If you saw my last post of a recent shoot with 50 extras, I apologize for posting too soon. I needed to pull that post until the client I shot for announces their new merger in early October. I’ll re-post after that is official.
Until then, enjoy this great imagery from the NY Times Magazine.
See the beauty of the power of the top woman tennis players at 1250 frames per second in motion with the Phantom camera.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/08/29/magazine/womens-tennis.html
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Way too long since my last post. Along with normal work schedule, I’ve been moving my home, the schedule has been really crazy for awhile.
I want to share some of my new favorite ipad apps. By the way, yes, I love the ipad. Now that things are settling down with the move and shooting, I’m anxious to go out and show the new ipad portfolio, with video included! I’ll post when the new portfolio is up and ready.
In the mean time, these are some very helpful apps along with maybe a couple that are just fun.
First for the real killer ones for photographers / film makers. Other softwares have been around way before these cool apps that do kind of what these do, but these two sun tracking apps take it to a new level. I highly recommend for any photographer / DP that wants to save a ton of time scouting to follow sun angles for your next location shoot. Just to geek out a bit, I typed in the Empire State building in NYC and typed in 3:00pm just to see where the sun would fall on it for this time of year, WOW, really cool. I tested it for in front of my house at several different times and it works really well. Here they are:
LightTrac: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lighttrac-for-ipad/id363963108?mt=8
Sunseeker: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sun-seeker-3d-augmented-reality/id330247123?mt=8
DSLR Slate: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dslr-slate/id374241045?mt=8
Use your ipad as a camera slate for your next DSLR film.
Infinote: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/infinote-todos-ideas-notes/id364356810?mt=8
Keep unlimited sticky notes on unlimited cork boards all easy to view. I found this very helpful for a recent project where I had multiple client email/ phone notes and wanted to keep track of them all on one “bulletin board”.
PaperDesk: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paperdesk-lite-for-ipad/id367563434?mt=8
Never be without a pad of paper for any kind of notes. Can draw with color pencils to sketch ideas or just kill time on a plane playing “hang man”.
Adobe ideas: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-ideas-1-0-for-ipad/id364617858?mt=8
Very similar to above PaperDesk, but I like the ability to do multiple undo’s with this app. You can import a picture from your library and draw directly on it for notes to clients, or make lighting notes. Unlimited uses for this. By the picture from Adobe below, you can even sketch out your favorite dress. I’ll stick with lighting diagrams thank you Adobe.
It’s an App world we live in now, lets embrace it and use them to their fullest potential to make our life a little easier and more fun at the same time.
Happy Apping
Posted in DSLR, TECH, ipad apps | Leave a Comment »
For the past few years I’ve been lucky enough to be asked by the British Consulate to document BritWeek in Los Angeles. www.britweek.org This is really a departure from the commercial work I do, so it is a nice change of pace and style to mix things up a bit. This is much more of a journalistic approach to shooting. At times it’s very frustrating though because I’m used to having total control in my commercial shoots, not so much here. I have to really let loose of the reins a bit and think and move quickly, nothing wrong with that to keep the chops up right.
Another fun part of this job is I get to be surrounded with a lot of very interesting people. Whether they be celebrities, prominent business people or politicians, it really keeps it interesting.
I’m right in the middle of the job, with several more events to shoot, but I wanted to share as I go.
Although, most of the shooting is grab what you can, and fast, sometimes I get to spend a little more time in the set up. One of those shots was to shoot the LAX sign at the entrance to the Los Angeles Airport. In recognition of BritWeek, they had changed the colors of their lights to a combination of red, white and blue. I had to park myself and camera for a bit of time right at the entrance on the middle island. I was a bit worried that a police car would drive by while I was shooting this because I’m not sure if I would be allowed to shoot there. It was a very cold and windy night so I bundled up with a big jacket and black beanie cap. I looked a bit like a bank robber / terrorist. With this security concious world we live in now, this wasn’t a good look at the airport. I did get this pretty interesting look at the famous LAX sign though, that’s all that matters.
On the tech part of the image, to keep the balance of all the different light levels I composited several different exposures to hold detail in the plants in the foreground to the bright lights themselves. I did try doing this in a HDR plug-in, but did not get the results I wanted, so I just processed the raw file a few different times and made a composite manually.
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I just got back from a couple days at NAB in Las Vegas. I wanted to share with you some of my findings.
There were two very prominent topics in this years NAB show, and they were everywhere:
3D AND DSLR FILM MAKING.
