I had a lot of fun with the last post so I decided I would give it another try. This didn’t go as smoothly as I just didn’t have any fresh ideas. I tried to remain simple here so it’s very two demential. If anyone has any constructive criticism that would be welcomed. I’m always trying to learn so let me know what you think.
J
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Well, I honestly couldn’t say whether or not this is my first attempt, I think I have a vague memory of messing around with this stuff when I was in about the 5th grade. I really should have contiuned with it then rather than following that phase with about a 10 year hiatus from graphics. Anyway, this is something I put together tonight over about an hour or so…. hmm maybe over 2 hours… my skills are a little rusty.
I was sorting through some old work last night and came across this image. I was doing still photography for an independent film here in Edmonton and Tito Guillen (Director) wanted to use this shot as the poster. Unfortunately this was just one of those shots that didn’t work out, basically it’s terribly out of focus and our actor is yawning in the shot. There was also a lot of negative space on the left side which bugged me so I decided I was going to work on it a little before I gave it away. Here’s what I came up with. Be sure to click the thumbnails to see the full before and after images.
haha, I should mention that 98% of what I usually do in photoshop is color modification and shading. I never transform any of my portraits like I did this one. This was just one of those instances where I had to salvage a shot I would normally have deleted. In this case as I was editing a story and a characters appearance, not solely a person in a portrait where I wouldn’t ethically be able to modify this way.
J
The challenge: make division 4 soccer look exciting. It certainly helped that Carey’s team took a terrible beating. Unfortunately, I missed most of the low bows and angry expressions that came from that later in the game. Anyway, here are some shots of my brother and his soccer team getting destroyed as best as I could capture on my first try. I think I’m going to give this a little more practice in the future as I felt I missed a lot of moments. I really should have been concentrating on the players eyes rather than the ball, lesson learned.
Jesse
It’s finally September and Photo season should be slowing down. Well, not as much as expected, there’s still a lot of editing to do, and Carey keeps getting steady bookings so, lets say maybe November. In the mean time between shoots I’ll find a way to put up a little progress every 8 to 10 days.
So starting in reverse chronological order here’s the latest video Carey and I put together. We spent a couple hours last Tuesday doing a photo shoot for Ashley Turlock, a local fitness model and winner of the Miss Planet Beach Edmonton competition. While on location we recorded a promo video for entry in this years International Miss Planet Beach competition, take a look.
For the video/photo/gear nerds – This was almost solely shot with a still camera, the Nikon 90 DSLR and also a bit with the aging Panasonic HVX HD cam with a little audio gear.
Special Thanks to DJ Nitro from the music, you can check out more of his stuff at www.djnitro.net
Until next week,
J
Notice the shortage of awful Micheal Bay shots in this one. No absurd pans and twists, must mean I’m developing taste… sweet. Anyway, Carey and had a lot of fun cutting this together, we’re both improving as editors and it’s showing.
Anyway, gotta love hotal Mac weddings, I’ve only done two there but they’ve been two of the best ones. The deco, the venue the couple, the food, the wedding party… everything was really good. Oh yeah the DJ was pretty good too, there wasn’t too much modern pop coming out of the speakers, I really wanted to stay at the end enjoy the dance. I’ll stop now, lets just it was fun. Enjoy the video. 
It’s been 3 family sessions, a corporate, a wedding, a couple and a pregnancy shoot since my last entry… I never fail to find excuses for not keeping up with my blog. Here’s the latest video of the Beeston family shot about a week ago. This time, I avoided any auto settings and tried to focus on getting a shallow depth of field (no pun intended). Anyway, half the time it really worked, the other half the Beestons would be blurry… uh oh. No worries, the footage has been getting better with every shoot. Every editing session is scheduled for 3 hours and ends up doubling that, so Carey and I are really beginning learn what works and what doesn’t.We finally went for an old film look with this one. This is a pretty good Wonder Years rip off so I hope you like it.
