As some of you may know, every year I do a christmas card based on a popular christmas movie or tv special.  The process allows me to flex my creativity and I get to collaborate with a lot of talented people.  I had the idea for doing the Grinch who stole Christmas when I first started doing the cards, I just didn’t have a way to go about doing it up to the level that I wanted.  Well, as luck would have it I collaborated with two very talented and creative people in their own right, Manny Lemus and Theresa Friel.  Both are special effects and make up artists who really turn out some amazing stuff.  I had done some work for this dynamic duo in the past and they were more than happy to return the favor once they heard my idea.

The process began with a lifecast mold of my face.  Picture covering your entire face in cold phlegm and you get the idea of what it felt like!  Once that was dry a mold was created from the cast of which Manny could begin sculpting the grinch features.  They also did a cast of my teeth which was probably the most bizarre sensation of my life.  The appliance ended up being a couple pieces so that it would facilitate movement and I could “emote” well enough for the picture.  Once the sculpting was finished, I believe Manny used latex to form the actual appliance that was heated and dryed and then applied to my face (I may ask him to clarify in a future post as my memory is horrible!)  We agreed on a day in the summer for the whole procedure and I began planning out the look of the whole picture.  We started early with the latex pieces being applied first and then blending, coloring, aging, etc.  Once all of that was done they started adding the hair to the sides of my head and the wicked looking eyebrows.  Theresa handled the look of the hair and it was so spot on it was scary!  After that it was more blending and painting and then on to the hands.  The hands were interesting in that a mold wasn’t used to create the look.  It was actually liquid latex that was poured over me and then allowed to dry, followed by you guessed it, more grinchy hair.  In order for the hair to look more like fingers it had to be sprayed judiciously with large amounts of hairspray and beeswax which seemed to do the trick.  All in all, the total makeup time took about 12 hours.  Once I saw myself in the mirror completed, I could tell it was totally worth it!

We photographed the image in two portions.  The first was just me mimicking the pose over the bed and the second was my daughter photographed separately at a later date.  We were worried we might scar her for life if we tried to do the shot all at one time so we figured this was the next best thing!  One thing that I hadn’t anticipated was how hard it was going to be to emote through the makeup.  I really had to exaggerate every movement for it to show up well on film.  It was a tiring experience as I am sure Manny and Theresa can attest to, but I think everyone was very happy with the final images.

Merry Christmas everybody, I hope you enjoy the holidays!

article in photoshop user magazine

Hi all! I haven’t had the time to really posting anything for awhile (obviously) as I have been very busy with a lot of very cool happenings and promotions. I was recently featured in the member showcase of Photoshop user magazine, as well as the D-town TV video podcast which was very cool. To be honest, I didn’t even know what D-town was until someone brought it up to me on twitter! I was honored to be included in both media outlets and I hope people dig what I had to show them.

Another super cool thing, and this may only appeal to the comic book geek in all of us, but they are filming the latest batman movie here in Pittsburgh, The Dark Knight Rises!!!!  We took a run over to the set while they were filming in Oakland and would you believe I got a chance to shoot a little video of the batmobile?!?!?!?!  Holy golden opportunity batman!!!!

My most discerning client

My daughter is at that age now where she is deciding what her likes and dislikes are.  Take for instance our daily lunchtime feeding.  She loves bananas, hates sweet peas, loves apples, hates green beans, loves peaches, hates mixed vegetables (sensing a theme yet?).  When approached with something she loves its all giggles and smiles. When approached with the offending vegetable regime its tantrum time.  At first it was frustrating and downright morale breaking (I have much less hair now to prove it) but after awhile we came up with a simple solution.  Take what she really likes and mix in a bit of what she doesn’t like. In a nutshell it was a compromise.

Which leads me to my point.  If we can take this kind of attitude to our clients and show that we are willing to work around and mix things in to get the best possible results for all parties involved, then everybody walks away from the table feeling like they have done their job.  We aren’t getting anywhere by being rigid and inflexible, except maybe out the door in our clients’ eyes.  If we can just stop and see for a moment if there is a solution in which everybody comes out on top by creative problem solving, then those clients are going to come back to you for future work.  Compromise really works.  In the case of my daughter she gets a fun filled dining experience and I get a happy baby and a mixed fruit/veggie smile!

Master of the force... and an all around confident guy!

“Luke: I don’t, I don’t believe it
Yoda: That is why you fail.”

