STREET PORTRAITIST

Learning Post Processing

Ugh, I think I bought my first camera, a d70, in like June 2010. After shooting for a few months I realized that I wasnt happy with the way the photos looked and to make things worse had no idea how to fix them…

The escape route was to start shooting film :D. With film you can more or less just use whatever u get out of the cam and still get decent results.

But the side effects of doing that is that I only really know what I want/like from an abstract point of view (composition, colour scheme) but havent really got a clue on a more detailed level.

For example, I spent a bit of time on the above image but got to a point where its like, do I keep her eyes the same or make them brighter? Do I find some tutorial and find a way to make her skin super duper magazine smooth or is it cool like this, do I brighten the shadow, completely remove it, leave it as it is? Try and dodge and burn to add more dimensional? Am I happy with the way it looks or can I make it better? haha the list goes on… And unfortunately the answer to most of these questions is a shoulder shrug…

I guess the only way to find the answer is to face my demons and actually try spending time with a lot of my images and trying to figure out what I like and what I can do in camera and with lights to try and get better results in camera.

Should be interesting hitting the darkroom again after processing a bunch of photos. I might actually be able to save myself some paper.

If anybody is using GIMP and knows any cool plugins, let me know :D

SixtyEight & SixtyNine

My timing has been lovely as of late. Seem to bump into people or cool stuff wherever I go. Maybe it is more induced than anything since I do stuff like get a different train to work everyday and end up riding on a different carriage each time. I also walk home and to work via different routes depending on my mood and go to lunch at a different time everyday. My life is pretty random…
Based on that I seem to end up changing my fate or something. I suggest you do the same and see what happens ;p

Anyway, last week I tried to go to one of my regular spots for lunch but for some reason I couldn’t get in. I decided to go to a different spot and headed towards Meguro river. Just before I got to the traffic lights I see the dude in the above picture crossing the road.
Light bulb goes off, I know this guy… Lol my first day out shooting street portraits in Tokyo back in September at Yoyogi Park I took a photo of him. I saw him and thought, “Woah dude looks cool”. I stopped him and with an exchange of very few words took his photo and thanked him.
Unfortunately the photo was complete garbage and despite all the cropping in the world it was unusable.

As he got to the other side of the road the light changed and I couldn’t cross. Thought meh, can I really be bothered to wait for the light to change then run after him when the place I am heading to is in the completely opposite direction? However, when he got to the other side of the road he stopped to take stuff out of his bag or something.
I stood and observed, the light changed to green and he was still there.. If that is not some sort of sign or something I dont know what is..

I flash across the road and say, “Yoooo”. And tell him that I took a photo of him like 6 months ago. I study his face and it goes from a blank expression to a “I recognize you” expression.

He was like, “Wow you recognized me?”. Im like, “Lol dude I doubt anybody who met you before is forgetting what you look like”.

Ask him whats up and he says he lives not too far and is off to work. He works as a web designer. I give him my card and tell him to catch me online.

He adds me on twitter and we speak some.

Yesterday I needed to pick up my business cards near the station at lunchtime and I see him tweeting he is near Meguro station eating Ham tabehodai (all you can eat). I holla at him and say yo if you got time let me retake your pic!!!!



We meet at the station and he is with his chick. They both are blacked out, wearing sunglasses and look ridic cool. I apologize for calling him out while he is with his chick and he is like its fine they got no plans and are off today.

Do an intro with his chick and she says she just graduated yesterday. I congratulate her. She says that she does ballet. I was like “Cool, would love to see you rock it sometime”.

Compliment her on her cool jacket and she said that her bf picked it out for her. Take the guys pic first and then look around for somewhere to take the girls photo. Interesting thing about the above photo, before I would probably never have taken a photo of someone in the middle of the day getting hit by afternoon sunlight, normally I look for shade. But I guess after a while you realize that not everything is as simple as soft light = good and harsh light = bad.
Next I need to take the girls photo, I spot a green bridge that is really nice and decide to take the photo up there.
Was actually interested in seeing how the green would be rendered, came out better than I thought.

So after taking both of their photos I ask them if I can take a photo of both of them together. They said sure and we head towards the station to look for a spot.
I asked them what they had planned after and they said that they are gonna go furniture hunting ( would love to see what type of furniture they have…). The girl tells me that my jumper is cute and I say thanks in an nonchalant way, but on the inside do a couple of fist pumps. Was feeling pretty uncool hanging out with them lol.

Find a decent spot and tell them to stand next to each other. I suggest maybe they hold hands. They give a shyish laugh and then connect hands.



The End.

