Time Lapse Photo Shoot

Time Laps from John Halligan on Vimeo.

I have been wanting to do a time lapse of a photo shoot for some time now. Krista allowed me the opportunity to try this on her photo shoot with Ross Davidson. I wanted to make a video showing how the setup, shooting, and tear down goes. Because of sometime consternates on my part, I wasn’t able to start shooting before everything was setup. Next time it should go a bit smoother now that I know how to get everything setup. Now I just need to learn how to actually use my video editing software.

Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta

What is new in Lightroom 3 Beta - Part 2 - Part 3

An instructors of mine told me that he never looked forward to Photoshop upgrades because he had to almost relearn everything. Once he started to use Lightroom all that changed. He actually started looking forward to updates and upgrades. Everything new that was put in to Lightroom just help to improve the program without changing much of the layout and feel of the program. Well, now it the time to start testing out the next version of Lightroom. The Public Beta was just released yesterday, so do not need to have a previous version of Lightroom to try it. All you need to do is go to Adobe Labs to download it. Some of the new features in Lightroom 3 Beta that are listed on the Adobe Labs site are:

• Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
  
• State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
  
• Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
  
• Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
  
• Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
  
• Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
  
• New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
  
• More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) have already released some new videos to help get people up to speed with the new changes to Lightroom 3. The videos are demoed by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski who are great speakers on anything Photoshop and Lightroom related subjects.

If you do decide to use Lightroom 3 Beta it will be valid until April 30, 2010. So it seems like the new version will be out hopefully be fall of next year.

A New Use of an Old Toy

My friend Robert Williams needed some help with a project for the Advanced Digital Workflow Class. He needed a partner for the midterm practical and his schedule was booked solid because of work. I decided to help setup a shoot so he could tech for me. I really had no idea what I was going to setup for the shoot. He wasn’t able to make it to the fashion shoot that I setup with Krista Skustad, so that left me with one day to think of something. The day before Robert and I were going to shoot I received the Drobo that I had order a couple of days earlier. I had planned on replacing my HP MediaSmart Server with this new fine and shiny Drobo, which gave me an idea. This would be the thing we would shoot. After all, from the time that I got the thing, it was a little bit of a pain to manage. Most of the time I just left it shut off because I was tired of having to trouble shoot it. Now I finally manage to find a use of the old thing. As a Prop it worked fantastic. It never beeped at me, got angry and flashed red lights at me, or just constantly give me warnings that it processer was working at 183 degrees Celsius. Now I actually like the thing. More or less as a paper weight now.

The New Pen and Paper

(Update the video has been pulled because of the unauthorized use of the Nike symbol.)

Courier User Interface from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

This maybe a conceptual idea from Microsoft, but I really like it. I hear everyone is waiting for Apple’s announcement of a new tablet computer, which from rumors will be I big iPhone, but I think I will like this a little bit more. If it come to market the way it is shown here then it would be an amazing thing for me to use at school to organize my notes. The old pen and paper notebook might just become a thing of the past. One of the key features that I like about this design is that it looks like something that I am already familiar with. The good old pen and paper. A problem that I might have with Apple’s Tablet is that none of the rumors talk about it having a pen. I think it would be easier for me to jot down notes in a class with a styles then it would for me hitting a virtual keyboard. The interface of this device also seems to be a little more appealing to me. I like the idea of two screens. It is the way I look though most binders and note books right now. Plus when I open an application or program it should not cover up the whole screen like it might on a single display screen. I am really looking forward to this technology. Right now I am thinking this would be a good way to draw up comps and sketch ideas for some of my photo shoots. Hopefully this come to market the way it is looking in the concept video and not some watered down version of this.

Original story about the Microsoft “Courier” can be found on Gizmoto.

Living Art Media

Living Magazine Cover & Spread - Outside Magazine from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

I was looking through some blog feeds this morning and came across one that really caught my eye. It was an article about Alexx Henry and his work with the new media, living art. He was a guest speaker at Image Mechanics Collision Conference up in Los Angles not that long ago. That is where I first got introduced to this new media of living art, or sometimes called living canvas. It is the hope of the print world that with new technologies that are in development that one day bring our magazines and news papers to life. I really like this concept since it has been around for years in many movies and television shows already. Right now this is still in its infancy and the market for selling this kind of stuff is not there yet, but it is coming. Now as photographers it seems like we are going to go through another transitional period of stills to video. It should be a fun time ahead.

The original post was from Photography Blog.

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.