Peripheral Visions

I've been putting the finishing touches on the Foxy Avenue Clips Virtual Tours this evening. Aaron and I are really satisfied with the finished projects, and we can both honestly say that since we went through the hassle and all the complications, we are now over the learning curve and know how to do them. Soon we are going to purchase an 8mm lens and start doing virtual tours to add to our outdoor portfolios online. We hope to do some nice landscapes and some fun QTVR's (QuickTime VR's) from tents and unique perspectives.

Here are the virtual tours... please give them a minute to load. Once loaded you can click and drag around the room to see all around you, including the ceiling and floor. Any feedback would be helpful. Thanks!



- click and drag image to rotate -

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We finally found that Doggie Cache this week. One thing we’ve learned is to make sure to bring a flashlight when you go out at night and bring extra batteries for your GPS because its less accurate with weak batteries.

When we got to the park we realized that the coordinates from earlier this week when we were caching in the dark were at least 100 feet off. We would have NEVER found it, even if we did have a flashlight. Here is a picture of Lady pulling out a dog treat from the cache herself. I think its adorable. I have a feeling I’m going to be blogging a lot about GeoCaching in the near future, especially since its my topic for my 362 documentary this next session.

This picture is actually a screen grab from the website GeoCaching.com. For each cache you find it gives you an option to upload one picture from your trip to the log. This was the one Aaron chose and so now we're officially logged.

Platypus ended today. Overall it was a fun seminar. I met a lot of really nice people as well as got a taste of what training programs people have available to them. Who knows exactly where people get the majority of their information when they dont attend Brooks. After Mike, Aaron, and I came back to the house. They plopped down on the couch for some serious Wii time and I organized our gear closet. I dont know what drove me to start organizing, but I did. I re-organized one backpack and then thought "aww... heck, I'm just going to pull them all out now". Surprise surprise. I found myself in quite the display of gear storage cases. Pelican cases, think tanks, tamaracs, and more. Between the two of us we have a TON of stuff. And I know this is only going to expand as the time passes.

So this session I've been doing a lot of retouching work, and it's not just because my sensor has gotten to a ridiculously dirty state either. I have been looking into several text books and trying to pry out of people who do it often exactly what works best. I've experimented with facial structure and skin textures and how to add/remove makeup in post. It's really fun and I can see it getting easier and easier with each technique that I learn.

My teacher has also noticed a drastic difference in my before and after images since I put a lot of effort into retouching and making sure my final output is flawless. At first we started to debate in class about what is journalistically "ethical" and what isn't. I always argued, even when my photos weren't up, that due to the nature of our portrait class, we should do what we want since they are posed and we're doing this for our portfolios. After a while it was clear that due to the "journalistic nature" of our program we're taught a certain way, understandably, but he approved of my work for editorial. He made that clear when he approached me and asked me questions about retouching and he even approved of me resetting facial features and proportions and such. I didn't get graded down when I refused to not re-touch my portraits and my instructor even took me aside and told me he'd like to use me as a retoucher in the future. I feel very fortunate to have taken this portraiture class. The focus in this course has given me the opportunity to discover a skill I was very unfamiliar with beforehand.

Here are two before & afters. The first one above is of a girl I shot at Foxy this weekend. I retouches her face based on her requests, including the changes in facial features. The differences are subtle with this one and the differences for the following one are extremely noticeable. The animations are gritty and lose a lot of detail and saturation but they work. Livejournal limits what we can post EASILY by not letting us embed flash and certain other things.


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Today in class we had a special event. Our teacher brought in nine models from a theatre acting group who are pursuing careers in different sorts of acting. We grouped up into pairs and selected models to shoot. Our objective was to head out to our very own "mexican village" on campus and switch off shooting and assisting while rotating through models.

It was chaos... and it was fun! Our village is a really small location considering how many students we have in class and how many people we had roaming around today. To top that off there was equipment EVERYWHERE. We had P22 kits blowing in the wind, octabanks and elinchrom kits staggered on the sides of the walkways, sandbags scattered under all our feet, and wireless strobes firing left and right. We were shooting so close together that often the light from someone's gold reflector could easily be caught in your own shot. Although that in itself may seem irritating it wasn't. We were all doing the same thing and just smiled at each other while we posted and shot our models. We even seemed to work out that the fact that all of our pocket wizards could only vary from 1-4 channels and we were inevitably firing each other's constantly.

