Ultra Portraits

What do you get when you ask three ultra runners to pose for your homework assignment? You get, at the very least, some serious athletes who never take themselves too seriously. And that is what makes being in their presence such an honor.

I'm in a portraiture class this session. I'm learning how to illuminate the topography of a person's face, the form that makes up their body, and camera angles that give the viewer information (both consciously and subconsciously). Honestly I'm overwhelmed, stressed out, and enjoying every single morsel of information that I'm learning. My portraits have come so far, even in the last three weeks of class!

We have been studying how to make a great portrait, starting with form and topography. One person has a wide nose, another will have a thin one. Nobody's face is perfectly symmetrical. This is actually a good thing. A simple Google search for images of symmetrical faces will show you why we are more beautiful with asymmetrical faces. But it takes a trained eye, and a skilled artist to highlight the beauty of an asymmetrical person. We have been learning how to light and pose each person so their beauty shines through.

In the first week, we worked just with a person's face. We have since "zoomed out" a bit to make images of head and shoulders, 3/4 of the body, and now full body portraits. This week, I am to make portraits that are planned in their entirety. Location, wardrobe, model, poses, camera angles, lighting... it all has to come together, and it all has to make sense so the viewer can get a story before they ever read a single word.

When I got this week's assignment, I knew immediately that I needed to go on location. After chatting with a few willing models, we decided to hit up one of their more beaten paths for training days. What happens on set at a KBPP shoot? Check it out!

My models know that they need to bring some serious work ethic on set. 

There is nothing but absolute respect for each other as we work diligently toward the final product.

Posing and facial expressions are a breeze for these guys. Very little direction was necessary from me.

When they suit up to get a job done, you can absolutely bet they won't leave until it is done to standard...

...unless somebody says they want to go for a run. These fellahs are so in tune with each other that they are not only in step, but elevated during their runs.

And when the day is over, they just can't help themselves. They have to hoist each other up and celebrate.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the ultra running community, any distance above a marathon (26.2 miles) is considered an ultra run. The fellah who is hoisted up just finished his first 50 mile race last weekend. These guys are undoubtedly super human. Thank you, gentlemen, for being my models!

"Little Adults"

Sometimes, my visions are far too big for the time hacks I have to hit in class. 5.5 weeks is just not long enough for my visions to come to fruition. In fact, some of these projects could easily take years to accomplish properly. But I don't have years for my finals so I have to accept the things I cannot change, and work with what I have.

I just finished Digital Darkroom, a class that reminds me of photography's roots and pushes me to try to accomplish those techniques digitally. My favorite techniques were aging images to look like they were shot and developed decades ago. As discussed in a previous post, black and white prints are relatively new. The reason images of old look brownish orange, or purplish grey, or even blueish grey is because of the developing process back then.

In the beginning, images were not always developed perfectly to the edge. The photographer had to paint on the emulsion, and he wasn't always perfect at applying it to the edge. The edges were also faded a bit more than the inside of the image. When images started being developed on paper (as opposed to glass or metal plates), the paper wasn't perfectly free of textures. There were stains, wrinkles, and other different textures in the paper. For my final, I added these effects to the images I shot.

My models were fantastic! They were so very happy to get in front of Lux, and show me what awesome Little Adults they could be. I had to produce 15 images for this final. Had I had more than 5.5 weeks, I am sure I could have fifteen different Littles to work with, and I could have picked one best image from each Little Adult shoot rather than have several images from each shoot to fill in the requirements of the assignment.

But narrowing the images down to the best two or three was tough enough! My Little Attorney, Little Mechanic, Little Baker, Little Bike Shop Owner, Little Teacher, and Little Doctor (complete with Little Patient and Little Students) were amazing to work with!

And I can't thank the parents enough for being so flexible with me as I had to schedule several shoots in a 36 hour timeframe. As a small token of my appreciation to the parents, I would like to offer each parent a 5x7 print of the image(s) their child is in. The printed image can either have the textures or not; but they will be in the tonal finishes that they're in below. Pick your favorite, and let me know!

"Little Mechanic A" toned and textured

"Little Mechanic A" toned

"Little Mechanic B" toned and textured

"Little Mechanic B" toned

"Little Mechanic C" toned and textured

"Little Mechanic C" toned

"Little Attorney A" toned and textured

"Little Attorney A" toned

"Little Attorney B" toned and textured

"Little Attorney B" toned

"Little Attorney C" toned and textured

"Little Attorney C" toned

"Little Baker A" toned and textured

"Little Baker A" toned

"Little Baker B" toned and textured

"Little Baker B" toned

"Little Teacher A" toned and textured

"Little Teacher A" toned

"Little Teacher B" toned and textured

"Little Teacher B" toned

"Little Bike Shop Owner A" toned and textured

"Little Bike Shop Owner A" toned

"Little Bike Shop Owner B" toned and textured

"Little Bike Shop Owner B" toned

"Little Bike Shop Owner C" toned and textured

"Little Bike Shop Owner C" toned

"Little Doctor A" toned and textured

"Little Doctor A" toned

"Little Doctor B" toned and textured

"Little Doctor B" toned

I'm just getting started with my shoots now! I have tonight off, but start a new class tomorrow. Portraiture, here I come! I'm a little nervous about what's in store with this class, but rest assured... I'll be soliciting more models as I find out what my assignments will be!

Four Ducks on a Bicycle

My Digital Darkroom course is over. I have one day off and then I start my Portraiture course. For the most part, I am happy I took my DD course. I'm much more confident working in Photoshop now that I have taken the class; but I don't really see myself using too many of the effects I learned in my art. Solarizations and infrared simulations look pretty nifty when done correctly, but they're really not my style. I dunno... I suppose I'll be eating those words soon enough.

