I'm going somewhere with no internet access, that's right, OFFLINE for 1 week (can't wait !)
Planning to simplify my gear while there too : just my 5DmkII and a 50mm which I keep forgetting about and it creeps back into my eyesight every so often. Im not a prime lens girl, I just love being overwhelmed by the speed and all the possibilities of a brilliant zoom lens like the 24-70. But it's also lovely to slow down when you can afford, and step back or forward until you got the frame right. These portraits of my cats were taken by the 50mm 1.8. It does make the mess in the kitchen neater, doesn't it :-D
Anyway, I ll have hours of fun with this lens, hope you get to shoot lots too and have fun with photography.
A good few years ago, the super duper guys from Cafe En Seine allowed me to shoot on their 1st floor (magnificently decorated in art deco) for 2 exciting 1920s looking shoot for jeweler Celine C.
I am really really happy and grateful that they allowed us in again so close to Christmas for Style Skin's last shoot of the year.
We'd be lying our teeth if we said that it was boring and we enjoyed no minute of it. It was actually very interesting to find ways to blend Justyna's ultra modern style with the art deco. And have fun with it.
I finally found a proper use for the rotating table (well, technically called a turntable and mostly used for display!) : Potter Colm De Ris had lent me a stunning teapot along with the bowl that features in the video that I posted a few weeks ago, what better subjects for a first spin !
The table turns 2 1/2 times per minute which is a perfect pace for video : not too quick so we get the details out but not too slow so I don't need to shoot ages to get what I need.
January 2013 pdn issue is PACKED with interesting information for self promotion (website advice, photo promo ideas, social media tools...)
One article about 10 tools for social media mentioned flavors.me. I confess I've never heard of this website before but I love the idea so I gave it a go right here.
It's handy to combine all online presence into 1 page. So far I've tried the free version to give it a trial, but the upgrade has lots of extra tools and options... worth checking out !
Style Skin has been borderline Christmassy, theatrical and playful...we didn't expect less from her :-D
Check her blog http://style-skin.com/ for details on the designers she used.
And check this : Justyna's fashion flair got British Vogue "Street Chic" feature attention with one of her sparkling looks.
This video is the perfect example of something born out of a proper team work and exchange of ideas between myself and Colm De Ris, who was very much involved in the making of it, not only by lending his voice and his image for the footage.
We shot it over 3 3-hour sessions along with a quick interview that ended up putting the whole story telling aspect of the video together. There's something really lovely in Colm's pace that matches the pace of the video, because that's the same rhythm as clay turning and all over movements going on in his workshop.
I had previously shot lifestyle short videos for Nicholas Mosse website. I thought it's a lovely idea to put the product in context and its best use. Im delighted I now got to shoot the craftmanship behind these beautiful items.
My initial idea was really based on the craftmaking process, there was going to be a lot of close ups and a lot of angles allowing to show the know-how and the evolution of the clay into a piece of art. While I haven't shown all different stages, because they were just too mechanical or not visually interesting, the whole transformation is there within 3 minutes, which I think is fascinating.
The video was shot with a Canon 5d MkII and several lenses : 16-35mm L 2.8, 70-200mm L 4, 24-70mm L 2.8. I used Final cut Pro 7 for the editing, and Audition for the audio enhancement, which is a phenomenal tool I got to learn for the purpose of this project.
We had a few lovely pieces of jewellery in the studio so I played around with them for a change ! These were made by students at the Crafts Council of Ireland's Jewellery and Goldsmithing Course (they are are currently -as of Feb 2013- on sale at Designyard in Dublin and at Designwork Studio in Cork I am told)
Huurraaayyyy we're seeing the end of the editing on FX Amps Randy Plex video ! I think I shot it over a month ago, had time to shoot another project in the meantime, and god knows how many photoshoots since then too... I guess it's one of those projects that are somehow a bit harder to come to life...
Not that we weren't super enthusiastic about the project, FX Amps make really really nice handmade projects, a lovely attention to detail (seemingly the way it is wired inside is pretty close to being called a Sistine Chapel of amplifications ! it's a neat and pretty work.
I do believe if something doesn't quite work straight away, it's not meant to work, but in this case, the potential was there, the footage was nice, I just struggled to dedicate the necessary time for the editing, so many tiny pieces of jigsaw to put together the editing was quite daunting, while it was also tricky to match the audio with the visual and preserve the continuity since none of the songs were rehearsed, that was just jamming. Pascal, my guitar maniac boyfriend, isn't 200% happy with the audio, whether it's the recording of it or the settings on his amp, but we decided to let it go and do a better job on the audio when we shoot the next product we expect from FX Amps !
Ok, there's also a "defect" we spotted on the amp which is fixed now so we ll have to reshoot one small pan...and I'm sure in the process I ll change my mind again on the look of the video...
but here's the latest version of the FX Amps Randy Plex video for now ! Comments most welcomed :-D
On another note I'm working on the final touches for a fantastic potter and introduced myself to Adobe Audition to polish the audio, wow...that's a serious piece of software for audio enhancement. And quite intuitive to play with (unlike, say, After effects & many video editing softwares which require a bit of research before first use). I'm glad I had the perfect project to get to use Audition. Hopefully this video will see the daylight in a couple of weeks or so.
