September Flickr War

Well this month I hit a new mile marker. 7000 hits and just at the nick of time. Almost didn’t make it this month. Hopefully I will get a good surprise when I see Grace’s blog and see her almost caught up to me.

Grace's Flickr

My Flickr

Small Problem on the Set

Krista has been working on her portfolio this semester as part of her independent studies class. Where she has worked with many female models in the past, Krista has wanted to start working with more male models to diversify her fashion portfolio. This was the first shoot that I am aware of that she setup to shot with a male model. The start of the morning went great. We actually got to the school a little early that day. Krista’s wardrobe designer Nicci arrived shortly after we did and her model said that we was going to be running a little late, but he would be there. Since we were going to have some time before he arrived, Krista had us hold off on setting stuff up the background. She wanted to wait until she could see him and get an idea of his outfits. The time for the shoot was originally set to start at 11:00am and the model say he was going to be about fifteen minutes late. After an hour or so Krista tried to call him and see if he was still going to make it to the shoot. He didn’t pick up, instead he had texted Krista that he was on his way and would be there soon. At almost two hours late he called Krista because he had gotten off the freeway and didn’t know which way to go. After a bit of a struggle to get him turned in the right direction, he was on his way. By the time he had finally arrived it was past two hours late and Krista was not a happy person anymore. She had stopped really caring about how the shoot was going to go before he had arrived. Once he was there and the shoot started, that feeling really didn’t change much at all. He really didn’t take directions from her that well, and his phone kept going off while Krista was shooting. He even answered it while he was in front of the camera. This was driving her crazy. When I chimed in about tech issues where we might need to adjust the exposure slightly or maybe move a light just a bit I got the response of “I don’t care”. I really didn’t push the point to much after that because I did agree with her. The shoot was really finished even before it had started. All of our excitement was drained by having to wait of the model. Krista also mentioned that he just passed over the fact that he was late and didn’t really seem to care much about the shoot. Hopefully the next male model that Krista works with won’t be as bad. As for this one, I don’t think she will ever work with him again.

On most of Krista’s shoots that I work on with her it is hard to edit it down. There are a lot of good pictures and it comes down to just having to pick one moment in time over another. That was not the case this time. It was hard to find any really good shots from this shoot, but I did manage to find about a handful to post.

A little Less Fun with Cature One

Awhile ago, I worked with Krista on another photo shoot. This was the second time that I was using the software Capture One Pro 4 on a shoot. I was still excited about using it from the late photo shoot that I work with Krista on. Unlike last time though, I had a few more problems with it this time. Once I got everything connected, I found that the software was not detecting the camera. I tried restarting the camera and the computer with no luck. I then remember that Cliff mentioned that sometime the preferences can get corrupted. After taking a moment to try and remember where the file was on the Mac, I trashed it. Once Capture One started up again, all was fine for the rest of the night.

Krista’s shoot that night was to take some pictures of a drummer named Emilio who is a member of the band Fire Rocket Red. The set up with the dark background made for a great low key photo shoot. Emilio brought the props to help with the shoot.

A little while after that shoot, Krista was going to also going to do some head shots of Chris. If I remember correctly he needed some new head shots to try out for a part on the show Heroes. Here is hoping he gets it. All of these Images were shot by Krista and have my post processing added.

Camera Obscura

This semester I am taking a Photo History class at Cypress College with Jonathan Fletcher. One of our first home work assignment was to make a camera obscura and then photograph the results. My place had a horrible view of walls and more walls were I live, so I asked Krista if I could use her place. Setting up the camera obscura in her room was fairly easy. We just had to take down one set of curtains and cover two window with black plastic. It was great fun up until it started to heat up the room. During my first test shot I turned off the light at the wall even though Krista told me if I turned it off at the ceiling fan I could still have some air circulation. That was a long five minutes baking in that heat. After checking my test and I looked good I decided to reposition the camera and take a couple more shots. This time I was smart enough to leave the fan on, but it was still way to hot. Grace also joined me for the last couple of shots. During one of them, she tried to take a picture of me taking a picture of the camera obscura. I don’t think it worked out the way she was hoping.

Fun with Capture One (Continued)

Here is a selection of Krista’s images from the shoot the other day. More can be found on my Flickr site.

Fun with Capture One

On Wednesday, Krista had a photo shoot and I was working as her digital tech. She also had a hair stylist, make-up artist, and a wardrobe stylist to help her get the model ready for the shoot. Because there was going to be a limited amount of time that the model was going to be able to stay, two different backgrounds setup at one time for this shoot. This made changing out backgrounds a snap. There were three different shots that required wardrobe, make-up, and background changes. With two backgrounds up, we only had to worry about changing one. Also during this shoot, I got to play with some new software. Normally I would use Canon’s capture software and have Adobe Lightroom import the images. This process was slow to setup and took a long time before you can see anything on the screen. This time I used Capture One. It was pretty much plug-in play. The images loaded very fast, about a second or less. This gave Krista almost instant feedback on how her images looked. She also like that she could hear the excited from everyone right after she took the shot. This was an amazing shot to work on and I can’t wait for the next one.

During the setup, I shot a couple pictures of Krista.

6000 Views

I just got the bench mark of 6000 views to my Flickr today. It feels good to have my stuff seen.