Update from the Sky
You may have been wondering why i’ve been pretty quiet on here recently. Well, for the past 4 months i’ve been training every weekend to get my skydiving qualification...
I’m now pleased to announce that I’ve finally got my FAI Skydiving “A” Licence which makes me a fully qualified skydiver!
If you fancy seeing a video of my qualifying jump, here it is:
Also, now that the weather’s starting to get good again, I’m going to be picking my camera up again more often and getting more photo’s done. The next 16 days from this post are going to be quite quiet, because I’ve got my university exams. But after that, I have a whole 4 months free for summer, so plenty of time for new jobs and shoots. So if you’re interested, contact me.
Jakob
Underwear Shoot Photos
You might remember back in December I mentioned I did an underwear photoshoot with the lovely model Hannah. I’ve finally been able to release the photo’s so I’ve grabbed the juiciest 2 and added them to my people portfolio page!
As always, take a look and tell me what you think!
Jakob
A Reason To Take Your Camera Shopping!
Today I was reminded of how handy having your camera with you all the time can be!
I had just finished doing my weekly shop in the centre of Southampton and was waiting for the bus outside the Civic Centre, the main crossroad in Southampton, when out of no-where; the road got blocked at all 4 entrances by 8 riot police vans, a police helicopter started circling overhead and the mounted brigade along with 200 police officers appeared on all sides.
Now, this all happened so fast, I was ready to drop my bags of shopping and make a very action-film like escape just in case they had all come for me... when in the distance I heard the unmistakable chanting of football fans.
As the army of police officers went past me I stopped one of them and asked what was going on. He looked at me and said in a very bemused tone
“It’s the football mate, Southampton vs. Portsmouth. It’s just finished. You must be the only person in Southampton to not know”
and with that he turned and ran back off down the road. I did feel a bit of a fool, but then I don’t do football. In the slightest. So how should I have known about the match.
Anyway, by this time the chants where a lot closer and I could see the mass of Portsmouth fans making their way towards me from one end of the street. “Fantastic, just like the old days covering marches” I thought and instinctively reached into my rucksack to get my camera. Only to feel my new pair of shoes I’d just bought at the bottom of my bag. “Bollocks”. Of course I wouldn’t have my camera in my bag. Who in their right mind takes their dSLR shopping, especially since the lens takes up almost the whole rucksack!?
I cursed again and reached into my pocket for my camera phone. But as soon as I turned the camera on I knew it was pointless. A picture from this thing would hardly be sold to a newspaper, so I put it back in my pocket and waited for the football fans to come...
After almost an hour and a half of watching 3000 football fans go past, 3 arrests being made and several punches being thrown meters from my face, I finally saw the end of the mob. Disappointingly I waited for the road to re-open and got on my bus home. Still cursing myself for not having my camera on hand.
So, that’s the moral of my little event. Always have a camera handy, because you never know when an opportunity might present itself. The other moral is do your planning because I had no idea about the football game today even though I should have had. Not because I like football (I don’t!) but because the 2 sides Southampton and Portsmouth are probably English football’s biggest rivals who hate each other’s guts, so trouble was bound to kick off.
Naturally though, you can’t take your camera everywhere (especially when the body and lens take up all the space in your rucksack!), but if you do have the space to put it in a bag and it doesn’t cause to much inconvenience, then it’s better to be safe than sorry for not having it and missing a photojournalist opportunity.
Jakob
Underwear Shoot With a Cause
Yesterday I did an underwear shoot with the gorgeous model and old friend Hannah.
The shoot was for a good cause; The Alzheimer's Society which the model is trying to raise £1000 for.
The photo's have come out amazing, but I've made a deal with the model to not release them until at least £500 has been raised.
So, if you want to see them up soon use the link below to donate to the cause!
http://www.justgiving.com/hannahgauntlett
Jakob
Photo Manipulation, Fairytales & Greek Mythology
A few day’s ago I did my another personal photoshoot, the first for at least 3 months, so I had an idea for this one to try something a bit new…
The keyword for this was “fairytale”, but I wanted to make it a fairytale photo with a bit of a twist.
So, here’s a little step-through tutorial of how I went from the starting photo out of camera, to the end result (see text below picture):
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1) This was the photo, straight out of the camera, no editing. I lit the photo using 2 lights; an SB-24 with shoot through umbrella, in close, front-right for the main and a 430EZ, bare, rear-left for a slight rim and hair light. The 430EZ is out of shot, but to get a nice soft light I had to get the SB-24 and umbrella in close, which meant it was in shot…
2) So the next step was to erase the light and stand. For this I took another photo, leaving the camera on the tripod in exactly the same position, but taking the light out of frame. Then, using a layer mask I blended out the light from the original photo, leaving me with a well-lit, yet clutter-free photo.
