Juskuz Photography

Today Sam and I headed out the McLain State Park to see what was happening with the shore ice and to take some time to try and create a cool portrait. I don’t know that we succeeded, but it was a good time even though it was much colder and windier than we expected. The most challenging part of the whole ordeal was getting my softbox to stay put. The breakwall was coated in a thick layer of ice and on top of that was a thin layer of fresh snow… think ball bearings on linoleum.

Anyway, I found a chunk of ice to brace the stand against, but I ended up needing Mari to help keep the softbox pointed in the right direction. I don’t really like the way the light cuts across the snow and I think that raising the softbox would help soften the line and would create more of a pool of light and less of a slash. I wish Lightware would make a grid available for the FourSquare softbox. I think it would be super helpful.

Below you can see some images of our setup and and ambient shot. I wish we could have played around longer. I would have like to try a greater variety of perspectives… but it was cold and we didn’t want to be out all day.

Here is a shot showing the ambient light before adding light and gels.

Here’s a shot of Mari helping control the light.

Here’s an ambient shot of Sam and his board.

And finally, here is one of my favorite images from the session. I sorta wish the breakwall were a little wider, it was less windy, or I had a really strong/sturdy boom. I would have liked to shoot straight down the breakwall, but we didn’t want to get too close to the edge with the lights with the wind and the open water. I’ve got some ideas… but they are going to have to wait. Keep in mind that we were shooting mid-day in the winter. I had 4 sb26′s in the FourSquare @ full power.

Anyway, I’ve got a ton of projects in the tubes at this moment and will hopefully be able to share some stuff soon as things get approved… if they get approved.

Later!

Yesterday I did some more work for the university. Part of me really likes these opportunities, and part of me doesn’t. Typically, I go into one of these assignments without a plan and with directions that boil down to…”Shoot a little of everything”. I find it difficult to know what to focus on, and I hate leaving not knowing whether or not I have what I need.

It can be frustrating. I know that they are only looking for one or two images, and I feel that if a small amount of planning were to take place ahead of time I would know where to focus my attention and I could spend my time making sure that those one or two images are as good as they can be. Without having some focus I find myself actually trying to shoot a little bit of everything and making sure I have options instead of spending time improving the images. I know that you can’t always plan everything, but I can only imagine that as the writer is working on the article or as the designer thinks about the layout they must be picturing something in their mind. If I could only get them to verbalize it.

Anyway, there is another side… the part of me that likes the challenge. Yesterday I went into this assignment not knowing where we were going to shoot, whether they wanted it lit or natural, how the image was going to be used – full page, spread, inset, etc… Also, the designer and writer came with which is kind of a double edge sword. It gives the subject someone to interact with during the shoot, but it also hinders my interaction with them. The only thing I am not happy with is how the shadow cast by the nose connects with the shadow side of the face. I should have move my flash a little more to the right to push that shadow back to the left a little.

Overall, I think it went pretty well. I left work, drove to campus, met with the writer and designer, walked over to Rekhi, scouted the location, set up my lights, had our session, packed up, stopped by the marketing office to get their FTP info, and was back at work in just a little under an 1.5 hours. The lack of a plan is frustrating to me, but I realize it is part of the job. I just wish there was a little more communication.

Above is one of the out takes from the session. I used two lights… one bare coming from camera left, and one thru a shoot-thru umbrella on camera right as fill. Both were gelled with full CTO’s and adjusted my WB to taste which pushed the daylight coming in from the skylight to blue while maintaining a slightly warm color on my subject. Nothing special of exceptional, but quick and clean.

Anyway, I always appreciate comments.

Later.

So, I really want to work on my portraiture. However, it’s sometimes difficult to find people to sit in front of the camera. Fortunately, I always have me around. Here are some examples of a head shot whose setup requires very little space and I could pretty much execute just about anywhere. I think the results are pretty great, and I really like the combination of white background and black and white treatment as it doesn’t clutter the frame and allows you to focus on the subject. I can see why there have been so many projects shot in this style.

Anyway, here are some larger examples of the images making up the composite above.

Later.

This evening Sam Gardner and I decided it was time to see if we could find his “Secret Spot”. This so called “Secret Spot” is a cave above tree line in one of the cliffs here in the U.P. In one of the images below you can see that it was about 20 or so feet up from the base of the cliff and the view was pretty incredible. We got there a little late and the light was pretty shitty. Also, I forgot my tripod so we pretty much wrote this outing off as a sort of “proof of concept” adventure.

Before we found the cave the light was anything but shitty… as you can see in some of the images.

So, I always tell myself that I need to spend more time practicing and developing my writing skills and that this blog is the place to do it. However, I usually just want to share my images and type a little as possible. So, if you are interested to find out more… let me know in the comments area.

Otherwise… just enjoy the pics.

Greg OUT!

Portrait of Sam taken in my living room before we left. He is working on a project of sorts and these outings are efforts to collect imagery in support of said project.

Getting our bearings while enjoying an incredible sunset… should probably get moving a little sooner next time, as finding caves high up in a cliff proves more difficult when lacking light.

