Insight – Page 5 – JWNPhoto.com

Category: Insight

Introducing JOEGOESPro.com

About a week ago I started to write my business plan. I got stuck on my mission statement. I need a mission statement. It’s like proposing to marry someone – it seems so permanent. That’s when it occurred to me, if the entrepreneurial world has drastically changed so much, why do I need to do a traditional business plan?

On the way home from the grocery store a few days later an idea came to me. Why not create a new kind of business plan? Why not ask for involvement of my peers, while giving advice about what I already know from my other business? An interactive business plan that changes with the business! I thought of a domain name for my new idea – I hurried home and immediately looked up joegoespro.com to see if it was registered and oh, the photo gods were looking out for me that evening.

So, I kicked off the site this weekend with 3 articles covering the psychology of becoming a professional photographer in today’s climate. These articles are based on not only my experience as an entrepreneur, but from the teachings of current top creatives and business people, books I’ve read on the subject, and my own observations about what’s going on in the artistic community.

The first article talks about branding yourself, the importance of taking care of your health, and defining your style in all aspects of your life. The second article tackles the fear of success and how to identify and work around it. Finally, the third article is about finding your place in the saturated world of photography.

To help kick off this venture, I’m giving away a copy of one of my favorite photographer’s latest books. It’s “Photographically Speaking: A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images” by David duChemin. All you have to do is go over to JOEGOESPro.com and comment on one of the first 3 articles linked above. Say something encouraging, something insightful, or just say hi. Make sure to use a real email address when you comment so I can contact you! I’ll pick a winner in two weeks to a random commenter. The only other rule is that you have to live in the United States (sorry, but I don’t know enough about international contest laws).

Cracking The Shell

Dr. Colleen Boylston’s husband tasked me with the job of creating a portrait of his wife for a new brochure for their medical practice, Sweetgrass Pediatrics. She was not happy about it at all! She’s not the type of person who likes attention (in fact, she’ll hate that I’m including her in this post). She doesn’t like having her picture taken, especially when I set up an on-location studio in one of their offices and all of her peers and employees are peeking in on the shoot. Can you imagine looking like that and not wanting to show it off?

Regardless, this is one of my favorite things about photographing real people. Sometimes it takes time, and it can take a lot of effort on the part of the subject and the photographer alike. When you can finally get them to open up in front of the camera, it’s such a rewarding feeling. I actually shot two little sessions with Dr. Boylston that morning. The first session was OK, but she was really not being herself – she wasn’t comfortable and I knew it. Thanks to one of her employees, Lakeia, who has done modeling before, she was able to get inspired:

I told her she couldn’t let her employees show her up! She was uncomfortable with posing techniques at first because she thought it was going to look too “Glamour Shot-like”. Once she saw Lakeia’s shots she got it! I was able to get her back in front of the camera with a new attitude and we got the shot up top. Now, if only I could have Lakeia hanging around at every photo shoot! Check out the set of photos from that shoot here.

OPK Are Much Easier

If you read Sunday’s post about my kids’ gift to their mother for our wedding anniversary, you heard me gripe about how difficult shooting your own kids can be. While we were shooting, some of the neighborhood kids came over to play with my son (our house is the place where the neighborhood kids like to congregate – I blame the cute dogs). Bryce & Olivia took an interest in the photo gear that I was breaking down and asked what we were doing, so I showed them the finished photos of my kids. They thought it was really cool, so I asked them when their mother’s birthday was, to which they replied next week. I asked them if they wanted to make a photo collage for their mom for her birthday, and they were ecstatic over the idea! I told them to dress up nice and come back the next day and I’d take their pictures.

They were so easy and cooperative! Every direction I gave was taken without complaint. OPK (Other People’s Kids) are a joy to shoot. They even convinced my son to get into a shot with them, although he was wearing a T-Shirt and his hair was a mess – it’s still a cute shot of some awesome friends.