Jesse
It’s been a few weeks since the last post, I’ve been pretty busy with Carey’s shoots and haven’t had much time to get these videos out as fresh as they should be. I got pretty video focused on this one and I don’t think I took more than two stills… I’ve really got to work on that. Anyway, I did do nearly all the video and a large chunk of the video editing here. Things are coming alone.. I even remembered to clean the lens this time.
Keep checking back, I think I’m finally going to write up my about me page… I was thinking of telling my story of how I ended up with these kinds of art forms… there were a few events that kind of led up to becoming a photographer and now seemingly a videographer. Anyway, more on that later. Comment on the clip. Any feedback would be appreciated… I’m still learning gang, anything would help.
Jesse
Carey, a photo friend Peter Carroll and I had a fun photo shoot at a new Whyte Avenue salon The Beauty Parlor on Monday. The place is sitting right on top of a Vespa shop(Top Gear Scooters) and a coffee bar(Luzzara Coffee Bar) so it was already kewl before we walked in.
It at first felt like casual gig since I know the owner/operator Desiree Liley, I was employed as a bartender owned by her husband at the bar down the street for about a year and a half (Wunderbar). For some reason this actually made me awkward because I’m used to being in bar more around Dez… this where I subcontiously act goofy, speak with a drowel and refer to dollars as bones (I actually did when she was signing the check, cripes). So I lost some professionalism points being sober but acting half cut like I’m used to. With becoming a photographer is a lot more to learn than style, composition, camera technical, lighting design… I fell a little short on the business end. With all that being said the pictures still rocked and my awesomeness did help carry us through har har. My insecurites from last Monday really got me thinking on where I need to improve the most and I watched Carey cruise through the portriats with style, skill and just plain confidence, his experience made things flow really smoothy and give us great results. Anyway, I think I’m rambling, the point is I’ve grown to a self sufficient position for most aspects aside from portriates and professionalism.
There are some wide shots and portraits up on Carey’s blog you should check out.
Links
I’ve been particularly obsessed improving my skills so it looks like I slipped into the early hours of saturday working on photos… yikes. Anyway, I barely every attempt retouching photo’s…. well cleaning up skin that is… I do funky things with color but never have I put more than a few minutes into smoothing skin. As an exercise I tried to salvage three images from 3 poorly taken photographs of mine. Let me know what you think. Right now I feel it would have been more fun to go out tonight. I’m liking the high key images right now…which actually kind of hides the level work put into these…
Went out for another shoot with Carey yesterday and had a lot of fun. Like last time I focused on video and I’m begining to improve both my composition and editing skills. Carey and I finally have developed our flow a bit with editing and were able to cut this together pretty quick without compromise. It’s always great working with Carey, we started shooting in a few tight areas and with some creative use of light we grabbed some cool stills. Anyhoo, I was learnt a lot again about light and style yesterday, it’s coming along.
So, that was a nice spring and summer, I would have hoped it could have lasted longer but I’ll take what I can get. Maybe I’ll just live somewhere warm next year. Anyway, with my brother Carey as a resource, I’ve been dabbling more with off camera flash and light modification, it’s crazy what you can do with lights outside on a bright day.
This video below is from a few days ago, Carey brought me out to primarily assist and work with the video camera.
Here are just a few random shots from the last month, there are a few acompanying videos but I’ll post those tomorrow. Anyway, feel free to tell me how awesome I am.
This was my fist actual photoshoot. At the time I was only mildy interested in photography but was also terrible when trying to meet girls, I borrowed a D200 with a good 55mm prime lense and tried to take some pictures… and talk to a girl. I managed to do both with moderate success. Well, I’m still single but I am a photographer now… not too shabby.
Only about a little over a year ago (march 2008) I started playing with a real DSLR camera and before that I was just wondering around aimlessly after a few drinks with an Old casio point-and-shoot. Anyway, this is the old stuff.
I’m only now learing to shoot with stuido lights… I’m begining to get the hang of it. It seems like they could be extremely useful.