Call it Cheesy, call it kitchy, call it hokey, but I think the little green guy is on to something here.  How often do we think as creatives that we are not good enough to obtain the big level jobs, or skilled enough to produce the perfect picture we see in our heads.  I know in my own experience I often second guess myself.  Self doubt can act as a cancer to the creative process.  If we all take a step back and believe in ourselves and our work we can certainly avoid having this converstation with master Yoda

So, given that information, some decisions needed to be made.  First of all, given the budget of the project we were limited to 4 photographs.  It was decided on to do a “hero” shot of the unit itself, an overall shot of the unit and all it’s ancillary pieces, a shot of the interior cooling unit itself, and an overhead birds eye view shot of the cooling unit in the system itself.  This way the client had all of their bases covered with 4 photographs.  To portray the clean and vibrant look they were going for, we decided to photograph on a white background with a lighting scheme that would accentuate highlights.  We set up the product on a table and ran a white seamless over it to make it, well, seamless. The pieces were arranged so that they all made sense to the construction of the unit. We blocked out the small pieces with a seamless covered brick but decided later that it would make much more sense to just balance the pieces along the edge of the seamless.

No lights added yet, just set up for composition

Once we were happy with the composition, I started blocking out the lighting. We needed something that was going to provide nice even coverage and allow for some highlights to shine through.  I kept it pretty simple and had a 3′x4′ sofbox to the left of camera at 400 watt seconds, a medium strip box to the right right of camera at 800 watt seconds,  a kicker light with a 30 degree grid to the right back highlighting the red kegstand at 800 watt seconds, and 2 background lights, one left and one right to illuminate the background at 800 watt seconds apiece.  The camera was set at 70mm, iso 100, F13 at 1/125th of a second.

Lighting diagram for turbochill shot

Now that I had the lighting down it was just a matter of tweaking the setup to get it exactly how we wanted it.  We moved some things around slightly and brought the camera up just a touch.  Other than that we were good to go.

final in camera shot

We did the same type of thing with roughly the same setups for the other 3 images with the exception of the overhead shot.  For that particular image I used the kicker light from before as an overhead spot light to illuminate the interior of the cooler.

final of the cooler

final in camera cooling unit image

interior shot of cooler

With the actual shooting out of the way, it was time to pretty them up in post.  I began by whiting out the backgrounds completely as the strobes had some fall off.  Usually what I do is create pen paths around the subjects and then make selections based on that.  Once that is taken care of I go about cleaning up any blemishes on the product either using the clone stamp tool or the new content aware feature within photoshop cs5.  One of the concerns of the client was that we couldn’t have the label showing on the beer tap handle.  I simply removed it with the before mentioned procedures.  After that was completed, it was just a matter of boosting the color and the contrasts and all was good!

final overall image

final cooling unit image

final hero shot image

final inside image

Canon reps pimping the latest high tech gear

Up close and personal with a movie ready hdslr

One of the big differences that I noticed from this seminar compared to the last one was the collective voice of the emerging photographer.  Every where I turned I saw young photographers talking about what techniques worked best for them or how they went about their marketing strategy or tips on where to get the best deals for rental studios.  Their enthusiasm and ambition was infectious and I hope to hear more from them as time goes on.  It’s these types of people that we really need to help shape the future of ASMP.

After breakfast we all met in the main banquet room for an opening presentation on licensing given by ASMP President Richard Kelly and Susan Carr.  I am a former intern of Richards and I always find his talks to be informative, on point, and entertaining.  Today was certainly no exception.  Richard brought up an interesting point (he calls it his “AHA moment) that had stuck with him since the seminar they had earlier in the year at Los Angeles, and that is the idea  that he needed to change the picture he had of himself in order to see the opportunity around him.  This stuck with me as well as too often I find myself thinking that maybe Pittsburgh isn’t the market for me or that my style isn’t conducive to a commercial environment, etc.  I think what really needs to happen is my perception needs to change for opportunities to flourish.  After Richard and Susan finished up Marketing and branding expert Colleen Wainwright gave a presentation entitled “Making People Love you Madly: Selling Yourself in a Postmodern Marketplace”.  Colleen’s presentation was insightful, entertaining, and very, very relevant.  Colleen posed a great question that kind of sets the framework for how you should be thinking:  “Are you (this person) with (this problem), I can help, here’s how.  It really is that simple.  I think clients are looking for the type of person who can be a total solutions provider, and to be able to do it easily. Really great stuff.

