Friday evening processing

Quick sample of portrait processing...

Straight off the camera

Lightroom tweaks

1. 5x4 crop

2. Some saturation, blacks, whites and exposure tweaks

3. Some vignetting

Photoshop tweaks

1. Content aware removal of picture frame

2. Cloning out light shade

Face Symmetry

A bored Wednesday evening with a shoot fallen through, I thought I'd have a bit of fun and show what some previous portraits I've done look like, made in to a left & right symmetrical face. 

Of course to do it properly the hair probably shouldn't have been included in the mirror, but its just a bit of fun to pass the time! Obviously facial features will vary a lot from left to right, but some of the shots even show very different lighting on the left/right thats not so obvious in the normal portrait.

Normal portrait : Left symmetry portrait : Right symmetry portrait

First portrait shoot in a while!

So last Sunday I had my first portrait shoot in over 3 years, it was also the first time I took the studio gear (Elinchrom D-Lite4s) out on a shoot, in fact they had been packed away since November 2010! Luckily they were more easy to put up than I remember/expected, and packed away just as easy when we were done. And more luckily the bulbs still worked, they're about €60 a go! Anyway, I enjoyed it, think it went well....

Helmut Newton 10th Anniversary edition of Sumo

Who really needs an introduction to Helmut Newton?

Helmut Newton (31 October 1920 Berlin Germany - 23 January 2004 West Hollywood, California USA) was a German-Australian photographer famous for his fashion, nude and portrait photography at times even being known for his controversial work. His work has been featured in the likes of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Playboy.

In 2005, his world famous photograph of Henriette Allais titled "Big Nude III" was sold at an auction for the world record price of $311,000.

SUMO was originally released limitedly in 1999, breaking all records for size, weight and resell price, going for thousands of dollars. Copy number one of the book autographed by over 100 of the books photographed celebrities sold at auction in April 2000 for record breaking whopping $430,000.

Luckily for most of with not so deep pockets, in 2009 this was re-released, smaller and somewhat more affordable (somewhere around the €80 mark).

Although smaller this is still one of the biggest books I have, I had to extend the shelve height to fit it, and at 7KG make sure its a solid shelf! Even with the shelf extension, I have to take other books of the shelf, and tilt it to get it on/off the there.

In fact it even comes with its own plexiglass reading stand, packaged together in a nice box with handle and all! It also comes with a little booklet on the making of the book. With pages being 26.7 x 37.4 cm, and a mixture of square, landscape and portrait photographs, they are all nice a big with some colour but the majority in black & white.

Photographs in the book cover all aspects of his work - portraits, nude and fashion, bringing together 40 years of his life's work - I think 450 photographs in all. Alot of the images are fashion shots for the likes of Vogue, others are more well known people in the fashion industry and movie stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Catherine Devenue, Karl Lagerfeld, Dennis Hopper, Kate Moss, Winona Ryder, Naomi Campbell, Andy Warhol, Twiggy, Charlotte Rampling, Nicolas Cage, Daryl Hannah, Sigourney Weaver.

Who is this book for? Fashion, nude and portrait photographers. Taschen really out did themselves on this one, 7KG, 480 pages, 450 photographs, making of booklet, reading stand.

A great documentary on the making of the book can be found here.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 480
Width: 267 mm
Height: 374 mm
Thickness: 102 mm
Weight: 7,144 g
ISBN 13: 9783836517300
ISBN 10: 3836517302


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5 Reasons Why You Need a 50mm lens

A usually funny piece from DigitalRev's Kai on the 50mm!!

DUFFY: The Man Who Shot the Sixties (Full length film)

Brian Duffy (15 June 1933 – 31 May 2010) was an English photographer and film producer, best remembered for his fashion and portrait photography of the 1960s and 1970s. In the late 70s he burned most of his negatives and stopped photography (went on to directing TV commercials and later furniture restoration).

The story of his life and work is documented in this BBC documentary shown in January 2010 titled The Man Who Shot the 60s.

Leia shoot 1

Unexpected shoot with Leia

Leia shoot 2

Just a quick few shots before getting rained out of it....

Magda Doll Shoot

Leia shoot 3

Another weathered out of it shoot, but some great ones got all the same.

Magda

So finally found someone that was up for the comic backdrop!