Nocturnal Sunshine

This is so classic! Spitting out the rhymes are KRS-One and Lupe Fiasco

Given the predicted snow storm for tomorrow, I think it’s wise that I do not go to this event tomorrow.

Unfortunately, that means that I will be canceling the planned shoots that I have scheduled for tomorrow.

I’m putting this on my blog for those that planned on shooting with me tomorrow since the Model Mayhem site is acting crazy and that is where most of the communications for the shoots have occurred.

Today I successfully hard boiled an egg.

I know it seems like the a lifetime achievement but follow me here. See, I use to hate hard boiled eggs. I found them to be smelly and the yolk hard and mealy.

I was watch a cooking show and the host was doing a variety of egg dishes. He surprised me by talking about how to boil an egg and my initial reaction was “he must be joking, right?”

The host explained that when most people boil an egg, the sulfur in the egg make the yolk have a green film and turns the yolk to a light yellow color. It’s also responsible for the hardness of the yolk and the odor that people associate with it.

So if you follow these steps you can get a delicious egg

1. fill the cooking pan with warm tap water.
2. prep your eggs by poking a tiny hole in the top, narrow point of the egg. I used a push pin. This will allow the sulfur from the egg to escape while cooking
3. place the eggs in the pan, place it on the burner to high heat and bring the pan to a boil.
4. Once the egg is brought to a boil, remove it from the heat and let it set for 14 minutes.
5. After the 14 minutes, place the eggs in a bowl of ice water for 1 minute. This will stop the cooking process so the eggs over cook.

The egg will have a orange-yellow yolk that’s creamy yet firm and not runny. It’s also odorless so none of that funky smell that associate with eggs. I have one of the best eggs ever this morning and now more eager to have them as part of my breakfast

So what happens when you get a bunch of art and portrait Photographers together with the assignment to shoot each other?

Well, let just say that there is a reason why I’m BEHIND the camera…lol.

Here is what I shot:

Folk need to check themselves before they wreck themselves.

Within the past 5 days we’ve had several examples of people showing a glaring lack of civility:

- Rep Joe Wilson’s outburst during Pres. Obama’s address to Congress on Sept 9;

- Serena William’s tirade to the a Line Judge in her US Open semifinal match;

- Kanye West’s bum rush of Taylor Swift during the MTV Video Awards last night.

W.T.F.

Do some just let their passion overtake them so much that they loose all self-control?

What happened to having enough respect for the person in front of you to extend a level of social civility?

Have we become so self-centered and self-absorbed that we can not even entertain accepting that someone else may have a view or position counter to our own?

Each Photographer will have different ways of doing things. I have a particular way of processing images for my portrait clients and with that in mind, I think I should take some time to explain my post-production workflow for a better understanding of my processes.

Ideally this is how it works:

1.  Images are downloaded and an image catalog is created from the downloaded images. These are unprocessed images. These are in-camera captures and nothing has been done to the images. This is then emailed or uploaded to my server for delivery. The catalogs can be viewed by clients using a free reader program which provide a great way for them to review the unprocessed images from the shoot in a more dynamic than any other proofing methods.

Please keep in mind that the catalog is for proofing images only.  I only want the best work from the shoot available for people to see but I also want the Client/Models that I work with to be able to see all the images that were shot so that they can give me their selections for the shoot without the risk of unprocessed images making their way to the public or a search engine caching images in their servers waiting for someone to look them up. I also wanted to provide a method that is private and not easily cached by search engines. This is also a great way to edit the images (editing in the traditional meaning of the word for making  selections). Again this catalog is for selecting images only and are not final deliverables.

2. Client/Model/Stylists make their selections from the shoot for the images that will be processed.

3. I will process the selected images.  At a minimum they are adjusted for exposure, white balance, color saturation and tonal density.  Also any major alterations to the image (cropping, removing blemishes, cloning in areas) are done at this point (see Level 1 retouching as described below). At this point the images are considered final and could be delivered.

