My Catch Up

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have some new shots to display. Some of which I am currently working on, some that are done, and some I just forgot to show at an earlier entry.

If you are having trouble viewing my blog due to slow loading photos and issues displaying the page, I am working on that and hopefully the problem will be fixed soon. Sorry! I switched to a new image hosting service and it takes some tweaking and getting used to.  If you use Mozilla Firefox or Safari (for PC and Mac) it should work fine but I am working on getting this correct in all browsers

Here goes...

Steven in the park for "outdoor portrait." I wanted a baseball theme for the sake of not doing just a plain portrait. Im sick of traditional "smiling at the camera, ok say cheese" photos. 

photographed with canon xti in open shade with white reflector on the left. 

[I think I like this one the best]

Ok, so I bought these towels a while ago and meant to shoot them but I didnt have any ideas and I forgot that they were in the back of my trunk. I recently found them and shot them for a "color still life" or a personal submission to my portfolio. It was fun like a creativity exercise we used to do in the beginning of the year. I got focus on the towels and was able to experiment with different backgrounds and patterns. Check out the stacking of the towels. For photographic jobs shooting this stuff they have trained stylists working hard to get everything perfect. Loading them up with cardboard and pins to get them folded just perfectly. I did some of my own styling with tape, clamps, and cardboard. Here are three of my favorites. 

photographed with large format camera on tabletop

one softbox overhead lighting the top, sides, and background along with one equally powered gridspot illuminating the front to get texture. background suspended with clamps and C-stand. sharpening added in photoshop.

same as above with additional towel suspended by clamps in the background.

same as above with no hanging background. yellow paper swept under the towels. 

Here is a shot I did for Izze carbonated beverages. I am turning this into an advertisement and adding a sunburst pattern in the background with letterhead on the top and text on the bottom. I have done nothing to retouch the background because the bottles will be cut out and pasted on my ad design layout. 

photographed with large format camera on tabletop with one softbox behind to blow out the background and one softbox overhead to illuminate the tops and sides of the bottles. one silver reflector under the setup to reflect strobe back up onto the labels. (you can see the silver card at the bottom of the photo but its ok because im cutting it out.)

dodging and burning done in photoshop.

The cups below were an attempt to pay tribute to a NYC based photographer David Arky. Check out his "liquids" section and scroll to the very end. All of his work is really cool and the photo of the simple plastic cup caught my eye so I wanted to pay tribute to it with my own rendition. I was doing this for fun because I didnt think it would be visually appealing enough to end up in my portfolio but I really like it and it goes along with my commercial style wonderfully so I may end up including one of the shots. 

photographed with a large format camera on blue paper suspended above the tabletop. Gridspot illuminates the background making a fanned out lighting pattern. One gridspot flashed right above the water facing straight into it to illuminate the cup. I filled the cup with water to give it a solid look. 

No retouching done yet in photoshop but I do plan on cleaning up the dust spots, dodging and burning the corners a bit, and adding a bit of noise.  

Shot on a glass pane against a blown out rear lit softbox background with the same grid spot from above illuminating the glass. water spilled on the table to give more aesthetically interesting look. 

Thats all for now as far as pictures go but I thought I could update you with some fast news information.

• Adobe Photoshop has released a free online version of their photoshop software. its easy to use and allows you 2 gigs of free photo storage along with the basics of their editing software. Check it out at https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html
• I purchased the Format's newer CD "Dog Problems" from iTunes and it was one of the smarter musical purchases I have made. Check it out. 
• I currently have the most obnoxious yellow background on my computer and I think its hilarious. Becky thinks its horrible. 
• I hung up clothesline across my living room and have clothespinned prints, polaroid, and proof sheets on it. It looks pretty cool and Its a pretty cool idea if I say so myself. 
• I am photographing a family this weekend.
• My work is looking good and I have a lot done. Will I be done a week before its all due? probably not. But I wont be freaking out so this is good. 
• Anberlin, Jonezetta, and Showbread are coming out with new albums.
• Bethany is out of town for the weekend :(
• Got a new iPod for free because my old one broke. It pays to have applecare my friends. Invest in the replacement plan. 
• I have some fun commercial studio plans for this weekend. A picnic scene and a high end perfume bottle. Should be interesting! I have all of tomorrow to experiment. 

Ok! Im off to bed because I am tired. 

More later. Let me know what you like!

-Ryan