Now hopefully their mom doesn’t read this blog, or else her birthday surprise is ruined! Although I’m sure she got a clue when here kids asked to get all dressed up to go over to the photographer’s house down the block…

Haley (Part II)

Welcome to my second post of photos of Haley from her photo shoot. This time, it’s all about composites. This first one uses this picture of a road on a foggy morning in Landrum, SC.

The rest of these are a combination of multiple images found on Flickr as free backgrounds and textures, such as these from Flickr user Moosebite. There are a plethora of different types of images that are offered completely free for this purpose.

As for the art of making a composite, I used Photoshop and experimented with different blending modes, opacities, and manipulation of the images through Free Transform. I also used a combination of Snapseed and Color Efex Pro from Nik Software to finish these off.

The challenge for me is not to overdo it, as I did in this photo. It looks like the 80’s threw up on the 90’s and had a bastard child of a background, and poor Haley is stuck looking pretty in the midst of it all. But, it’s about experimenting for me, and I think the photos above work for their intended purposes.

In other news, I’ve got an exciting week ahead of me as I will be shooting some stuff at Charleston Fashion Week. It will be my first time shooting a runway show, so I’m pretty stoked! TTYL.

Visualizing Rebecca

Rebecca is the latest friend to come to the home studio for a portrait session, and man is she amazing to photograph. It’s becoming quickly apparent that it’s impossible to get bored with portraiture when you have amazing people to work with who are creative and are game for anything. This time around, I had several shots pre-visualized before we began. The first one is this natural light portrait using windows as the light source. We took advantage of the fading afternoon light and went for a bedroom scene (in my dining room).

I put a bed sheet on an ottoman to act as a bed. The problem was that I forgot how tall Rebecca is, and any shot that showed her whole body on the ottoman looked quite strange. It made her look like she was in a toddler’s bed, which is less than sexy when you think about it. No problem, I just shot tighter on her and got an implied photo. Sexy’s back!

Next, I wanted to showcase her amazing long auburn hair. We broke out the industrial fan and had her whipping her head from front to back to get her hair to catch the wind like a sail.

My goal was to have her flip her head enough times until she passed out. Not really, but I’m sure it felt like that to her. This kind of shot is all about timing. Hit the shutter at the perfect time while the hair is spread out and her face doesn’t look like someone who’s moving up and down vigorously. That’s not an easy shot to get without a lot of attempts. Saying that she’s a trooper is an understatement.

This is my final pre-visualized shot. I wanted to get this angle showing the piano and guitar on one side of the wall and Rebecca on the other side. This is one shot – not a diptych. I was inspired to use some of my old records in it after a friend of mine from back in my punk rock musician days posted vintage photos of girls with records on his Facebook page. Thanks for the inspiration Frank!

Katie, who works with Rebecca and is also just plain awesome, was helping out with the shoot and got drafted into a similar shot. I’m blessed to know such beautiful people! This shot rocks almost as hard as Katie at an Avett Brothers show at the North Charleston Coliseum (I’m still indebted because she invited me into the box seats with her friends at that show).

The above shot was a suggestion of Rebecca’s, which was to shoot her on a magenta background to compliment a green dress she wanted to wear. With such big bright blue eyes and the rich colors of her dress, her hair, and the background (I used a speedlight with a magenta gel on it to get that), I wanted to get a big smiling portrait. Rebecca’s such a fun girl that it’s more than easy to get a natural reaction out of her.

This was the final frame of the shoot. I love to do a head shot like this at the end of a shoot because at that point the person has been coached so much that they just easily connect with the camera. They’re all warmed up and comfortable, and it’s also quite a slow-down from the rest of the shoot. I just use the modeling lights and a 50mm lens, and really tone it down. I can fire off multiple shots while talking and complimenting the subject on the work we just did, and it really makes for a beautiful expression.

