Not A Starving Artist

If you got an hour, Brian Smith’s chat about not waiting for your big break with photography is still one of my favorites. 

How To Accentuate the Jawline —Thanks @peter_hurley

I’m going to try to start blogging more of my behind the scenes things from my shoots on this blog. I’ve gotten a few emails last week regarding one of the images I took of Tori Kelly for her feature on NewMediaRockstars. So lets talk about the nerdy stuff in making the shot!

Since I don’t always have the luxury of scheduling the shoot time, I’ve gotten used to shoot when the sun is ridiculously blaring high. Its not fun. 

Shadows can be way too harsh and unflattering,  and generally I lose a lot of data in my files aka bye bye sky! 

The sun was pretty high for Tori’s session. For the image (above) I moved the singer/songwriter into a shaded area. The ambient lighting would be more even on her face.  This also made her positioned the sun slightly behind her, which created a nice rim light. Although the sun behind her also would cause Tori to either become a dark silhouette if I metered for the sky or blow out the sky completely if metered for the her face.

Expose properly for Tori, I metered for her face and then lit her using a beauty dish. To maintain a shallow depth of field I used a Singh-Ray Vari-ND (which also helped to cut down the ambient by 2 stops.)  

Peace! 

Settings:

Exposure Time: 1/160
F Number: 4.5 
Exposure: Manual
ISO: 100 
Flash: No Flash
Focal Length: 85.0mm

Photo Gear:

Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II
Lighting: The Sun and  Profoto 7B
Accessories: Beauty Dish, PocketWizard II, Singh-Ray Vari-ND

(Source: blog.mellylee.com)

This is kinda cool, I will find you photo thieves! 

http://jarred.github.com/src-img/

Was inspired to write one of these hehe.

1. They rather hold their bulky camera, than hold hands with you.
2. On a romantic date, you’ll watch the sun go down and think “Wow this is gorgeous” and they’ll go “mirror lock, tripod, and stop down f/8 at 1/125.”
3. You’ll never be able to enjoy tv, movies, or magazines because they’ll point out all the visual flaws.
4. They like to sit in obscure coffee shop and voyeuristically watch people for great lengths of time.
5. If you’re taking a walk outside and you come across some “interesting light” they will make you sit/stand/pose in public so that they can take a photo.
6. You’ll never get to enjoy freshly cooked meals because they’ll spend 15 minutes taking 20 variations of the same dish with their iPhone.
7. They get angry when your friends go up to them and say “I am interested in photography, can you recommend a good camera for me?  Nothing professional I just want to take pretty pictures.”
8. You’ll wait longer for them to finish analyzing art in a museum than you’ll wait at the dmv
9. Same goes with old used bookstores.
10. When you think they’re giving you their undivided attention, they’re really wondering how they could fix you with a little Clone Tool and Patch Tool.
11. Or they are actually using you to not look so creepy as they people watch everything going on around you.
12. They rather drop $1,000+ on new glass than a purse for you. 
13. You can’t take a photo with them without taking at least five more.
14. If you ask them if you look fat, they’ll say “don’t worry I can photoshop you later.”
15. They’ll never photoshop something simple for you if the content is not up to their “standards.”
16. That photo they randomly took of you yesterday?  Good luck getting them to send it to you.
17. They spend all their time on the computer (and not for porn.)
18. They can’t have a normal conversation without throwing acronyms and random numbers in.
19. They still use film cameras.
20. They spend a lot of time with people cooler than you i.e. models, actors, musicians, successful rich people.
21. They’ll be fussy over the position of a common household object, like a coffee cup.
22. They won’t return your calls or text messages, but you can bet they’re still posting pics on Instagram.
23. They like watching old films that you’ve never heard or will ever understand.
24. They like looking at weird things in general.
25. Instead of having penis-envy, they have camera-gear-envy.
26. If there’s a natural disaster in a far away land, they’re already on a plane going over there.
27. Everything is watermarked.
28. They think everyone else’s photos suck.
29. They want to color correct a lot of scenes from Twilight and Jersey Shore.
30. They hate rainbows, especially ones spinning in a circle.
31. Whenever you’re in a group talking and the conversation goes deep, they’re taking notes in some form of Moleskine.
32. They use over priced Moleskine notebooks.
33. They like trespassing into old abandoned buildings filled with health hazards.
34. They always want to show a new photo they took, but don’t really care if you like it or not.
35. They hate your n00bie friend’s new artsy profile picture.
36. Bright, sunny days make them sad, but cloudy, overcast days are apparently great!
37. They’ll take you into places that have “culture” as well a high chance of getting mugged.
38. Your birthday present will be a portrait that they’ve taken of you.
39. You can’t go anywhere new without them stopping to take a photo of everything and anything.
40. They will always bug you to be a test subject.
41. Nothing can ever be naturally pretty, everything must be fixed in Photoshop.
42. Bringing their camera means, bringing 50lbs of equipment.
43. If you break any of their things on accident, you’ll owe them thousands of dollars.
44. You can’t get them a birthday/Christmas present without spending at least $500
45. They are natural hoarders, collecting and keeping piles of old newspapers, packaging, magazines, and other things that “inspire” them.
46. They are weird and geeky.
47. They have hard drives of photos, but probably have printed 10 images.
48. They are always secretly judging your creativity.
49. If you’re ever in auto mode, they laugh at you.
50. They orgasm every time they learn a new lighting technique.