Here you can kind of get an idea of how far up the cliff the cave was… makes for an interesting descent once the lights go out.

Was hoping for an image like this… maybe next time. (this is a composite – cut out the black hole that was the sky and inserted the shot of the moon)

Checking the weather to see if the sky was going to clear up anytime soon… ain’t technology wonderful.

Quick side trip out to McLain State Park to see if the sky was any clearer over the lake… It was kinda/sorta. The fog obscured the horizon, but high above the stars were out in force.

Another beautiful wedding at the Mountain Lodge in Copper Harbor. I just wanted to congratulate Rachel and Cory. I hope you guys had a great time mountain biking out west. Anyway, I just thought I would post some of the images from the event.

Later.

This evening I met with two super nice kids to take their senior pictures. Richard and Valerie were really easy going and I had a lot of fun working with them to create these images. However, if I had to do it again, I would have scheduled them separately and then scheduled a third shorter shoot to get some images of them together.

Usually having your portrait taken isn’t the most comfortable thing to do. You’ve got some guy you don’t know (me) pointing this huge camera at your face and asking you to “smile”, “look like your having fun”, “relax”. How you can really relax in a situation like this. Truthfully, I don’t think you can, and that’s why it’s nice to have at least an hour to work someone. In the beginning it is awkward, but you push through it and eventually you get to know each other and people start to loosen up. Usually, towards the end of the session is when you start to get some of the best images. Images where the subject is relaxed, and really having a good time.

This session did not work that way. Richard and Valerie showed up with their older sister, who is a super nice person. But this created a situation where I was the outsider. This made it hard for me to get a conversation going and start to get to know the subjects. Part of it is me needing to develop my small talk skills, but part of it was the fact that there were two other people there that they were more comfortable with. During the session we would switch between brother and sister and when they weren’t with me they were hanging out with big sis. This meant that every time I got one of them in front of the camera it was like they were sitting there for the first time again.

As much as I think this could have been better, I do think we came away with some nice images. I’d love to hear what you think. Leave you comments in the comment area at the bottom of the post.

Greg OUT!

I just wanted to thank Bryant and Stacy for for letting me drag them around the Houghton area asking them to pretend to like each other and even be affectionate every once in a while. I had a lot of fun yesterday, and I hope you enjoy the images.

Congratulations again, and good luck with all of the wedding plans.

Just thought I would share a quick portrait that I made this evening for the Admissions department at MTU.

For this photo the admissions department wanted something similar to the portraits of their other staff members. Here you can see some of those other portraits – http://www.admissions.mtu.edu/apply/meet_the_admissions_staff

As you can see it is a relatively easy photo to take, and I just thought I would share the process in case anyone was interested.

Too dark…

Getting better…

Ahhh… there we go

Now to add the flash… I did leave out the one image where my flash was set a little high and the subject ended up over exposed. But here is the image we ended up with. Once we picked our location everything went pretty quickly. From setting up the lights to getting the proper exposure really only took about 10 minutes. Anyone with a flash you can fire off camera can get really similar results… just go out and play. This isn’t anything special, but it is something that I can consistently reproduce.

Hope some of you find this interesting. Until the next post… later.

Today I was scheduled to shoot individual portraits of 100 football players and shoot a team photo from a cherry picker, and we had to cram it all in between 1:00 and 2:30. Honestly, I really didn’t think it was going to happen.

I met Wes Frahm up at the football field a little after 12:00. The idea was to choose a location and get setup so that when the athletes arrived we were ready to go and could start knocking them off.

Below you can see the example photo that was sent to me – it’s the one with the scoreboard in the background. Truthfully this didn’t do that much for me, but at the same time they really didn’t seem to care and speediness seemed to be the overriding factor.

Actually, I was just getting my lights out when the first player showed up. At that time we had a pretty good idea of the shot we wanted, nothing special just a tight cropped image head on with a background that wasn’t too distracting. With the lights I decided to set up a little cross light with the main light being an sb26 fired with a pocket wizard through a honl short snoot. The rim/back light was my trusty sb800 set to slave with no modifiers. I underexposed the ambient a little, and brought the players back up with the speedlights.

I think the images came out ok. I like the highlight the rear strobe creates on the players right side. However, if I were to do it again, I would maybe kneel down or back up a little and use a longer lens to push the track in the background down a little more. But, it’s alright.

I have to say that I was a little apprehensive going into this. I was supposed to be 100 outside portraits and a team photo just after noon on a field with very little shade. Fortunately the clouds saved me and knocked down and softened the ambient a bunch.

As far as time goes… we were done with the whole thing a little before 1:30… Crazy! The other sports teams should take a page out of the football teams playbook. They were organized and they listened to what they were told. This was a great group to work with.

I hope they like the pics.

As always I would love to hear what people think, and not just how great my pics are – I know. Tell me what you don’t like, what would you change.

Here is the example I was sent when I asked what they were looking for…

This is what they got – I like this version more… What do you think?