Annular Eclipse Tokyo
Taken from my balcony at about 7:30am this morning.
Portrait Session - Starring Tiffany
Shot with model and punkrocker Tiffany Cadillac recently. She had some creative looks that she had come up with so we decided to meet up and shoot them. Hair, makeup and styling was all done by her.
We did maybe 7 looks or so. Still processing the photos but here are two quick photos from some that were taken.
Will post the rest maybe next week when I have finished with them ;D
Portrait Session - Starring Sascha
So, took these pics maybe 2-3 weeks ago of model Sascha
A bit before this Mijonju brought out his lappy and gave me a quick lesson on photoshop
and how he edits images. Got some good advice and was able to do some basic editing of some photos.
However, for any type of beauty work you need to do a lot of stuff in post so I subscribed to Lynda and watched a few photoshop series by Chris Orwig then decided to use the above
photo as a “lets practice retouching” photo.
I pretty much have opened the picture up in photoshop everyday for the past 3 weeks. Some days I just opened it stared and asked what? why? how? and never actually edited it at all and in the end just closed the file.
Other days I would do a little editing, sometimes leaving the result, sometimes deleting it and starting again.
As with anything you dont really know what you like untill you know what is actually possible.
I went away and started looking at other photographers work to see how it is processed.
It is funny once you know about editing because you can look a photo and see what the person did in post.
I saw a lot of amazing work that pretty much blew my mind.
Also at the opposite end of the spectrum saw a lot of “Got plastic?” “Got airbrush?” “Oh no, they went too far….” type of stuff.
I guess in the end it is what is. You edit stuff the way you feel and according to your vision so there isnt really any right or wrong solutions.
This image might be about 95% finished. There are maybe 1-2 really small niggly details I would like to fix, but I think im not too sure how and I am cool with the way they are for the moment.
Oh well, got quite a few shoots lined up this month. Should be fun to see where it goes!
Probably start shooting street portraits again next month :D also have a lil fun project lined up for when I go to climb mount Fuji again this year.
Polaroid Fun
Was shooting a bit of retro/old skool ish and took a few polaroids.
Think the polaroids might end up coming out better than the shots on digi ;o
Portrait Session - Starring Stacey
So with the weather sucking since forever decided to do a bit more studio stuff. After all the bad weather rainy season is probably also around the corner which sucks even more…
Decided to up some shots with Stacey from a week or so ago. Messed around with a few setups, beauty look and some other stuff.
Ended up making a composite out of one of the looks.
Shot some film too.
Medium format with the Pentax67:
End up going darkroom the following weekend and making some prints.
Was going to post a little darkroom field report but forgot some of the prints in the darkroom lol…
Pretty happy how the film dev is going. Have had thin negs, badly damaged and scratched, completely ruined negs… However the past few devs have gone really well, close to flawless in terms of density and scratching/dust etc.
Shot some large format too:
Noticed from the last shoot I did that my large format camera needs a lens hood. Using a light on the back ends up creating some very funk effects without one…
Oh well, got a few more photos from another shoot to try process and also might try to line up a few shoots for GW ;o
Pretty interesting though. With street photography and stuff I found myself not really caring too much or worrying about doing any post processing to my work (or even really the quality of my work just the content). But with this type of photography you kinda have to. As a result, I find myself staring at my photos for ages thinking about them, what to do and how to make them better. Kinda like in the darkroom making prints. Actually making me a bit more detailed oriented :)
Quick Portrait - Stacey
Quick pic from a portrait session I did with Stacey last week. WIll post some more pics and a write up later.
Actually went darkroom 2 days ago. Will up some scans and a little report about it tomorrow or something.
Have a nice day folks.
Portrait Session - Starring Julia
Did a shoot with Julia about 2 weeks ago. Alani came along too. Shot some outdoor and indoor stuff. Been trying to learn some photoshop recently. It is funny I find that at this point I jump between Lightroom, GIMP and photoshop depending on what I want to do…
Was shooting large format outdoors so maybe only took 3 different looking shots. Came inside met up with Maity and shot one setup. This is the shot I liked the most from the indoor setup:
Feeling ridic lazy and tired recently.. so much film to scan so many shots to try and process…
adventuresinfilm asked: Re: your overexposed Portra, I think that just proves the principle of 'with negative film, it will be fine'. Shooting a roll of slide through my RB67 made me realise how much my guessed exposures vary, but on FP4+, Reala and Ektar they turn out just fine.
Yeah tell me about it. Because of that reason I am scared to shoot the Astia that I bought for my 4x5 camera :( Last time I shot it on 6x7 I guess I didnt meter properly because I didnt get great results…
Darkroom Coat
So yeah I was talking about getting a lab coat for going to the darkroom when Joanne offered to get me one :D (she works as a mad scientist).
We discussed colours and I said that blue would be good. However, no blue was available. She said she would dye a white one blue for me. However, it didnt quite turn out blue, ended up purple…
But its all good, purple is rapidly becoming one of my favorite colours.
