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Forum: Post Your Photos!
07-02-2010, 07:06 AM
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Hey Adam! Eh, it's getting there. Thanks for the words and it's good to hear from you.
Thank you! Does your daughter have a web gallery or photo site? I'd love to see!
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
07-01-2010, 11:29 PM
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Not sure how many people here still remember me as it's been pretty much forever and a day, but I had to stop by and thank everyone and let them know what I've been up to.
I started out shooting Pentax digital and was a member of this forum ages ago and even had a stint as a moderator removing and creating colorful arguments ;)
This forum and all the amazing photographers on it was my inspiration to stop taking snapshots and to begin creating art and capturing more than just imagery that inspired me but also others. Today I currently run a successful studio shooting everything from weddings to professional model books and more recently fashion and editorial work.
I learned everything I know from the people here that critiqued my first images through my first year and a half as a photographer and I can't thank them all enough for their diligence and eye for detail, plus all the kind words I received from time to time.
I still own a Pentax camera or two and use them to this day even though most of my work is done on other systems I know the value and amazing image quality that is produced by the camera system we love.
Thank you everyone and hopefully when life frees up I'll be able to contribute more to this forum again as I know some people must miss my crazy antics and charm ;)
As a special surprise I'm going to present some recent works that were published as well as my very first fashion editorial. I've always loved photographing models and held onto the shoelaces of another pentaxian, Ben Kanarek, and told myself one day I would have my own fashion editorial. This week the recent issue of Northwest Quarterly contain 4 images shot and processed by myself with the help of Frank Szarban, a partner in our booming studio.
The first three images below are ones printed full page in the magazine the others are works used for advertising for the company via their website and other marketing avenues.
Thank you all so much for everything and especially those that helped me so much along the way!
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-24-2010, 09:46 AM
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-08-2009, 09:12 PM
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It's been a loooong while since I last posted so here goes...
My roommate and I drove up to the Bristol Renaissance Faire and with camera in hand I began to capture all the things that make this such an experience. If you've never been to said faire I highly recommend it to anyone looking to enjoy a whole day experiencing new things and seeing all sorts of amazing sights.
#1: The grumpy bartender
#2: Telling a tall tale?
#3: The guy you want to throw tomatoes at!
#4: Ummm... this guy killed a lot of birds :(
#5: Dual flowing manes ;)
#6: Onward my steed!
#7: POW...
#8: Clink, clank, slash...
#9: The spider fairy
#10: The wood fairy and a happy child...
#11: They have capture a little person
#12: The queen
#13: Back off Spartan!
#14: The mean old Viking
You can see more on my site here Bristol Ren Faire - Photography 2.0 - Unconventional - Unrestricted - Unreal |
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-08-2009, 09:07 AM
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Hello ladies and gentlemen!
I had the pleasure of participating in an amazing workshop run by one of top photographers in the US, Nels Akerlund. This workshop takes place in an old 1840s brewery in downtown Rockford Illinois and deals with portrait photography. The models range from a top Ballerina to a completely tattooed gentleman. I was one of the instructors teaching lighting, posing and setup alongside photographic great Nels Akerlund and Denis Nervig.
This was definitely an amazing experience and for anyone looking at learning about portrait photography and creative lighting this is the best class available for the price.
You can read more about it on his blog at Nels Akerlund Photography .
BTW, we are running a second workshop on Sunday September 20th and if you're interested in signing up for it contact me at 815.398.3686, just ask for Chris :)
Here is a small showing of what everyone experienced during the 5+ hour workshop.
Ballerina using natural light
Elite model on the staircase
The leap (yes you shoot the leap)!
Tattooed and menacing...
Here are some captures of the students learning and experiencing the workshop...
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
08-29-2009, 10:04 PM
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Not yet :( I've only been working on paid work for this site and just picked up the K7 10 days ago. I've missed the last few ball games due to rain so hopefully in two weeks!
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
08-29-2009, 08:23 PM
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Thank you so much everyone, can't express how much it means to hear all the good words from the place I started at and all the great photographers that post here.
@Paul, I still shoot Pentax, as well as Canon and Nikon. I use the Nikon more so now because of the ISO capabilities, but the K7 is doing me fine at the moment and may end up being my main sports cam during day games. I've always been a Pentaxian and always will even though it's not my main ride. During every shoot I have to edit I wish my Nikon took images like my Pentax in terms of look, color and contrast.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
08-27-2009, 10:39 AM
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Man it's been waaaaaaay too long since I've posted on here so I thought I'd stop by and show off some of the things I've been doing.
First off I'm now the lead photographer for our local Baseball team the Rockford Riverhawks so I'm out there shooting the games in the dugout and on the field. Also picked up the Rockford Thunder pro fastpitch team which is home to the olympic gold medal wining pitcher Cat Osterman. I'm also an instructor for local workshops held by the world famous photographer Nels Akerlund. I'm also doing weekly shoots with girls from HIN (Hot import nights) and selling poster prints of the lovely young ladies at their events not too mention the cars. Oh... and weddings, family sessions and the occasional baby.
Basically, I've been too busy for anything besides working the camera and editing on my computer.
