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Diptic

Things you need to make a time-lapse and pull off something similar:
1)small digital camera/photo taking device.
2)a place/tripod/light stand, to set up small digital photo taking device
3)a photoshoot to shoot a time-lapse of.
4)”cool” music
5)some way to edit cool music and ur million photo time-lapse together as one.
6)time*

My setup was an iPhone plus an app called Timelapse Pro and a “GLIF” that I used to attach my iPhone to a light stand with an umbrella adapter(tripod would have been the better option). There was also video being shot and that was on a fLip video camera. I am seeing the importance of video being an important part of being a phototrapher as a commercial to sell you basically. BUT you also have to be a good photographer who produces a good product and have a good reputation. Gone are the days of being hired because you have an entertaining video of yourself.

Why a Timelapse video of your photoshoot? If you’re the only person you can drag out to the shoot it’s a set and forget kinda of thing. It’s easy to produce a final video just slap music on it and it’s done(obviously I did a lil more and shortened the song and added other footage). Its fairly cost effective if you already own an iPhone/goPro/Digital P&S most are capable of shooting Timelapse.

Now go make a time-lapse they’re fun to make even if you aren’t making a BTS video of yourself there are other things to make a time-lapse of.

At photo shoots now a days someone has to play the video guy(me this time), and of course “every” camera shoots video and takes photos so there’s no reason that every shoot you go on should also have video being recorded. Right? All anyone has to do is “point-n-shoot” (see what I did there), whats that you say, ah yes once you jump the hurdle of shooting, the next and worst part for most is editing. Well I guess I should consider myself lucky I have prior editing experience. Don’t get me wrong I hate the process of editing, but I like editing o.0 figure that one out. If you watch the video, I’m not really doing anything fancy, it’s something that could easily be created in a program like iMovie and could be shot with anything that shoots video. So enjoy the flick. Start making your own.

So I’ve had an iPhone for all of one month and I have to say it’s a great tool. With this great tool comes great responsibility, namely you have to use the thing to make it worth having. Today I’ve been playing around with a free app made by Microsoft called Photosynth. Photosynth is a great “panostich” type app that shoots a pretty good 360 panorama. All the other stitch apps I’ve tried I felt they were clunky like take your photos, select ur photos and add to queue, process the photo stitch, commit to your decision, agree to their terms and services blah blah. You know you take a series of photos and “guesstimate” where your photos line up and usually take the photos in a straight line. With Photosynth I just aim and it shoots(you can also set it to manually shoot too). The other thing I like is that it starts building a globe around you as you shoot. If you messed up you can pan around to reshoot photos of sections that didn’t line up. Once you build the world of photos there’s a “stitch together” process that takes a about a minute, then you can use whatever photo apps you like to make it look badass(filterstorm, instagram, photoshop, diptic app etc.) or just leave it uncropped. I think it looks cool uncropped with the warped edges.

So would someone like me recommend an app like this to anyone with an iPhone, sure it’s flippin free. The picture taking part is fast and if you do a decent job of taking photos, the stitch together process doesn’t take long. Side note, I can’t tell if taking more photos or less photos is beneficial but as long as the photos line up it’s pretty quick at generating the 360 panorama. There is a slight learning curve when trying to take photos, some photos just don’t line up if you’re in a tight space. Yeah 8′x8′ rooms like below has fail all over it. With more practice good photos can be had easily though.

I know there are other panorama apps but this is my fav so far. Send your recommendations of other apps, I’m always looking for more apps, games, stuff like that.

-kevie-

One other place of inspiration I like to check out

I don’t even think I know what a formal headshot should look like (if there is such a thing), because trends change, shift happens and, with casting directors, you never know what might catch their attention.

In any case, I decided to give it my best shot. Meet James. This headshot was taken in the afternoon sunset light and, yes, it is direct light. Why not! Having been on the casting side of things myself in the past, I’ve seen plenty of photos that look like this. It gives a decent representation of what James looks like, which is exactly what he may need going forward.

