Single Cover Shot
Firstly, Happy New Year to everyone! Hope 2010 wasn’t too harsh on you all, but we have the joy of another full year to look forward to now.
2011 certainly has kicked off straight from the word go it seems. Only the second weekend into the new year and I was already hired to shoot some promotional shots for Nisha Chand, a composer and artist, who I’ve worked with before. As well as promotional shots I also got to do a shot for and design the front cover of her new single “Falling Star”.
So as a new year’s treat look below for the sneak peek of the single cover!
As always, feedback is much appreciated.
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Jakob
A Christmas Treat
With it coming up to the Christmas period, I thought I'd share a little treat with you.
This is a video posted by one of my favourite photographers, Drew Gardner.
It explains in lovely detail the key elements behind a location shoot with a model.
I hope you enjoy it!
Jakob
Musician Photoshoot
Last week I had the opportunity to take pictures for
Nisha Chand, an up-coming singer/songwriter and composer! The shots where for promotional purposes and for her upcoming EP cover.
The shoot went fantastic with us starting off taking a few promotional shots in the sunset of the local woodland, and then when night fell taking to a more urban scene for some long exposures and hopefully her new EP cover.
Below I’ve chosen 2 of the best shots and added my usual lighting diagram so you can see how I went about them. Both where quite simple set up’s but using very different techniques produced quite amazing results.
Final Pictures:
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Jakob
Expansion Time
I’ve been a bit quiet again for a while, and the same has been reflected in my photography. But recently I’ve started to get on the ball more and am doing a lot more local advertising. I’ve also now decided to expand into web design. I say expand, I’ve been doing web design for the past two years at my part time job, and for a lot longer before that. But I’ve decided to go fully freelance with it, cutting out the middle man who takes a huge chunk of the money for himself.
So, anyone need a website ;-)?
Jakob
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
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