So today I'll put up some of my favorite shots that I've taken while I've been away so enjoy and as always C&C is appreciated!
A lovely wedding ends with a lovely image...
The three sisters...
Behind bars... grrrrrr
OUT!
SAFE!
The Pitch...
Nailed at first...
Bad toss...
Say it ump! He's OUT!
Lighting class, model Jessica...
HIN poster image, model Brit...
Brewery Workshop images... For more info on the Brewery Workshop check Camera Craft Inc.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
06-15-2009, 11:30 AM
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I've been slacking in doing my own personal work so today against all odds I stepped outside and went to my favorite little park on the side of the road and walked around for a few snapshots before work.
C&C is welcome and as always, enjoy!
#1: Damselfly
#2: Yet another damselfly
#3: A loving pair of hover flies
#4: A beautiful wild Iris
#5: I believe this guy picked the wrong flower to hide in? Not so sneaky...
#6: Ahhh, a lady bug... doing what lady bugs do
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
06-05-2009, 01:23 PM
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I've been hitting the local skateparks recently to nab some cool shots of these stunt machines. Tried a new technique and even strapped on the Zenitar 16mm fisheye for all the shots.
C&C is welcome and do enjoy!
Big Air Gap Transfer:
Need some PAM?
Ollie off the 8ft box
The Michael Jackson
Big Air over his buds
Going for the 50/50
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-28-2009, 03:12 PM
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It's possible to look at it that way, but it's tough to honestly know how much emotion is the proper amount ;)
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-28-2009, 12:57 PM
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Thank you all for your input, it's much appreciated.
The reason the facial expressions are the way they are is the whole idea of being a doll, a doll of the devil. Lifeless and lacking of higher emotion. She's fresh off the plant and it slowly gaining an idea of what is going on and what her purpose is here while under the power of someone or something else. I'm going to shoot this series in 4-5 sets to explore her change and it should make more sense after it's all pieced together.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-28-2009, 09:08 AM
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Out from the door comes a dark angel...
She begins to understand her purpose...
Her wings shed and the temptress within engulfs her being...
Looking innocent she waits patiently for you arrival...
Too be continued...
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-26-2009, 11:18 PM
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Hello Ladies and Gents!
I was helping on another forum I frequent with some of my retouching techniques for skin that give it that all natural look and thought I'd share with it with you guys as well.
ENJOY!
Received and started.
My typical first step is to use nothing but the spot healing tool and fix simple blemishes like spot, zits and pimples. In this instance where I cannot rely as much on the auto feature of the spot healing tool I have to use my number one fix all tool the patch healing brush. You must carefully choose the right spots to remove and replace with the closest matching skin as the clone patch tool takes texture from the place you're taking from and blends it into the your trouble area.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
The reason for this madness, which mind you on this type of derma will take nearly 30 minutes when you're fast and precise, is that when we soften the skin we need to have as little change in skin color as possible or it'll look like a blotchy fix. So we'll use this to even the tonality a bit as well as removing most of the trouble areas while replacing them with a better skin texture.
After we've fixed most of the trouble areas on the skin we need to begin to remove other distracting parts of the image which to me is the stray hairs on the face and fixing up the eyebrows. I used the healing brush to remove the stray hairs on her face knowing that her new skin would be able to cover it up nicely with an auto brush at this point. Now her eyebrow was more difficult as I had very little sample skin to play with since she covers it with her bangs. I may try another stab at trimming the brows but it may look patchy if I clone off more than it can digest. I was basically using the patch tool to remove sections of stray brow hair, but again it can be over kill so in this instance I'd back off making it perfect until later on in the process.
BTW, I'm only working on the the right side of her face to speed up this process so if you see some problems on the left side of the image it's cause I'm not messing with it for this tutorial.
BEFORE: 
AFTER: 
After you've fixed the skin and removed anything you don't want in the photo it's time to make a texture layer. To select the skin without the lips, teeth, eyes and hair I typically use the Color Range tool under the Selection menu to capture the skin and nothing else. It's not perfect but I use the selection mask and paint in the areas I want and remove what I don't want.
EXAMPLE:
Now that we have that last skin layer saved and hidden right now I'm going to patch up the eyes and teeth. I used the simple dodge and burn to fix the white of the eyes and brighten the iris then removed the second catchlight as I personally found it distracting but everyone has their tastes.
BEFORE: 
AFTER: 
Now this is the critical step and the the step everyone is looking for. This is my old skin retouching technique that I've now simplified with the ON ONE software suite but it works great if you want a more NATURAL approach to fixing the skin.
We now go back to skin texture layer and hide all the other layers so we are only concentrating on one thing, the skin. Make a copy of this layer directly above it and hide that. I use Apple + J or on PC CTRL + J for this step then hide the layer. Use a gaussian blur to make the skin ultra smooth and yes you can go as crazy as you like in this step.
Blurred skin: 
Now we have to put the TEXTURE back on. The simple way is to just unhide the layer we copied above the blurred skin and use the opacity of that layer to make us feel happy.