I did have fun learning how to age images to appear like they were made in the early days of photography. In fact, I decided to make that skill set be the main effect I used in my final project. But that's for another posting. This post is about ducks on a bicycle.

One of my assignments was to make a composite that had surreal qualities. I'm quite the literal person, so surrealism is something I really have to work at. One day, while visiting Big Spring Park in downtown Huntsville, my girls giggled at the thought of a duck flying to sit on a metal bicycle statue that sits near the duck pond. What's funny about this is that the metal is probably no wider than an inch, so even if a duck thought a bicycle was a comfy place to sit, these particular bicycles are not.

But this idea gave me an idea; this idea became my surreal composite homework assignment. Now, I didn't really pay attention to directions. I was supposed to use layer masks to make the composite look better. I didn't do that. So I have much more work to do on this one, but I love the idea of four ducks riding a bike. Five points to the first person who can tell me where this trail is!

Trail Portraits

While going on a trail run with my 7 year old the other day, I decided that I just had to photograph portraits on that same trail. The lighting was okay, but I knew that at a different time of day the lighting would be phenomenal. I called a friend of mine and asked her to clear her schedule for the weekend, find coordinating clothes for her and her daughters, and come over Sunday morning. And like a fantastic friend, she did just that.

Portraits are very different than triathlons. The action is slower, more intimate. Unlike race day, the choices for locations, times, wardrobes, and poses for portraits are pretty much infinite. One would think the pressure of having to get it right would be less with portraits since I have more control, but those infinite possibilities also mean that I could have picked a better time of day, or a better location. I could have communicated with the subject better with wardrobe choices. I'll be taking a portrait course next session, and I'm sure I'll look back at this photoshoot and think, "Man! How far I've come!" But for today, I'm pretty impressed with what we came up with.

Using Digital to Make Photographs Look Like Film

The humor of using expensive, modern technology to create digital prints that look like they were made in the early phases of photography does not escape me. In fact, I'm curious as to why a person would want to spend hundreds of dollars on a software program, and countless hours learning that program, only to create an image with the likeness of those that were created in the 1800s. But I'm absolutely positive that one day I'll read this blog post and eat my words.

Either way, here is an update on the assignments I've been working on. Remember my images from the previous blog posting, where I discussed whether your old photographs are really black and white? This most recent assignment has me building on the tonal changes in the images to add textures and washings that look truly old. It's not enough to simply have the same colors as an old photograph... one must also show the textures of an old photograph. Let's explore:

Remember this fellah? He was the modern black and white. Since black and white came about in film, I added film grain to the image. Grainy, right? That is on purpose!

Oh, Cyanotype... you needed texture. So here is a bit of texture to make the modern look more realistic!

My favorite: sepia. I made this resemble an emulsion wash. 

Sometimes, our eyes can't remember what we saw before, so here is a look at the images from before the distressed effects, and after. What are your thoughts?

Going Old School

I'm taking a Digital Darkroom class right now. Basically, I'm learning the non-chemical, very basic way photo processing happens in a darkroom, and then learning how to accomplish that digitally. One day, I want to work in a real darkroom. But that will most likely happen after I graduate and become a booming success. For now, I will be content with the crazy amount of notes I'm taking, and making on-purpose changes to my images.

Did you know that black and white images are a relatively new thing? When photography first came out, images did not print in true black and white. There was always a tint or tone to them. The tints and tones varied based on the chemicals used. Our eyes tend to see them as black and white because we just don't see the many colors of the rainbow in one image. Consider the following image:

This image is not black and white. It is tinted with a very slight purple hue, mimicking a selenium effect. Selenium is subtle, and can appear to be purple, brown, yellow, or even blue. I chose purple in this image because the temperature was just above freezing during this race. The purple tint just seemed appropriate.

Have you ever heard of a cyanotype? Chances you have seen the effect at least once; this is true if you have seen a blueprint. Cyanotypes are a style of processing images where the print is blue, white, and black. You can see an example below:

As you can see, the blue isn't really a "true blue". There is a little bit of green in it, making the overall color cyan. This really isn't my favorite processing type, but I had to use it in this week's assignment. So here you go!

Most people love the sepia toned images. And I am no exception. I love the warmth, the immediate aged-look to the image, the feeling that the moment was quiet, and the image was taken during "the good ole days". Here is an example of an image with sepia tones:

But black and white images are lovely as well. Even though they are relatively modern, they still evoke certain emotions and feel like time is slowing down for the viewer of the image (even if it isn't happening for the subject of the photograph). Here is a true black and white image; one with absolutely no hue involved, and all colors in the photograph have been desaturated to a greyscale:

See the difference? Now go back to grandmas and look through her photo albums. What colors are those "old black and whites"? Which processes were used to print the image?

For a view of these images in full color (as well as the rest of the images I shot), please go to my SmugMug gallery. The Spooktacular 5K was a blast to shoot, and even more fun to witness. Maybe next year, I'll run it!

Oh, and I almost forgot the last style of color toning: split toning. I can choose the tones of the highlights and shadows of an image to create some really dramatic images. Some people use split toning to create highlights and shadows in the same color temperature (warm vs cold). In the following image, I created a color scheme that had warm highlights and cold shadows. What do you think?

Being that the sun was rising when the race started, the warm highlights just make visual sense to me. But you had to be there to know the cold that was present that morning. The sub-freezing temperatures made me wonder why I was out there to shoot the race to begin with! So I chose to put cold blue shadows in the image to give that unsettled feeling. The results are dramatic, and very vibrant!