I took this image of my very close friend Hillary Dubie (which is an amazing photographer, click on her name to see her site) while I was visiting her in Vermont a few years back. I think we were waiting in a parking lot for some, when she went to look at her self in the mirror of the car visor. When I looked over to I noticed the beautiful light that was lighting her and I just had to capture this shot; high ISO didn't matter, a ton of noise didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was the light.
I've been working at Ultra the Night Club in Providence, Rhode Island since March of 2011 as a crowd photographer. I had to work on new years eve and it was an awesome experience! I took the opportunity to record the count down to the new years and made a video of it that includes some of the images I shot threw out the night, the video is below so you can check it out.
Since I have been working at Ultra I have been able to pick up some great tricks, later on I will share a post on some tricks and tips.
In both thies images images I shot of Christian Herrera, a friend that's a singer, were shot one right after the other, with the same light, same camera, same ISO, same f-stop, and same shutter speed. The only thing I did different was on the top one I had my 24-105mm lens zoomed in all the way to 105mm and on the bottom image I had it zoomed out at 24mm as well as I got in closer to make his head the same size in the frame. As you can see the top image is more of a straight up portrait; he stands out, the background is nice and soft like a painting. In the bottom image its more of a charter study or environmental portrait; the distortion of the wide angle lens makes him look like his coming at you, even tough he's only in a small area of the frame he has a feeling of owning the frame, the background has a feeling of been up in your face and it has some sharpness but that it doesn't distract from him, the main subject. Another thing that you notice is on the bottem image you see the V shape tree by his right earn, our left, it's reall small but then when you look at the top image that same tree is hug, it's larger then his head. So there's no right or wrong way to make a portrait you just have to have in mind what it is that you want at the end, and know what are your tools to get that done.
Extra:
The video below is a scene from Good Fellas where the used the zooming in on the lens and moving the camera back to keep the subjects the same size as an effect. Here you can clearly see what effect a lens has on the background, not just the subject.
I did the design and photography for Wilson Kelly's next album. I had an idea of both of these location and the exact lighting I wanted for a while but never had the right subject to be able to use them, so when Wilson called me up to make his HipHop album everything fell in to place. I knew I wanted the inside and outside to be two page spreads and these locations fit in perfectly. For the outside I lit him with strip box, about four feet away, high, and angled down for the front and a tight grid to add separation on his back. On the inside I used the same lighting but there were far away just out of the shot.
I haven't posted about the backpacking trip I went on the summer of 2010 because of work other events in my life, and if you haven't noticed I'm really bad at writing. So from now on I'm just going to write a title of the posting kind of explaining the images and just showing the images.
So this weekend that just pasted I went to New Jersey to meet up with my photo school friends from Hallmark Institute of Photography. I haven't seen all of these people in about 3 months and it was a great to have spent a weekend with them.
We stayed at Michael Esposito's house who is a great photographer check out is site http://www.espophoto.com. The house gorgeous and is right on the water with a great view and an awesome breeze.
Just about a block way from the house there is a beautiful lighthouse, that we up to the top in, on Saturday. From the top there was a great view of the beach and the ocean. When at the bottom we started to talk to old lady that was sitting next us and she told us that she was there on a friends weekend out, just like us. She told us that she and her friends have been doing these friend weekends once a month for 50 years now. Knowing that gives us great hope to know that we will be Hallmark friends for a long time.
After the light house we walked on the beach and reconnected and talked about our plans for our future. Even thou we all have different plans and are going to live in different place we plan on still staying in touch with each other. Another reason this weekend was so great is because we was all in a house full of photographers and we all understand why we are so passionate with photos and didn't look at each other strange when some one said "OH look at that light!!!", like back at school.
Over all it was a great weekend in a charming place and with beautiful friends.