Oh well, weather is on the come up. Current plans, do a bunch of lighting stuff and try get a few more street portraits (along with a few mini projects). If all goes well will try make a Street Portraitist book sometime within the next 6 months…

Print Giveaway

Gonna be giving away some test prints that I make since they are probably gonna pile up and end up going to waste or getting thrown away (some old street stuff and maybe some newer portraits I take). Check out my FB page if interested:

FB Page



Peace

Rapper Micho

Did a little shoot with Japanese Rapper Micho a few months back.

She released an album last week that is available through free download and can be found here:

Download

Download it and give it a listen :)

Here is here music video on youtube for her single -> Youtube

She is also on twitter -> https://twitter.com/#!/MICHOmic

And has a FB page - Facebook

Go show her some love :D

The shoot was initially for a magazine that was suppose to be released this month, but ended up getting cancelled at the last minute.

Think it was meant to be a 2 page spread with like a small profile pic type shot with some text (pic above) and a biggish size composite taking up a large amount of the other page.

Ended up making 2 composites, first one above would have perhaps taken up a whole page and there would have been text at the bottom part that has some negative space.

Tried to make the pictures next to each other kinda flow like a sequence. This composite was the more of a chilled quiet atmosphere.

The other composite I made was a bit more loud and wild.

I was looking through a photobook called Portraits by Michael Thompson when I noticed he had a lot of these cool pics where he had JLo, Mariah Carrey, Fergie and a few other people dancing and took a bunch of those sequences to make one photo.

I asked a bit on twitter how to make something like that, then ended up issuing myself a challenge saying no sleep till I get it done.

Started 5pm went bed 2am that night lol. Ended up owning myself multiple times and having to start from scratch….

Oh well, at least I got a rough idea how to make layered composite now.

Actually liked this profile shot too, although it wasnt gonna get used, yellow and black is so nice ;D

Think there are quite a few other decent pics that got taken but they are destined to rot on the HD of my computer…

Anyway once again, download the album mayneeee:

Download

If you like it then feel free to reshare, reblog this or post the link on ur own page etc.

Peace!

Happy Sunday

Was looking through some photos and realized there were a few more of Lareina I took that I liked. Thought I would upload one real quick.

Have a nice Sunday peeps.

krshb asked: I love your work! Both the stories and the photographs are so inspirational to me. I've just sort of started off with portrait photography and sometimes I find it awkward to talk to people while taking their pictures. Sometimes I don't even know what to say or do! Haha, I think that it's awesome how bold you are to approach strangers on the street to take their pictures. One day I'll be like you :]

Thanks for the kind words. I was actually half tempted to write a kinda guerrilla guide to taking street portraits and some of the stuff I try to do to make it easier or learnt etc since I had a few people asking me about it. 

But not sure if I should add to the current stack of awful photography advice already floating on the internet hehe…

mariostrim asked: Great street portraits and stories. That is all.

Thanks :)

Probably won’t get any new street portraits till end of April/May cause of the weather. Might just take some of people i know in the meantime

The Archives

Was going through some old photos and found this buried in the archives. Took it probably a year and a half ago. After learning a bit about lighting from Adrian and  Zack Arias one light DVD I bought a softbox from bnhphoto and went to the park to test it out (how the above shot was born).

Time flies… Seem to have a lot of shoots booked for April but nothing for this month. Get at me if your in Tokyo and wanna shoot some :P

Darkroom Round 2

Warning, long rant, read at your own peril :p

Went darkroom Saturday night for a 6 hour session, was planning on making a few medium format prints, one of them being this one above (scanned negative).

Got to the darkroom, made myself comfortable and got ready for a productive 6 hour session.

Loaded the 6x7 film holder and started trying to adjust the enlarger to display the image on the easel.

(if you move it up it crops and shows less of the whole image, move it down it shows the whole image but at a smaller size)

I was noticing I couldnt get the image to display the way I wanted to. It was either too big or too small. The only way I could get it to be framed at the right ratio was to make it out of focus. I started trying to think back, what am I doing wrong?

Fiddled around with it for a while then stopped and gave up for a second. The darkroom is really hot, and I had to keep turning the light on next to me to check what I was doing. Trying to troubleshoot in a room with a high temperature is pretty stressful and can tire you out pretty quickly.

I had some 35mm negatives with me so I popped it in the 35mm holder and tried. It framed perfectly… Okay, so I know I haven’t done anything wrong, must be some special way to deal with medium format.

I look at the clock its 6:45 zzzz just wasted an hour. The chick told me she was leaving at 7, so I quickly ran around the building looking for her.

Found her and she showed me that lens are interchangeable and that you need a different one for 6x6 or bigger zzzzz.