I was tired before walking into class. I knew what I was up against so thankfully I stock piled my car full of gear, and that most definitely helped out. I had the majority of the things I needed. I also learned today that headshots should be flat lighting. I have become so accustomed to trying to create multidimensional lighting for depth and emotion that I completely wiped the idea of flat shadowless light from my mind. Although I sat and looked at headshot websites beforehand it didn't stick. My shooting style has become so ingrained in my head that when the pressure of getting nice pictures and managing the entire scene came around, I switched into auto mode to make sure I got what I needed. That just happened to be directional light.

As I was editing in the back of my car after we broke the set down I discussed that with my teacher. I realized that the majority of my images were not standard headshot style and thats something I want to work on. I know what I wanted to do and the frustrating part is that I didn't just slow down and listen to my brain. I got the CYA shots, and although I'm happy with them, I didn't learn something new. I am going to take a model back up to the mexican village and work slowly with them to get the desired look sometime this next week.

[ So this is the directional light I was talking about. I think it's a pretty picture but I know I have to keep the hands out of it and soften up on the shadows so there is a strong connection with the eyes in the subject. Even brighter eye lights will help out with that. ]

Today was another extremely crammed day. I woke up not feeling well so I ran to school to get the equipment I had an appointment for and then went back to bed until 11:00. When I got up and had enough energy to get going I headed to Mary's Secret Garden to take some pictures of my friend Rose who is a waitress at this amazing restaurant in downtown Ventura.

I ended up only shooting for thirty minutes and it was such a small space but I'm satisfied with how they came out considering I felt like crap, the space was extremely TINY, and I only had about a tenth of the time I thought I would have. Rose is amazing though and it was a great shoot. I had to run home and power edit to get everything uploaded by 7pm. . ::facepalm::







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[ Rosanna is adorable! I wish I could sport braids as well as she does too. She was an excellent subject to shoot and I think I might have picked up a little about Raw food prep as well. ]

So that movie quote was running through my head for quite some time this evening. [clinking clinking of bottles] Waaarrrrriiiiiorsssss!!!!! Heh.

For my "group portrait" assignment I brought out Athena and her sparring partner Mike as well as their friend Napoleon for a fun portrait shoot at school. I have been doing a lot of research online about advanced lighting setups and how to achieve looks that are more complicated. The more studying I do, the more I realize that we have a limited amount of studio equipment accessible at the Ventura Campus. We do have ENOUGH lights but we are extremely limited in the numbers we can take out. When looking at the setups I want to attempt to do I need nearly six or seven!!!

Thankfully I was able to get my hands on two dynalite kits. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get anyone to come out and shoot so last minute but when Athena got ahold of me and told me she could I bolted up to school to set up the shoot I had visualized and did it in less than 20 minutes (sweating profusely the whole time mind you). I can see where an assistant comes in handy during times like those. Anyways, they came out and I had more weapons that I knew what to do with and more visuals to choose from than I ever imagined. I wish I could have kept them around for six hours :) But in about an hour this is what we got.



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[ This is Napoleon wearing the gear he wears every weekend. Talk about awesome visuals and great masks =) I hardly had to direct him because his personality was just spilling out without any encouragement. I might see if I can arrange another shoot sometime soon. ]

Today was an interesting day. I got up bright and early to do the second half of my shoot with "Earth Friend Jen" in Ojai. Since I haven't explained who she is I'll take the time to do it now. Jen is an activist for green living and a strong proponent of self-sustaining eco villages. Basically, she wants to create communities that do not have to rely on the rest of the world for survival. By doing this it will reduce the impact we have on this earth and slow the damage we are doing to our environment. Some of her messages are:

do not use plastic bottles since they leech toxins into your body

Remove from your house any products that have a "fragrance" because the majority of them are created with petroleum based products and "in essence are dumping toxins like gasoline into your body everyday you use them".

Buy organic food so that you stop the trend of mass production

Ride bikes to limit the CO2 emission from vehicles

and her MAIN one:

"STOP USING CONVENTIONAL COTTON"
...because "3% of farmland in the world is used to grow cotton but 25% of ALL our pesticides are used on that small portion of land. And out of 3% of land, less than 1% is organic cotton. your judgment and your clothes are killing you!!!"

