in here, think you can spot them all? Check out how I did it after the jump.

thanks to flickr user j.cleveland I remembered to finally make the lighting diagram for this picture. It took me a minute to figure out my own lighting, but the in studio stuff can be predictable at times, so deconstructing it wasn't too bad. Then I remembered I posted the lights used on flickr. Typical.

Two softboxes on the background start off this high key image. Metered a generous 2 stops over my planned subject exposure (f/5.6 subject, f/8-11ish on the background). I chose a fairly wide aperture to get even more depth of field out of this picture. A long lens and compression can do the job for you, but only if you have the working space to do it. I was a little crammed in there, so wide open was easier than hitting the wall.

The two strips on either side of Jen are gobo'd off for flare control. If you can't see the light source, it can't make a flare even if its hitting your subject. Black cards don't bounce much light, so you're also not worrying about spill.

The beauty dish above Jen was one of my favorite lights all year. It has great falloff, and near softbox quality soft light. The last two lights are on either side of Jen's arm sticking through the Gobos, at about equal power. The top of the ball is being ever so slightly lit by the beauty dish, and the back of her hand and arm is all grid.



This is the rough lighting diagram, and what Jared may not know is that nearly the same setup was used the same day for another shot, this one:


I used the same setup for a couple reasons. Working without an assistant is tiring sometimes. And Wojo's shot was actually the test for Jen's, but since we had two completely different subjects, I felt that repeating a lighting pattern wouldn't be too egregious a sin.
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Retro-Vintage-Old School

Photographing in the style of another time period is a great exercise in nearly every area of photography. You're re-creating lighting, wardrobe, editing and, in some cases, the very media you're using.

And while pinup isn't exactly something that's lacking on the interwebs, going back around 70 years to an art style that fell out of common usage long ago is one of the coolest things I've done this summer.

I chose pinups because of the huge range of imagery possible-the different styles, mediums, and even purpose you can choose. I decided the logical place to start is with the classic pinups mostly inspired by Alberto Vargas. While I decided to go with girls wearing more clothing than he normally depicted, the pure white backgrounds, popping colors and an incredible sense of light are all true to his paintings. Part of the editing process even brought in a painterly feeling for that little disconnect from the modern digital photography that captured it.

Check out more pictures, the lighting setup and some processing after the jump.

Planning these shoots was fairly straight forward. My models were told to research Alberto Vargas, Bettie Page, and the pinup genre in general for clothing. Hair was simply curled and taken up for most of the shots, let down for others. The one absolute necessity to me was having the deep red lips. We took test shots before makeup, and you could tell something just didn't look right.

The lighting setup was one of the larger setups I've used for something that looks deceptively straight forward, and I still haven't perfected it yet. Total count-6 lights, or rather, every light I own right now.



Three lights on the background, two in softboxes on the side and one magic-armed to the ceiling with a bare reflector nuked the background to nearly pure white. I could have pathed out the model off of any background, but some of the flare from the background gave me part of the look I was looking for.

Two lights in grids were positioned behind the model at an angle. It was important that these two were never actually visible to the camera-way too much flare if they were. The background softboxes provided gobos, but light stands with poster boards attached would have worked if I needed to change the angles.

The main light was in an Alien Bee PLM system, which is really a glorified bounce umbrella. It's supposed to be more efficient, but I never had to test that since I shot relatively open at f/6.3-8, never straining my lights at all. Faster recycles, less eye strain on the model and a shallower depth of field are all bonuses.

Where I was lacking light was a fill which would have been positioned right next to me in front of the model. The PLM is huge, so it has to be pretty far to the side. The opposite side of the model would go dark pretty fast from the light falloff, so a fill would have given me slightly less of a ratio, but still be really nice, sculpted light.

With the background nearly pure white, the PLM was lighting my model and foreground. The tileboards I put down on the floor disappear into the curve of the 9' seamless paper, and the bottom half gets painted over in photoshop, as do any gaps or irregularities.

