My buddy, Jason, is what I would call a master installer of audio/video equipment in people’s homes and businesses. From simple television installation to full home automation systems, he can do it all. His installations are so clean and neat that it can make photographing his finished work a challenge. The photos below looks like a regular rooms, but they are completely wired for video, audio and home automation… and it does not stick out like a sore thumb.
On closer inspection, you may start to see the speakers in the walls and ceiling. It’s only when you see an interface from an iPad, television or wall module do you realize that you can control any media device or home system with the swipe of your finger. Pretty cool.
If you need expert AV installation and personable service, give Jason a call or check out his web site at www.PerformanceAVatlanta.com. You can also check out past articles about Performance Audio and Video here: past articles.
Rusty is a cycloptic Canis familiaris with an indomitable “can-do” spirit. As a puppy, he lost his eye in a freak mowing accident (that will teach him to mow the yard), and recently almost died with a mystery illness. Luckily, he bounced back.
I have a feeling that Rusty did not realize that having just one eye was supposed to slow him down, because he is very active running and swimming on “his farm”.
Oops. Where is the tail? Too bad, I liked the look on his face.
I had traveled to Cartersville, Georgia to take photos for a Boy Scout promo and Rusty lived in the house where I did the photoshoot. In between the human photos, we coaxed Rusty onto the set to see if I could make a portrait of him.
I find that dogs who love treats can be easier to photograph compared to ones who could care less. Rusty likes cheese… enough said. The photos below were taken at an angle that makes it easy to imagine Rusty whole again.
A few minutes before these photos he decided to take a swim in the river even though it was 40 degrees outside. I think he would have jumped in even if there was ice on the surface. Rusty was not going to let anything stop him from having a fun. Good boy!
Some cakes seem just too pretty to eat… even if that is the point. Such is the case with anything made by Lisa Humphreys of Couture Cakes, an Atlanta boutique bakery specializing in dazzling wedding and event cakes.
I collaborated with Couture Cakes to make photos of a showcase cake that looked absolutely amazing. The theme included delicate flowers, pearls and butterflies.
Lisa styled the accessories and we moved various items in a out of the photo in different configurations. Below is an early image that we later abandoned for a simpler design.
The final destination for the photos is Cake Central magazine. We made the photo below with lots of negative space so that it could be used as a cover which often require space for a magazine logo and article teasers.
As it turns out, we did not get the cover, but we did get a nice 2 page spread.
It is amazing to think that all of this is made with flour, sugar, time and talent.
A closer look reveals details like hand painted butterflies and letters, meticulously formed shapes, subtle color design and a variety of surfaces.
The flowers are made from edible fondent which may be a surprise to anyone viewing it. I would bet some people looking at these did not even realize that they were not real flowers. They are so delicate that it took several days of patient work to make them.
Lisa is an absolute master of cake design and it was a pleasure working with her.
Photo details for this included 2-3 flashes, 1 humongous umbrella, and 1 soft box. An additional flash was sometimes used to lighten the background, which was a painted wall in her home.
A client of mine is running a sweepstakes offering a chance to win a Fiat 500. Technically sweepstakes must allow anyone to enter without purchasing anything so, go for it at: www.georgiaexpo.com/sweepstakes. If you know anyone who works with trade show pole and drape products, let them know because their chances of winning are even greater since they can enter multiple ways.
I built this single web page for Georgia Expo and it has some cool features including a YouTube video in a lightbox, social media links and a form that allows people to enter and also upload photos of them using Georgia Expo products.
My wife is the head of the Psychology Department at Agnes Scott College, a women’s college open since the 1880s in the city of Decatur, Georgia. They are currently redesigning their web site and each department was tasked with developing a promotional video. This is a pretty tall order for many people who do not make videos all the time. I offered my services to help my wife out, but I wanted to approach the project from a photographer’s point of view.
I am not a video professional per se. I consider myself a photographer who is sometimes tasked with making videos. To me, still photos and moving video are worlds apart that require different equipment, techniques and most of all editing time on the back end.
The plan was simple and necessitated by the fact that I would only have about 10 minutes with each ASC student who was going to appear in the video. I would take a variety of still portraits of each student and then make a recording of their prepared statement of “why I like the Psychology Department”. To simplify this, I had a mic hooked right into the Canon 5D Mkii that I was using. This kept the recording with the person’s images so I could easily combine them later in iMovie. Yep, Apple’s consumer video editor.
This approach worked well for several reasons. First of all, I am better at taking portraits than making video so I decided to stick with my strengths. Another reason is that taking portraits can be much faster than making video. The students would have had to memorize their text and multiple takes would have been required to get the perfect performance. That can barely be done in 10 minutes with professional speakers, much less regular folks.