On the 3D side, I went to the Panasonic booth for their 3D experience. I really wasn’t all that impressed. I just don’t feel like the steroscopic 3D is quite there. I had a slight headache watching some of the footage. Things will be changing in this arena very fast though.
Before I get to DSLR film making, I wanted to mention the other hot topic of , online content. Online content is king. We all know about the advent of the online magazines and the devices that read them, I’ve mentioned this several times on older posts. With the release of Apple’s ipad, that topic is hotter then ever. One major problem is that Mr. Jobs over at Apple doesn’t want to play nice. He seems to be playing strong arm with the content creators, device manufactures and software developers. It’s “my way or the high-way” type of mentality. It’s quite frustrating on a lot of levels. The big issue especially for me is the non-compatibility of Flash on his new baby. We want full feature content on the ipad, including motion graphics and video. The problem is most of that content for web is Flash based.
I had a talk with a person at The New York Times booth about their introduction of the NY Times online version that will be readable through their Times Reader software powered by Adobe Air. They are very excited about it, as well they should be. Although, for the time being we won’t be able to view the full features of this site with our new ipad. That’s a shame because that’s excactly why we want the ipad.
You know there are developers in their offices, workshops and basements all over working on this issue of ipad compatibility.
I did run into one company at NAB that was working on just this.
They are simplifying the publishing of mobile video assets for ALL devices, INCLUDING the ipad. I am going to be learning a lot more about this company in the coming months. Stay tuned for more on this in coming posts.
Here are a few of my favorite booths and speakers from the show.
It was great to have hands on experience with a lot of the manufactors of the tools I will be using in the DSLR film making side of things.
The first is Red Rock Micro, they make the rigs that make it much easier to turn our 35DSLR ( Canon 5d MK11) into a very viable film making camera:
Redrock Micro remote follow focus with YOUR IPHONE
http://www.redrockmicro.com/microRemote.html
Another leader in the DSLR rigs and gear is Zacuto:
Zacuto DSLR rigs and viewfinders
http://www.zacuto.com/
Here’s a new jib / slider combo rig I really like by Porta Jib. To be able to have a two-in one device like this could be very useful on a lot of shoots. You normally would need two different rigs for this application.
Porta Jib Explorer:
http://www.portajib.com/explorer.html
As far as favorite speakers, I would have to give that to Shane Hurlbut. Shane is a veteran cinematographer shooting for major motion pictures that has made a mid-career change to shooting very high level films with the DSLRs, specifically Canon’s 5 and 7 D’s.
Beautiful work and a very entertaining energetic guy, way to go Shane.
http://hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/
Another great presentation was from Alex Buono, Director of Photography for NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
Alex is in charge of shooting all of the pre-show titles, new talent intros and mock commercials for the show. He showed us a reel of all the latest work he just shot for the show, all on the 5D and 7D. Those motion shots from the top of the taxi cab at the beginning of the show, 5D! This camera is really changing the world of cinema.
See some of it here: http://www.dslr-cinematography.com/news/2009/9/29/saturday-night-live-shoots-canon-7d-and-5d-mark-ii.html
Stay tuned for my new demo reel, I’m all pumped up!
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I just got back from a terrific job up in Napa, CA. Rather then just show the bottles of wine on my client’s web site, they wanted to show the faces behind the wine to give it a more personal feel to their brand. . These are the farmers, vineyard owners, wine makers, and winery owners themselves, that are behind the scenes of producing their product.
We wanted these to be very “real” feeling, not overly styled, just raw, in-the-moment feel to them. Hopefully we pulled that off.
What better place to work for a couple of beautiful days then up in the wine country!
Now look at these beautiful faces below:
These guys were very cooperative, although, they made me pay for it by lying in their droppings!
Just another day at the office
Posted in Behind the scenes, Shoot, Travel, Wine | Leave a Comment »
3D is here to stay and creative on-line content is changing daily.
Magazines and newspapers will not be printing using the traditional press for much longer ( at least to a much lesser extent ) with the advent of the “on-line” content. Look at my post on 1/26/10, this is a great example of where we are headed, very exciting! For a visual storyteller, this just opens up a whole new branch of creative content to create.
This small 3D movie clip was created from a series of 8 different composited images, see if you can find them all!
We shot the models against a green screen in a studio situation, see the pics below.