I could’ve stopped there and called it a wrap, but instead we headed into the studio and shot more…

This photo is a more “male model” type of shot. I kept the lighting fairly simple:

MAIN – soft box camera right
SUBTLE FILL – soft box camera left
RIM – behind James, camera left bare

I figured this would give him a strong look and let him work in that “box” of light. I only gave him a few instructions on posing (like, “turn this way”, “look over there” or give me your best “Blue Steel”).

Right now I’m a whore for photoshop, partly because I’m using it a lot for The B&W Project, so I wanted to see what would happen with a color photo if I used some of the same things I do for the B&W photos. After playing around with things, it definitely came out different, and I like the fact that he doesn’t seem like a real person due to the editing.

Finally, I’ve always been a fan of the 007 series, and thought one day it would be cool to shoot their marketing materials. However, until then, I figured I’d create my own. I wanted this image to feel like an old school Polaroid test/reference photo, which is what someone may use before they wasted film on a bad exposure setting. (I’ve been on shoots in the past where the photographer used more test photos than actual film mainly because the lighting was being trickier than normal.)

In the end, I think it’s good to try and get as much out of a shoot, which is what I did with James: headshot, male model, and fun 007 shot. I will almost always try something new on a shoot, or I’ll go back to something I tried before that didn’t work on a previous model. It’s a good way to get different photos and a safe way to experiment, especially when I can get the photos I need out of the way and know I at least have 5 good photos.

Why not swing for the fence, something good might happen from it?

More of James

-kevie-

So what do you need to make this happen at home, some kind of backdrop, I used a dark gray background from Calumet, two lights(light is light minimum at least one soft source and one for rim or fill), a camera and a very pretty, first time, model. The first picture from above was one of the last setups we shot. Its obviously light from a high-ish source camera right and really it only looks like one light but I made sure, even when I was racing around with scatter brain I covered my ass and made sure that I had some source of light for fill. As Mr. Strobist put it(unofficially) talking about fill light, “….establish a strong base with fill light, a floor or base level, to then build off of or a safety net to control/dialing in the amount of shadows, again however you roll. So that fill light is camera left and its floored, almost, the bottom of the umbrella is touching the floor and I had that thing tilted up a little too. I knew I was gonna do some random crazy post processing work on the photo so I was fine with not worrying too much about exact light ratios or that I had enough or too little fill light as long as there was some fill light I was happy. Typically when I work, and there isn’t a set pose or action that I’m trying to achieve, I will create a lighting area/box that the model can move within and we can create different looks based on where she stands in front of the lights. Sometimes that box is smaller/tighter (not a lot area to move like overhead snooted lighting) other times the box is large (que dogs or kids for the big lighting area/box) just thought I would mention that this model’s area/box was fairly large, maybe medium-ish, not because she moved a lot, it just happened that way for most of the setups(AKA it was easier, what can I say I’m lazy).

Before I get into lighting setup number two i just wanted to quickly say im changing light setups as the model is changing her clothes so by the time she gets back in front of the camera I have the lights close to what Im looking for and can micro adjust to get the final look.

Lighting setup number two (above) “CrissCross-light-of-awesome-dramatic-shooting”. Why not? Big softbox to subject’s left and umbrella shoot through camera right, but the lights sre 90 degrees to the model left and right and quite quickly if I wanted to dial in the drama I could have her take two steps forward towards the camera and get a different look. Or two steps back and get something different as well. For me the B&W adds to what this lighting setup is trying to accomplish, “awesomeness”.

Different kind of “box” of light, lighting setup number 3, rim( but more side-ish) light to the model camera right and super large octobox camera right (WTF? I know right?). I kid you not I’m laying on the floor to get this shot(and the next photo too), but yeah about the light, I stacked the light on one side of the image and had a reflector for some back fill but it wasn’t needed really. Upon further inspection I think I had three lights for this one a very subtle “ninja rim” light camera left behind the model. With that said I think it will look similar without the third light. Plus we’re talking two lights here not three ppsssh! Ratios dont matter you can flip flop power front and back and which ever way you want just as long as they arent the same level its all to taste. “Everybody can make chicken soup but they will all taste different.”