4.  At this part of the process, I will decide what type of image that I’m looking to do and the level of retouching that is required.  Typically I can take an image up through 3 levels of retouching:

Level 1 – Portrait and Personality Retouching
For a portrait that reflects a person’s character the aim is to refine it without changing any of the person’s defining traits.  All permanent features in the person’s face must remain true but this does not mean that you can’t flatter them a little bit.  Pimples, redness or blotchiness are not permanent characteristics but scars, wrinkles and birthmarks are. To the degree that they can be minimized without removing them is done.  Improving the texture and color of skin is also done to make the person look more beautiful.

Level 2 – Commercial
these are usually images that promote products, services or a company profile. For advertising, corporate and commercial images people (models) are usually portrayed as successful and inspirational.  The goal is to have viewers identify with them so the Models need to look like real people – just more perfect than the rest of us. This is detailed retouching, usually involving a lot of manual application of image processing programs.  For example, I will clean the skin to perfection (removing blemishes, pimples, redness, blotchiness and scars, wrinkles, birthmarks) without blurring the skin. Eyes sparkle, the hair skins. Same as you would see in any magazine ad. This is very labor intensive retouching and needs to be done to the level that no clue is left that indicates that it is a retouched image – a very clean, natural looking image.

Level 3 – Iconic
when retouching fashion, beauty and iconic figures I’m aiming for perfection. The motivation here is to elevate the image so that idealizes the Model or Celebrity. There is an element of fantasy here and the viewer and image-makers know this is really fiction, so I take this a carte blanche to go to town with my processing. So in addition to Level 2 retouching, I will be looking to adjust asymmetry,  make changes to the body itself (elongating and shortening body parts, nips and tucks) and creating a hyper-realism to the image.

Images are processed according to the Level that is appropriate to the shoot.  Most of my work is done at Levels 1 or 2 if I’m dealing with a large number of selections. If I am dealing with a small number (5-10 images) and the images call for it, I will take them through Level 3 if appropriate.

5. Once the images are processed, I will resize/watermark the final images and make them available for delivery. Typically this is done by email if there are a small number of images or download link as a ZIP file for large numbers of images.

My moment happened twenty years ago this week.

I was one of the top 800m runners in the country my senior year in high school (1989). I was a two time state champion and was nationally ranked that year (8th).

It’s August 1989 and I had just completed my summer track competition. I ran for a club and was disappointed with my performance in the 800m at the national meet (3rd place after getting boxed in for most of the race). The coach from a summer track team that was doing the AAU Junior Olympics that I had ran for a couple of years before call me up a week after I got back from Spokane, WA asking for a favor.

He needed me to run on his 4×800m relay. I was officially part of his team (I had ran in a local AAU meet earlier that summer and the relay team that qualified for the national championship meet needed a body since 3 of the alternates were injured and one member had a previous commitment that took him out of the country. When I spoke, I told him that I had not worked out for almost two weeks. He said that was fine, all he needed me to do was run the race. No expectations. I agreed to help out and a couple of days later I was in San Antonio, TX.

People often speak about being in the “zone” when they achieve a high level of athletic performance. For me this has been a place where I am unaware of pain but totally aware of what I’m doing. I can go full on and feel totally fluid as if it was effortless. Michael Jordan once described it as “having the basket seem 5 feet wide” you just can’t miss. I was in the zone that night.

August 10, 1989 was a perfect summer night, about 80 degrees low humidity not as hot as I would as assumed it would be for August in Texas. We were the last event of the day so we were running under the lights. After the younger age groups finished, we were summoned to the starting line. I was the anchor leg (surprise!) so I knew I would probably be behind when I got the baton. My teammate were a 400m runner racing longer than he normally does and two distance runners that would be lucky to run near 2:00 minutes for 800m.

