Fashion shoot (last two images)

Hey all,

Here are the last two images from my fashion spread for the alumni mag @ the college (see original post below for first four images). Once again, please honestly critique. And thanks so much again for the feedback you've already given. You guys are a great sounding board (or maybe seeing board?)! THANK YOU!

The Sky Is On Fire

The weatherman says that we are going to get rain today here in the Phoenix area, so there are dramatic clouds in the sky this morning which made for a gorgeous sunrise from my front patio/courtyard. It made the horizon and sky look like it was on fire.


(click on the image to enlarge)

We'll see if the day actually brings any real rain, but it certainly started out with some great color.

This is an HDR composite of 3 images (-2ev, 0ev, +2ev) using Photomatix Pro to process the images.

Have a great day,
David Gralian
http://www.davidgralian.com/
david@davidgralian.com

Hey all,

Wanted to share with you my latest project for the alumni magazine (these photos haven't been published yet, so.... shhhh.) We challenged six alumni fashion designers to design a garment based on one of the schools within the college (e.g., the School of Business, the School of the Arts, the School of Humanities, etc), then found student models for each shoot. Attached are the first four shots.

This is the first time I've done fashion. I found it DIFFICULT! I went into this thinking fashion would be a creatively freeing kind of shooting, but actually felt very limited right away. No spontaneous shooting here: instead of that spontaneous moment I always look to capture, I had to meticulously pose each model so the garment was shown in its best light (literally and figuratively). I'm not sure why this surprised me. =0)

Anywho... please honestly critique. Good... bad... what I did well... what I could have improved? I'd appreciate it!

Will post the final two images when they're shot.

Thanks all!

Hope you had a great holiday!

Leslie

A Few from Our First Day

I was going through photographs from Joe's class last Feburary for a project I was working on when I came across a few candid portraits taken on our first day.

I've posted them in a private gallery here. My apologies to those of you who are among the missing.

I hope the pictures bring back good memories of a week full of challenges, discovery, fun and frustration.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for a healthy and productive New Year.

Chicago at night

Hope everyone is well. Just keeping Kabobs alive! These are from my recent trip to Chicago.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.

Fred

Fun with Mushrooms

Well not that kind of fun, just photographing the mushrooms.

While in Sacramento CA, I came across this colony of mushrooms growing at the base of a tree. I thought it was kinda neat looking, so I came back the next morining to catch the warmth of the early light.

The below two images are HDR (High Dynamic Range) compositions, using Photomatix Pro software. I'm really liking the results of this HDR stuff.

The image below is from a "point and shoot" camera, shot in the shade of the tree, still turned out OK.


Wishing you all the best,
David Gralian
http://www.davidgralian.com/
david@davidgralian.com

Fisherman and engine shed

Hi Virginia,

I was trying to implement RSS feed on my own blog, but then "something" happened ...;o) Sorry!

FISHERMAN
Well, here is a picture I made earlier this year of a fisherman on Ringkoebing Fjord a beautyful (and very early!) morning in the summer of 2009.

D2x, ISO 200, 1/1.000 sec., f. 5,6, 17-55 mm. f.2,8 lens at 17 mm., manuel mode. One SB800 + SC-28 cord.
 
MILLE
Here is a picture I made a couple of weeks ago in an old remise (garage for trains). I think it is called engine shed or roundhouse in english. The girl is Mille.
 

D2x, 17-55 mm. f. 2,8 at 28 mm., ISO 200, 1/160 sec., f. 11, manuel mode. One SB800 in Ezybox as main light camera right + one SB800 very high to light the scene up + SU800 commander.

LISBETH

Trying to light the purple shawl from behind and control the ambient too. The girl is Lisbeth.

D2x, 17-55 mm. f. 2,8 at 30 mm., ISO 250, 1/3.200 sec., f. 2,8, manuel mode. Two SB800 in shoot thru umbrella as main light camera left + one SB800 with gobo from behind camera right to light up the shawl camera right + SU800 commander + strong sun from right side to light shawl camera left.

TROTTING TRAINER

Made a testshot of trotting horse trainer Mr. Kaj Jensen, Aalborg. Just for fun.

The shooting resulted in two new customers who accumulated minimum a months pay, so my time was invested good.

D2x, ISO 200, 17-55 mm. f.2,8 at 32 mm., f. 5,6, 1/80 sec., manuel mode, one SB800 in umbrella + SU800 commander.

Carol's project following an artist

HDR using Photomatix Pro 3

It's interesting that Fred Troilo posted his experiments with a HDR (High Dynamic Range) style image, because I have just recently been experimenting with producing HDR images using the Photomatix Pro 3 software.

Below are 3 HDR images of a Monument Valley Sunrise that I just created using multiple camera captured pictures at different exposure levels. {click on the image to see a larger version}


This HDR image used 3 images: nominal/-2/+2 stop images.

This HDR image used 3 images: nominal /-3 /+3 stop images.

This HDR image used 5 images: nominal/-2/+2/-3/+3 stop images.


Here are the +-3 stop images for your reference.
Nominal exposure


+3 exposure



-3 exposure



Of all the images, the HDR images come the closest to portraying the spectacular view I was seeing.


I actually shot 7 images in 1 stop increments from -3 to +3 stops and I was not able to create from any one of them an image that even came close to the results of the HDR images.

In this round of experimenting, the HDR image composed of the +-2 stop images turned out the best in my opinion, but you probably won't be able to tell that from the smaller images I've used for this post (+-2 stops is what the Photomatix folks recommend). The only processing I did to the Photomatix output file (.tif) was some "chromatic aberration" adjustment using Adobe Lightroom.



This was only my second time using the Photomatix Pro software to create an HDR image, so there is definitely a lot more practice needed on my part to processing the image, but Photomatix will become a new tool I will be using to create my pictures where there are a wide range of tone values present that should be portrayed in the final image.




I hope this was useful and interesting.


David Gralian
http://www.davidgralian.com/
david@davidgralian.com

Pseudo HDR

Been fooling around in Photoshop playing with HDR and came across a technique to create a pseudo HDR using Lightroom. No photoshop at all! Here is the before image. Took this from my hotel room last month. Early morning outside DC.

I imported the image into Lightroom, and started by setting all the following to 100 Recovery, Fill, Contrast, Clarity & Vibrance. Then just kept tweaking until I got this.

Gel assignment

I wasn't gonna let this month go by without a post from someone. Just had my son try on his costume for tonight and thought, what the hell grab the strobes. Had him stand in the entrance of the laundry room and threw a blue gelled light in there. The main light is a 580ex2 with a Honl grid. Happy Halloween everyone!

Fred

Sorry I am late ...

Is fire in old cars available light? I don't know but here is my pictures for the september assignment. A little late I know that, but I have been busy lately. Obama, Pelé and Oprah dropped by for a cup of coffee after the olympic election in Copenhagen, you know ...

Today on my way home from a shooting for a construction compagny, I noticed smoke on the horison and made a u-turn. Came to this nice fire with lots of burning cars and red firetrucks. Oh boy - I am 12 years old again!

I love the rainbow.

The reflection in left side of frame is from the sunlight.

The worker is watching the fire and the firefighters.

October

What's the assignment for october - gels?