Slightly transparent texture layer over blurred soft skin layer:
CLOSE-UP: 
Now we will bring back the fixed image from underneath our fixed skin section and we'll see that it looks good but it suck in some areas, specifically the areas of hard lines like under the eyes and the smile lines on the cheek and on the eyebrows as it blended into the hair strands. So we will have to mask out those areas. What I do is combine the fixed skin layers into one using merge down Apple + E or CTRL + E on a PC. With them combined I can mask out the problem areas.
The finished product looks very realistic and the tonality is much better than what we started with. I worked quickly on it but I think you can see the finished difference right here.
ORIGINAL: 
After initial fix: 
FINISHED: 
100% comparison after a quick sharpening vs the Original.
ORIGINAL: 
FINISHED:  |
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-25-2009, 02:37 PM
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I've shot some sports here and there but yesterday I spent 2 hours shooting some coed league soccer at our towns bigger sports complex. Definitely a new experience as with american football it's easier to figure out where things are going, but with soccer it seems that anything can happen at any time and becomes very difficult to track from the sideline. Hopefully I'll build a faster response time to soccer as I'll be shooting this for the rest of the summer.
Let me know what you think!
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-25-2009, 02:02 PM
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Shot my first soccer game and captured some very interesting dance moves on the field...
Whuzzzzzup!
Swing Dance
Swan Lake
Headbangers vs. Hip Hop Dancers
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-22-2009, 12:09 AM
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I love shooting people and enjoy it so much more when they are doing what they do best.
This again is outside my bubble but I used to read skate mags back in high school so after the initial breaking of the ice I did my thing...
Had the D700 with me on this shot as the FPS is more fitting, but there may have been a secret camera along side ;)
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-19-2009, 02:51 PM
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Hey Eric,
I've been to quite a few photo contests as well as being a judge at 4-5 of them now.
Your first image is the strongest but depending on the judge the minuses are going to be the following:
-centered subject (not my idea, I love breaking that rule myself)
-close crop to the right knee
-visible post processing (the eyes look dramatic, but unrealistic)
The last image is still amazing but here are the few points that may come off of it:
-missing right arm... (it's again something that is great to break the rule on but judges look at it as a mistake)
-Hair in the face (I can't tell but there seems to be lots of stray hair climbing on the edge of her face, but it may be just the small image or compression.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-19-2009, 01:56 PM
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Hey Everyone added links to the first two video clips from the class.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
05-19-2009, 11:44 AM
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Good day everyone!
I recently had the pleasure of being an instructor at the famous Anderson Japanese Gardens. I've shown a few samples of the images I was able to snap off while instructing, but I also had my friend come by and tape the shoot. I'm sorry for the quality and the even more sorry about the audio as the garden is filled with water features and water falls so the ambient sound is picked up by the mic more-so than my own voice. I edited the first two hours of the video down to 30 minutes and broke it down farther to 4 parts so I can upload them on YouTube. I'm making this series available to the masses and in there buried are great examples and live demo of reflectors and flash used on location.
Let me know what you think and I hope everyone here enjoys this!
*Only the first clip is up and I'll add in the other links as they slowly upload*
YouTube - Portrait Workshop Clip #1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASbWT-Yukps |
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-18-2009, 05:10 PM
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Used the DA* 16-50 f2.8 :)
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-18-2009, 06:31 AM
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-17-2009, 11:22 PM
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Ugh... 1080i again does not need to be 60fps...
1080i can be used at 30fps, actually 29.97 which is perfect but again it doesn't have to be 50 or 60 fps. What you guys are misreading is Hz and FPS. 1080i as well as MOST video is recorded at 50-60Hz so it illuminates the screen without showing the flaws or interlacing which shows the video display at every other line. Means HD quality but a smaller bandwidth. With progressive you show every line from top to bottom which takes more data bandwidth and is still recorded at 50-60Hz.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-17-2009, 10:48 PM
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I posted a while back about my opportunity to teach a portrait class at the US's number one private japanese garden. Class ended about 4 hours ago and I decided to edit the few shots I took since I was the instructor. Being the instructor meant I missed out on like a million photo opportunities but these are about 1/4 of what I shot throughout the day.
***************UPDATE*****************
I've shown a few samples of the images I was able to snap off while instructing, but I also had my friend come by and tape the shoot. I'm sorry for the quality and the even more sorry about the audio as the garden is filled with water features and water falls so the ambient sound is picked up by the mic more-so than my own voice. I edited the first two hours of the video down to 30 minutes and broke it down farther to 4 parts so I can upload them on YouTube. I'm making this series available to the masses and in there buried are great examples and live demo of reflectors and flash used on location.
Let me know what you think and I hope everyone here enjoys this!
*Only the first two clips are up and I'll add in the other links as they slowly upload*
Clip One: YouTube - Portrait Workshop Clip #1
Clip Two: YouTube - Portrait Workshop Clip #2
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Enjoy!
First session was only using reflectors:
Second session we used a little bit of off camera lighting:
Last session was advanced lighting techniques (aka LOTS OF FLASH):
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-17-2009, 10:42 PM
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1080i means interpolated... nothing to do with fps.
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