rat race - bob marley and the wailers

More photos! These are from the same day, with pretty much the same setup, the only real difference is the model, another one of my roommates, Sammy. She was the one I ended up turning head shots in of. So look and see! I should warn though, if you are the sort easily offended by Jesus related things, you should beware. Because we here at The Photographic Neophyte are somewhat... Sacrilicious. That's right. Both delicious and sacrilegious. And Jesus does make his appearances here. Indeed. But enjoy anyway, yes!



Ah, Sammy as we got started. Clearly my lighting was wrong but this gives you a sense of the space I work in.





Oh and look here, you can see my softbox poking in here in the corner. I LOVE YOU SOFTBOX!

Once more, I run right off the seamless, but look, there's how I set up my seamless. Indeed!

And the pissed off face!

And now here's Jesus and Sammy together

The end!

tiergarten - rufus wainwright

Ah! Long neglected photoblog, I return! My last post was done right before I started as a photo major at my current school, School of Visual Arts. Now, with almost two years of art school under my belt, I'm like a real photographer. A fucking wizard of cameras and stuff. Though the big problem is now that I'm really exploring a lot more photographic stuff, I'm finding that I'm fucking addicted to 4x5 film. ADDICTED. It's a problem. And the thing is that not only is 4x5 expensive but it's also film, so hard to get online. I have to scan it. And it's a pain in the ass. But shooting large format is so much fun. An experience every photographer must have!

So I spent last Sunday in the studio, shooting two of my roommates. I'm posting these in sections, so stay tuned for more. First up, Marissa.

First, we started with the basic head shot. My photo on assignment class had us do head shots and character shots this past week. I planned to shoot Sammy but as Marissa was in the studio with me anyway (we were doing an artist trade, so I was shooting some other things with her), I figured I'd test things out.

I pretty much kept my lighting set up the same for the whole shoot. Head shots require a lack of dark shadows and while character shots can have the dark shadows, I just am really fond of this light. What is my setup you might be asking? Well here, I drew a really terrible thing to show you what it generally looks like.



In case you are curious! WB is white board, this is a large board, probably seven feet tall, that I set up to bounce some light back into my frame. BD is my backdrop, I just used a black seamless. The lightness you'll notice in these photos and the ones from Sammy's shoot comes from the fact that I didn't bother to move my lights or my subject away from the seamless. It's part laziness and part the fact that it gives my seamless just a little texture. Awesome! X is clearly my subject and SB is my lighting of choice, a medium softbox. Has there ever existed a more awesome piece of lighting equipment? I think not. But photographers, tell me, what is your lighting choice? Softboxes just happen to be my lighting porn.

Oh, and everything was shot on my little Canon Rebel XTi, using a pocket wizard (another thing I now ADORE) that I borrowed from the cage. That thing is also magic!

Ah, at this point, we switched over from the Russian spy character to some sort of student/teacher kind of thing. In some of these photos you see off the edges of my seamless, though I did not post any of those because ick, not interesting and not very good. Yeah, when I'm not tethered to a strobe kit, I forget about the limits of seamless. Need to get better about that!

norwegian wood - the beatles

And another set of photos, though none of these are artistic. These are all from my going away party. A lovely time was had by all. Anyway, the photos are fun and silly and so forth, so my comments will aspire to be the same. And hopefully, this will make up for my lack of posting over the past few weeks. So enjoy!



I'll welcome you to the party with a photo of Julie and Jen's salad. Quite a delicious salad, and Jen had to defend it from all the people who were going for early munches



The majority of the younger folks in the kitchen. From left to right: Greg, Julie, Gian, me, Jen.



And some of the older folks! From left to right: Kim's friend Helen, Kim, Grandma, Aunt Penny, Cheryl, Liz



More of that delectable salad, now for Jen to show it off. Also, Julie to show off her salad-stealing skills.



Julie meeting Lysander through the screen. While Grandma was over, the cats were kept out. That didn't stop them from trying to get people to let them in.



Ms. Uribes and Mrs. Montgomery toasting the camera



More of the above



Jen with her new fan, a gift from Drew I believe.



More of Jen, now somewhat blurry. Can you tell she was in a good mood?



