Fashion Post?

I've realized that I'm beginning to take an interest in fashion photography.  It would seem that there's a great deal of creative potential, not only in the clothes, accessories, and so on, but also in the realm of photography that exhibits the creations to the audience at large.  Having said that, I've been pondering doing a monthly fashion post where I will assemble outfits to fit themes for that particular month.  There's no real objective, just looking through and giving suggestions as to what to wear to a photoshoot and in a sense taking it further, depending on how this theme business goes.  We'll see, the target post date for the first posting will be July 29th and I'll try to create a Blogger "page" for this particular section of my blog.

A Photo from Recent

Every morning I walk my dog and I see this really lovely scene, golden light streaming in through the trees over an old chicken coop the previous owner had.  Until yesterday, I had never taken my camera out to capture it.  Aside from waiting for the lens fog to clear, it was fairly easy.  Stitching together of about twenty photographs, resulted in a 40MB image with an effective focal length of 25mm and aperture of .89 (credit to Brett Maxwell's Brenizer Method Calculator).

New Photographer - Michael Sharkey

I came across photographer Michael Sharkey from the New York Times "Lightbox" section where he was a featured artist/photographer.  The series that the paper chose to spotlight was called Queer Kids, in which he interviews and photographs gay teens and young adults on their experiences in life so far relative to their sexuality.  Sharkey, who is (if I read the article correctly) gay himself, created the project in an attempt to "to give this generation a voice, one he didn’t have at their age."  One of my earlier posts from April or so detailed what I desired to do with my photography and as an assignment I was asked to find a photographer who was currently doing that (this sounds extremely convoluted, I apologize).  At the time, I was unable to find such an artist, learning quickly what pops up in Google when you search for the words "gay" and "teen" together...  So through happenstance today, I found this article and photographer and am happy to show you a few of his photographs below.

The photographs themselves are perhaps to some extent deadpan, lacking what one might consider a creative tone.  However, flipping through his website, I did see the genre of documentary photography pop up and so in that spirit, the photographs function as expected.  The images are sharp and to the point portraying what the series' title is about, gay youth.  During the course of the photographs, he interviews the models - posing questions about being in love, the people they admire most, their families' reactions, and what they saw in the future for themselves among others and each photograph is presented with a slide presenting name, age, and quotes from the conversation.

I don't know if I exactly want to mirror Sharkey's approach to such a similar concern, regardless I definitely value what he has done and is continuing to do.  I do enjoy the fact that I, if I wanted (and hopefully will), could create similar images.  From the images above, you'll notice that he's balanced the lighting between the subjects and the background, ensuring context and atmosphere.  If I've learned anything from my studio lighting class and from the research I've done so far, this is done by first evaluating the camera settings required for rendering the background and then going in with either a monolight or quite possibly a strobe to light the subject separately.  Again, convoluted, but by getting the base settings for the ambient light in the background the strobe will independently light the subject, thus drawing more attention to the human element. If I had to guess, in the first image, the background is a full one to two stops below the exposure used for photographing the model and in the one below, perhaps a half to a whole stop below in comparison.  The point is, it's doable.  No real fancy lighting or other equipment required.

The Brenizer Method of Panoramic Portrait Photography

The following picture is my experimental attempt at the Brenizer Method of Panoramic Portrait.  Basically, through stitching together a series of images together you can create the illusion of using a medium or large format camera with their oftentimes unparalleled DoF.  The process itself isn't all that difficult; focus on the subject matter using a wide-open aperture and then shoot a series of images capturing the subject and the area around it, making sure to overlap about 25-30%.  Then in Photoshop or another program, stitch the images together.  The really great thing is that you can shoot relatively low quality images and, provided you shot enough images, the final image will be of greater resolution.  Here's my attempt, keep in mind my focus was kinda off due to some lens fog issues and user error, but the concept works.

PS:  This photograph consisted of about 80 individual images shot with a Nifty Fifty f/1.8 Canon lens.

Startrail Attempt #1

Well, I attempted to create a startrail photograph using the stacking method and then a Photoshop action to create the final images.  Not only did it take about two hours to finish, the result is subpar.  However, after saying that, I'm not sure if it's the action's fault or my own.  There was some cloud cover and I'm also curious if I actually had enough images.  I read up on it and they claimed that an hour and a half of thirty second exposures would be enough.  I did only use an hour's worth and I'm wondering if that's the problem.  I'm also noticing a slight motion blur which is odd in that I did use the camera's self timer when performing these extended shots, though I suppose it is quite possible that the vibration of my feet caused some of it.  I'm also not pleased with the tree being out of focus.  Oh well, this will require quite a bit more practice and time.  Here's my result:

Summer 2011 in Progress

Just a few photographs I've taken over the summer so far since having my Nifty 50 lens back.  Critiques welcome, though they're not really meant to be taken all that series or really to be considered as a group necessarily.

Kickstarter Troubles

Well, I was right in assuming that the Kickstarter campaign would be more difficult than originally planned.  Specifically, they do not allow "charity cases" or what business ventures, rather what you present to them must be a project with a definite beginning and end.  Thus, I'm unable (at least at this point) to create a project for funding from Kickstarter until I'm able to come up with a solid project.

That said, there is an alternative website - IndieGoGo where you can fund such charity cases and a definite ending are not required.  The downside, though, is that if you don't meet your funding goal, they take out 9% of what you did manage to raise.  I would be fine with that to some extent, and I guess I could break my original campaign up into smaller chunks, ie the actual lights by themselves, then the backdrop, and so on until I have the entire setup I desire.

That would make the project far more likely to reach the goal; however, having the entire setup would make the paying of "perks" significantly easier versus only having parts.  This is going to require some further planning...  Suggestions would be great!