The light makes the picture look like it's straight off a page of watercolor paper, and then I enhance it even more in photoshop. First, stray bits of background are painted white, covering the bottom of the background, sides peaking around, and anything that shows up that isn't supposed to be there. Skin is retouched if required, and liquifying is done now, so we don't change masks later.

A layer of curves brightens the whole image, skin tones and background. If an area like a knee or an elbow is blown out, it will disappear so I mask those areas back in, and then brighten them individually with the dodge tool.

A second layer of curves pulled down, only affects the model, since our background is 100% white. This provides a punch of color, contrast, and usually, too much red. A hue/saturation layer with the red channel selected pulls down the reds just a little, and I mask in red clothing, accessories and lips.

Then I just go crazy with curves, using them to increase contrast or brightness in individual areas. Legs and eyes usually get brightened a little, hair gets added contrast, and the overall image is brought up to near the final look. Masks are on every individual part so I can fine-tune as much as I want. Dodging and burning is done on a 50% gray/softlight layer, usually on clothing to give it some pop and depth.

If the photoshop didn't scramble your brains a little bit, here's the finished product to finish the job for you.









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Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?

Actually, i'm just about the right height. Not that I'm considering a career change or anything, but being the goon in full armor is pretty cool. Figuratively at least, because plastic armor and a full body suit make for one sweaty photographer. But I've never had more fun on a shoot than with this. More after the jump.

Costume rentals are starting to be the dominating feature of my budget when it comes to doing my independent shoots. But wardrobe has always been a hard to find item, and is usually the one thing I've had to rely completely on my models to provide for themselves.

But rental shops can be hard to find sometimes. One that was very close to where I work went out of business years before I even picked up a camera. Now, my nearest reliable source is a 45 minute drive each way. Worthwhile for big concepts, but combined with the price (stormtrooper armor is $100 for up to a 3 day rental), it's something that needs to be planned out a bit more in advance.

But as you may have seen, I sometimes neglect to plan things entirely out. Like the fact I was lacking both a blaster and the right boots. I ended up wearing some Nike's (ironic since Adidas made licensed Star Wars shoes) and ski boot liners. Neither was a perfect match, but the ski liners ended up being acceptable. Improvisation is an important skill in photography, and I seem to inadvertently test myself rather frequently.


But mismatched shoes aside, there was one major issue in shooting this piece specifically. It's white. All white. And I wanted to shoot it on a white background. Holding the edges on the lit side proved exceedingly difficult, the thigh and calf nearly disappeared into the background.

I did get to try a light modifier I under-utilized at school and never had the chance to use at home. The PCB Parabolic, basically a giant 6' odd silver bounce umbrella with a giant diffusion panel. Huge, soft light close up look absolutely gorgeous, and nothing is bigger than this. It's super even since it's bouncing from the light to the back of the mod before it hits the diffusion, unlike a giant softbox which has a hotspot and quick falloff. This is definitely a great mod to use for full length shots.

My old modifier of choice was the PCB Giant softbox, which you could fit two or three people standing up inside. But with the aforementioned hotspots and falloff, it made full lengths difficult sometimes. Light would falloff at either the head or feet, and since an unlit head doesn't do a portrait photographer any good, legs and feet were usually neglected and shifted in color temperature. The new PCB Parabolic doesn't seem to have that problem as much.

I do still miss the Profotos a little bit, especially for commercial work, but now I'm finding that I'm also missing the C-Stands we kept in the commercial bays. They're ultra-sturdy, stable, and support a lot of weight. Even my heavy duty stands bend when they have a boom arm and a small softbox, and I've had two try to take a dive already. But no more new equipment till the big move to LA.

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Level 26-Video on the 5DmkII

If you're interested in shooting high quality video on your DSLR, check out this post from Anthony Zuiker's Level 26 blog where they discuss using the 5dmkII for filming, and give me a little shout out for my behind the scenes work.
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Photoshop-How to

Giving the video tutorial a try here, check out how I did some of the editing and arrangement on the mock poster I made for Joan of Arc.



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