Blurry and not a great photo of the Dwyn but I wanted to show off the rice cooker I got. I am already certain that this will come in handy very much during my time in college.



And this is Pink Teddy, my beloved childhood stuffed animal. I've had him ever since I was born. Sam borrowed him the week before my party and returned him with this brillant get up. It's a good new look for him, don't you think? He'll be joining the staff on my other blog soon, just as soon as I get my stuff together



Pink Teddy again, now the back. You can see Sara in the background being amused by Pink Teddy. He's just so adorable!



Jen and the amazing cake and I. Impressive, right?



And here's just the cake. It was pretty spectacular. Jen ordered it and I didn't get to see it until just then.



Sam and I. Can you see the lovely mola in the back? I love those things



Jen, Sam and I



A group of us doing Jazz hands. It feels important when talking about New York and Broadway. From left to right: Julie, Greg, Jen, Drew, Sam, Gian, me



Finally, Grandma, Mom, and I.

That's it for this week!

gloomy sunday - billie holiday

So there's been a bit of a delay.... Chalk it down to busy preparing for college. Anyway, here's a make-up post, complete with double the number of photos. With any luck, another post will be up very quickly with photos from the going away party. Woot! Let's get on with the photos. Comments are short cause I'm tired and busy.



Boats in the harbor outside the hotel room in Half Moon Bay [HMB]. I'm not totally in love with this photo but I liked the idea of it, the grey water with the grey sky and the sort of depressed feel. I rather enjoyed the area but anyway. I took several of this shot and this was the best but still, I think something is almost off. Any idea what it might be?



Part of my resolution for HMB was to do more landscapes. So this was one of the landscapes I encountered on my walk the first morning we were there. I was heading out towards the beach and I thought the shape of path with the long line of the fence and the barest hint of water was sort of compelling. Despite landscapes not being my forte, I think this one is a pretty decent shot for an amature.



This clump of flowers was encountered on the same walk and I found them so lovely that I made a full stop and took my time in looking for the perfect shot. I did not originally like this shot, I felt there was something blurry in it that just didn't quite work. However, the damn thing has grown on me and now I love it, particularly the sharp, bare stick that sort of pokes up over the top of the flowers and looks a little dangerous and strange among these lovely flowers.



I fear this might be a somewhat generic shot but really, I loved those flowers so much so I couldn't help myself but be all over taking this. So I did and it came out alright. Maybe a little darker would be better? I'll mess around with it and put it up next week in the color altered version. It's really not a bad shot, just needs a little adjusting to be made absolutely perfect!



Once more, this is something I love because of the grey on grey. All the different shades work well together in a very interesting way. Also, the wall of rocks I like, mostly because they are interesting because they are a contrast to the soft shapes in the background and the soft, rolling shapes of the plants in the foreground. And it does help that the wall is about a third, maybe a little less, into the photo. Rule of thirds anyone?



More flowers, these ones were in front of the RV parking area. I'm a sucker for things with petals as of late and I found these just such a contrast, all cheery and bright in such a grey area. Also, this particular patch seemed to have a lot of dead flowers, which was another nice contrast, dead to bright and life-filled.



And this starts my series of three close up rock photos. The rocks were piled up in a wall that made getting down to the beach a little tough. However, all these lovely little things were hidden in the cracks and whatnot so I got a whole slew of photos of the hidden treats. I really liked this pipe that just seemed to come out of nowhere and go to nowhere.




This probably needs editing but I loved the shape created by the three rocks. That is all



Once more, all about the shapes, especially the little triangle of water on the top.



Is this as generic as I fear it is? Anyway, I liked it, a lovely, very typically ocean image, with the tower and the sea walls.



Oh look, my two favorite things! Flowers AND rocks! More of those hidden treats I talked about earlier.



More of the ocean, now with surfers. I'm less sure I liked this but I liked the IDEA of it, with the surfers siting out on this massive grey-ness, waiting for something to move.



A little crooked and almost certainly generic. Ah well, I like it and it shows where I was.



Basically the same as the one above but I really love the small spots of sun in the sky. A light beyond the darkness maybe?