Thanked her and started going at it again. Got the image framed the way I wanted it and pulled out my 8x10 guide to setup the easel (use it to decide the size of the borders on the photo).

It was a plastic one I got with my scanner, by putting it in my bag it had snapped and became unsable. Decided to forget about it and just sort the borders after.

Test strip time, decided to make some test strips and print the above photo. 

Set the lens to F8 and made six 2 second exposures (expose the photo paper for 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 seconds and see which portion I think works best).

Put it in the developer and it turned pure black…

WTF? Did I accidentally expose the strip to some light or something? Ugh.. Try again and the same thing happens.

I look at the clock and laugh to myself and think maybe ill just go home and come back tomorrow.

Always sucks when you try to start something and everything seems to go wrong, soul crushing and pretty off putting.

Go outside get some air, go back in decide to make a test strip of a 35mm shot to make sure it wasnt the paper.

The 35mm test sheet is fine… Light bulb goes off and I realize what the problem is. Given the F stop you set the enlarger at the intensity of the light gets stronger or weaker, if its too dark I need to either expose it at a shorter time (0.1 seconds) or make the light weaker.

I set the camera to F16 and try again, bingo it works. I look at the 2 second test strips and realize I need to make it 1 second for more accuracy.

I find the best exposure and make a print.

Looking at the negative I realize that this is an example of what people call a thin negative (a negative is thin so it lets light in easier/faster).

Look at the picture and its kinda weird, exposed right but not how it should look.

Give up for a bit listen to some music, decide to print something else. Pull out a shot and try a F16 2 seconds test strip but the strip ends up being blank….

Try again at 5 seconds, its blank but with the faintest bit of grey at the end.

Eventually try at 40 second intervals, and the last strip 240 seconds is still underexposed.

I shake my head and laugh, how ridiculous is this. I got one negative thats so thin that at F8 it went pitch black in 2 seconds, and another negative that so thick (doesnt let light through easily/fast) that after 240 seconds its still underexposed.

I normally hear all these terms get thrown around, but its not till you do it with your own hands that you really build intuition for it.

Decide to go back to the Lareina print since I cant be bothered to do a print that that takes forever just to make test strips (was taking long even at F5.6).

I look at the print and look at the scanned version on my phone and ask myself why are they different? Light bulb goes off, the dark blacks and the bright whites aren’t in the picture.

I remembered what Ayako told me about the contrast filters and instead of using number 2 I put on number 5 and made this:

Problem is that it has a lot scratches on the bottom and a few blemishes here and there. Heard that there is a thing called spotting to fix dust and scratches, but not sure to what extent it can be done and how hard it is…

Oh well, pretty frustrating day but learnt a lot. Ill be back…

GF2 Popup Flash

It was my birthday yesterday. Went to grab food and watch a movie. We were in an underground store that was pitch black to the extent you couldnt take a photo without flash.

My chick took a few shots of me with the flash pointed straight at me which resulted in the usual “headlights from a car is pointing at you look”. 

I took the camera back and realized that you can actually play with the flash and move it up and down. 

Anyway to cut a long story short, you can move the flash so its not pointing at the person but at the ceiling instead. Or if you shoot a vertical of someone you can move it so it is aiming to the side at a wall.

Not exactly rocket science or a new discovery or anything, but just a headsup for people who might not know.

Anyway the result in doing that is that you get better quality of light. Not bad for  shots taken in a pitch black store with a camera that fits in your pocket right :D

Darkroom Field Report

Thought I would write up some random thoughts on doing some darkroom stuff for the first time.

First thing, time flies. Booked 4 hours but barely had enough time to make 2 prints, seriously might need to go in 6+ hour blocks.

Thinking of maybe getting a setup in my house, but gotta work out the logistics.

Greatest Fear: Opening 100 sheets of photo paper with the light on and ruining them all lol.

Thoughts on Contact sheets: I think if you shoot 35mm and you actually take care in what you shoot they might be worth it.

But for me I guess I see contact sheets as a waste of time. I more or less only want to print shots I think are good, and at best most rolls have 1 or maybe 2 good shots on them. Also, I have a scanner so I can just check at home anyway.

I made the most epic contact sheet ever though.

This contact sheet has 2 strips of delta 400, 1 strip of delta FP4, 1 strip of trix 400 and 1 strip of neopan 400 LOL

Nobody does it like me :D

Made the first print after printing once and making a number of test strips. However, the shot is pretty hard to get a perfect print from. Basically it has a lot of highlights and shadows (high mix of really bright and dark spots). Would probably take a ridic amount of time for me to make it perfect.

