Category Archives: Portraits

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Julie in Black & White

October 21, 2009 – 8:23 pm

August 25, 2009:  Chapel Hill, NC -  I had some down time in Charlotte and decided to call up one of my tall friends, Julie.  Pretty much most of my work has been photojournalism.  I’m just capturing what is in front of me. So, I really want to start using strobes and start being a bit artistic.  I’ve been on a big black and white kick lately with the help of my Holga…That blue, yellow, and pink camera ;)   We used a gridded Alien Bee beauty dish as the main and a square softbox on the floor pointed about 45-degrees upwards for fill.

I love big hair on the runway and wanted to make Julie’s hair as big as possible.  Keep in mind, its usually a wig or at the very least extensions on the runway.  Rosie Hardy of Flickr fame was kind enough to “backcomb for days” as I put it.  This was the 3rd shot I took and well, I liked it the best.  I wanted low depth of field. So, the camera stats at ISO 100,  f/4, 1/160th at 140mm.  I was using a Canon 5D Mark II + 70-200L.

Julie with backcombed hair

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Wilhelmina Models: Simone

January 18, 2009 – 12:58 am

Charlotte, NC: With the Carolina Panthers season over and my lack of interest in basketball, I haven’t had too much to post. So, I thought I would spend my spare time wisely and slowly learn the ways of Photoshop.

Its seems the two big things the last year or so has been HDR and using textures.  I’m not a fan of HDR images, but I do like the look of textures if they aren’t overdone.  If you don’t know what a “texture” its basically an image you overlay on your photograph.  More often than not its used to give a photo a grunge look or a vintage feel to it.

I started out slowly and actually baked my own textures.  It sounds weird, but its quiet popular.  Basically you take some paper, add a bit of water and lemon juice which will darken the paper even more and bake it in the oven until you get a dark yellowed sheet of paper with even dark bits from the lemon juice.  From there you just take a photo of the paper or you can scan the crunchy paper.

Below are some shots from this summer of Simone who works with Wilhelmina Models here in Uptown Charlotte.  The shots are of the famous golden wheel on Tryon and Trade(I think) street along with the church and mosaic on 7th and Tryon.  I started subtly with the textures, but I like how they toned down the highlights that I blew out in the originals.

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