Inspiring Fashion Photographer

I have been searching for a photographer that shoots commercial shots pertaining to fashion, and a lot of what I found is plain shots of makeup and shoes on a plain white backgrounds. However, I came across a photographer named Aaron Dougherty that does beautiful work with fashion products. His makeup photos have beautiful light quality and fantastic detailed shots. I love the decisions he makes in regards to the type of light he wants and the movement and texture of his subjects. I think he pushes the creative envelope and stands out among other commercial fashion photographers. You can check out his work @ aarondoughertyphoto.com!

Ciao,

Shannon

Fashion…

Next week we will be shooting Fashion in my Commercial Photography class. Below are my sketches, and since I have a very poor talent for drawing, I have included descriptions of these sketches in hopes to portray my vision a little better.

1st Sketch: I would like to roll up a bunch of different colored ties with different patterns and shoot low from the front and the side. I want to play with the design principles repetition and lines. I would like side lighting to compliment the textures and patterns of the ties and I think a grey background will be simple and not compete with the many colors, and it will be a cloth like material to give the shot less of a “studio” feel.

2nd Sketch: I played around with rolling different ties into different shapes and one of the shapes I got was a really interesting dome shape with the skinny tail flowing out. I think these shapes paired with dramatic, one light from the side to highlight the edges of the ties will make for an interesting shot. I think a dark blue back drop lit from the top to create a gradient will add to this moody shot.

3rd Sketch: One of the shapes I made with the tie reminded me of a closed envelope and I thought if there was a lipstick “kiss” on it to “seal” the envelope tie, that could play off the lipstick around the collar idea and can kind of be interpreted in different ways. To help the viewer know that the tie and the lipstick are equally important, even lighting will do the trick with this shot with a plain blue backdrop or even a black light table.

4th Sketch: This one is VERY ambitious for me and I think this is the one where I will have to challenge myself the most as far as the concept goes… It is hard to tell in the awful sketch what I am trying to portray, but I think it would be very interesting to do a landscape using only makeup… I am playing off of the “foodscape” idea and think that, if done successfully, this could be a very innovative and beautiful shot… Below are some examples of landscapes that would inspire this concept:

Ciao,

Shannon

Inspiring Editorial Photographer

Zack Burris is a very inovative commercial photographer that does very clean, yet interesting work. I browsed his website for quite a while before deciding on my concepts for my Editorial shoot. I really like how clean and well lit his work is and it inspired me to keep it simple and interesting. My favorite image on the website is his image of an apple that has been cored and fanned out on what looks like a device that cores apples. If you would like to view his work for inspiration you can see it @ http://www.zackburris.com.

STAY TUNED: This weekend I will be posting my editorial shot involving the topic “Gambling Addiction”!

Ciao,

Shannon

Gambling Addiction…

This we in my Commercial Photography class, we each drew a topic to shoot from a fish bowl. We then have to come up with an editorial concept to shoot regarding that topic. Mine was Gambling Addiction!… Here are my sketches…

STAY TUNED: Next week I will show you the final outcome!

Ciao,

Shannon

The Results Are In! (Mimic The Master)

Today’s “Mimic The Master” shoot was VERY interesting… AND FUN! I cannot wait to tell you all about it!

In case you forgot, the “mimic the master” assignment was one that required me to find a photo that I would like to try to mimic exactly as far as lighting, subject matter, etc. The photo I chose was “French Wine” by Light Painting Photography Tutorials as shown below…

I printed out the tutorial from Light Painting Photography  so that I could try my absolute best to duplicate the shot. I then taped a white board to a backdrop stand and had one strobe light pointing up at the board on its 2nd to lowest power. Next I glued the three wine glasses that I purchased for a dollar each on a sheet of glass that I found in our prop room at school. This glass was placed on a cart with wheels (found in the studio at school) and with a drop of blue and a drop of red food coloring in the appropriate glasses, we were ready to shoot!