My first workshop of the day was Richard Harrington’s Essential Preproduction for Video: How to Budget, quote and Crew Video Projects.  Richard heads up Rhed pixel, which is a company that works in all aspects of motion production.  Let me say this, Richard really, really knows his stuff.  The workshop was concise and chock full of information that had my head spinning.  There is so much more to consider when working in the motion world, from audio capture, to editing, to script writing and final output.  The one thing that I did notice that is different from the stills side of things was that video production most often works from a work made for hire model.  In the still photography world, clients often license an image based on it’s intended usage.  Not so in the motion world.  In motion the work is generally created for the end user and that’s that.  Richard covered such line items as preproduction, script writing, rental, location, editing, etc.  All in all it was incredibly informative.

Lots of information going down at Strictly business 3 in Philadelphia

After Richards workshop I had Jay Kinghorn’s “The Agile Photographer: A Multimedia Partner for Business”  Jay’s presentation knocked my socks off.  He had so much forward thinking information in terms of where technology was headed that it really got my creative gears turning.  One thing he brought up that I think I might try to implement is the idea of using a QR code.  If your not familiar, a QR  code is  a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data (info taken from wikipedia).  What happens is that companies will embed these codes at the bottom of their advertising pages in magazines or on bus stop one sheets, etc. and people will scan them with their smart phones to get the embedded information.  Really really interesting.  My thought was to use them to help guerrilla promote my alice in wonderland series.  I figured I could have stickers made up with the codes on them, and then paste them up on bus stops, coffee shops, etc.  Could prove to be profitable.

Well, that’s it for now, stay tuned for part two of my trip in a day or two!

Brian

Getting ready for another presentation

One thing I want to speak about here briefly is about the technology leap from the last SB3 (which I believe was just 2 or 3 years ago) to this SB3.   It’s amazing the current state of the tech environment, never has there been a time in history when information and content has been so widely and freely distributed within a global context.  Here at the conference, if you look left and right you see people typing feverishly into their the smart phones and ipads. Within seconds, pictures from the conference are showing up on facebook, twitter and flickr. Truly amazing!  I think we as photographers have an amazing opportunity to capitalize on this new technology in ways that can prove beneficial and profitable to our businesses.

After Jay’s presentation we broke for lunch, which was provided by the hotel in their banquet room.  I talked with a wonderful fine art photographer out of Baltimore who was doing some really interesting stuff using the theme of corporate satire.  Very cool stuff that you should check out.  After lunch was over, we split up for our afternoon sessions.  The final two workshops I had for the day were Strategic Estimating with Jeff Sedlik, and Secrets to driving traffic to your blog with Rosh Sillars.  First up was the estimating workshop with Jeff.  Jeff has been in the industry for a long time and his insight into the world of photo estimating is invaluable.  I think what amazed me most is the lengths that we have to go to as photographers to protect our intellectual property.  Jeff was relaying a story where a photographer was suing a client for breach of contract and the client was claiming that he never received the terms and conditions page spelling out his obligation.  The sticking point in court was that the contract stated “see terms and conditions on reverse page” but the file was sent to the client as a pdf so there was no reverse page.  Crazy right?  They were trying to get away with claiming that they never saw it because there was no reverse page. Scary stuff.

The last presentation of the day was Rosh Sillars social media workshop.  I have attended one of Rosh’s workshops in the past and I found it to be enlightening.  I do quite a bit of social media marketing and I’m always looking for new ways of getting my name out there.  Rosh’s presentation covered the basics of web presence: website, blog, twitter, facebook, etc. but he also went over some other sites that I haven’t been taking advantage of like posterous, woopra, quora, tmblr, etc.  I’ve recently added some of these outlets to my marketing focus and I’m hoping they make a difference. One thing that I really liked about Rosh’s presentation was the idea that givers gain.  What he means by that is the more you are willing to promote others the greater the chance that those people will promote you is pretty high.  I really like this idea and try to use it within my social media efforts.  I figure we are all in the business of promotion and the more we help each other the more successful we will all be.

Step 1.  Initial sketch.

I always begin with a very rudimentary sketch of what it is I’m trying to accomplish.  In the immortal words of Doc Brown, “Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn’t have time to build it to scale or to paint it.”

Concept sketch for the camfire stories photoshoot

lighting diagram for campfire setup

The studio shoot itself went off without a hitch.  The background was kept dark so I had an easy time punching it out from the foreground.  That way I could just pop in the correct background at a later date.

image before knocking out the background

From here it was just a matter of photographing the background on location and popping it in.  I chose a spot in a local park that kinda fit the mood of what I was after.  From here I just waited for the right time of day, set up two strobes, and fired away.

background shot, park near my studio

finished campfire stories image