Dabbling in Paint
May 27th, 2012
As I continue to work my way through my backlog of shoots, I’ve now reached the end of February. Slow but steady progress. This was a fun shoot…as I’m sure you can see. There’s a painter who has his studio in the same building as mine. Mike Elsass also has a gallery in the Oregon District in Dayton where he shows his work and also the work of some other fine artists from around the country.
Mike asked me to bring a nude model in to hang around his studio while he paints. Might sound a little weird, but it really isn’t. I did this once before with Mike and it was a great day. I knew this would be a lot of fun for the model and that Mike would capture the energy of the day in the work he was doing.
To make the day even better, I got an old friend who has modeled for me in the past, but not recently, to come in for this. I hadn’t shot with Charlye Raine for quite a while…but when we were working together regularly she was a favorite model who helped me produce some of my favorite photos. So this was a great chance to work with her again.
We hung around Mike’s studio for several hours. Charlye helped with the painting. Mike worked on his paintings which are done on rusted steel panels. It was a lot of fun for everyone and even resulted in some fun photos.
And, another technical note. These are all available light, which is probably obvious. But I processed the files differently this time. I decided to try working them all the way through using ACDSee Pro 5. That program has some very useful editing tools that I wanted to play with. I’m very happy with the results. I’ll probably still buy PhotoShop CS6…but I’m really wondering if I need it…
Ayn in Other Light
May 23rd, 2012
Here are a couple different photos of Ayn shot in the studio at another time from the earlier photos I’ve posted recently. I was experimenting with other kinds of lighting when I did these photos. I’d tell you about these lighting setups, but I didn’t take notes and now I have no idea what I did when I shot these. I’m really bad about taking notes. When I was younger I could usually remember stuff like that, but times, and my calcified brain, have changed and that’s no longer the case. I know this and know I should take better notes…but I keep forgetting. So it goes.
But, nevertheless, Ayn is beautiful and talented and was having some fun trying different things when we shot these. I’m looking forward to doing more work with her outdoors now that summer is here. And, even though it is technically still spring, when I see temperatures in the upper 90s in the forecast, I consider summer to have arrived.
Ayn’s Front
May 18th, 2012
Here are some more photos of Ayn from my test of the lighting technique shared with me by MC Grain. Ayn looks great from pretty much any angle, and I’m really enjoying what this light does with her figure. I’ll be doing some more work with this light. And I’m looking forward very much to doing a lot more work with Ayn in the coming months.
I tried a different workflow for my editing of these three photos. I did the conversion from RAW in Nikon View NX2. But then, instead of opening the files in PhotoShop, I worked with them first in ACDSee Pro 5, which is the program I usually use for viewing and selecting photos. I’m experimenting with the fairly sophisticated image editing capabilities in that program. I may be using it more in the future, once I get through the learning curve and get comfortable with the many options it offers for selective control of the editing process. I’ll let you know what I think as I experiment more with it.
But I have a very busy weekend coming up, with a very important family event. Next week I’ll be getting back to work on photo stuff. Meanwhile, enjoy Ayn.
Ayn’s Back
May 15th, 2012
Yes, Ayn is back with some more photos from my test shoot with this new lighting style. And, of course, that is Ayn’s back in the photos. I’ll be working more with this light from time to time. Thanks again to MC Grain for freely sharing this technique with me.
For those who care about the technical stuff, these were all shot with my 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor lens. The top shot is wide open at 1.4. For the other two I stopped down a bit, to 2.8. They were all shot at 1600 ISO with my Nikon D7000. As I’ve said, the quality is so good with this camera that I use ISO 100 to 1600 as just ways to set exposure. None of these have any noise reduction used on them. When I shoot dance performances I go up as high as 6400 ISO and still the noise or grain is much better than I could get with Tri-X in Acufine back in the old days of film, so I’m completely happy with the results…still with no need for noise reduction to my eye.
And, in other technical stuff, I’m pretty settled now on shooting RAW and processing the files in Nikon View NX2. For these photos I pretty much nailed exactly what I was after in the camera, so all I did in View was convert the files. A few slight tweaks to the tonal relationships in PhotoShop and I was finished. I didn’t even sharpen these in PhotoShop since I liked the slight softness of the files as they were.
Light and Dark
May 11th, 2012
It’s fun to play around with different kinds of light. In the winter when I can’t work outside with nude models because they seem to always complain too much about the cold, I often find myself experimenting with lighting methods in the studio. That’s what I was doing when I shot these photos of Ayn.
I first saw this style of lighting when photographer MC Grain shot my friend and favorite model, Brooke. Usually when I see a different lighting method I’m able to figure out how it was done by studying the photos. But MC’s photos of Brooke had me mystified. So I contacted him and he very generously shared what he was doing with me. That told me he is a photographer I can respect, not one of the fools who think they have a secret that they must guard to keep anyone else from using it.
So I set up a variation on the lighting he was using and set out to see what I could do with the method. That’s the point…I wasn’t interested in copying what MC had done, but rather seeing what I could do that reflected my own vision in that style of light. These are some of the first results from that test.
I plan to do more with this light when I find the right place to use it. I have a shoot planned in NYC next month where I will use it. In addition to this lighting style I’m also using my 50mm f/1.4 and fairly high ISOs. For these photos I used the lens wide open. At my next shoot with this light I’m going to stop down a stop or two and see how that changes the results.