In the end I printed out these two, the beach shot and a shot of my chick.

Quick run through of how to print for those interested (not too accurate)

You have a thing called an enlarger that more or less is going to take a photo of your negative and make a bigger version of it onto photographic paper (shines light down on it).

You set the timer which says how long the enlarger is going to spend taking the photo. 

Depending on your negative there is going to be some optimal time that gives you a photo that is not too dark not too bright, just right.

Once you do that you use 3 chemicals, throw the photo paper in the developer for a while then you see the picture appear, put it in stop bath that stops the developer from developing, then put it in fixer that probably makes sure the image stays on the paper.

So once you have the optimal time for a good photo (lets say its 10 seconds). You might notice that the top half is too bright, so in that case you might do the photo for 10 seconds, then block the bottom half and do the top half only for an extra 2 seconds.

That way you end up with a photo that has the top half done for 12 seconds and the bottom for 10 which would make the top darker.

You can find your optimal time by cutting small strips of photo paper and maybe developing each one at a different time (10 secs, 11 secs, 12, 13 etc.) You then look at these strips and see which one you think gives you the result you like best.

Conclusion?

Printing is easy. What I think is this, if you went to a shop with a negative that is black and white and ask them to make a print from the negative and gave them no instructions on what to make lighter or darker, what they would give you is something you could probably learn to make from scratch in a few hours in a darkroom by yourself.

The actual science behind making a well exposed print is easy, its just a question of how long you wanna play around with it to make it perfect or trying to find your preference/style which is probably more time consuming than actually hard.

There probably are some advanced techniques or whatever and obviously if you wanna become a master printer or try to make money offering print services its a completely different story. But yeah I guess for what I am trying to do I dont need to worry about such things.

But yeah fun stuff, defo gonna try keep up the momentum and go again within the next week or so.

Paper used: Ilford multigrade RC pearl paper.

SixtySeven

Not a stranger this time, a cool lady who lives in my neighborhood who I became friends with. She has the most adorable children. Since there is no back story to the encounter allow me to entertain you with a little anecdote.

I cant actually remember how we met, I know I moved to the area about 2 years ago and would randomly walk around and see her. She is one of those friendly people with a good aura and we would kinda smile at each other when we would see each other kind of thing but never actually spoke.

I think one day we ended up getting on the same train to work and ended up speaking. Pretty sure we got the same train together for quite a few months. 

After maybe 6 months or so I realized that I didnt know her name. One of those situations where you meet someone new and never exchange names? Or I just forgot since im retarded?

Too much time passed so I was like hmm its a bit lame to be like “hey btw whats your name again”?

Time for some Espionage. I told my GF that if we are together and bump into her, ill introduce you and then you should ask her what her name is so I can obtain the information.

We bump into her on the train one morning, I do the introduction and my GF plays the role perfectly and asks her for her name. My GF then turns to me (in front of her) and says, “Her name is xxxxx”…..

Cover blown, mission failed, #headexplode, doh….

Lareina Part 2

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is…”

A little reflection from the shoot the other day, the perils of shooting strobes using film.

Given a lighting setup that consists of a set of lights with different modifiers and the model in the optimal spot to give you the result you want. Depending on the modifiers being used the amount of freedom the model has to use in terms of turning left and right tilting their head up and down and moving in any direction before the lighting changes from:

Optimal -> Satisfactory (not exactly the way you wanted it but still good enough) -> Unsatisfactory( light completely missing, irrecoverable under or over exposing) 

is a factor I forgot to take into account a few times.

The setups I used for most of the shots unfortunately provided very little freedom, however I didnt notice it at the time. Stuff like slight turns and leaning forward lead to irrecoverable under and over exposure and stuff like the head light I was using when I tried out a three light setup completely missing the models head and coming into the lens creating some very unwanted flare…

Kinda makes you wonder whats the best way to work at it. Having to constantly stop every other shot to move the light (and probably re-test exposure etc) is a pretty good way to kill a flow and vibe of a shoot.

With digital its not a biggy since u can check and even choose to just reshoot the ones with problems after, but such luxury is not afforded with film.

I guess maybe the best thing to do is just use an octabox all day and not even have to worry about much since it seems to give a ridiculous amount of freedom for the model to move in.

Oh well…

The tattoo on her shoulder that says ダメ人間 = dame ningen = Useless human being/Good for nothing person.

I was surprised she had that tattooed on her since she is far from one. She models, writes poems, sings and plays instruments. Check out her youtube channel she made recently for some of her stuff -> http://www.youtube.com/user/gaijinlareina

I asked her to contradict the meaning of the tattoo by showing it and sitting up tall and proud. 