The reason I put such an emphasis on the last one is because thats how she justifies how she protests in town. She removes her clothes and parades around town to prove that one should feel comfortable in their own skin and not feel influenced by the millions of messages we receive daily, which are often quite misleading.

Anyways...I met her through a friend and asked if I could shoot her for my political assignment. She agreed and I went out yesterday morning for part of the shoot and today for the other. Because she commutes around town all the time in her birthday suit (ALMOST.... she wears plastic nipple covers that look like the real thing so she can "abide" by the law technically and they can't stop her) I figured we'd go downtown to take some pictures. There have been several articles written on her in the local publications and a few people are even petitioning to have her put on a stamp. I was a little cautious and skeptical considering I've never seen people react completely welcoming to that type of action but figured "WHAT THE HECK" =) Shes the one naked... not me.

I parked my truck downtown on the main strip, hooked up my power inverter to my car battery, whipped out my studio lights and set up right on the side walk. (We weren't allowed to use pocket strobes for this assignment unfortunately. We had to use dynalites, but I'm okay with that).Ten minutes later she pulled up on her bike, fully clothed, and commenced to let me do some test shots. A guy walked by and asked if he could watch... little did he know what surprise he was in when she stripped off her clothes and stood there seemingly in only a hemp thong. Whoa! I saw her come to life as she projected her messages to passerby's and anyone who would glance in her direction.

I have to admit... we were there for a heck of a lot longer than I thought. It was almost a total of 30 minutes before a public worker came up and asked us if we had a permit. I said "no." and he said "you do? Okay!" and walked away. um...okay?He was either completely distracted by her display and ignored everything I had to say or decided mid-way up his approach that he didn't want to deal with it. Meanwhile we commenced to shoot.

A few minutes later, just as I got my last shot, I put my camera down and went to pack up when I noticed a cop walk up. Whoa, was he cranky. He immediately questioned her and she busted out with all her legal rights and so on. I stayed out of it. When he told her she had to cover up (although she says she was in her legal right) he told her also that he was going to take her in if she didn't obey. It was at this moment she let out a LOUD reverberating war cry and expressed to them how "if you live by the gun!!! You die by the gun!!!! I love you though!!!!" THEN I noticed there was another photographer taking pictures. (Go figure it's pyrotic's roommate who used to go to Brooks. I'm pretty sure when he asked the cop info the cop snapped at him. Anyways, I finished packing up and they took our info. I couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation and the irritable cops. You could tell the younger of the two didn't want to give us a hard time and by the end of it we were all laughing.

Either way... was a fun day. I learned how to quickly set up and quickly break down a portable studio lighting setup outdoors from my car and I also learned that a light reflector works great to reflect exhaust fumes... or else we would have been smelling them the whole time and really delirious by the end of our shoot.

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[ So these are a small select of the shots that I took. She rides around on her rig, talking and spreading her message and it's... great. I couldn't do it... I prefer to use my fruity deodorants and treated clothing but at least I can see it from another's perspective... as crazy and passionate as that may be ;) ]

Our latest assignment has been to photograph a professional business person. The way I've been wanting to shoot has recently been in a way that breaks stereotype so why not keep it up? My first subject was posing in the nearly-nude instead of in a business suit as my teacher expected, so instead of shooting a traditional corporate picture I chose to create an image of business person that isn't what you would typically think of.

My subject Alecia handles tons and tons of files as well as manages incredible amounts of money while doing insurance for rest homes and hospitals, and she does it in jeans and casual clothing. I find it interesting that the women who are high up in this company and manage these positions seem more relaxed as casual than most, and work in an extremely prestigious corporate building on top of that. Her look suited my photo vision so I drove to Woodland Hills and shot for a few hours, after hours. It was fun!




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[ Here is Alecia in her corporate headshot! Thankfully, I found a wall that was nearly two feet wide somewhere in the office, that had a slightly less than boring color, and took a few frames. I need to learn to watch clothing near the end of the shoot because sometimes those details slip when I get tired. Regardless, I was happy with what I got out of a five minute setup and shoot for that one shot. More fun ]