Ok, so it has been ages since I have made a blog post. I would like to send out a big apology to all those that check my blog for updates. It was all for good reason though. I have been working harder than I have ever worked in my life on projects with Gary Land. I’ve been travelling, spending countless hours in the studio retouching, assisting, and problem solving. I’m at a really exciting time in my life and everything is going pretty well. I have a shoot coming up for myself very soon, and will be sure to post the images from that. Due to most of our advertising jobs having disclosure agreements I have not been able to post any of the behind the scenes material I’ve been collecting. I have some really great stuff I think you all would dig, but I have to wait until those campaigns are released to actually release the behind the scenes stuff. All in due time though. In the meantime though I will get better about posting some material that I am allowed to have up. All that coming VERY soon, bear with me people! I’m back!.

I know it’s been a while since my last post but I have been hard at work at the studio. Last week we had two big shoots we were working on. One was for Coke’s global point of purchase and billboard photos. This was my first official shoot on the job. It was a great way to break me in with 15-20 hrs/day that week. It was a really exciting experience knowing I had a part in something that will be seen around the world. There were actually two sets built, one was simulating a kitchen and the other was simulating a living room.

For my photographers out there that may be wondering about the lighting. It was set up in order to emulate a kitchen in the daytime backlit by a window. The four magnums are pointed into the ceiling to create a huge soft light. The two lights in the front are primarily lighting the people. The octabox coming from the back is creating the effect you would normally get from a window, and then there are grids pointed at each coke bottle.

The concept of the next shoot was supposed to be a 1950’s/60’s pin up girl poster like the ones Miller used as advertisement back in those days. I actually worked on some retouching for this shot, and I’ll post the final version later. It came out pretty dope. Check out the photos, and leave a comment. LA and Utah next week for some really exciting shoots.

As some of you may know, I have finally made my move to Boston. Shortly after graduating photography I am blessed to have a job in this economy. And not just any job, but one where I will learn more about the business and the art of photography than I ever did before. It is a full time assisting position with Gary Land.

CLICK PIC TO VISIT SITE

As you can see from the image below, his style is creating a very surreal environment mixed with action and movement you might see in a big budget film. The shoots often star some of the hottest athletes or celebrities shot for the biggest brands in the world. This means that I will have the opportunity to travel and experience the world in ways I never thought was possible.

With that being said. It is important to me to make a full commitment to being the best assistant I can be and working on myself in order to be a better photographer. So, for a while I will be stepping away from the camera, and focusing on learning as much as I can. I know that this is about to be a great experience and can’t wait to get started. The blog will temporarily be switching gears on subject matter. I will be blogging less about MY own pictures and more about the job and things I learn from day to day. I may be able to also feature some of the light setups we use and explain what’s going on. New material should be up starting next week, thats when I’ll be hitting the ground running with the new gig. Wish me luck ya’ll!

Here’s my light set up for todays shoot. Photos of the actual shoot should be up sometime next week. More stuff from today’s shoot coming soon!

So, in today’s commercial photography market, a question often asked by new comers such as myself is if it is still necessary to have a print portfolio as well as a website. It’s almost obvious that today you NEED a website in order to be a professional photographer, but it isn’t so clear whether or not you should have a printed portfolio. In this post, I will briefly discussed the importance of having a printed portfolio as well as where you can buy one and about how much to expect to spend. CLICK READ MORE TO CONTINUE….

I took this shot last night, and I like it….Hope you do too. No editing, just b/w conversion.

Ok, I have been thinking lately how I can make my blog more informative about photography, and not just be another showcase for my work. So, this was something I came up with that I’ll start doing from time to time. Through my experience, I have found that there are LOTS of little nick knacks that photographers need outside of just a camera, lenses, and strobes.

I see lots of people blogging about the latest cameras and the newest lenses but no one really talks about the little things that make their jobs that much easier. I’m still getting some of the things I need myself as I’ve only begun in my photography career BUT as I acquire new things I think are cool OR think of something I have already I’ll post it up complete with pics and a write up of how it helps me do my job. So, let’s begin with the first thing on the essential list after the jump! Click the READ MORE link below.

Ok, so last week I picked up a Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet. Having one of these is essential if you are doing any type of beauty or fashion retouching. It allows you to have a level of control unrivaled by that of a mouse when it comes to precision dodging and burning. Any professional high end retoucher worth their salt will tell you you’d be doing yourself a favor by getting one of these. It feels a little weird at first but after you get used to it I can’t begin to tell you how much easier retouching your photos will become. This particular model has 2048 levels of pressure, and allows you to control the opacity and hardness of your brush strokes in real time by how hard or soft you press down with your pen.

I bought the medium sized model so it ran me about $350. The small sized one is $200, and maybe better for those on a bit of a tighter budget but still in need of this tool. If you would still prefer the bigger tablet area but don’t have as much to spend I would suggest tracking down a used Intuos 2 or 3 on amazon or Ebay.

Please let me know if this is a series you’d like to see continue…

Decided to keep playing around with that last beauty image. Lemme know what you think.

Beauty retouching can be a really time consuming activity. Doing it well really is an essential component to having a good end product. On this shot I am about to show you, I have been working it over for about 4+ hours now. I still have some very minor nitpicky things to do but I thought I’d show this to demonstrate the contrast between an original beauty image and a retouched beauty image. A lot of people that aren’t involved in photography don’t really know what kind of time it takes to finish an image like this, and a lot of photographers that do their own retouching often times look for shortcuts or filters to help them finish faster. This retouch took so long in part because I very thoroughly dodged and burned on the pixel level while also using the healing brush. Check this out, and tell me what you think of the transformation.

These photos are the result of the light setup in my last post. This was a shoot I did with a MUA I had been wanting to work with since December of last year, but I was away in school. We stayed in touch and finally got the chance to collab on this shoot. The model was Nina Cardella who is repped by Elite Model Management in Chicago. Both of them were a lotta fun to work with.

Anyway, here are some pics from the shoot. I thought this would be a good way to share some of the photos that some may not see, as only a few of these are actually going to make it into my portfolio. Lemme know what you think!