As I do this more, I’m really seeing the importance of vision over technical ability. You need the technical ability for sure, but without the vision, making a good photo becomes a game of luck. Why take only chances? The photo at the top of this post is an example of free-styling it. It might be one of my favorite shots that I’ve made in a long time, but it really was a lucky shot that I got while we were working out some fashion poses. Her expression is amazing and it was a decisive moment that was lost in the very next frame of the same setup. The blowing hair shot though, which was heavily planned and worked on, was destined to succeed because I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like before I took the shot. Sure, luck is a great thing, but it’s not predictable. Hard work and visualization can be.

Haley (Part 1)

Over the weekend I setup the home studio and invited Haley over to be the first model in it. I’ve been exploring the different practices of people photography lately, and I have to say that this shoot was one of my favorites. It could just be the fact that Haley was an amazing model to work with, but I really had fun. She also had fun (it shows), and my ~~assistant~~ wife Amy had a lot of fun as well. In fact, Amy played a huge part in coming up with poses as well as keeping the energy up (we shot late into the evening). Here’s one of Amy’s pose ideas:

Haley is such a natural. Every shot felt like a keeper – in fact I haven’t even gone through all of them yet. I felt I needed to share these with you fine readers, hence the “Part 1” – there will be more of these soon!

So, here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of my home studio – You can see how I had the lights set up for this shoot. The giant softbox is an AB800 as the fill, the beauty dish is my 2nd AB800 as the main light, and there’s an SB-600 speedlight in the smaller softbox as a kicker in the back.

After getting some traditional poses, things started to loosen up and we got shots such as the guitar one up top. Each time she changed clothes, she brought a new energy. She also got to choose the music, which I provided via Pandora. I asked her who her favorite musical artists were and she was quick to respond with Florence + The Machine. If you’re looking for a good alt-rock Pandora channel, that one does the job!

I’ve also been reading and watching a lot of stuff from Peter Hurley about headshots lately since his guest blog post on Scott Kelby’s blog last week, and I find his style and approach really inspiring. I threw on my 50mm f/1.8 and since it was late and I couldn’t shoot with natural light, I used the modeling lights from the Alien Bees to get this:

I set the white balance to incandescent for that shot, but when I turned on the Nikon SB-600 in the kicker softbox, the flash color turned the background blue to get this effect:

In post, I decided to experiment a little on a couple of shots. Here’s a black & white:

And finally, here’s a composite I made with an image I shot at Tugaloo State Park last year. After combining the two, I used a cross-processing effect to get the color.

This was my first attempt a fashion style photography, and while I have a lot of learning ahead of me, I think Haley definitely made this look better than I expected!

More to come very soon…

Shooting The Boss

No, not The Boss, although I’d be gushing about that non-stop for weeks if I could ;). I’m talking about the broker in charge of Carolina One Real Estate’s Main Street office, Christina Ellis. I call her the boss, because she’s my wife’s broker.

There’s just a little bit of stress when you get tasked to shoot a head shot for your wife’s boss. Not just the usual responsibility of making someone happy with the way they look (trust me, most people cringe at the thought of having their picture taken, so us photogs have to damn near have a psychology degree to convince people that you’ll make sure they look their best), but the responsibility of making your wife not look like a jerk for referring you if you botch the job!

Luckily, it would take a complete failure of epic proportions to botch a job like this – Christina needs no help from me to look good. She’s naturally photogenic, so the only thing I need to worry about is getting the light right. Here’s the diagram of the white background, which was a reversible collapsible background from Adorama. Note my method of lighting the background with bounce umbrellas and feathering the light from them to give me some rim lighting for the subject.

I had the softbox right up close to her. In fact, it was so close that I had my assistant, aka my wife Amy, hold the bottom lip of the box up so it wouldn’t get in the shot. For the black side, I had to ditch the umbrellas and use snoots to focus the light so it wouldn’t influence the blackness of the background. The snoots are actually just beer cozies with the bottoms cut off. It’s an ingenius idea I learned from wedding photographer David Ziser in one of his Kelby Training videos.