I love going through new projects in Behance, it is such a source of inspiration and it challenges me to be more productive. This project caught my eyes straight away, the photographer is Tadao Cern
It reminds me of the brilliant pictures (which I can't find online anymore ) that a friend of mine had taken during the first Twestival in Dublin back in 2009. The series was called "Exploded Potatoes" and consisted in snapshots of the Tweetters as they did their best to pretend a potato was about to explode out of their faces. Shot with a flashgun firing straight at their faces (including mine, that's how we met !) the effect was strangely dramatic and hillarious.
Funny how you can get people to be more than themselves when you offer them enough distraction !
Trevor recently acquired the Fuji new rangefinder, Pro X1 with a 35mm lens, which I was briefly thinking of getting for myself before realising it's actual too bulky as a hangbag camera and not reliable performance-wise as a back-up camera for my own taste and budget.
Lovely camera though, nice shape and some great features like a built in digital spirit level, the info display in the viewfinder and a stunning auto focus while in Stills function that changes the focus without you even pressing the shutter half way...I was just holding it and moving it around and it adjusted the focus all along.
I'm sure there's lots of reviews about its stills performance, along with details about the problems that Adobe image softwares have at the moment in dealing with its RAW files, so Id like to highlight a major problemo for those considering this camera as a carry-around combo photo/video camera...
White balance, colour rendering, auto exposure are really nice, nicer than the Fuji X10 that we've used so far as a blog camera, nicer than my G11 which doesn't perform well in tricky light conditions...BUT sweet mother of god, what's going on with its focus in the video function? When set as AF, it's noisy and constantly searching for focus (and blurrying the scene for a sec in the meantime)...not very convincingly succeeding in keeping the focus. We were in a room with 2 ceiling lights and 3 modeling lights from our studio lights so quite low light conditions but regular conditions if you're shooting at home, really.
Too annoyed by having my scenes ruined by intermittent focus, I set it up as MF, which means you turn the focus ring on the front of the lens. You'd think this would the most straight forward option but because it's an electronic focus ring, it seems like there were lots of small increments to go through, meaning instead of turning the ring with a single wrist movement, I had to keep turning for a while...not great if you're handholding or moving around different focus planes...
Here's the examples I'm referring to.
Back
in 2010, fellow enthusiastic photographer Emanuele
Siracusa was planning fabulous world trip and also thought
photography could well be a new career for him, I saw he had a great
potential, especially with portraits. It turned out his (and his
wife's Romana) travel
blog
grew
and grew into popular website, full of humanity, beauty, inspiration
and travel tips, along with interesting landscapes and portraits of
local people.
The
photography they took while travelling had brought a lot of attention
beyond their blog and once back home, it seemed like Emanuele's
desire to pursue photography more professionally could be very
realistic. I just learnt that they got robbed, thoroughly
robbed, hard drives, cameras, flashguns...and this gives me shivers
because while it's easy to back pictures up, it's equally easy for any of us to forget or just to
save the jpegs from them. As inspiring as they
always are, they launched a great
campaign to raise the funds to get replacements for the gear
: donate or buy a print from them, and help them at the same time,
that's a very fair deal.I personally bought this
one but check out all you can do for
them here and
check updates on their campaigns here. Thank you !
Style Skin visionnaire Justyna has been very busy between the launch of her new website and the several photo/videoshoots we did together !
For the videoshoot below, we used the talents of make-up artist Jane Gribbin to give the final touch of the look, a glam and dramatic purple and black look. Since Jane needed to have her website re-designed, I made a deal with her : she will teach me her tricks (she does very thorough 1 to 1 workshops for your own make up, along with her other make up services) and I ll do her new website, Dah tah !
As usual youtube videos best viewed big (very big) by clicking on it...hope you ll enjoy it, there's more post production than I usually do.
Very very impressed with this encounter brought to me by Youtube, as often, as I was doing some research for the videoshoot I'm doing next for the lovely Justyna ...I wanted to get the same sort of feel as the sexy catwalk that Charlize Theron did for Jadore by Dior...Ended up finding this first...wow ! look at the fab job on the lookalikes, it's just bang on ! A wonderful job in the cast, in the styling, in the make up, in the body movements, just beautiful...love the grading on it too, gold and bronze tones to it.
Did I ever mention Justyna from Style Skin never stops surprising me ? Well, I ll say it again. She did mention there was this "nice" penthouse that we could shoot in and one of her outfits would "shock me a bit"... "probably". Both statements were understated, but in a magnificent way ! We had tons of phenomenal areas to work with and this crazy mix of electro elegant zebra skirt with a jacket that looked like an African team fan jacket, genius ! To level up with this edginess and "out there" ness, I added some grain, textures and some spilt toning to the pictures, giving them the vintage feel they deserve to have !
There's more to come on this shoot, I ll post some more pictures later. Also editing a guitar video that should be nice and tight, and an appealing summary of 2 weeks in Switzerland...oh wait, that may not make it to the blog !!
