Portrait of a Friend

After I set up a portrait session with a classmate...and he never showed up I organized one at my house with my friend Kalinka.

Whenever I pictured a photo of her I just couldn't picture it against anything but a white background.

So we had a little portrait session.

I had 3 lights, I had 2 softboxes that I shot though, one ontop, and one on the bottom of the camera...and a 1 light shooting through my background lighting the background up as white...as well as  seperarting her from it...and adding a night highlight/wrap around her that I found really carried out the angelic look, and the angelic way she holds herself.

The only think I would have changes was maybe use to beauty dishes, so that she had a circular catch light instead of 2 squares ones.

Slow Shutter Speed With Flash

This was my photo of a slow shutter with flash.

I asked my friend who was DJING one night if I could come and take photos for my class...he said yes.

So what I did was experimented and this was the best one of the batch...what I did was I picked my framing...or at least how I wanted it to look...waited for the drop (where the bass kicks in, which would make him, the DJ, go crazy for the crowd), then I set my shutter speed to 1/2 a second, I then set my focus manually, locked it in, and opened my aperture so I got proper exposure, my ISO was around 6400. I set my flash to 1st Curtain Sync so I got the light streaks, and on my 24-70, I went in tight to 70mm, then I timed it, when I hit the shutter, I zoomed out, so that just as the shutter opened and the flash went off, I went wide, and I hit 24mm (the widest focal length i could go on that lens) just as the curtain began to close.

I was very happy with the results!!

Speeding Water Droplets

This was my photo for the speeding water droplets assignment.

I used a super fast shutter speed (1/4000th) and a wide open aperture (f/2.8) along with an ISO of 800. I shot it on a Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro lens.

I was somewhat unhappy with how this series of photos came out...just because I thought that I could have done better. I couldn't get the timing right with my partner, and even though I would turn on the motor drive, and blast away...I still couldn't seem to get a keeper.

This was my favourite of the set though! And I love how the indentation of the drop has created somewhat of a hole in the water...while the ripples circle away from it. I recropped the shot, to almost center the drop.

Panorama

This was my panorama photo:

I used 30 photos stitched together, and layered upon each other to create this photo. I shot 3 different exposures of each photo (so same framing for each photo, but my settings were 2 stops under exposed, 1 shot perfectly exposed, and the third shot 2 stops over exposed), then I created a High Dynamic Range photo, which gave it this certain look!

I edited it in Photoshop CS5.5...and each one of my shots (not including the under/over exposed photos) overlapped the previous by about 30%.

I travelled with my family to Ottawa, and while they were at a museum, I went exploring with my camera and tripod with the intention of shooting the panorama photo. But when I saw the bridge I thought that I had to use that! So I shot it...and then I looked at it, and thought that I had to do something to spice it up...therefore I reshot it so I could do the HDR!

Painting with Light

This my photo that I did for painting with light.


My settings were:
Shutter: 30 seconds open
Aperture: f/22
ISO: 100

I was happy with the concept...but ultimately the execution was lacking...I would have ideally used a flash to freeze Justin, because over 30 seconds, you can see a lot of motion blur.

Exploration of a Photographer

My choice of photographer, and a great influence of mine is Peter Hurley. I would argue that he is one of the greatest portrait photographers out there. I love his style, and also, having seen him in person in action, I feel that his greatest strength, beside his signature look (more on that later), is that he has one of the, if not the, most charismatic personalities I've ever seen. The way he is able to get his models (normally actors looking for headshots, or people wanting a portrait) to emote, to show their true emotion, but the emotion that he wants them to show is amazing.

Also, his style is just fantastic. He normally uses a set of Kino Flo's, which creates a fantastic, sharp light, with some great highlights sculpting the face. Also the use of Kino Flo's is able to destroy the interruption that a strobe creates.

Self Portrait

The original file was taken at 1/250, ISO 100 at f/11 with 2 strip boxes left and right and a large softbox boomed over me. I took it at 24mm on a 24-70 f/2.8L and a Canon 1D X. I took it lying down on a cyclo, with the camera mounted on a magic arm attached to the boom. I took it with the 35mm camera in it because I love that camera, it brings me a sense of comfort, as does being in the studio. I lied down with my feet on the wall, and just felt comfortable, literally and figuratively. I feel that this picture really captures me, I'm comfortable, behind a camera, in my socks and jeans, with a shirt that's anti-homophobia. Also, I love how the blue clashes against the white, as does my skin. I should have worn something darker, or just slightly flagged off the lights because I have some highlighting going on with my shirt.

In photoshop, I didn't do much, I played with the levels, saturation and contrast, and slightly upped the highlights to blow out the gray background.