With all the hubbub over the fantastic design of the iPad, here’s a look backward when tech seemed simple – or perhaps, it’s more complex than we remember. This ad/documentary shows the glorious inner workings and manufacturing process of the Polaroid camera. Did you ever have one when you were younger? I’ve only used one a few times, but treasure the few polaprints I have.

With photography everywhere now, it’s hard to what a big deal the Polaroid was when it was perfected – instant, accessible, portable, simple in operation. Digital photography is awesome (I’d never go back – I think), but it sure requires a lot of other stuff to actually, you know, hold a photograph in your hand. Kristi and I used to dream about a photo lab in our basement; these days, I let SmugMug handle that for us. I’m completely removed from the physical act of image-making. I guess Polaroids were a chemical lab-in-a-print – remarkable if you think about it (there’s a cool segment in the video that illustrates how it works).

I picked this up from Scott Hansens’ wonderful ISO-50 blog. Great photography, design, & music finds.

Wow, I’m floored by the response to the last post! Some great suggestions on some of the frame grabs of the loops I posted. Here’s some modifications to the church spires, based on feedback from the last post.

The sepia is a little too yellow, I may try to warm it up. I used the Tritone filter in After Effects to do what I would do to still images (this is really just moving still images, if you think about it). I tried to color the shadow tones, but didn’t push it enough and it’s just kind of dark now.

I’ve been having some trouble getting these rendered out of After Effects. For some reason, it gets hung up within a half hour of starting. I’ve been trying to use the excellent AERender (which uses a command-line Terminal interface to manage the renders, freeing up After Effects and rendering the project in Matrix-y, geeky glory) – but half the time I can’t get it to initiate. Such are the travails of the artist these days, I suppose.

Here’s a short loop of the triple-wide video in action:

The clouds move a little fast – that’s how the footage came. I’m talking to Dave the cinematographer about getting the source footage, if it still exists. Oh, one question I had was the camera (“It’s so sharp!”); Dave shot this (I believe) on a Sony EX3 – which was in the hands of a master.

What do you think?

I don't think I've ever done a job where the subjects were having so much fun! The kids came up with the idea to make a photobooth, which created a lot of energy and, well, silly faces. The kids had a great time and the project was pretty simple. We also shot candids, and made a slideshow during the event for a backdrop - they kept us busy!

We got a new radio flash trigger, umbrella diffuser, and flash stand for $160 at Pro Photo Supply in Portland – perfect for this project. Our shooting style is very lightweight and mobile. Next time I plan on using an externally powered flash for something like this – the cycle time was like 10 seconds which was too long for the photobooth concept. That, and the kids’ silly faces started to cramp after 5 seconds… it was amusing catching them unexpectedly, just like a real photobooth! Great concept the kids had, I think it really worked.

Another thing I tried to come up with was an automated way to kick out the photos in a strip (Lightroom can do this with proof sheets) and import those into a template of sorts in Photoshop. I couldn’t quite get it to work automatically, but the result looks great:

We also provided the images in color through Smugmug. I checked it out a year ago when we were starting WBI, but wow – as a pro who needs to sell his work, I couldn’t ask for anything more than what Smugmug provides. It completely removes the hassle of photo fulfillment and lets us focus on shooting and editing. It’s $160/year, and I think will be completely worth it.

Today I shot a few portraits of Keith Palau, Director of Donor Relations here at Luis Palau. I shot a few in the studio, and just went outside with a flash & diffuser just for a minute; these turned out much more natural and pleasant in my opinion.

Having a strong backlight makes the photo just sparkle, if done right. The basic idea is to get a strong backlight (setting sun, flash, etc.) for interest, then throw lots of light on the subject to compensate. In this case, I used a Westcott Apollo light modifier with an off-camera, hand-held flash. I pushed the flash to +2 stops of extra light (you lose about a stop with the diffuser), and pulled back the camera’s exposure -2 stops. In short, the scene is overbright (matching the bright background), so you reduce exposure to compensate.

I’m still learning this technique from the likes of Tyler Gould and Strobist. There’s a lot of trial and error; there’s many variables. I’m drawn to it for some reason.

As part of any package of “official” portraits these days, I included a square, 512 pixel-square icon for use with social media sites. Need a headshot?

A Spring evening up on Cash Mountain.