Thanks Ayn, for being my test subject for this technique. We did very well with this shoot and you’ll be seeing more over the next few posts.
More Angie
May 7th, 2012
Here are a couple more photos of Angie. Taken the same day as the other photos featuring her baby bump. But I felt like trying to get a couple portraits of Angie to show what a really sweet, wonderful person she is. And she did have a bit of that “pregnant glow” going on that day, even though you can’t really tell she is pregnant in these photos.
I was also playing around with my 50mm f/1.4 lens, throwing the background out of focus. I stopped down a couple stops from wide-open for these shots. At that point this lens gets really sharp if you nail the focus. I was mixing the modeling lights from my studio strobe system with the street light outside coming through the studio window and lighting the background. These were shot with my D7000 at 1600 ISO. I’ve pretty much decided that with this camera I can work at any ISO up to 1600 without worrying about noise being an issue in the photos. So I treat ISO as just another way to adjust exposure to give me the aperture/shutter speed combination I want to use.
In other news I’ve just finished framing my print for the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. I need to wait a couple weeks before I ship it, or it will arrive too early, but I like to have these things taken care of early so I don’t have rush at the last minute. Doing this early gives me recovery time if a disaster of any type happens during the preparation work. It all went together well, though, so I’m all set to box it up and ship it off. But first I need to assemble a collection of smaller prints that will go out to the store that is part of the festival. I’ll have that done by the end of this week and will get it all boxed up together next week. So, if you make to SEAF this year, please look around for my work. I won’t be able to attend again this year. The timing is just wrong with other things going on, but I still hope to make it to the festival someday. Maybe next year.
Angie and Son
May 3rd, 2012
If you’ve followed my blog for any time at all you’ll know that my favorite local model for some time has been Angie. And you might have wondered why you haven’t seen her on the blog for a while.
Well, Angie has been involved for the past year or so in another, non-modeling project. In January I got her into the studio for a few photos to illustrate what she has been up to. She had her baby boy last month and both mother and son are doing well.
Now I’m trying to get her to bring the baby to the studio so I can do some portraits of the two of them.
In other news, my friends at the beautiful magazine L’Allure des Mots have published a new issue. Go to that link to view it. And be sure to read the short story by another of my favorite models, Kat, at the end of the magazine. That lovely lady is far more than a pretty face and fantastic body.
April Returns
April 27th, 2012
Wow. It’s almost May and here I am finally editing and posting photos from December. That’s when my old friend, artist and model, the lovely April, came by the studio for a visit. It was way too cold for an outdoor shoot, so we just played around in the studio. Since April moved to another state we don’t get to work together nearly often enough.
So these are just another variation on the kind of light I used for the photos of Kelsey in the last post. But a different take on the whole thing, of course, with very different contrast. I, of course, prefer to work outdoors and use the light that nature provides, but when that isn’t possible and a beautiful model is available for some figure work, it’s always possible to come up with some sort of variation on classic figure lighting in the studio. Thanks Phoenix, it’s always a pleasure to work with you and to have the chance to catch up on what is going on in your life.
The next post will move us into work shot in 2012. Still lots to catch up with, though.
And, in Epson 4900 news, my replacement printer arrived on schedule Monday. It took a little while to get the nozzles on the new printer cleaned, but after a few cleaning cycles it was working well and I completed a couple printing jobs that had been waiting since the old one succumbed to the nozzle clog. The shipping company wasn’t quite as fantastic as Epson had been and failed to show up on schedule to pick up the returning printer…but a few phone calls and they made the pickup the following day. All in all a very satisfying experience with customer service. Thank you Epson.
Kelsey in the Studio and Kudos for Epson
April 20th, 2012
Back in December the lovely model and delightful person, Kelsey Dylan, came by the studio for some photos. I have to do something to pass the time when it’s too cold to shoot nudes outdoors. And with someone as beautiful as Kelsey, it’s always fun to do a few classic figure studies.
In other news, I’ve been having a problem with my Epson 4900 printer. Sometime in the past week one of the ink nozzles clogged and was delivering no ink at all. I contacted Epson tech support and they talked me through a number of nozzle cleaning routines. This included twice unplugging the printer and leaving it overnight, followed by “power cleaning” the next day. All to no avail. Today they decided to send me a new replacement printer and replacement ink cartridges to replace the ink I used in the cleaning cycles. I should have the replacement printer Monday or Tuesday.
That is really fantastic support in my book. Everyone I talked to at Epson was great and very helpful. I love this printer and haven’t had a single problem with it until this happened. Just had to give them a shout out for the great support.
A Small Victory in the Fight Against a Bad Law
April 17th, 2012
I’m one of the named plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to have the laws commonly known as 2257 and 2257A declared to be unconstitutional.
The suit was first filed in 2009.
In 2010 the judge hearing the case dismissed the suit at the request of the government.
We appealed that dismissal to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
The appeal was argued before that Appeals Court in January 2012.
On April 16 the Appeals Court ruled in our favor and the suit will go to trial in Federal Court in Philadelphia. No date yet for the trial, but I expect it will happen this year. I expect to be a witness at that trial.
No telling how long the whole process will take, but this is progress toward removing this unconstitutional law from the books.
