Guitarists
My series of guitarist portraits is up on my site. Here is one of the other guitarists I shot back in December. Not sure what to call this project… right now I’m just going with the obvious “Guitarists.” You can see the full gallery here.
This is Reyka of the band Death Valley High. He’s playing a Ibanez Artist from the 70′s.
Guitar Face
As I’ve posted about in the past (here and here), I love guitars and have a few despite how poorly I play them. So, it gave me the idea to start a series of guitarists portraits. One day I was talking about the project with makeup artist Veronica Sjoen on a shoot and she mentioned that she knew the guitarists in a couple of local bands. So with Veronica doing makeup and Tietjen Fischer doing the styling we got the project underway with two local guitarists.
We All Could Have A Little Work Done
I’ve been reading interviews with a few of the leading fashion/editorial/advertising photographers working today. These are the photographers taking the cover photos of the top fashion magazines. Photographers shooting the latest ad campaigns for top designers. These are the photographers that are likely known to people who know nothing about photography. Whenever one of the the photographers was asked about the extent of retouching done to their photos they would say they do no retouching to their images.I had to laugh at that. Are these photographers, who are clearly at the top of the photographer food chain, so vain that they can’t admit that their images have had work done to them? What is it about their ego that can’t let them admit that their images need work after the photo has been taken. I think that we’ve seen more than enough evidence to the contrary. I’ve seen images from great photographers before any work was done to them, and trust me, they all needed post production to get them to their final state. Why do some think this is a bad thing?Maybe when they say “they” don’t do any retouching to their images they’re playing a game of semantics. Because, I’m quite certain that they don’t do the actual retouching. These are photographers that have people to do things for them (one even seemed to take pride in the fact that he didn’t even know the type of equipment he was shooting with). Maybe the magazines/clients are getting the top retouchers to do it for them behind their backs.Who knows. Whatever the reason, its silly they don’t want to admit their images have had work done. Of course, none of my images are retouched at all.What I listened to last week:The Kinks, Muswell HillbiliesWhat I watched last week:Entourage Season FinaleWhat I read last week:Chasing CoolPhoto hair/makeup: Veronica Sjoen
Dancer
I recently photographed a dancer at my studio. This was the first time I’ve photographed a dancer so wasn’t really sure how to go about doing it. I’ll admit I’m not the quickest at pushing the button, especially when shooting with larger formats. I generally like to work slow and methodical, so if something springs out of nowhere in front of my lens, chances are I’ll catch the tail end of it by the time I’m in focus and ready to push the button. If I were a sports photographer, I’d likely get “The Celebration” rather than “The Catch.”Having finished the shoot and gone through the images I already know what I’d do differently. I can see that I didn’t get enough movement in many of the earlier photos from the session. A lot of the images look like she is either posing or doing Yoga even though she was actively dancing. My favorite of the dancing shots is one above that showed movement. I like how the hair is covering her entire face and just one eye is focused right on the lens (although in the low res version it does look like her eye is closed). It shows movement and a connection to the viewer. I like a lot of the other images, but this would be my select for the dancing images.Let me know what you think of the images and if you have any tips for shooting dancers I’d love to hear them.Here are some more of the dancing images:
Photo hair/makeup: Veronica Sjoen
1 Years Gone
I can’t believe its been over a whole year since my last blog entry. Well, time flies as they say. So, I think its time to start up the blog again. Like anything in life you just need to get into a habit and that is what I need to do to get back into the blogging mode (not that I was ever heavy into the blogging in the past). So, for my first entry in over a year I keep it short and simple. That way I can work my way back into blogging and have something to write about on those days where thoughts aren’t flooding in. The shot I’m posting today is from a recent personal shoot I did. I loved the retro look of the subject’s dress. So the makeup artist (Veronica Sjoen) gave Tina a look to go with the dress… trust me, if you saw the other looks we did you wouldn’t think it was the same person. I love the calmness on her face… which again, if you saw the other pictures you wouldn’t think it was the same person. Anyway, that is all for today, check back and I promise it won’t be a year before my next entry.
