January 14th, 2009

One of my passions is creating traditional-chemical-based cyanotypes. This blue-toned printing process is a hands on art form in which an image is permanently printed on normal cotton rag fine art paper. Having grown up shooting film, processing the film myself, and printing the film in a traditional darkroom I love the ability to get my hands wet and create the final image rather than just “push print” and to yet again watch a latent image materialize at the bottom of a photo try after exposure to light. Since maintaining a full black+white wet darkroom based on a silver-halide process is now extremely impractical, cyanotypes allow me to tap into that magic again. Because of the chemical process it depends on cyanotypes can be done in a general purpose room and requires very little specialized gear.

After the Jump: a Step-by-Step Tutorial

January 12th, 2009

The Team:

Very few high end photographers work alone. It can take an entire team of talent, assistants, and production agents to accomplish a single finished image. This weekend I was very fortunate to be part of an amazing team photographing fashion in South Beach. The makeup artist and wardrobe-coordinator/stylist did a wonderful job of creating a look for the models that either contrasted or complimented the grungy look of the location. The three photographers (myself included) traded off shooting and assisting. Below is the team as captured by Tom and I at the end of the night. The room we are in was completely dark, which allowed for easy light painting. In light painting you leave the camera open and use a flashlight (or strobe, candle, or whatever) to paint light on. In this case I ran through the frame like a mad man waving an LED flashlight which I then tossed to Tom so that I could be included.

From left to right are: Julia Kreibich [Stylist], Scarlet Fernadez [Model], me, Claudia Davila [Model], Tom Laveuf [Photographer], Lauren Coleman [Makeup], Krista Leger [Photographer].

The Location:

My Results, Claudio:

My Results, Scarlet:

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After the Jump: More of my Keepers

January 6th, 2009

It was my pleasure to be an assistant and digital instructor at the GetDPI.com Lighting Workshop in Florida a few months back.

While most of my time was spent assisting the lighting instructors and giving the students tips on digital workflow and raw processing I was able to participate in some of the shooting. The beach shot in my retouching section was from the sunrise shoot from this event.

Most of the workshop was in-studio at a first class rental studio in Fort Lauderdale by the name of TYE Studios. The best set was a dozen+ light setup used to accomplish this shot:

After the Jump: More of my Images from the Workshop

January 6th, 2009

Pinhole photography is one of the oldest and truest forms of photography. Rather than a lens, a hole is used to project the image onto a light sensitive medium (film or digital). It’s really that simple.

More often than not when you see work from a pinhole image shown in a gallery it is from a home-made camera taken with a sheet of film.

The images you see here are from a modified Phase One P30+. This 32 megapixel digital camera system is normally used because it provides top notch lenses. So it is not without irony that I choose this platform for my latest pinhole project.

32 megapixels worth of soft, ethereal mush. It’s almost insulting to the camera.

Some fun links for pinhole:

Technical Calculators for Pinhole work

6 month long exposures by pinhole

After the Jump: More Pinhole Images