Once I composed my shot, I took a picture of a target card to set the Custom White Balance. My camera settings were as follows: ISO: 100 APERTURE: F/6 SHUTTER SPEED: 125 (These are the exact settings the tutorial shot this photo with) CAMERA: Canon 60D. The only step left was to give the cart a nice big shove into the wall to create that pretty splash!

My lovely partner and expert “shover” counted it off with a “5,6,7,8…1,2 (SHOVE),3″. I laid down the continuous shooting with manual focus on “2″ and after about 45 minutes of this, we got a couple of good shots! My favorite shot from today is not exactly like the one above, in fact the splash isn’t even going the right way, but I LOVE it and had SO much fun doing it! It also taught me how SIMPLE shooting wine glasses can be! All in all it was a fun day, and I absolutely love that I got to try something that I never thought I could do and I’m so happy with the results and want to try it again with stronger glue and different flag colors from different countries!

Below is my lighting set up along with the best image from today’s shoot:

This is my favorite image because it is clean, simple, and has an heir of elegance.

This one is a little closer to the original photo as far as splash and direction of the liquid, however if you look closely you will see the globs of desperation AKA: GLUE on the bottoms of the glasses.

My lighting set up was very simple… One light pointed up at the background, black boards were flagging off some of the light so that the red glass would have a defined right edge, and camera angle was directly in front of the glasses.

STAY TUNED: Next week we will be talking about Editorial photography!

Ciao,

Shannon

Mimic The Master

This week’s assignment is called “Mimic The Master” and it requires me to find a photo that I think is interesting and that I would like to re create. Once my instructor chooses which photo he thinks I should try out, I will research the methods that where done to create the photo and re-create the image to look EXACTLY like the original. Here are some photos I would like to try:

I love how elegant this is and it seems like such a simple shot with a flair of creativity! With a little bit of glue, 3 wine glasses, some food coloring, and a nice big SHOVE, this idea will work out nicely!

This is a Foodscape by Carl Warner that will require a few fun shaped mushrooms, maybe some orzo pasta and warm lighting. This is such a pretty shot and I think it will be fun to really create a scene using food and lighting techniques.

Now THIS will be interesting! This requires a lot of patience and a bit of compositing. The way ANRB Photography shot this was by shooting incense smoke using light on a black background and then painted the smoke in photoshop and inversed the black background to be white. They then painted the smoke in Photoshop and placed the photos of the cups in the shot with the smoke. I love the colors and the uniqueness of this shot!

As the great Mr. Ping (the noodle expert from Kung Fu Panda) would say, ” To make something special, you just have to believe it’s special”. I think Mr. Ping had the right idea and having that kind of mentality is how a lot of abstract photography is born! I LOVE the different shades of orange in this photo and the beautiful light that dances around the noodles. I think this will be challenging to mimic but I think it will be fun and will push me to composite the photo in a way that is different than my usual style of photography.

All of these photos will push me to try something COMPLETELY out of my comfort zone, and I am excited to try one of them this Wednesday!

Now we wait in anticipation to see which of these Mr. P will select!

Ciao,

Shannon

Wining Without The Dining!

So, the wine shoot for my commercial 2 class went very well on Wednesday and I have the photo that turned out the best, along with the lighting setup I used to achieve the photo! It is a very clean and simple shot, but it took a bit of problem solving. I lit it with a strobe through the back of a white light table, and a strobe with a soft box to the left (at camera position) as the main light. I wanted the main light to come from the side to get nice texture on the grapes. I initially wanted a warm, natural light feel, but due to the light table, it was not turning out how I had hoped. So with the light from the back and the main light to the side, my partner held up a white card to kick a little fill light onto the right side of the glass and that is about it! It was as simple as that!

You can try it at home on a white table with a white sheet if you don’t have a light table.HINT: If you use a sheet as a background, make sure your wine glass and grape setup is far away from the sheet so you don’t pick up any texture from the folds and creases.

