Category: studio

She and her boots

2010-03-10
photophotomanipulationportraitstudiowomen
0 Comment

I have to witness I liked the idea of a delicate girl wearing big, bulky, rough boots, I think it has the potential for a good story, with tension and visual impact.

her boots

Unfortunately, the boots were not the best for the shoot, so the first step in dealing with them was to fire-up GIMP and erase those strident red/yellow labels, a supposed bad girl will not show such labels.
her boots

Then the overall color of the brown leather was not matching well the rest of the clothes (those are mountain boots, not war boots…) so I changed their color a bit, going from brown to black. At this step I cleaned them a bit – not much, such thing is better done before taking the photos.
her boots

After this work I think the result is better compared with the starting point, still there is room for further improvement.

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Making-of: Black versus White

2010-03-06
learningportraitstudiovideo
1 Comment

My video camera is a toy, its battery lasts only a short while, so it wasn’t possible to record the entire photo session and as a result the “making of” covers only a small part of it and not necessarily the best moments. Also, the camera was all by itself, on a small tripod, without anybody controlling it.

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Tux play

2010-03-03
FOSSphotoportraitstudiowomen
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Who said gaming in Linux is hard? You just need a stuffed Tux and a playful model. Is that simple.

tux play

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Big people

2010-03-03
photoportraitstudio
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Prepare to be crushed… she is mighty and does not seem happy.

the giant

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Black versus White

2010-03-02
beautifulcleavagephotoportraitstudiowomen
2 Comments

As anticipated here is the fruit of the photo session over the week-end with Irina. Lacking a better name, I titled it after the colors she was wearing, "Black versus White".

She was really nice, the location was OK, it lacked only a power source, so without the ability to use my gear fully, the light was less than perfect and the photos suffered. I suck.

white black

So the place didn’t have power, but it had really big windows… still the day was cloudy, the light was not enough so I used a portable flash with my biggest portable softbox during the entire White set (it was the first).

Later, when shooting the Black set the sun appeared so part of this set has less portable flash and better light. Next time I must use some proper lights, not just uselessly carry them with me.

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Your gift for Mărțișor

2010-03-01
beautifulgirlsphotoportraitsexystudiowomen
1 Comment

Mărțișor is a holiday for women, when they expect gifts, flowers and so, but this time I will do the other way, giving a present for men. Nicely packed and waiting:

martisor

Ant then happy and full of joy:
martisor

This is part of a large series which will follow in the next days.

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Close-ups and Depth of Field

2009-03-18
close-updepth of fieldflowerlearningmacrophotostudio
2 Comments

I tried some close-ups with various parameters for the shot and found myself unable to definitely chose what I like better: a wide or shallow depth of field, for each of them I can see pluses and minuses, so I turned out to some external opinions.

Unanimously, the non-photographers (and a photographer interested mostly in portraits), opted wor a wide DOF, and I can understand why, the "more is more" doctrine, the picture shows more things, wich many people consider a good thing:

Purple Crocus / Brindusa Mov

Still not convinced, I turned to past colleagues from the photography course Cursphoton, and I found voices opting for the shallow DOF, or what I like to call in this case "less is more":

Purple Crocus / Brindusa Mov - Shallow depth of field

I find the difference interesting and telling, but obviously the definitive question is still "who is the target for the photos?" and this may tell you which option to prefer…

And of course I tried another version of the photo: dark background and an intermediary aperture value, it tells a completely different story:

Purple Crocus / Brindusa Mov

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Depht of Field

2009-02-09
depth of fieldlearningphotophotographerportraitstudio
1 Comment

On top of being a model this week-end I also took my round as a photographer and my imposed theme was about a shallow depth of field. And a real difficulty of such a shot, beyond overcoming your own lack of technical and artistic knowledge, is to make a, relative large, group of unprofessional models to behave and pose for you. My failure was epic, as usual.

CursPhoton: Depth of Field

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Me Model – Again!

2009-02-09
learningphotophotographerportraitstudio
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Is not like I’m starting a new career as professional model or something like that, it was late in the night, only a few of us remained at the photography course and she was stuck with me and an imposed theme (high light contrast on two subjects). So I pretend I’m taking photos (well, I really took some photos, but with the lights laid for another photographer in the scene they are all crap and unusable).

CursPhoton: High Contrast

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Making of: object photography

2009-02-03
candidclose-uplearningphotophotographerstudio
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Since I received complaints about the portraiture "making of", I reduced the number of uploads and avoided posing some portraits candidly shoot this week-end at the "object photograpy" session of the photography course. So don’t blame me for the lack of content :p

Making of: Object photography at Cursphoton

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Grecian Helmet

2009-02-02
close-uplearningphotostudio
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This week-end at the photography course we did practice on shooting some objects. Since I don’t have at home any interesting [which I didn’t already shoot], I went empty-handed, hoping to find something interesting on the spot and found a bronze reproduction of an ancient Grecian helmet, something ringing home with all the Leonidas based stuff I did lately on the Fedora land. What can I say more? I am quite unhappy with the photos I made: bad focus, bad light, bad framing, but I wasn’t in the mood to try harder… needs some kicks in the pants :p

Object photography: Grecian Helmet

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Beyond portraits: photomanipulation

2009-01-27
blackandwhitecolorFOSSgirlslearningphotophotomanipulationportraitstudiowomen
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I take seriously the freedom thing so my photos are never photoshoped, they are gimped instead :p So I used GIMP to touch the portrait I made the other day.

A first step was to play with the saturation, the initial colors are a bit too strong and the black and white is not bad at all:

Portrait: photomanipulation

Another interesting operation is to play with cropping and put in the spotlight what you think is the most interesting part of the picture:

Portrait: photomanipulation

And of course, unleash the gimping extravaganza going for a "glossy magazine cover" type of photography: heal the unwanted spots, soften the skin with selective gaussian blur, sharpen the eyes, lips and hair, other important details (the ring in this case) and, why not, alter the color of the eyes and lips. And stop here, while a bit of sanity is still preserved…

Portrait: photomanipulation

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Making of: studio portaits

2009-01-26
candidphotophotographerphotojournalismportraitstudio
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When doing studio portraits, the other photographer have to get themselves busy and find something to to: snapshots of the surrounding events, a so-called “making of”, a collection of candid, but technically bad, pictures.

Making of: Portraits at Cursphoton

Making of: Portraits at Cursphoton

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Blue eyed blonde Anca in high key portraiture

2009-01-26
girlslearningphotoportraitstudiowomen
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Sunday was an exciting day at the photography course: we took portraits in the studio, with camera on a tripod and studio lights. Since most of my colleagues did shoots they can’t to at home (low key, dark with strong small lights and big shadows), I went the opposite way, with a high key photographs, for which I asked Anca, a blue eyed blonde colleague, to pose.

Portrait exercise

The main light is quite close to the camera, almost like in fashion portraits, with a second light on the right to ease the shadows and a yellow backlight to give some contour of the hair and make it golden. This photo is touched just a little (saturation, sharpness, a few blemishes removed), will follow later with more photomanipulation (I need time to play with GIMP and try various things).

Studio portrait: Anca

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