Rasyad Chung
Rasyad Chung is an all around bad ass. Aside from the fact that he learned to skate a halfpipe at the age of 50, he was also the first person to ever ride a kayak at Mavericks. Since nobody had ever done it before there weren’t exactly “Mavericks ready” kayaks he could buy so he custom made a kayak of his own design (with a paint job that looks like it came straight out of Saved By The Bell). I think that’s a pretty good reason for Canoe & Kayak Magazine to do a feature on him.
Shoot Film
I’ve been shooting film on all my editorial shoots so far in 2012 and I plan to continue (unless things like deadlines call for digital). Whenever I mention that I’m shooting film to the Photo Editor or Art Director, they pretty much say the same thing; “Film? Cool! I love film!” A Photo Editor just the other day said to me: “Oh, you shoot film? No wonder I love your work!”
Then, when I get to the shoot and pull out something like my Mamiya RZ67, every subject has said just about the same thing; “Whoa, what kind of camera is that? You’re shooting film? Wow!” You know what I hear a lot when I pull out a Canon digital?
“Oh, I have one of those.”
Christopher Hitchens RIP
Christopher Hitchens died today. As I wrote here before, Hitchens has been one of my most interesting subjects to date. He was actually one of the very first assignments I received after becoming a photographer… my second editorial assignment to be exact. It’s intimidating enough to be a new photographer and working on only your second editorial shoot let alone having it be Christopher Hitchens (it didn’t help when his wife told me, during the shoot, how Annie Leibovitz photographed their wedding with a Holga).
Smile
Today over on A Photo Editor there’s a link to a Rodney Smith blog post about smiling in photos. Rodney doesn’t think smiling photos have substance. I don’t know that I agree with that, but I know I tend to like non-smiling photos. I have a total of seven on my entire website and only one in my portfolio (although it depends on what qualifies as a smile… there are some very slight smiles that I didn’t count). I tend to take things a bit further though… It seems I don’t even like people looking at the camera.
Color Blind
I’m never happy with how I’ve worked color images so I’m always fidgeting with them. I mentioned in a previous post that if I have a retoucher work on an image I usually don’t mess with it (after all, that’s why I paid them to do it). But for some reason when I’m doing the post on an image myself I’m never satisfied. So, I was playing with this skater image that I like and messing around with the look. I like them both. The original treatment of the raw scan is more natural and this version looks a bit more processed. What do you think (poll below):
