One of my favorite areas of Boston is mear blocks from my house. I took the Lo-Fi route today using a polaroid 420 and long since expired film for these images.
Blog
Structure (if you build it...)
I shoot a lot of images that may not make sence by themselves, but I always have the idea
that "down the road" Im going to do something with them. This is the case, quite litterally,
with many of these image.
This is a compilation of man made structures.
Squarespace
Hey everybody, just wanted to let you know about this great web tool that is going to change your life. My website is in a everchanging mode, I am always looking for the next cool thing in web design, and this is it- SQUARESPACE
Although, I dont feel I am totaly sold on this recent Livebooks, cliqbooqs, etc trend (Too many photographers sites are looking too similar) but the ease of use and clean functional feel was calling to me. When I found squarespace it answered all of my website and blogging needs. They povide great starting points from templates (that really should not carry that dangerously evil word of template, because templates indicate you are confinded to a set of paramiters) with Squarespace you are free, it allows you to change and manipulate all aspects of your starting point. So creating a great looking, and functioning site is not only easy, and fast but you will spend a fraction of the livebooks cost.
Now on to the bad news, they have not yet developed a good soulition for photo galleries. the default gallery options that are presently available are not the prettiest, and possibly a little clunky BUT its not all bad news because with a little coding knowelgde and the popularity and multitude of easy automated galleries available through lightroom and similar programs a customized photo-gallery is not unattainable.
I give them 2 thumbs up.. Check them out at: squarespace.com
When Life give you lemons, make ART
Well, this weekend handed me a small blow. While on a trip to upstate New York, I had a bit of car trouble that rendered my vehicle unusable for a few extra days.
So I walked around the neighborhood I was In and this developed..
Thanks
Dan
Long Time, No Blog
Sorry everyone, I know you've all been waiting intently for my next blog post. Well, I figured since I am back, I am going to come back big. This post is from a recent shoot that I really had so much fun Doing. Mari at "The Loft Salon" on Newbury had an idea of shooting these 3 guys with an Industrial feel for promotion/contest entry.
We shot it all in studio, and I searched for an Industrial look for the backgrounds. Coming home from a shoot one night I saw something happening in and around Chinatown that I thought would be a great theme for the images. I shot around the area for a couple nights and came up with some great backgrounds.
Here is the layout of before images:
After shooting I hit up the "Digital Darkroom" for a day or so and these developed:
Thanks for everyones help on this, I really love the outcome..
Oh and a little plug for them: http://www.theloftsalonanddayspa.com/
Travel
It has been a long six weeks of travel. I have gone as far south as Honduras, and as far north as the Canadian/ New Hampshire Boarder. It has been a lot of work but so much fun. (i will post some images about the trip at a later date)
Today, I took some time off, and went climbing. Just me and the rock. It was what I needed to wind down. Since I was the only one there I had to come up with an interesting way to anchor the camera to the cliff, I put it on a mono-pod and jammed it into cracks.. It really looked funny, I wish I had another camera to photograph the set up..
Chicken
Out at my sisters tonight, before feeding the horses and what not I went into the chicken coop and played around a bit. This is what I came up with...
Heres lookin at you !!
Requests
In this business, we (photographers) are like DJ's, spinning our tunes, creating our images at the requests of our patrons. Late last year I was approached by a client asking if I could create a Photobooth.
"Photobooth??" was my response
She then went into the need for it, and explained that renting one would cost 1800 bucks for 4 hours..
Ok, so I went to work, creating an automation or something. It ended up all I needed was my canon 5d, the Canon software, and Adobe Lightroom.. The Canon capture software allows the user to fire a series of images in a row with one click of the computer. I set it to take 4 images, one every 3 seconds. Lightoom then auto-imported , auto-rotated , and put the images on the page to print (auto of course). After that, all that was left was to press the button to print.
This whole process didn't just fly out of my head, I took a bunch of testing. Of course I was the only one with the patients to sit around and pose for the "photobooth" 100 times. This left me with a huge pile of photobooth strips.
Whats a photographer to do with them, wallpaper his refrigerator of course...
There are images for other experiment as well on my refridge, but the photobooth images are the majority.
After the party, after all the guests went in and posed thinking they were the only ones to see them make faces and wear funny hats for my camera, I was left with several hundred photobooth strips on my computer. Being the sinister person I am, I then made a book of all the strips for the client who got to see everyone making a fool of themselves.. what fun!!!
Photography, Compositing and Oil Painting??
Today is a super experimental day.. I saw an image from dark horse (the fine people who brought you hellboy 2) and thought today would be a good day for something way over the top, with a comic book feel to it.. I also use corel painter from time to time, although I haven't used it much lately. I figured now would be a perfect time to dive back in.
First, I chose my subject matter.. Last week while shooting the stormy waters content, kylah and I went to a WW2 ship that is in Boston harbor. The guns and cannons got me thinking about a composite but I wasn't sure what it would be at that moment this was the perfect subject matter for a comic book hero, or is she a villain??
The base images are as follows:
The Guns
Kylah on the Bow of the ship..
a sky image from New Hampshire
Now for the Layering
When I put these together they really didn't give me that intense, comic hero feeling.
I needed to give it an exra boost
So, I brought it into Corel Painter, gave it a strong contrast of light, gave her long blowing hair. and Made the Guns BLAST!!!
The Factory
Today will be a small collection of experimental images from the Gloversville project. The Mill buildings and Factories of Gville have been an enchanting sight for me since childhood.
Now many of these buildings are not in use but still have a draw of inspiration and even more mystery to them..