One of the problems that arose is something that I’ve been dealing with for quite a while now. My go-to medium zoom lens is a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. About 6 months or so ago it started to get stuck at 24mm when twisting the zoom ring. It’s very annoying, but I can just pull the lens from the front cap and it will move. I was ineligible for warranty coverage because I bought a display model, so it’s considered used. Another problem is that it’s not sealed well at all, so there is a ridiculous amount of dust inside the lens. It’s not noticeable at large apertures, but if I venture past f/11, it’s unusable. The worst problem of all though is the random focusing issues, which is what plagued me during this shoot. I can fire off a series of shots and some will be blurry for no good reason, other’s will back focus a few inches so that the ears are the only thing that’s sharp, and if I’m lucky, one will be just right. This is not just annoying, it’s a hazard! My favorite shot expression-wise from this job had to be ditched because the eyes were muddy, but the hair on the back of her head was tack sharp. I broke down and ordered a new lens as soon as I got home because of this. If I’m charging people their hard-earned money for a product, then it’s my responsibility to give them the best product I can make. I’ve been able to squeeze by with the shortcomings of the Tamron for a long time now, but this showed me once again that I can lose the best moment because of it, not because of my lack of ability. I’ll also steer clear of Tamron lenses from now on since their quality control is notoriously uneven and their warranty policy is proof of that. If I tried to sell this lens, I’d get next to nothing for it – it holds no resale value (especially since it’s technically broken). I have gotten by with it for a long time despite of it’s shortcomings, but I’ve known to shoot a lot of photos in case one is blurry or back-focused.

The last photo I shot of Christina was shot with a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. I wanted a natural light, shallow DoF photo more for myself more than for the job, but to be honest, I bet she likes this one the best also. I just popped on the prime lens, opened it up as large as it will go and got in really close to her. Simple, quick, and an example of what a good lens is capable of – I only took two shots like this and that’s because the first one still had the white balance set to flash on the camera.

I’ll write up a post about my new lens when I finally get to do some work with it. I’m super excited because it’s a Nikkor lens, so I know it will rock!

Getting Ready For Gabriel

In my exploration of different types of photography, one of my many goals was to try maternity photography. I was all set to shoot Crystal, who was also the subject of my first wedding shoot (I thought it would be fitting to shoot her again), but as I explained in this post, life took an unexpected turn and that opportunity passed. Back to the drawing board. I asked my wife if she knew anyone and she presented me with one of her clients, Tamara.

The challenge was to explore the different popular poses, lighting methods, and themes in maternity photography while looking to create something new. I started off by searching through popular photo sites like Flickr and 500px for the work of other photographers to see what they are doing. I also wanted to prepare Tamara for what I expected from her, so my wife and I picked our favorite photos and shared them with Tamara. I was hoping that by attempting the tried and true in maternity photography, but applying my style and lighting techniques, I’d get inspired to expand on what’s been done before and find something new. Get inspired, build on that inspiration, and then veer off into a new direction with what you’ve learned. That’s been a pretty good road map for me creatively.

This shot above has been done a million times before. The old “heart hands” as I like to call it. It’s cute, it’s got hands (which are always interesting photographically), and it’s got a touch of sentiment behind it. If you search the internet for maternity photos, you’ll find hundreds of the same type of photo. Still, I set up the shot and do it almost as if it’s an exercise. While I’ve got Tamara and her husband in front of my camera, I’m able to work with what I see, and because I’m liking the hands, I setup another tried & true photo of dad kissing mom’s belly. This time, I want to see their hands. This photo is all about the hands graphically.

Another shot I see usually taken from the mother’s perspective is the shot of the belly with their feet up against a wall and crossed. I decided to try a variation of that and had Tamara look back at me while lying on her back with her feet up and legs crossed. Since I was using a backdrop, I had no wall! This was a situation where help is 100% necessary and my wife Amy was playing the part of photo assistant. I had Amy hold up her legs and on the count of three she let go and I quickly snapped the photo. As you can expect, this position is anything but easy for a girl just weeks away from giving birth to pull off!

Building off that shot, I grabbed the blue bed sheet that we later used in the photo at the top of this post as well as baby blocks. This time I let her keep her feet down as the blocks were now a major element in the photo.