3) This step probably took the longest; cutting out the model and the bushes around where you want the background to go. Simply done using the pen and layer mask tools.
4) Take 1 castle, cut out the sky, and place it under the layer of the model and you get a photo starting to form.
5) The sky picture I actually took when I was in the Czech Republic over the summer. No need for cutting here, just drop it in as the least significant layer, and size it up a bit to get the dimensions and perspective right.
6) Now for the twist…a CCTV camera which I took last year sometime. This not only adds the twist in the photo, but also balances out the right hand side of the picture.
7) We now have our picture basically finished. Only problem is, it looks completely fake with each separate element looking like its just been placed there (which it obviously has, but we want to make it look like its all one photo). So we do colour corrections on the sky layer, model layer and castle layer, adjusting temperature, saturation, contrast, colour and dodging and burning different elements.
8) The photo now looks almost done, just a few final touches, we add adjustment layers over ALL the previous layers to really merge the photo in as one.
9) And, finally we add a vignette and a warm stone texture, blended using soft light, over the top to finish it off. And we have our final result!
This whole process took about 6 hours of editing with the whole photo containing a grand number of 20 layers/adjustment layers.
And to put the cherry on the cake, I also thought of a little caption for the photo (referring to some Greek Mythology):
“Princess Elpis seldom strayed from her castle. For she knew that nowhere she went, could she escape the ever-watchful eye of her father...”
(with reference to Elpis, the Greek goddess of hope…)
Jakob
Jumping From Planes!
Many of you reading this will probably think I’ve lost my mind, but I’ve got a new hobby. Skydiving. I don’t know what first made me take it up, but a while back, somewhere in that head of mine, something clicked and I though ‘why not’…so now, this weekend, I’m off to Netheravon airfield, in Wiltshire, to perform my first Solo jump (hopefully, but with this being England, you can never tell what the weather will be like!).
I would have taken my camera up and jumped with it to get a few nice photos, but unfortunately my insurance policy doesn’t include a dropped camera from 7,500 feet so I don’t think I’ll risk it just yet.
In other news, I was the press photographer at Westfield shopping centre’s 1st anniversary of the Bench. store event. Half way through I did manage to get a little wonder around the shopping centre itself, and I must say, I would highly recommend it if you like shops. Its got literally every imaginable brand in there!
I’ve got no more up coming jobsright now, which leaves me free to (finally) start work on personal projects again. Keep a lookout for more photo’s coming on my website soon…
Jakob
Bench. and Beyond
Last Saturday I went up to London with Shirin, to shoot for the 1 year anniversary of the Bench. clothing store in Covent Garden. The day was a great success with the whole event going without a hitch. I was also pleased to be provided with a lovely room upstairs in the Bench. offices where I did a few shots with the two models. Generally the shots came out good, but one particular one really caught my eye, so I decided to experiment with it a little more, and after some heavy editing I got a result that really stood out.
Below are the before and after versions of the photo for comparison.
What I did (in the order I did it) was:
- Play around in Photoshop’s RAW converter, add some black, contrast and lowered the saturation.
- Duplicated the layer, converted the top one to Black & White with a blue channel filter and then set the blending mode to Soft Light and change the layer opacity to 60%.
- Adjusted the colours generally using the Selective Colour tool.
- This is where the real fun starts; I then used the Dodge tool to ‘paint’ in the light as if it where coming through the window.
- Once that’s done, I now ‘painted’ light onto the model herself where the light (were it real) would be falling onto her.
- Then I used a stock texture that had a warm-green hue and a slight vignette around the edge. I placed that in a new layer above the picture and blended it using Overlay, then took the opacity down to %50.
- I then duplicated the texture layer, flipped it horizontally, and again blended it using Overlay @ 50%.
- Finally, to finish off, I did what I do to all of my pictures; Un-sharpen Mask to sharpen the image up.
Hope you like the results
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Jakob
At Uni
Well I’m here! Southampton University. I love it, I’ve been here for exactly 7 days now and its great.
Unfortunately I can’t say I’ve been doing much photography in the time I’ve been here as I’ve been too caught up in the student life, but next weekend I’m doing a shoot for ‘Bench.’ in London which should hopefully kick me back into taking photos!
In the mean time, here’s a quick snap of my room for the next 10 months:
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Jakob
Quick Update
Just a quick update on what I’ve been up to since my last post...
I went down to Swindon on the 29th last month to shoot Shirin performing at a designer outlet centre. The event was for the opening of a new Calvin Klein Underwear store in the outlet. I also did a few fashion shots with the Calvin Klein model’s that day for any adverts etc. All in all a very fun day!