Okay for some fun now with the last light setup, big octobox camera left almost tipping over the model and low-ridin’ the floor but not touching and a nice rim light behind the model camera right 28″ softbox so it would spread a little more.  This type of shot is my cryptonite, girls for me can never get their face to look right, I know its because of where the camera is positioned because they have to look at the camera. For some reason the planets aligned for 1/160th of a second and I was able to get this shot, good face, it doesn’t looked strained or contorted so good. The model was able to sort of roll around with this setup if needed but we kept it simple and just had her lay on her back and try different things until I got this shot and a few other.

In the end about 12 different setups in the span of 45 min.  It went as such: shoot 5-10 photos, once I got something I liked and the model liked we moved on to the next setup so we got like 2-3 lighting setups per outfit and I didn’t post all the different light setups these were the best of the best (good lighting with good pose).

A little history on this project, it all started with this photo I had shot of a friend of mine, Chris Cantore, for another project about a year and half almost 2 years ago, after I shot the photo, in my head, I knew I wanted to process it with an intense look and feel also I wanted it to be B&W, but I didnt know how to create that look that I could see in my head nor how long it would take to finally get what I saw in my head out and into the photo. So I did some research online looking for inspiration, then tried post processing based on examples I had found but nothing worked. Then tried a few more things that worked but not really in black and white in the end I got a cool looking photo from it(PHOTO) and it only took a couple of days to make that one photo(LOL). For the life of me I really couldn’t remember the exact way I setup my lights or exactly how I processed the image but it stuck with me, always in the back of my head. Something I wanted to try and repeat at a later time in my photo career. Well now its later, like 2 yrs, I still look at the photo and I’m still into the look of the photo. The photo doesn’t feel like something I tried or felt was trendy for the time and I’m not over it yet. All I want to do is shoot more like it. This is my “perfect circle“experiment (basically this artist was asked if he was good so he sent a perfectly painted circle on a piece of paper).

The break down of the lighting setup, 8ft dark gray seamless roll, a basic 3-light setup (-2 or -3 stop to the main i think, and the brand I’m using Calumet’s Genesis 200) two in the back at 45 angles to the subject, super-high-up-maxed to the highest point, light stands with the lights pointed almost straight down, two reason(maybe 3) in case I shoot a really tall person(HA), the spread of the light so I get decent coverage its a combo hair/rim light. For the Main(key) light is a 28″ Westcott Softbox over camera and a fill reflector underneath the camera for fill.  Would it be easier to setup one light on a boom for the rim light? True yes it probably would and probably create a better hair light. But I have no boom presently and things change throughout a year of shooting so I wanted something basic that was repeatable in case I needed to borrow equipment for whatever might happen to my gear. If I needed to take this project on the road its less setup (setup meaning less tinkering once the boom is “flying”)which is always good. Lest we forget that if anyone out there wanted to try my setup they wouldn’t need a boom either (plus im lazy “set it and forget it”).

The Post Processing which by nature is always different for each photo, I don’t think I could create an action or script that could repeat what I do and get consistent results but it would come close Im sure, mainly though because people are different, different skin, hair, clothing, height, its all different. I won’t got into too much detail on how I process the photos but generally speaking I shoot the photos in RAW(NEF or CR2 whatever you shoot with) I process 2, sometimes 3 version of the photo in ACR and then combine them into one project. Theres always a “flat” version meaning low contrast, the highlights arent crazy, the midtones are just right and the shadows are not “floored”.  Second version in ACR I create a hideous HDR version, the image looks crazy, the sliders are being moved to places they shouldn’t be but I’m able to use it for what I need. Sometimes theres a third version I create where its normal looking not flat, not hideous, just in between the two version. Almost a safety net version that I can pull things from when needed. Once all those images are working together there is a highpass layer created from the final of the ACR’ed photos. Then a few curves layers and a black background created and masked (wishing i had a black seamless now lol) and a dodge and burn layer. Finally a B&W adjustment layer to bring it home to its final look oh and a subtle low % warm filter.

Why do it? Well I have nothing better to do and I figure if I keep shooting the same thing over and over I will learn something from it (or get sick of it), whether I learn something about myself, the way I work(shooting/editing) or learn interesting things about the people in front of the camera, is why I do it. “AND” I want to say, “I’ve got a book with some of my photography work in it.”.

click on over to my Fan Page on facebook, everyone that I photograph will be posted there.

-kevie-