Expired Ektachrome just developed

Lorna, a good friend of mine recently gave me a couple of rolls of Ektachrome 64 that were expired in 2007... a perfect toy to go back to analog for a day or 2 ! 

I have to say I looked at the back of my camera right up to my 36th exposure :-D

I love the quality of slides though, very vibrant colours and a film you can look at as it. My dad mostly shot in slides and we have boxes and boxes of slides with their cardboard edges and plasticky ones for the later ones (just above and left are some from my childhood :-D ). I loved them, they look like miniature framed pictures ! 

I haven't printed any of the pictures yet, there are a good few that I will print, but these are pretty beautiful colour wise and contrast wise as they are. Can't wait to see how they look larger.

Portrait photographer, Dublin,   videography, event video, boudoir photography, portraiture, studio photographer,  romantic photoshoot, baby photoshoot, corporate headshots, creative photography,   Ireland, advanced photoshop retouching, baby pictures, irish portrait photographer, female photographer,family portraits, HD DSLR video

Playing with Photoshop in a sustainable way !

A few weeks ago I followed the Doug Landreth tutorial on photoshop that Creativelive broadcasted and it made me realise that I use photoshop the same way whether I do advanced editing or a quick retouch work. Gigantic creative potential aside, what I learn from Landreth was a way to work on my pictures that was completely flexible and re editable to infinity. No more saving as a different name or having to start from scratch again just for one additional adjustment : using masks to show and hide parts of a layer and playing with blending modes like so :

This is a fun collage I did for the Bear Bicycle's art competition  (If you see my pic on that page at some point, please put some nice comment on it...I really need a new bike...well, not really but I mean...I'd love to !!)
The technique of applying a mask onto a layer was particularly handy when I started to move the position of the bike and the pin up around, all I needed was to brush the masks white if I wanted more to be shown, and black if I wanted to hide some parts...which means anything could be undone ! Once you've created your layer, just drag it to the button next to fx at the bottom of the layer tab and it will create a mask. Then check all the time whether you're applying a change on the mask or on the actual layer and you'll be flying !
I found that multiply was the smoothest way to blend layers together.
Finally Landreth inspired me to play around with textures and frames, which I wasn't really doing before. It does help bringing the vintage look together.
Some words of warning though : 1.name your layers or you'll soon be lost and 2. this is seriously addictive !! be prepared to spend hours on photoshop to get things right. I tend to work for 1 or 2 hours and go back to it another day, just to keep a fresh eye to what I'm doing.
Wish me good luck on that bike competition !!!

Silly fake ad project

What do you do when it's friday morning and there's not much going on, you're in a studio with plenty of toys and props to play with ? Yeap, me too, I totally would !
So I used some beans that gracefully preserved from the previous shoot we did for Dr Oetker (some great healthy tasty recipes to accompany their Ristorante pizzas coming soon) and pretended the beans have had a party and like any party, there are some that are slower to move out or to go to the next place, so some are still there and the Heinz bottle just arrives too late...typical...

Anyway after doing that, I thought of a few other silly ads so I ll be doing some in the next coming days using the same ideas that we see in ads ...like humanising food or pretending some liquids are alive... you know...
Here's what I have to show so far !!

Hamlet by Plastic Theatre

I'm always up for a challenge and a bit of stress sweat, so when I heard my friend and actor Sharon Sutton was playing in Hamlet, I asked if I could come and video the play, only half aware of what was going to happen that night ! 

They were playing at Pearse Centre on Pearse St, near the Trinity Hotel. It's running until the 9th actually, from 7.30pm.

It was all at 200%, all the excitement and energy from the cast like palpable euphoric bubbles in the air, simply a magic moment !

Shooting a long, rather continuous and moving scene(s) with the 5DmkII is a tough one, and I think I handled the challenge well but there were so many factors to think about, it certainly takes a good bit of experience until I absolutely nail it. 

I still had vivid memories of a crazy 2 hour long talk where the speaker (an IT super duper expert in his field AND the most focused and continuous talker I've seen in a long time !) which made me hang on to every words  and intonations, waiting for the right time to cut the video before it would be too late (from my experience, the max clip length on the 5D is anywhere between 12 and 13minutes...). Since then, I bought a 32GB card it ahah in your face long scenes! well, that resolves the problem of having to change cards when really you dont want to but not the length of clips.

I had my usual camera...I could have taken a second 5D mkII but realised it wouldn't be manageable with the amount of memory it consumes. So instead I had a Q3 HD next to it and a H1 on the edge of the stage to get a nearer sound as I was set up at the back of the room. I have to say running through the different light set up with the light designer was so helpful especially when I didn't see most of the material before so there was already a lot of factors to adjust from on the spot, it was good to know what kind of range of exposures I'd have to go through and what were the best combinations. 

Now I have 3 hours of footage from 2 cameras and one recorder to go through :-D I ll let you know how I get on !

Portrait photographer, Dublin,   videography, event video, boudoir photography, portraiture, studio photographer,   baby photoshoot, corporate headshots,    Ireland, advanced photoshop retouching, baby pictures,  female photographer, family portraits, HD DSLR video, play recording, creative photography, romantic photoshoot, irish portrait photographer,