The day we met to exchange the goods I was expecting some lighting stuff so I asked her if she wouldnt mind helping me test it out. Waited till 9 o’clock but the delivery didnt come. Checked the internet and it was actually due to come the next day .. doh
Figured since she was here anyway i would try using some lights I hadnt used before and try experiment a little, and also get her to take a pic of me in my new pimp lab coat.
Pretty abc lighting, but I liked this pic:
Thinking of going to the darkroom this Sunday maybe, gonna have chicks all over me….
Portra 400 shot at 100
Picked up some film last night which was a mixed bag of this weekend and a shoot from 2 weeks ago.
I shot two rolls of portra400 on my pentax67 with Adriana, reason being was after shooting the first I realized I adjusted my f-stop in the wrong direction and exposed for iso 100 instead of 400…
Shot another roll straight after at the correct setting. Sent that roll to the local near my house, comparing what he did to what the people at Ebisu did is pretty crazy, results are like night and day. I already knew the local guy sucked as he has ruined a few rolls of my film, but I was feeling lazy and impatient. I think Ill make a bet with myself and start setting 1000 yen notes on fire anytime I drop film off to him to get developed….
So yeah dropped the roll to Ebisu and they said they can only pull one stop (needs to two stops) and it will cost twice the price. I was like wtf?? Told them to put the order on ice till I get back to them. Did some research and heard people talking about shooting portra at 1600 and developing it normally and getting good results.
Decided to just dev it normal. Results are interesting. Looks slightly on the washed out side, but might be able to fix it in the scanner or lightroom.
Also picked up a large format shot too. Not sure if my eyes are getting bad or the focusing screen sucks but seems like im unable to see stuff in the background too well…
Quality is pretty nuts, although you cant tell on by looking at it at this size. Shot with porta400 slightly overexposed.
Hanami with the missus
Was out doing Hanami (checking out the cherry blossoms) with the missus on the weekend.
Took out the camera so she could take some pics of the flowers and stuff and so I could take a few of her.
Got to near the end of the park trail and hadn’t taken a single picture of her yet, I was too busy using instagram to take photos of weird people and stuff.. (follow me on instagram “streetportraitist”).
She turned to me and said:
“Y U No take my photo?”
I smiled, took the camera and spent a few minutes snapping away :D
Adriana on Film
Shot some photos of Adriana on film. Developed them last night and they came out nice. Might be the best batch of negs I have done so far, nice density. Still have a little dust and a few scratches though but way better than the past two batches….
Shot some colour too, but bw looked way better. Not sure if its due to me letting the dude in my local shop dev them… (i never learn).
Tried to get the iso400 film I shot at iso100 by accident developed, but the shop told me the most they can do is develop it at iso200 and it will cost 2x the normal cost LOL (gamboooollll).
I told them to chill to not do anything and I will decide today if I want it developed…
Portrait Session - Starring Adriana
So yeah did a shoot with model Adriana and hair makeup partner in crime Maity recently.
Fun times :)
It was the second time shooting in my home studio setup. Had a post about the first shoot I did but tumblr deleted it :(
Few months ago I thought to myself, why not turn my home to a mini studio? Did a bunch of research, checked around and came to the conclusion it was not feasible because the ceiling is too low and layout is too narrow. So I gave up on the idea….
Ended up paying to use other studios for a bit. Next thought was how about finding a dirt cheap building to rent and maybe turning that into a studio?
But after a bit of research that wasnt feasible either. Everywhere was too expensive, and the places cheap enough didnt have the right layout to make it work. So I gave up on that idea too….
About 2-3 weeks ago I started thinking about it again and went to Yodobashi to check out the price of seamless background paper and a stand to mount it on.
Not too expensive, but I still wasnt sure.
A few Saturdays ago, I remember writing a tweet about backdrop stands and Uchujin (check out his photography and vid documentaries) who I ended up bump into that same day
kindly offered to lend me his background stuff. In the end I opted to just get my own since it was cheap enough and didn’t wanna make him go through the hassle of lugging heavy stuff around.
That same day as I was walking through Shinjuku station pondering about whether to get the stuff or not someone tapped me on my back. I look around and its Genevieve (check out her photography). She said she recognized my hat from afar lol..
Spoke to her a bit and I tell her that I saw a cheap backdrop mount and was pondering getting it. She tells me she has the exact same one I was thinking of getting and we speak a bit more about it.
That more or less makes my descion for me to get it.
So yeah FF back to the photo shoot. The plan for the day was to initially do bunch of beauty shots using different colours. But things ended up going a bit slow and after the first natural look shot kinda just changed it up and improvised.
Adriana was great though, she brought quite a few outfits.
After the beauty shots it more or less turned into a game of how many looks and trying to push the limits of my house.
Ended up moving the light from front to front to side to side, used tables with white cloth for reflectors, black paper as scrims, added a bunch of lights, took some away, used multiple modifiers, moved closer and further to get a different colour background.
All this while Maity rocked the makeup and Adriana rocked my camera.
Probably still a few things left to try and to try improve for the next time, but pretty happy with the way things worked out.
Might try shooting some beauty stuff for a while ;o
Shot some film and managed to expose iso400 film at iso100, and waste some large format. Seems im forgetting or unable to use the camera efficiently since I havent used it regularly for a while…
Might post some film shots if any came out ok…