My wife and I wanted there to be a consistent theme throughout the video to tie everything together. I used a picture frame that read “Why I Like Psych” that would appear in every scene. Each student was also named in the video to make it more personal.
The students that participated did an excellent job, and I believe that they show the diversity and independent spirit alive at that school. Agnes Scott College is a unique school, and I got the feeling that the women who go there love it.
I am breaking tradition on my blog and writing about something other than photography or graphic design. Today is a review of Les Miserables, the much anticipated movie adaptation of the now classic stage show.
The original stage show came out in 1987 when I was in senior in high school. In those days, I hung out with the drama club… which is about as geeky as the glee club is today. Thankfully, I never got on stage, but I would help with the programs and sets. It was fun to be a part of something like that.
I know I may open myself to ridicule to admit that have I listened to show tunes, but that was the year that Les Mis and the Phantom of the Opera came out… and those productions were some of the best ever put on stage.
Les Mis has been made into multiple movie adaptations, but this is the first one based on the Broadway musical. Like everyone else who loved the stage productions, I had my reservations about the actors cast for the lead roles. Would they deliver the role and singing performance the material deserved? The short answers are “yes”and “mostly”… depending on which actor you are talking about.
The producers had an interesting problem to consider when casting. They could have either picked great singers who were might have been relative unknowns or find movie stars who could sing… not always an easy thing to do.
Bringing established actors to the project brings star power which may account for some box office success, but it could backfire if the singers don’t hit the notes. The decision to live record all the singing was an artistic choice to bring the story to life, and give it the emotional gravitas that love, death, sacrifice, revolution and redemption requires.
The acting was excellent by just about every member of the cast. The main characters really dug into their roles and were not afraid to completely lose emotional control… to look ugly, vulnerable or “human”. A pet peeve of mine is seeing an actor’s bag of tricks (Merrill Streep… I’m calling you out). When I see this behavior, I am pulled out of the story and back to reality of a crowded theater. The magic spell is broken.
On the other hand, when an actor is present, committed and completely in the moment, I lose myself in the story. That moment for me in this movie was the “I Dreamed a Dream” scene sung by Anne Hathaway. This is the song they used in teasers leading up to opening day… and with good reason. Her performance was so true, emotional and gut wrenching that it made up for any nit picks I might have had about the rest of the film. It was the bravest performance I have seen on film…and this is where the value of the live singing pays off. Here choices in timing, inflection, emphasis and all those other things I am not qualified to talk about were Oscar worthy (update… this has since come true).
Hugh Jackman turned in the lion-share’s of sung dialog…. though with mixed success. If I am being 100% honest, his voice at times irked me. My wife mentioned it too. Perhaps we are just too used to the 1987 studio version? When I got home, I listened to the 2 versions back to back and while they are simliar in pitch, there is a unique tone that is missing for me. His acting, however, made up for any vocal shortcomings with a load of charisma. I can forgive some of the awkward pauses, lost tunes and a few “just spoken words”. He should be commended for his efforts.
Russell Crowe is a favorite actor of mine and supposedly a singer in a band, and I can forgive his lack of a trained voice too. He tried the best he could. Some of the long extended notes were not going to be possible for him. It did not spoil my enjoyment of the movie, but it made me wonder who else could have played some of these roles…
In the end, I think the director made the right decision to hire film actors instead of stage actors. To me the 2 different arenas require different skills. Modern movie acting requires subtlety and stage shows larger overt actions that can be seen from the back of a theater. The lack of subtlety shows up in moments like Apennine’s “On My Own”. This showstopper usually brings the house down, but this case it felt weak in comparison to more nuanced emotional performances by other actors.
The surprise for me was to see Sasha Baron-Cohen (aka Borat) play the devious inn-keeper, Thenardier. He was great despite the fact that half the time he switched in an out of a French accent in mid-song. Actually, most of the cast had English accents thought the story was in France. Hmmm…. How weird is that?
In a neat cameo, the original actor to play Jean Val-Jean, Colm Wilkinson, made an appearance as the bishop. That was a nice touch, though I did not recognize his voice at all.
Make no mistake. This is a long, emotionally taxing movie where practically every word is sung. If that bothers you, don’t see it. You should really think of it more as a Broadway style show with amazing living sets, no intermission… and only costs $10 (or less if you rent it). Quite a bargain when you think about it.
Some products are more difficult to photograph than others depending on what kind of shape they are in when I get them. We all know that the products that we buy do not look like the photos on the package or that Big Macs look nothing like the idealized photo on the menu.
I have had wrinkled, crinkled, warped, folded, stained and ripped products sent to me which can make my job “interesting”. In cases where I could not get a clean replacement, I sometimes I could fix the product with anything from a hot steam iron and glue to retouching in Photoshop.