LIGHT SETUP:

STAY TUNED for the “Mimic The Master” assignment!

Ciao,

Shannon

Inspiring Beverage Photographer

Lew Robertson is a food and beverage photographer from Culver City, CA. I looked at his work for inspiration for my Beer, Wine, and Spirits Assignment because I think that he is great at taking beverages and shooting them in a way that doesn’t seem too set up. Instead, it seems he focuses on making every shot look clean and natural. His style of keeping the shot simple and accenting colors and lighting choices is one that I will take with me on my shoot this week. I think that with beverage photography it is important to be calculated in all decisions from the color palette down to the placement of props and I think he does this successfully with all of his beverage photos.

To take a peek at his work to get inspired you can go to his website at Lew Robertson Photography.

UP NEXT… Next time I will post my beverage photo from my Beer, Wine, and Spirits shoot and all the technical information that helped in creating my photo, including the light setup and camera settings! STAY TUNED!

Ciao,

Shannon

 

Wine, Liquor, Beer…

1. My first idea for the upcoming Wine, Liquor, Beer shoot is a clean shot of a Sake bottle with a pile of rice next to it. I will have someone hold chopsticks as if they were holding a grain of rice with them. Later I will insert a droplet in between the two sticks to look like it is a droplet of sake instead of rice. I want this to be sophisticated looking so I will shoot it on a black light table with lighting from underneath. I would like to to do lighting from the left as well with white boards to highlight the edges of the bottle, the rice and the top of the chopsticks.

2. My second sketch is more of a rustic feel but will also require a bit of Photoshop. I would like the glass and orange slice to be sitting on some sort of wood with a burlap background (or have the wood continue throughout the whole scene). The pitcher will be packed with whole and sliced oranges of all shapes and sizes. I will also shoot the pitcher full of beer pouring into the glass so that I can Photoshop the pouring liquid into the scene of the pitcher of oranges. I would like the lighting to be warm and natural looking. The picture below inspired this shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. The third sketch involves a cleaner, more simple shot of Blue Moon Beer. It will be shot on a white light table and will be a bottle of Blue Moon being poured into a clear glass with whole oranges and orange peels surrounding the glass. The lighting will be even for the most part, but I would like to highlight the tops of the oranges and outline of the glass. The photo below helped me come up with this concept.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. My last idea was heavily inspired by the picture below. I would like a nice clean and somewhat simple shot with red or white wine (or both) in a glass (or glasses) surrounded by the grapes that match. I would like for this shot to be on a red, brown, or burlap type background, or even a cutting board type surface. The lighting will be from the side and will mimic window lighting. This shot would be used to help me focus on lighting techniques and technical obstacles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UP NEXT… I will be sharing with you a couple of photographers that I think shoot interesting work relating to Wine, Liquor, and Beer!

Ciao,

Shannon

I might just pull this off…

Well, it has been a VERY LONG AND strenuous day filled with spinning Mac wheels of death, and many many arguments between me and a little program I like to call Final Cut Pro. For some reason the universe decided to throw me a curve ball today and have the computer I was working on at school freeze every single time I moved a picture. It took me one and a half hours to place three pictures into the Final Cut Pro timeline…Besides all of that, I went to compress my file for Multimedia so that I could upload it to Vimeo, and after 45 minutes, it turns out I had actually DOUBLED it in size instead of compressing it… To top it off, the CD’s that I burned my Photojournalism project on are completely jumpy and the video does not look as it did in Final Cut Pro…. But thanks to a REALLY great friend, and a helpful teacher, I JUST might pull this whole thing off… I have successfully compressed my video and it is now downloading to Vimeo… I will be re burning my CD’s and will be ON MY WAY TO A COMFORTABLE BED… I cannot WAIT for tomorrow to be over so that I can finally relax!

Look for my videos on Vimeo.com!

Ciao,

Shannon