When I got the baton, I was 60 meters behind the lead pack. Something clicked in me the moment I made that assessment. My college coach told me once that there are two types of runners: trainers, who love to train and racers, who want to win. I’m a racer. I immediately wanted to catch the pack but knew I needed to be smart about it. I decided that it would be best to catch them at the 500m mark, float the next 100m and kick the last 200m in. So off I went on a furious pace to catch the pack. To my advantage the lead pack decided to settle in for a kicker’s race. Perfect. I caught the pack with 300m left.

What surprised me was that I still felt fresh and everything seemed to be slowing down. I didn’t want to slow down. Once we got to the 200m to go mark, I thought to myself, well if no one else wants this then fuck it, I’ll take it. I put in my kick. No one went with me. Entering the final straight away, I looked back to see where everyone was and I had opened up a 10m lead. The crowd was going wild. My teammates in the infield are running to the finish line. I’m pouring on the speed now and was amazed, I felt like I could run like that forever.

As I crossed the finished line, I’m being mobbed by the team as I’m trying to gasp for breath. Even the other teams that were competing were coming up to congratulate us and me in particular. Some were just in awe of the performance stating they had never seen someone walk down anyone with that kind of lead.

My split time: 1:50.1, my best time of the year.

I’m offering my first seminar specific to lighting.

The seminar will take place on August 30, 2009 at my studio space in Old Town Alexandria:

1127 King Street, Alexandria, VA 22314

The goals of the Light[werks] seminar is to help define and refine your approach to creative lighting. This will be done through teaching and hands on practice of my lighting theory and practices.

This is mainly targeted to beginner and intermediate level Photographers looking for a structured and systematic approach to the art and craft of lighting.

Due to the short notice I’m discounting the normal investment of $150 to $100. This will be limited to 12 people.

Schedule

Morning check-in/setup: 9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

Morning session: 9:30 a.m. until approximately 12:30 p.m.

We will cover:
- Fundamentals of light and exposure
- My Lighting Theory
- Lighting Gear – covering various lighting equipment that you can use, the why you would use it and the how do you use it.
- Post-production considerations and discuss how lighting decisions impact what can be done to the images after the shoot.

Lunch and snacks will be provided.

Afternoon Session: 1:30pm to 6:30pm
The focus will be on taking the things we talked about on in the morning session and applying them to a shoot

I hope that we will be finished with the theory stuff so we can move into the practical/demo session. (Sometimes we go into a little overtime on the theory.) I want to get into some studio and location lighting exercises photographing with a model.

After shooting, we will view each setup and discuss the results onscreen. This will allow for instant feedback in a group environment and is a great way to reinforce the thought process and techniques demonstrated that morning process. The goal will be to incorporate lighting theory, room environment, assignment constraints and our available gear to create images with respect to the situation.

The entire day will be a nonstop flow of ideas and techniques, punctuated by spur-of-the-moment Q-and-A. I want you to bring lots of questions, and to feel free to voice the ones that pop into your head throughout the day. In fact, if you do not ask me enough questions, I will start throwing some questions at you.

What to bring
You might want to bring a notebook and pen. I will have a binder that I will give out to the attendees that will have the presentation printed out so that you can take notes related to each slide) as well as diagrams of the lighting set-ups that we’ll use. Also, bring a camera if you want to shoot the setups for your reference.

There will be no secrets here, I will not hold back on my “secret sauce.” This stuff is not rocket science; anyone can get very good at this.

We will plan to wrap up at about 6:30pm. If folks want to grabs some drinks afterward, I’m game for that.

Please note that there are no refunds once you book but the balance can be applied to a one-on-one session or a future seminar.

Please contact me if you would like to attend for payment details.

As some of you may know, I sprained my ankle on Mother’s day. I was playing with Miles outside of the restaurant that we took my wife to and landed wrong after jumping up in the air trying to show him how to broad jump.

I’m roughly 90% right now. It still tweaks a little but I can walk on it. I’ve not tried to exercise on in for fear of re-injuring it and I’m especially fearful since I have 6 weddings this month.