Naked Chicks in Trees
March 11th, 2011
I don’t only take photos of naked chicks on rocks. Sometimes I do photos of naked chicks in trees. While I was down south I was blessed with the chance to work with a wonderful new (to me) model, Charlise. I had actually contacted Charlise on an earlier trip down to South Carolina, but it didn’t work out for us to shoot on that trip. But this time when I got back in touch she was available. Not only that, she was willing to drive out from Charleston to a nature preserve that I had hiked around in before wishing I had a model with me. And, of course, she had to make that drive in the pre-dawn darkness because I wanted to shoot the sunrise on the beach. We’ll get to those photos later.
But, for years I’ve wanted to do something with live oak trees and Spanish moss. I’ve tried it a number of times, but finding just the right tree in just the right location, just the right model and just the right light has been elusive. This time I came pretty close as you can see in the photo up top. I’d be happier if we had had an overcast sky to work with, but the backlighting works pretty well here. I hope to do another shoot with Charlise in this same location sometime in the future on an overcast day.
Despite the bright sun presenting challenges for me, Charlise did a great job modeling and I was able to come up with a number of photos that I’m happy with. I’m still learning all the features of my new Nikon D7000 and I suspect that as I get to know more about the options to control contrast in the camera I may be able to do a better job working in this kind of light.
Lots more to come from this shoot, but for now enjoy a closer view of the lovely Charlise in a tree below. Not every tree in South Carolina has Spanish moss, but they can still make some nice photos.
One Man Show (With Lots of Ladies)
March 8th, 2011
I share my studio with a very fine photographer, GaryM. I just learned that Gary is going to have his first one-man show at the Zaum gallery in Newport, Kentucky. I’m astonished that Gary hasn’t had his own one-man show before this…he’s been doing outstanding work and getting it published and shown all over the place for quite a while. As you can see in the announcement above, the opening reception is Saturday March 19 from 7 to 11 p.m. I’ll be going down to Newport, the town that puts the “sin” in Cincinnati, for the opening. Hope to see you there.
A Lovely Pair
March 6th, 2011
As expected, this past week has been exceptionally busy. Getting tax stuff ready. Trip to Athens for two days to photograph the winter concert at the Ohio University School of Dance. Appointment with my accountant. And a quick visit from my daughter who flew up from Tampa to do an interview for grad school. I drove my daughter to the airport last night and came back home to relax a bit. I’ll have more to say and show about the dance concert in a few days. I’ll just say for now that I was very, very pleased with the performance of the Nikon D7000 in that application of my new photo tool.
But meanwhile, one more post of photos from my Savannah visit with Bill Ballard and the two lovely ladies who posed for us there. I was quickly obvious that both Christa and Sarah were both of similar build and almost exactly the same height. So I just couldn’t pass up having the two of them pose together for some photos. You see a couple of the results here. What a great pair of beautiful ladies they were. Thanks ladies. I hope I get to work with both of them again sometime soon.
Back In The North
February 28th, 2011
I returned home over the weekend. There was snow on the ground when we arrived back in Ohio, but it melted yesterday. Today it rained, but the temperature is dropping and it looks like we will be getting another taste of winter. But it’s March tomorrow, so the end is near.
That’s another photo of the lovely Christa up at the top, taken in Savannah where the temperature was 79 degrees. Below is another photo of Sarah in the great location that Bill Ballard arranged for us. Thanks again, Bill. And great thanks and praise to both Christa and Sarah for a wonderful shoot. I’ll have some more of them to share soon.
This is a busy week for me. I’ll be going to Athens, Ohio, for a couple days to photograph a dance concert at the Ohio University School of Dance. That’s always a fun trip back to my alma mater. And I’m looking forward to using the high ISO capabilities of my new D7000 for the performance photos. Of course, this will be my first time using the new camera in that environment, so it will be a learning experience. As soon as I get back from Athens I have to go visit my accountant for the annual income tax ordeal. So getting all that paperwork together will occupy the remainder of this week.
Here is one final photo of Bill at work, taken with the fisheye lens. The model is Christa. The location is fantastic. One important trick that must be mastered when using a fisheye is keeping the photographer’s feet out of the photo. The lens takes in 180 degrees, so if you tip the lens down just a little, there are your feet at the bottom of the frame. I’ve pretty much got the hang of that skill…no, I didn’t have to crop this one to get my feet out.