Since we had the blocks out and the mother on her back, I got her 1st born involved. He had just taken a bath and didn’t finish getting dressed yet, but I though it would be cool if he left the shirt off, just like mommy! We spelled out his new brother’s name and had him play with the blocks. His smile is genuine, because what kid doesn’t want to play with blocks?

I also have him pose with his brother in this shot as he listens for little Gabriel’s heartbeat. I love the contrast of his hand with his Tamara’s as well as the catchlight in his eyes.

Another shot I really love is the low-key rim-lit shot of a (seemingly) naked maternal figure. The photo up top is one example using two lights, and the one just below is shot using one light source to create a dramatic image with shadows. The beautiful curves of an expectant mother is one of the most stunning subjects one can photograph. I say seemingly because she’s got her bottoms on as well as being fully taped up on top. The illusion is always more interesting as it leaves more to the imagination! Sorry to spoil that for ya…

The rest of the shoot was done using natural lighting. I set up this scene in her front window with the theme of waiting. At this point in her pregnancy, it’s about all she can think about – the waiting.

The sun was getting low in the sky, so we took advantage of the golden hour and hurried outside for a family shot. As I was shooting the family together, we got one magical moment where the dogs stopped, looked at the camera, and posed. It was amazing!

Tamara was spent. She was such a trooper as we tried different poses, set-ups, and wardrobe changes. After hours of shooting, she was ready for one last setup – the bubble bath.

This leads me to what I think is my most successful shot of the day. This photo screams maternity. An exhausted mom relaxing in the tub, feet up, candles lit, and a grin on her face that glows with the anticipation of the chaos that will be upon her and her family in the coming weeks. Right at this moment she takes a minute to enjoy the best part about being a woman, the gift of life.

Miracles at MUSC

Aurora Kuck 1/8/2012

When you see a baby that’s just under 2 lbs and is alive, animated, & looking up at you with big beautiful eyes, you can’t help but be amazed at the wonders of life. The folks at MUSC Children’s Hospital are miracle workers for being able to do things like this every single day.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was talking to Aurora’s mother Crystal about shooting maternity pictures. She was worried that it was too soon and she wasn’t really showing much. Life happens in it’s funny ways and Aurora decided it was time to come out (way ahead of schedule). Lo and behold, I ended up shooting baby pictures!

Walking through the NICU is kind of intimidating – it’s looks like a scene from the X-FIles with all of these blue glowing pods and walls lined with medical equipment and monitors. I was expecting to see some alien being floating in a tube of liquid, but instead I saw little miracles of medical science as babies were being cared for with the greatest of expertise and love.

Crystal wanted to make sure we got a picture of Sarah, who’s one of many Sarah’s that have been attending to little Aurora. The new mom said that Sarah was her favorite nurse, but she never said which Sarah…

Welcome to the world little girl, you’ve got two loving parents and a big family just waiting to spoil you. What more could you ask for?

Sunrise With Snapseed

One of my favorite iPhone/iPad photo editing apps is now available on the Mac App Store, and it’s called Snapseed. It’s more than just an effects application, but it’s strength is that it’s a quick and fun way to add some textures and styles to your images. The people at Nik software are really setting the bar pretty high with their image editing effects, and this mobile app crossover is no exception.

I was up at an ungodly hour this morning (for a Sunday) and managed to catch the sunrise from my back porch. I decided to make lemonade out of the lemony situation and play around with the photo in Snapseed to see what I could make with it. The image above was made using their “Grunge” effects as a starting point. The following is the same photo was using Snapseed’s “Vintage” effects as the starting point:

It also has a mean black & white converter. This version of the image used the “Film” preset as a starting point as well as a green filter effect:

And for the purists out there, it also does some very subtle basic adjustments, such as saturation, cropping & straightening, sharpening, etc. The interface is very simplified compared to more professional editing software such as Adobe Lightroom, which to some might be a selling point. Here’s the same photo straight out of Lightroom as a reference point:

For $20, this application is a steal.

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