Other products are too complicated to shoot without simplifying them. This is the case of some of the heart monitor pouches I photographed for Kimberly-Clark. Imagine a small pouch connected to several feet of ribbon to tie it to the patient. Instead of showing ALL the ribbon (which looked like tangled spaghetti), we got permission to cut them down to a manageable size.
Hopefully, you wil never need to get an IV drip inserted. If you do, these will make the job easier.
These baby items were very small. It is amazing that humans start out this tiny.
Kimberly-Clark is a world class corporation that makes many of the brand name products you might use everyday like Kleenex, Huggies and Cottonelle. Every year they have a Safety Campaign aimed at maintaining the safety-culture of their company. Last year I took a set of photos of workers decked out in Personal Protection Equipment, or “PPE” as it is known in the biz. See previous campaign.
This year, the theme changed slightly from workers in the factory to family members. It was decided to use a young child and his father for the “hero” photo. This was a real father and son to make it more realistic, and it was probably the only way to do it. The young boy was no more than 5 years old so we would be fighting a short attention span. Having the parents there would help me coax the emotions that the art director was asking for. This is was challenging for many reasons.
The concept for the photo was that the boy would be seen hugging his father dressed in Dad’s PPE which consisted of safety goggles and vest. This is where the process got fun. The art director wanted black hair and a black shirt on a black background. Not only that, the boy was to wear wrap-around, highly reflective safety glasses that reflect EVERYTHING! I knew this was going to be a challenge to light.
In all, I used 1 softbox, 1 umbrella fill, 1 horizontal strip light and 1 gridded spot light and some reflectors. Removing any of those would have made parts of our subjects fade into the black background especially the hair.
All the safety goggles were highly reflective and showed all my studio lights. The highlights had to be managed.
We tried 3 different sets of goggles to give the art director a choice, and soon we were done. I tried every trick in the book to get the right expression from our young talent… I even bribed him with a robot from my childhood toy collection. Talk about going the extra mile.
The retouching phase of the project got a bit “hairy” as I removed individual stray hairs, and gave the Dad a hair cut. Below is a BEFORE and AFTER detail of the photo.
BEFORE Retouching
This process involved rebuilding the shirt collar and skin texture on the neck, plus adding back digital hairs in certain locations. I also removed a major unavoidable softbox reflection and added some color to the boy’s eyes. Overall, I am very pleased with the results given the circumstances.
AFTER Retouching
This poster will be translated into 21 languages and hung up in factories all over the world. Pretty cool.
Justinas and Marie are two of my oldest friends in Atlanta. I have know them since the days when riding motorcycles in the north Georgia mountains was a weekly event. We spent many a mile together and had some great adventures. It was wonderful when they got married and then pregnant later on.
Justinas and his brother, Paulius, are photographers just like their father back in Lithuania. The love of photography is something that we all have in common. Justinas was making a movie of the shoot.
I was honored to be able to take some of these photos of Marie, but I wanted to include Justinas in some too. He is always behind the camera so this time, the roles would be reversed for him. I also thought it would be important to show them as a couple. I love the negative space between them in the next photo.
We decided to meet at my office where we could take advantage of an open studio and also the last remaining Fall foliage outside. Many trees had already lost their vibrancy at this point, but I put my secret weapon to good use… I simply call it the THE TREE. This one always has incredible color.
My favorite tree in Atlanta still had a little Fall color left… but only if the sun hit it just right. The same tree is in the background of the image above and below. The only difference is that sun peeked out for a few brief moments on the latter one. I call this “boom pow” because this kind of color knocks me out.
Pretty soon the evening light was toast so we headed indoors to try a few different scenarios. The first was to photograph Marie against a painted blue wall using a ring flash. If you have never seen one of those, it would look similar to sticking your camera lens through the hole of a large doughnut shaped flash. It creates a signature ring highlight in the eyes and a soft shadow around a subject who is in close proximity to a wall. This look is not for everyone, but Marie pulls it off.
Then I wanted to try some dark background portraits with strong directional light. We used a sheer mesh here.
I wanted a very strong rim light to help define her against the dark background.
She then changed into something a little less comfortable. How she wrapped herself in this thing is a mystery, but I think I saw her twirling into it while Justinas held the end.
This is one of my favorites because of the modeling on that perfect belly, and the expectant look of motherhood. She will make an incredible mom.
I was hired by BeWell to create two versions of their company web site. This company sells products all over the world so each site had to be tailored to the host country since they sell different products, have different regulations and contact procedures.
As a money saving strategy, we decided to build one completely, clone it and then change the information for the remaining country. In fact, this process was so efficient that we plan on rolling out several product-specific sites this way. This was the perfect plan to get a lot of web sites built in less time than normal. Visit the USA site at www.Bewell-USA.com
