Change in Direction

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Today marks a turning point in this blog's life... Up until this point this blog has been geared at Photographers. Photoshop tutorials, photo tips etc. After spending some time with commercial photographer Don Giannatti and talking about the direction of my photography etc. the aim of this blog is going to focus more on my images, and why I did what I did with them. So without further adieu... I present to you Tarah.

Tarah is one of my favorite models to work with in this area. She's naturally beautiful, fun to work with and is fearless. I setup this shot for my commercial book. The goal was to tell a story, or show something different than just a pretty face. I wanted to highlight not only the model, but the vehicle as well. Lighting the two planes separately did a good job of accomplishing my goal.

Hit the Jump to see an outtake and hear about the lighting setup...





I didn't like this shot as well because the posting and the look on her face just didn't nail what I was looking for. Another beautiful picture to be sure, but just not quite as good as the first one.

For this setup I used a White lighting 1600 with a gridded beauty dish for a main. The kickers were sb800's on either side of the car. For The light on the car, it was just a touch from another sb800.

So a big thanks to Don Giannatti for pointing me in the right direction, and a big thanks to those of you reading. If you want to see more work from myself or my studio please visit http://www.rdphotos.com and look at the portfolio section. See you next time, Jason

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Shooting for Social Media

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Hey everyone. Glad to see you back! The image you see above is of my brother Garrett. He's a producer for Clear Channel radio here in Cincinnati, specifically the AM sports side. As such he tries to have a pretty good social media presence. He has a blog, a couple of twitter accounts, Facebook etc. His problem was that he didn't have a consistent picture across the accounts, and branding is all about that, consistency. So the other day he was over to watch some football and I grabbed him for 5 minutes to do some quick shots for his profiles. Hit the jump for the rest of the shots, as well as a lighting diagram




This is what I did for lighting. I had a single SB900 camera left shooting through a shoot through umbrella on manual 1/8 power. The umbrella was roughly 2 feet from the subject and feathered to the left so that just the edge of the light was hitting his face. On camera right, I had a tri-grip white reflector held by an assistant. The settings on the camera were ISO1600 112mm on my 70-200 2.8 f/5.6 1/80th of a second. Here's a diagram:



Simple enough setup but highly effective. In the diagram you'll notice that the subject is a good distance away from the background. This is important. It's the inverse square law at work here. The further away the subject(and the main light source) the darker the background gets. In this case we wanted totally black, so we moved him as far away as was practical. Here are a few more from the shoot:






I took 12 shots total and these are the keepers. Social media is a huge part of every business now, take advantage of the need that has been created by and for this market. Thanks for stopping by, See you next time!

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The best camera is the camera that you have with you

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Hey everyone! Glad to see you back. We've been a little busy as of late with model portfolio's, senior pictures, and of course wrapping up wedding season. I've been away for a little while. There have been a few interesting things that I wanted to let you know about though. First, this blog has been accepted by Alltop.com which is a popular service allowing you to follow all of your favorite blogs in one spot. You can find this blog by clicking HERE. It's a great way to follow your favorite content. If you want to see what/who I follow, click here: WHO I FOLLOW. Also, we at RedDoor Photography have been busy updating our website to allow for iDevice viewing. If you haven't checked it out recently, head on over now to see the site. On that note, I have been doing a lot of guest blogging for Adobe Evangelist Terry White over at his application website BestAppsite.com. If you have an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, be sure to head over there for some great reviews including all of the photography apps you could possibly want.

Speaking of photography apps and iPhones, I want to say a quick word today about something that has become really important to my creative process. When I see something that inspires me, I use whatever camera I have with me. Usually that's my iPhone which admittedly has a pretty nice camera built into it, but the point is it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what camera you have, it doesn't matter if it's a point and shoot, a film camera, a DSLR, etc. It's all about capturing the moment. There are entire Website dedicated to using cell phone camera's. Most of that revolution was brought on by commercial photographer Chase Jarvis. The point is, you don't need a special camera, or a special lens to capture great images. Hit the jump to see some of my favorites that I've captured, and edited right inside of the phone.















Thanks for stopping by. See you all soon! Jason
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