With some use of Photoshop and AfterEffects we put a pretty simple image into a new approach. The exciting thing for me is to think of all the commercial applications this could have. For example, this snowball fight could be an on-line ad for PacSun. Hopefully you would get a fresh, youthful approach at seeing their winter clothing line which would stand apart from traditional 2D print ads. Can’t you just see the 20 year olds at Starbucks on their new Apple ipad, surfing the web or PacSun web site, and seeing this snowball coming at them? !! I see the next Apple ad, don’t tell anyone.
I can’t wait to start my next still 3D content project. The next step will be to add some live action video to this world.
Stand by for more 3D. James Cameron wont’ have a thing on us.
Avitar, Shmavitar!
Cheers
Here are a few behind the scenes from the shoot. Pretty simple set up really. I trick was to light it to look like outside lighting, so I wanted a little more directional lighting falling on the faces as opposed to a really “soft box’ look.I love the light quality of a raw light head going through a Lee 255 diffusion. It cuts down the harshness of raw light, but not too soft. I think it’s similar to sunlight through a soft layer of clouds.
Obviously the background image is a strong sun backlight, so we put a “sun” light with a warming gel to give some of that warm “kicker” light, but we still put our front key light with some direction to it. If I shot this on location in the mountains (which we contemplated) I would have lit it the same way. Hopefully it works to sell the illusion here.
Posted in 3D, Behind the scenes, TECH, Video | Tagged 3D, AfterEffects | 2 Comments »
Okay, I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks, I’m not sure where the time has gone. Oh, I know, I’ve been glued to the Winter Olympics. I love this spectacle every four years, well two, when you go from summer to winter Olympics. I must say that the winter, kicks some butt over the summer version in my mind. Where else can you see a person flying down a hill on two thin slats of wood (or some other composite) over 90 miles per hour. It’s INSANE, and I love it. The human interest stories of the athletes is as compelling as the action sometimes.
When I was going to college for my photography many years ago, my first passion was photojournalism, and if I could have been shooting for Sports Illustrated, all the better. Okay, if National Geographic called back then, I wouldn’t have denied their call either.
I have posted images from the Boston Globes Big Picture before, but it’s worthy of another.
This looks like it could have been a setup commercial shot. Great shot.
The Big Picture is one of my favorite blogs to follow.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/vancouver_2010_part_1_of_2.html
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Olympics, sports, The Big Picture | Leave a Comment »
Homeless, Julliard student, makes a CD
This story really spoke to me on different levels.
Mostly because, this is a human interest story of an artist that has stayed with his art through all the turmoil in his life. All of us artist go through different periods of struggle and success, this takes it to another level.
A one-time Julliard music student, has now succumbed to a mental disorder and is forced to live on the streets, although he has kept his passion of music alive.
The fact that music was my first love, is another reason this strikes a chord with me (sorry).
This story has the feel of a couple of my all time favorite movies: Shine, Geoffrey Rush portrays the mentaly ill pianist, David Helfgott. Also, August Rush, the story of an orphaned musical prodigy.
I’m a sucker for a great human interest story, and if it’s about music and art, I’m done.
L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez did a terrific story on Mr. Ayers. It is definitely worth a read. Also, see a video clip of the recording session below.
Article in L.A. Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez3-2010feb03,0,3503177.column
To see the video of the recording session: http://kcet.org/socal/2010/02/the-soloist-in-a-duet.html
Posted in Inspiration, Video | Tagged human interest, Inspiration, music | 1 Comment »
This is exciting stuff. No more carrying around a bundle of papers and magazines, no more carrying around a backpack of school books for students. It will all be in one slim tablet. With the ability to watch videos about the story you are reading , click a another tab and be linked to a web page is just how all this information is literally at our finger tips now (pun intended).
In just two days, Apple is unveiling it’s tablet to the world!
Here’s a link to a video from ABC reporting on the new device.
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9663409
As a photographer / videographer, this opens the doors for some very creative use of the two mediums to offer to clients.
Stay tuned for some upcoming samples of this kind of work. I feel like a kid in a candy store with all the possibilities that lie ahead!
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http://tv.adobe.com/watch/customer-stories-video-film-and-audio/adobe-and-avatar/
Okay, I know this kind of looks like an ad for Adobe, well it is really, although, the content is really interesting.
Watch this video on how the Adobe line of products were vital in the making of Avatar. I guess I’m a little hyped on this right now since I just bought Adobe’s CS4 Production Premium bundle yesterday. I’m in the process of doing some 3d imaging with still images in After Effects.
It’s really great how we can use the same tools as the big movie studios to create our own art.
Stand by for some upcoming posts on these tests.
Posted in Behind the scenes, Inspiration, TECH, Video | Leave a Comment »
