Capture One 5 Workshop

Since taking the Advanced Digital Workflow Class at Cypress College, I have been introduced to many new and fun programs. One of them being Capture One 4. It is a great raw processing engine for photos and with the pro version shooting tethered to a computer is a breeze. While surfing the net and Calumet’s website, I just happened to notice that they were have workshops on the new Capture One 5 software. The closest one to me is the Calumet Los Angles workshop on Feb. 1, 2010. After seeing the deal that everyone who takes the course gets a free copy of Capture One 5, I was hooked. The normal cost of the program is $129.99. Registration for the workshop is $49.99, so you get the software and two and a half hours of training on the software. If anyone from the Digital Workflow Class is going to be going let me now. Right now Grace and myself have signed up for the Capture One 5 Workshop.

Our Broken Window

On the same night of the Available Light Class we had a problem at the Cypress College Photography Department. Grace went into Studio 2 and noticed some glass lying on the floor. It didn’t look like any of the typical glass that we have around the department that might have broke. On closer inspection, she noticed that it had the same tint as the large plate glass window that are in that studio. Once she opened up the blinds there it was. A perfect shaped hole that fit the glass found on the floor. Grace immediately called campus security and talk to the auto body department to make sure no one was standing under the window. From upstairs the window seemed to be fluctuating with the wind and seemed like the rest could fall out at anytime. When Campus security arrived, they decided to break the rest of the window out just to be safe. So with all of the excitement going on, Grace and I decided to document it by photographing upstairs and from ground level. After patching the hole with some black plastic the nights excitement ended. The next day a plywood board now sits where the window us to be.

Available Light Field Trip

A couple of days ago Clifford Lester took his Available Light class on a field trip. The trip was to a building he had found that was still under construction, but the walls there were great backgrounds for a fashion photo shoot. I came along because I wanted to see the class in action. While I was there I also worked as Cliff's Digital Tech for the first part of the class. It was actually fun being on location as a tech. Since we didn’t have any outlets, it was a new experience trying to set everything up and try to conserve power. Cliff had Krista and Chris scout the models that we were shooting that day. After Cliff’s demo I took part in some of the shooting. I mostly focused on taking pictures of Krista’s model Courtney. I really like the class and next time it is offered I will see about enrolling in it.

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.

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

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.

Cypress College Photo Dept Staff

Cypress College Photo Dept Staff, originally uploaded by pinlux.

Grace has been scheming to get a photo with all of the cypress college instructors in it for quite a while. This summer she had her opportunity. With a little bit of sweet talking she got Greg Fulton to agree to let her use his studio. After a grand tour she decided on the location of the shot and how she wanted to light it. When it got close to the day of the shot Grace enlisted the help of Craig Norris and Vergil Lam to help with the lighting. It was a full day and night event getting the lighting setup. Even then it still need to have minor tweaks the morning of the shoot. Once everyone got settled in and found there places the first couple of test shots started. Again with the lighting correction and the angle of the camera. This went on for a good amount of time, so people got bored and played around during the testing. Once the lighting was finally set and the group got its composer back the final shot was taken. Then five to ten more were added just because. During one of the shot, everyone had post-it notes on their heads for fun. With the day winding down, the refreshments were severed and everyone gathered around the laptop to have a look at all the images. It was a great day.

Appearing in the photo

Top Row: Greg Fulton, Ronald Miller, Clifford Lester, Jonathan Fletcher, Greg Bumatay, Mark Chamberlain
Stair Case: Rob Johnson, Grace Suphamark
Chairs: Max Gerber, Jerry Burchfield, Elizabeth DiGiovanni, Susan Skaar, Davis Barber, Clayton Spada
Front Row: Krista Skustad, John Halligan, Greg Rager

The Kate Reid Quartet at Steamers

I got a call from Grace asking if I wanted to go to Steamers in Fullerton, CA. She told me that Kate Reid, an instructor that I took for Jazz History Class at Cypress College, was going to be playing. How could I pass up an opportunity like that? We were going to meet up with Ron and Nancy Miller and just relax, listening to some great jazz. When Grace and I showed up, I was thinking about leaving my camera in the car and not shooting that night. I still feel kind of awkward shooting around other people that are just trying to enjoy themselves. Since we were already at the back patio we decided not to go back to the car. It was for the best though. Grace was the first to bring out here camera and start shooting. After a few minutes she wanted to use my camera because it is better at shooting in low-light situations. With my camera already out I decided to snap a couple of shots. It wound up being a great night of shooting and music. I am hoping to go back and do this again sometime. Also, I want be as camera shy next time.

You can see more photos on my Flickr

Photo 203 – Lighting and Studio Techniques Final

The lighting class had a practical final in which they needed to shoot a white cup of coffee with a white saucer on a white seamless background. The concept was to use no more than two lights to create mood and drama in the photo. The class was given information on the assignment a week before the final so they could get the props and try testing some ideas. Cliff was going to give extra credit to any team that was able to get steam to come off the coffee in their shot. The assignment also had a special prop that would be given during the night of the final. When everyone was given their assigned stations they were also given sugar cubes. They had to use at least three cubes and work it into their idea for the shot. Once the final started, Cliff and I were walking around checking up on the progress of the teams. After a couple of minutes into the final, Cliff started to wonder if what he envisioned was the same thing as what his students were doing. He imagined something with more mood while most of the teams were lighting everything including the bright white background. For an hour's worth of work everything looked fairly good. With more time I think all the groups would have done great. There was one group that did get what Cliff was hoping for. Craig Norris and his group came the closest. It was shot with one light and the background was left dark to create the drama. Craig posted the shot his blog.

Each group for the final project was give a tabletop with white seamless and a two light preset up. Anything else that they might have wanted had to have been brought from home.

Cliff talks to his students about the final and group assignments.


Craig is the first to see the "special" item that had to be placed in the photo. There had to be at least three sugar cubes included in the coffee cup shot.


The last minute rules and instructions for the classes final.

A Latin Evening Five

Friday was the fifth Latin Evening event at Cypress College. It was put on by the Patrons of the Arts and the ticket sales are going towards scholarships for the students within the Fine Arts Department. The evening started a little early when the house went off queue and opened the theater early to the audience. This gave people a little something extra though; they where able have a seat and see some of the sound checks and what goes into the setup the show.

The music was the main focus of the evening with everything from folk to jazz. They even had an entire choir for several of the songs. The end of the first half of the night the choir ended with an audience participation of La Bamba from Ritchie Valens. During the second half of the show I noticed some of the students that are in my Jazz History class performing. I remember hearing our instructor singing the song that they sung during some of our classes for example of jazz styles, but I can not remember the name of it right now. Throughout the night there were several dances. There were two dancers that really stuck out. They had donated there time and skills as professional dancers from Disneyland to help put on the two tangos for the night. All the dances and dancers that night did a great job and put on an excellent show.

The lighting designer did a great job for the show. The lights really helped with the mood and added great accents to the show. I also liked the gobo affects that were used on some of the moving lights to give scattered light patterns to break up the flood lights. The use of the harmonious colors also played well with the stage setup. The choice of lighting looked great throughout the entire evening.

During the entire evening the Patrons of the Arts sold tickets for a 50/50 drawing. At the end of the night the winning ticket holder decided to donate the $110 winnings back to the Patrons of the Arts scholarship fund on behave of his two children. That was a very generous gesture that some student will be very thankful for. I never got his name but I did manage to get a picture of him and his two kids to archive with the Patrons of the Arts.