For some weird reason I actually want that same tattoo lol… 

I actually like this shot, but thinking about it in hindsight maybe I would have put a  light on the left to get rid of the shadow.

Light setups were all pretty basics, 1st and 3rd pics are just a beauty dish as a single light source, 2nd pic is 3 lights, beauty dish key, octabox fill and a striplight as a rim light.

Been a pretty lame week, here is to hoping the new month brings forth good fortunes. 

Peace.

Portrait Session - Starring Lareina

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

Really love this quote, crazy how true it is…

Went to the studio on the weekend to shoot some with Lareina and Jo came along to shoot too.

Was a pretty crazy day, I was more or less dead before I even left the house. I was gonna shoot large format but changed my mind at the last minute to go with medium format because I wanted to shoot colour too.

Ended up semi freaking out at 8:30ish not remembering how exactly using strobes work with the pentax67. So I decided to shoot a test roll of bw neopan, dev it and make sure the flash worked properly. I have never developed MF before, so after taking the shots I spent like 40 minutes trying to put the film on the reel in the changing bag but it wouldnt go in. I gave up and put it on the reel in the light as practice (wasting the film) then retook the shots.

Deved the shots and half of them were lit and half of them were black. I re-shot and re-deved again and finally figured out what was the problem (3 rolls wasted).

Got to the studio and tried to shoot and the flash didnt go off (4 rolls wasted), in the end I worked it out though.

Shot quite a few rolls, 3 colour and 3 black and white. I deved one roll and here are three pics from it:

The other two black and white are hanging in my shower drying and ill try scan them along with the colour before Wednesday. Will post some more stuff this week assuming I got anything worth posting.

Made quite a few retarded mistakes with the lights while shooting, but I guess thats what happens when you know stuff in theory but never actually do it in practice. 

Oh well, hopefully get to shoot more with Lareina in the future, really cool and easy to work with. Only problem is that my favourite colour, blue, is her worse colour :(

I actually turned the comments feature on as an experiment, will leave it up for a while and see what happens.

SixtySix

Hmm, too cold to get motivated to go on any sort of wandering outside all day type of missions.

So, of late I either go studio, do nothing, or do nothing + spend an hour in the park behind my house.

I have hit the park for the last 3 weeks in a row now. I normally go at 3pmish when the light is starting to get good. First week I took pictures of trees, second week I took nothing, and this week I took the above photo.

As usual the park was mainly populated with babies and little kids. Seeing that I brought my large format camera out, trying to take photos of young kids is out of the question. And I guess even asking someone if I can take a pic of their kids is kinda opening up a can of worms anyway.

I go deeper into the park and walk past the skaters and keep on going. I think in the past I tried talking to them before a few times, but they weren’t really welcoming, so I don’t even bother anymore.

Get to the top of the hill and look at the sky for a while when an elderly lady with really nice grey/white hair and a shade of pink lipstick that really suited her walked by and said hi.

We spent a good 15 minutes talking to each other. She told me she used to be an editor for a football magazine and her favorite team was arsenal.

We then spoke about a range of football topics from the Robbie Fowler era, to the whole William Gallas and Ashley Cole doing ridic stuff like jumping around to different London teams and how back in the day teams like Man City were fighting relegation every season.

I asked if I could take her photo and she said she is embarrassed. I told her its cool there’s nothing to be embarrassed about and she said thanks, but that she is worried if I put it online people who know her might see.

I gave her my card and wished her a good day.

Walked around a bit more and saw someone I wanted to take a photo of. But for some reason I hesitated and let the chance pass by.

About to give up and go home when I saw the guy in the above photo. 

Went over and said “Sup” and told him I liked the yellow of his guitar and asked if it was expensive.

He laughed and said no its a really cheap one. He is a soloist and if my memory isnt failing me I think he has been playing for maybe 8 years (or was it 15? lol).

He mentioned that he thought he isnt getting any better and I suggested that maybe he should try and practice with some other guitarists to try and get a different perspective. He smiled and said that he would give it a try.

He said I can take a photo and I started setting up. He seemed pretty intrigued by the camera. He said that his brother studied photography. He was interested in knowing the difference between this camera and a normal one, how much it cost and what all the different parts were.

After taking the pic I let him look through the camera and he seemed pretty excited by it.

I asked him what he had planned for the rest of the day and he said he was going to the studio later. 

I told him I was gonna pack up and go because its freezing (sun had gone down) and he said he is going to stay a little while longer. I asked him if he wasn’t cold and he laughed and said that he often comes to the park at night with a can of beer to keep himself warm…

He told me he is at the park every week and that I should come check him if I am ever around.