Fireside Chat with Ken

Hey all,
I’ve decided that since I’m taking a more proactive approach in the social media aspect of the internet I would need some more professional quality photographs. Thank God for Thomas. He heads up our Design department for SNAP Media Productions, and after seeing the quality and fun of setting up and taking photographs, I’m thinking its something we should push our clients into getting done. The responses I’ve gotten from posting on MySpace and Facebook alone in the last hour are pretty encouraging. So I’ve decided to take you through some of the behind the scenes setups for the shots, and the “creative” way we got them to work for us.

“Fireside Chat with Ken”

This photograph is in all likelihood my favorite. The fireplace scene made for a warm shot with subtle shadows and quaint nuances. The glow from the fire itself helps to draw the viewers attention to the foreground, and gives a faint “Library” detail to the photograph (shooting in a 20 year old Tudor Colonial studio doesn’t hurt either). And, what photograph doesn’t need touching up? I’ll tell you this one needed quite a bit, and thats where Thomas stepped in […when dealing with Photoshop you make due with what you have… and if what you have is a borrowed digital camera and a bunch of incandescent lamps, then you’re as good as pro. -Thomas]. From the changes I remember him making; neck adjustment (double chin to 1.5 chins), lots of red reduction in the face, blemish removal, heavy shadowing in the background of the picture (I really wish I had the “before” photo to show the drastic difference in shadows), foreground contrasting as well as overall brightening. I made a side-comment to him last night that it looked a lot like a CD album cover… I stand by that comment.

“The TBS Parody”

“The TBS Parody” was by complete accident. This was when we were just shooting to get the light in Tom’s office¹. He had me sitting on a prop and gave me the instructions “act normally”. So there were a few awkward tumulus shots (that will never make it to the internet) but also a few gems. Believe it or not, that wall color was not originally green (astonishing I know, haha). It was, however, a color called Americana (a blue-gray). There was also a shelf with Japanese artifacts (swords, shuriken and the like) that had to be removed. Again, Thomas came in. We actually combined two different photographs here. Originally I was sitting in the middle of the wall with swords to the left and a blanket/sheet of sorts to my right. The face was priceless so we figured we would work with this setup shot and see what we could do. The usual touch-ups took place here, (i.e. blemish control, red-reduction, contrast altering) but the most amazing was watching two photos become one. Keeping the lighting the same AND moving me more to the right. It truly looks like I was sitting in front of a green wall the entire time. Again, it doesn’t do justice to the talent without the initial photograph to look at. I told Thomas afterwards that it looked like those TBS ads on cable. He agreed - - I’m sure there will be some type of parody in the near future (hence the name).

“The Late 80’s New Age”

Hahahaha! This was just a fun photograph. It was another setup photo with props. The Nikon camera we used actually caught unbelievable details in the glasses, and since studio lighting is less than ideal in professional photos (and any touch-ups would noticeably change the reflections of the light sources) we decided to port this to Adobe Illustrator. What a fun program this is! It reminded me a lot of the old school Creative Paint program I used to have where you could very easily apply filters to pictures (admittedly not even CLOSE to the quality of this program) and change the entire look of the landscape. We used the trace feature and only pulled out 8 colors (hence the paint-by-number effect). It’s not earth-shattering stuff I realize, but still a cool feature. All traditional Photoshop fixes went into this photograph before the port. While it’s not my favorite when compared to “Fireplace Chat with Ken” it definitely deserves a place in the portfolio.

Any ideas for some photo set-ups or filters that look good, leave a comment or drop me a line. Can’t wait for the next installment!