June 11th, 2008

My weekend was absolutely fantastic. I was able to spend some long overdue time with my family at my Grandparents’ home in Ohio. Several decades ago, when my father was a teenager my grandparents purchased a humble plot of land in rural north-east Ohio. After creating an artificial lake as a border, and decades of home improvement, DIY landscaping, and extensive gardening the result is the beautiful Peterson Island.

This wonderful environment was the perfect opportunity to test out a new camera: a Phase One P45+ Infrared Modified Digital Back. This is a 39 megapixel digital camera designed specifically to capture infrared light. I’ve previously blogged about the basics of infrared photography when I captured Infrared Landscapes of Australia’s Northern Coast. Previously however, all of my infrared work had been done with a point and shoot digital camera when traveling, or infrared film when shooting locally. Using this camera brought my love of infrared photography to a whole new level.

May 16th, 2008

Roman and Julie are a couple full of life and joy. These photos were taken in Flamingo Park in Miami Beach on a sunny Sunday.

More photos after the jump.

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May 16th, 2008

My friends Cedrick and Olivia celebrated their marriage last weekend in a small intimate setting. They asked me to come as a guest, but I love wedding photography and I couldn’t resist. After several multi-photographer high-end weddings, it was good to have a change in pace and capture moments of a smaller affair surrounded by friends.

Check out more select images after the break, or browse this weddings full gallery.

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May 15th, 2008

Below are selected images from a photo shoot I did this weekend at my new favorite location. This magnificent tree sits near a friend’s apartment and from 90 to 30 minutes before sunset it is bathed in strong warm light.

May 11th, 2008

Creating iPodesque Silhouettes

1) Shoot a silhouette. Raw file flexibility will make this process much faster, but even a point and shoot camera will do. Do NOT rim lite the subject as you want the harsh edges from a total silhouette.

2) Add an S-Curve to increase contrast. This makes it easier to edit.

3) Using the magnetic lasso, trace the body. Adjust the “frequency” (pixels between anchor points) until you capture details like hair, but otherwise have smooth lines.

4) Fill the person-shaped selection with 100% white.

5) Add a drop shadow with a spread of 100% and distance 0. The radius will be the thickness of the outline, so experiment until you like what you see. I’ve reduced the opacity to 75% to allow the color added in the next step to show in the outline as well as the background.

6) At this point you can use the brush, eraser, or other tool to reshape the body. In two of these images I’ve repositioned limbs which didn’t look right in silhouette. The Shift button is your friend here, click on a point, hold shift and click on a second point and a line will be brushed (or erased).

7) Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer set to Colorize. I’ve found saturation set to 25 gives a very appealing pastel color. If you’re doing multiple images experiment with Hues which are spaced 90 degrees apart. The hue of the three featured images in this post are 0, 90, 270.

8) Select All, then Select > Modify > Contract. This width will become your frame.

9) Fill the frame-selection with 100% white.

April 27th, 2008

Looking to get back into modeling, Ash came to me to help build her portfolio.

April 20th, 2008

Moving Past Analog Analogies

The first wave of development in digital photography was a struggle to replace film in quality and use. Now that it has, a new wave of development will push photography into new places and redefine still image creation. Digital Photography is about twenty years old; it’s acne is gone and its about time to move out of the family house, and become its own medium.

Photoshop has already begun this transition. Most features of Photoshop replace analog tools such as airbrushing and dodging and burning. Even seemingly new tools such as Unsharp Mask and Liquify have analog origins. But tools such as HDR move past the imaginings of the analog world into entirely new techniques possible only in a digital workflow. HDR is part of the new wave in photography with entirely new way of representing photographic vision.

Four attributes of digital photography have improved rapidly since the first mainstream professional digital cameras: resolution, ISO, burst-capture speed, and dynamic range (hereafter: DR). New workflows will arise from these technological advancements and each will bring complete virtualization closer. By virtualization I mean that a particular decision, now made at the time of capture will become part of the information contained in a raw file, able to be easily and accurately changed during post.

Some of these changes may not take place for decades, but some have already taken place. Exposure is virtualized in current high-end cameras. At the time of capture a photographer has to pick a certain exposure, but contained in the raw file is enough information that the exposure can manipulated during post without artifacts.

Drastically higher ISOs, burst speeds, and dynamic range will lead to the increased virtualization of photography which will shake the very foundations of still photography. If you thought the transition from film to digital was a game-changer you ain’t seen nothing yet

Read on for my thoughts on: virtualized shutter, virtualized aperture, virtualized camera position, virtualized lighting ratios, and virtualized subject matter

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April 20th, 2008

Olivia wanted to give a sexy, but modest present to her husband for his birthday. With her permission I am posting this visual excerpt.

January 29th, 2007

As I continue to look for ways to increase my e-marketing I am experimenting around with linking services. Google is smart and tries to ignore links that are as meaningless as self-submitted links to your own page. Yet photo links has a high page rank. We’ll see how this goes…

Leading Miami Beach, Florida Photographers listed in Decidio.com

October 1st, 2006

Boats anchored along Arlie Beach.

Every once in a while you experience something that lives up to the cliche ‘once in a lifetime’. This past week I had several. I spent my mid-semester break at the Whitsunday Coast in northern Australia. The Whitsundays, a series of islands with pristine sand beaches, are a prime gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. After asking for vacation advice from every Aussie I knew I settled on the Whitsunday Coast; not a single person who had been there had anything but rave reviews. After a similar search, my Norwegian friend Milosz decided he would join me. Despite very high expectation, we were not disappointed.

In this entry I document my trip in great detail. Likely only my girlfriend, and my family will find this of much interest. If you get bored, just skip ahead to the next several entries which center on the photos I took.

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