Since then things have been relatively quiet, although this Saturday (12th) I’m going to Surrey to shoot a couples 25th wedding anniversary. And the Saturday after (19th) I’ll be spending my day in Covent Gardens, Central London, shooting again with Shirin, for the clothing label ‘Bench.’ which should be pretty interesting.
I’ve also recently found out where I’ll be spending the next 10 months living, and I’m pleased to announce I’ll be moving into Montefiore 2 Hall’s of Residence, Wessex Lane, Southampton. So that’s where I’ll be based for the next 10 months (moving in on the 27th September) so if anyone fancies paying me a visit, your more than welcome!
Jakob
The Next 4 Years
Well I’ve finally got my A-level results and I’m pleased to announce I’m going to be spending the next 4 years of my life at the University of Southampton studying a Masters of Engineering degree in Computer Science.
How will this affect my photography you might be wondering? Well the answer is it wont. At least I’ll try and not let it interfere with my photography work. I’m still going to be doing photoshoots and commissions and I’m still going to be trying to expand my photography career in every way.
Now, I’m off to start packing, so don’t expect any more updates for several weeks...Oh, and if anyone else is off to Southampton, feel free to give me a shout :-).
Jakob
Shooting for Shirin
Last Friday I went along to Que Pasa Bar in Southampton to shoot Shirin, a new and upcoming talent in the world of music who’s worked with high profile producers such as Benny Cassette who have produced songs for the likes of Black Eyed Peas, Mariah Carey and Eve.
But that night I wasn’t shooting freelance as usual, it was infact my first gig as Shirin’s official photographer. So from now on, I’ll probably be doing a lot more travelling with Shirin to her gigs and taking photos of the performances. I’m also planning on multiple photoshoot sessions with Shirin and her dance team to get photos for her advertising campaign and upcoming live tour of the UK clubs.
Now for some information on how I actually shot Friday’s performance, and I have to say it was tricky. The big thing that I noticed almost immediately when I walked in there was the lack of light. The stage was dark, lit only by very dim coloured lights. I tried taking several test shots at first, with both my 17-85mm & 70-200 f/4 L and even at ISO 3200 and f/4 the shutter speed range for a decent exposure was about 1/2-1/3. Needless to say that was completely unworkable with. Luckily I brought along my 2 trusty flashes and the small white diffuser boxes for them. At first I went against all my principles and put the Nikon SB-24 on-camera and tried to bounce it off the ceiling. But as soon as I took a few photos and reviewed them I realised why I never use on-camera flash. The pictures where of the typical ‘rabbit in the headlights’, high key, plain light coverage type which looked absolutely terrible. But all was not lost, I had infact decided to bring along to the event my 2 wireless triggers. So in the end I ended up using the typical 2 side light setup by placing the SB-24 on a table to the front-left of the stage, and the 430EZ on the ground, pointing up, front-right stage. With that setup I got some surprisingly good results, and it also meant that I could drop my shutter speed down to about 1/5-1/10 to capture some of the colour and light of the actual stage, and also some nice movement effects, yet Shirin was still sharp as the flash pulse effectively only exposed her for the equivalent of about 1/1600. I did still have to use ISO 1600 which was a bit disappointing and meant my photo’s weren’t quite as nice and crisp as my usual studio shoots, but considering this was a live performance I think it worked out pretty well!
Below are a few shots from the performance, and a lighting diagram of the setup:
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Jakob
A Shout From Czech
For the past week I’ve been avoiding the apparently horrible weather that’s been going around England because I’m in my home country of the Czech Republic. The weather here’s delightful with temperatures reaching almost into their 40’s.
Naturally I’ve bought my camera along with me and so I’ve got a couple of nice shots of how things look here. I must warn you I haven’t done the photo’s I’ve taken here up to my usual standard but then again 1) I’ve had very little time to take the photo’s. and 2) I’m editing them on a rather old laptop, no graphics tablet, no mouse just a touchpad at my disposal which really limits what I can do.
Other then that I’ve just generally been enjoying myself in the scorching sun, topping up on a bit of a tan and catching up with old friends. I have another week left here as I’ve bought myself a plane ticket for the 10th when I’m flying back to Stansted. What I find a bit ridiculous is that the 600mile flight from Czech to London Stansted takes 1.5 hours, yet the the 100mile or so, journey from Stansted to Southampton takes just under 4 hours and requires me trekking across the whole of London to catch my train home. But hey, what can you do, I’ll just be happy when I get back home in 1 piece.
In the mean time here’s a few shots of Czech:
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Jakob
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