Notes From a Snow Bird
February 23rd, 2011
Sorry it has been so long. Last week was a whirl of activity, then I headed south with the family to get away from this horrible winter. We have a favorite place on the coast in South Carolina that we like to go to at this time of year when we can’t take any more winter. So that’s where I am this week.
I’ve not done any figure work on these family vacation trips in the past, but this year is different. I was able to drive to Savannah yesterday and meet up with an on-line friend, Bill Ballard, there. Bill was good enough to line up a location and two wonderful models for the two of us to work with.
That’s Bill up above. It seems to me like he was having some difficulty figuring out which direction to point the camera…but he’s old…not quite as old as me…but still may be having an occasional mental lapse. Bill is a great photographer with a real understanding of light and the figure. And he’s a great guy who was a super host for me…and took me to a kick-ass Cuban restaurant for lunch after we finished shooting.
I didn’t work with just the fisheye yesterday, but I decided to just show you a couple of the fisheye photos I took in today’s post. Stay tuned for other photos taken with a “normal” lens.
The model in the two photos above is Christa. She doesn’t have an on-line portfolio and only models for a very few people, so I feel quite blessed to have had the chance to work with her. She is a delight, beautiful and with a great understanding of what the artist is trying to do. Thanks, Christa.
The model below is Sarah. Several years ago when Sarah lived in Michigan we tried to arrange a chance to work together, but we were just far enough apart that it never happened. So I guess she just needed to move further away for things to work out. She now lives in Savannah, so yesterday we finally were able to shoot together for the first time. I hope it won’t be the last, because Sarah is a fantastic model. I had a great time working with her and getting to know her a bit. I think we’ll work together again.
As you can see, I’m having lots of fun shooting with this new lens. I’m gradually getting used to just what it does and learning how to best use its characteristics to make photos I’m interested in. I’m starting to think it may turn out to be a more useful lens than I thought it would be when I bought it.
And, for my friends back home in Ohio, it was 79 degrees in Savannah yesterday. No snow or ice in the forecast around here.
f11 volume 4
February 15th, 2011
Volume 4 of the f-eleven books has just been published. You can go here to preview and purchase a copy. Once again my work is included in this volume. This is the direct link to the preview.
f-11 volume 4 is the next chapter of the f-11 books series, published by the private photography group f-eleven. All proceeds from this volume will go to the Seattle Opera.
Printed on lustre premium paper in 8″ x 10″ format, with ten photographers contributing award-winning work from editorial fashion, artistic nude to photojournalism. This book will make a uniquely phenomenal conversation piece on your coffee table, and a great gift for the photography connoisseur in your life.
For our other books, and the latest updates from the f-eleven group of photographers, please visit us:
f-eleven books: http://f-elevenbooks.com/
f-eleven books blog: http://blog.f-elevenbooks.com/
f-eleven face book: http://www.facebook.com/f11books
Dirty Show Snaps
February 14th, 2011
I went up to Detroit to attend the Dirty Show on Saturday night. They gave me a photo pass this year so I was able to take my Nikon in and do some snapshots. I don’t have much time for writing today (Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone) but I thought I’d go ahead and share a few of the snaps. The first one up there shows the wall dedicated to the S.W.E.A.T. artists at the show. I took that with my new fisheye lens using my SB-600 flash and one of those white “tupperware” diffusers. The flash covers the whole 180 degrees that that lens covers when I use that diffuser. I shot everything at 1600 ISO, which seems almost indistinguishable from 100 ISO with my D7000.
Here’s a shot of the general scene at the show, taken from the side of the stage:
Here’s Chris Maher in his store which is a great place for artists to sell their prints. Chris does a fantastic job with the store at the Dirty Show every year. This may be the best use I’ve found for the new fisheye so far:
Here are some of the glamorous friends who went to the show with me:
And last for now, here is the distinctly unglamourous photographer beside his distinctly non-erotic contribution to the show:
Playing with the Fisheye
February 11th, 2011
It’s off to the Dirty Show tomorrow, but I’ve had time this week to do a quick shoot with Angele at the studio. As I’ve mentioned here before, I have a new lens, an 8mm fisheye. I have some specific things I want to use this lens for, but before I get to those I need to learn to use this new tool. So for now it is coming out during every shoot I do so I can learn what it does, how it behaves in different settings, and how I can use it to get the photos I want. I also have a nice little piece of software that straightens out the fisheye effect and in essence converts this lens into an ultrawideangle…as I’m learning, almost an instant panorama lens. So I’m starting to play with that software too, so I can learn how it works and understand how to use it to get what I want.
