Quick shots from the Strange Brew gig the other night, in Roisin Dubh, before I move on. If I get time, I’ll try post galleries.

The Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters

Planet Parade

We Should Be Dead

I’ve added links to books I’ve bought, read and liked in the sidebar. Ed Verosky has a number of books on flash and boudoir which are excellent. JimmyD from Pretty Girl Shooter has just brought out Guerilla Glamor, which I’m currently reading. I like Jimmy’s no nonsense, down to earth, writing. While I’m not a glamour shooter, there are elements of it in model photography, so it’s good information to have. Both Ed and Jimmy have their ebooks priced at $9.95.

David duChemin is the prime instigator of Craft and Vision books. Each book is a small read, with beautiful imagery and excellent advice. They’re only $5 and there’s often deals for multiple copies. Buying through the links costs the same as from the site itself.

I want to be clear that I’m not putting stuff there just because. This is stuff I like!

Since giving up my studio, I’ve been doing more location work. Still I need to shoot studio based stuff too, so when I do, I’m shooting in my kitchen. I’ve a 5 foot section of wall, that works fine for up to 3/4. When I need to go wider, then the sides of the shot become an issue. Fortunately Photoshop comes to the rescue in these situations. Todays Photoshop Quick Tip is on Content Aware Scale, available in CS4 and 5.

Please click the movie to view on YouTube, where you can view in HD.

Here’s a shot of Larry Love from Alabama 3, best know for the use of the track ‘Woke Up This Morning’, used as the title track of The Sopranos.
They played in The Roisin Dubh tonight to a packed house. Last time they played, Larry was a cowboy hat wearing skin head.

It’s a bit ironic that I find that Jay McLoughin (http://flickr.com/photos/jaymond) was going on about Terry Richardson.. I’ve been looking at a bunch of Terry’s stuff recently, including his own tumblr account, and that of fans.

The irony extends even further, because with a recent shoot with Alex, we went a bit Terry, but using my newly purchased flash bracket and cord.

Good fun practicing with different bounced flash looks, but it was the direct flash that Terry is known for, and I really liked the shots we got doing that.

Of course most of the rest of the shoot was softboxes and beauty dishes, but this made for a refreshing change.

I had a shoot in the house last week with Alex from Catwalk. Alex is always fun to work with, and this shoot was no exception. While not in the shots here, it gave me a chance to mess with my new camera bracket in portrait mode for Terry Richardson style shots (as in normal shots, not what he might get up to with first time models), which she quite liked.. Good fun.

I’m progressively improving healthwise, still not there yet though. At least I’m not in constant pain! It’s been a busy week, and I’ll probably do some individual posts on shoots etc in the next few days. Today saw me finishing this months article for ProPhoto Resource. It’s on Lens Corrections in Lightroom. I also cut a roll of black seamless in half for doing basic full length in the house. I’m sure there’ll be a bit of content aware scale making final shots wider in Photoshop, but it’s better than nowhere to shoot. I did have a wooden backdrop made, but as it turns out, it’s way harder to store in the house, so it’ll be gone this week.

Later in the week, I’ll be looking into updating LR2Twitpic for Twitter’s OAuth login. It’s a bit more detailed than the basic authorisation, but Jeffrey Friedl has done the grunt work already.

Got some good news in the post yesterday evening. Ian Blair from the NAIP mailed to inform me I was the winner for their June competition with a shot of Ivory Flame. I’m delighted of course.

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Time for another rambling round of stuff I’ve liked recently!

The Audio now also appears on iTunes. I’m still working out details on the artwork etc.

In the first of a series on people that have influenced my lighting, I really have to start with Dutch photographer Frank Doorhof. I can’t even remember where I first came across Frank’s work, but I suspect it may have been via the Fred Miranda forums. Wherever it was, I joined his forum in April 2006 because of it and my lighting has been influenced by it ever since.

Style
Frank is a good natured and proficient teacher, with excellent English (something he may have been concerned about!). For me the key aspect of Frank’s work is his use of modifiers to create shadow. While a lot of photographers use an overhead light with reflectors as a go to setup, Frank is all about creating shape with light. Around the time I joined the forum, Frank was putting up a lot of ‘Backstage’ videos from shoots he had done. They would introduce the shoot in the makeup room, something that I’ve learned is one of the most important parts of a shoot, to the shoot, and then showing some final selects. Even though there was no speaking in these, watching them was learning in itself.

Lights
Frank is a well known Elinchrom user. I can attribute my use of Elinchrom to Frank. I switched from Bowens to D-Lite 4′s and now have 3 full Ranger Quadra kits, and 2 BX400′s. Of course I could have followed his lighting using Bowens, but I was really impressed with the range of modifiers available for them. I have no regrets about switching to Elinchrom, despite all the love going around for ProFoto.

Training
Frank has visited Ireland doing workshops, but timing and expense prevented me going. I’d like to have gone, but such is life! Fortunately, though, Frank has a range of DVD’s that he started making after I joined his forum. There’s 2 Inside Look DVD’s, which extended something on the site that was essentially an online magazine, 3 ‘Light’ DVD’s and An Introduction to Model Photography. There are also some Dutch only DVD’s, and a new one Frank is currently working on. None of them are particularly expensive, making them must haves. They cover the theory of lighting, using and calibrating lightmeters, grey cards, modifiers, balancing flash with daylight, among a host of other things. He also has a lot of short free videos that he puts out on his YouTube Channel. He’s also told me that he’ll have material up on Kelbytraining.com later this year. Nice!

Inside Look
When pressed for what modifiers you should have, Frank answers, a Deep Octa and a Striplight. Well I have some knockoffs and love them. I still hanker for the real deal with the Deep Octa though. If you’d have asked a few years ago, it would have been the large Octa. I’ve seen a lot of people use the Octa and create very flat light with it. Frank on the other was creating beautiful shadows with it. In fact, I even put that section of the DVD on my iPod, so I could watch it before shoots for inspiration. Another modifier I love using outdoors, again first seen with Frank, is the 29 degree Maxispot. I can easily overpower the Sun with it, making my Quadras more useful than their small size belies.

The Future
One thing about having Frank as an influence is that his style still grows and matures. This allows scope to teaches new things. Of course, I’ve still not jumped to Medium Format as he has, nor have I gone with Aperture (I still love Lightroom much more). Frank will be making the trip to Ireland again in September, so I’ll get to meet him in person finally then.

Links
Franks Website
Portfolio
Blog/Forum
YouTube Channel
DVD’s