So, here’s a photo of Angele shot with the fisheye. I put her in front of that window for several reasons. I wanted to see how much flair I’d get with this lens when used with pretty extreme backlighting. I’m very pleased with what I find here on that score. This is a pretty damn good lens, optically, for the price. The other main reason was to see what it would do with all those straight lines from the window panes and then to see what the software did with it all when I did the conversion to remove the fisheye effect.
Here’s what happened to the photo when I ran the software:
Pretty extreme and pretty interesting. I’m not real pleased with what is happening to her feet here, but that’s a point of learning to work with in the future. But I’m very interested in the “instant panorama” sort of effect that is produced. In the right setting that could be very useful. With a little cropping this could work as an ultra-wide shot. And, wow, those lines are nice and straight. I may try later running it back through the same program to use another effect that it offers, to remove the lens tilt effect that is seen here and in any photo where you tip the camera up to include something like the top of a building. Lots of possibilities here. The software, in case you are wondering, is PTLens. It’s a download that is very reasonably priced. It works as a stand alone program and also as a filter in PhotoShop. And the correction on this photo was a simple one-click operation. There are controls to modify the extent of the transformation, but I just left it at the default settings for this trial.
I’m impressed. I’ll be playing with both the lens and the software for quite a while, so expect to see more about both of them here.
And I hope to see some of you at the Dirty Show tomorrow night.
Dirty Time
February 9th, 2011
It’s almost time for the Dirty Show. It opens Friday night. I’ll be there with some friends on Saturday night. They said they would give me a photographer pass this year, so I should have a Nikon around my neck and be working on doing a bunch of photos of the evening’s activities. Say hi if you are there.
Other than that all I have to say is that I’m totally done with this winter. It’s too damn cold. There’s too damn much snow and ice. We just got our first mail delivery in a week. The cold and ice and snow has just been exhausting me. I’ve done a little shooting in the studio and will be posting some new photos soon, but I just have not been able to get the editing done on them. I need the studio computer for some of the work I want to do, but today I’m stuck at home for the afternoon waiting for Fed-X to deliver an update for my van’s GPS system. The delivery requires a signature, and I want the update installed for the trip to Detroit this weekend, so I’m sitting at home waiting for them to deliver it “sometime before 7.”
So that’s all for today. Maybe it will warm up soon and my brain will thaw out.
Herb Ascherman At The Kinsey Institute
February 4th, 2011
Yesterday I drove over to Bloomington, IN, to meet Herb Ascherman and hear him give a talk at the Kinsey Institute. It was a great trip. Herb’s talk was supposed to have happened at the opening of the current show at the Kinsey Gallery, but these weekly blizzards forced him to postpone it when the snow closed the road as he was trying to get to Bloomington.
The show was curated by Herb and Jeannette Palsa and is all photos done using 19th Century photographic processes. Another photographer I’ve met, Charles West, had work included in the show. Herb’s lecture dealt with the history of erotic photography from the earliest days of the medium through the rest of the 19th Century. It was well researched and insightful as he reviewed the desires and the marketplace that produced the earliest photographic eroticism and the efforts to suppress it. Good background for the current struggles against censorship and government intrusions into the work of photographers.
I did this photo of Herb doing his lecture with my Canon S90. That was shot at 1250 ISO.
And, something completely different. My friend, Stephen Haynes, included a link to this work in his blog today. I almost didn’t take the time to look through it. I’m glad I changed my mind. This is one of the finest uses of the medium of photography that I’ve seen in a long time. There was a time when I aspired to do work along these lines. Life intervened and I was not able to take my work in that direction in any meaningful way. Darcy Padilla has certainly done a fantastic job in the finest traditions of documentary photography and in just being a feeling, caring human being. Look through the whole project. Look at her other work. This is as good and as important as photography can get. http://www.darcypadilla.com/thejulieproject/intro.html
