Klyment.com - Journal

My friend, Jonathan Puckrin (Junior, hahah ) forwarded me a link to a video clip that he describes as what "[k]eeps me sane working in a store with so many temptations." I suppose the conversation stemmed from what appeared to be a sudden, impulsive desire that possessed him and almost drove him to pick up a used Nikon D1X even though he's currently an Olympus E-1 shooter and really has no justification for switching to Nikon at the moment. But that's not the point of this entry. What is important is that the video clip (~8megs, download and save to your computer, unzip, play with Quicktime 6.5, M-player or other MPEG-4 compatible player, please don't directly link to it or I shall be forced to remove the file from my server) shows one photographer's interesting approach to fashion photography.

If you intend to download and view the clip, please do so before reading any further.

For the benefit of those that have not viewed the clip I shall first describe its essence. The clip is about a fashion and swimsuit photographer named Terry Richardson. According to what I've found on the web Richardson really does his serious shoots with point and shoot cameras.

When I first viewed the video I thought it was some kind of joke. So I viewed it again, just to make sure that there was some footage of him actually doing a shoot and not just spliced frames . . . especially considering that Jonathan's a videographer. Not quite convinced, I looked him up. If you Google with the keywords Terry Richardson Photographer, you'll find a few rather entertaining stories about him and some of his aquaintances and gigs. The linked story is actually quite fascinating. With his point and shoots he has photographed for Gucci, Calvin Klein,  and A|X to name a few and his photos have been published in French Vogue and even a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.

Richardson gives all of us photographers something to look towards. I think he's a real-life example that what one lacks in equipment one can make up for in creativity. But seeing my own approach to photography I hope that the complement is also true. Happy [point & ]shooting. And thank you, Jonathan. =)

http://verba.chromogenic.net/archives/2004/12/kubricks_50mm_f.html

The blog entry speaks of a Zeiss Planar 50mm F/0.7 (!!!) used during the filming of a movie called "Barry Lyndon". Maybe something cool to check out.

I figured it was time I dedicated an entry to Leanna so I'm craftily masking this equipment blog as something for her. =P j/k. Anyhow, Leanna, I think you've already seen this photo as a preview but I've just completed a black and white conversion on it. As you probably remember, the fountain ledge across the path between the legislature stairs took this photo for us . . . so you can blame it for not holding the camera perfectly level. =P I'll work the rotation and pincushion distortion out of the image once I figure out how to do it properly. Anyway, let's see how long it takes for you to find it.

Photograph was taken at ISO 400, 54mm, F4 w/ a 1second exposure time with an S2 Pro on ten second self-timer and with the 17-55/2.8 AF-S DX lens. Manually metered with manual flash output. Duotone conversion performed using Greg Gorman's black and white conversion technique. I highly recommend trying it out. The procedure is documented in a PDF file on his website. I'd rehost it here but I do not feel worthy even messaging him to ask for permission to do so. If you like it, I'll have a Photoshop action to automate the basic parts of the conversion so that all you need to do is choose the base colours for the dutone and adjust curves. This technique is, by far, my favourite for doing duotone conversions.

I noticed some strange referrers on my side bar. In fact, there are two domains from which credit card application-related information is being hosted. I checked on the exact address under the webhosting domain to see what was linking my page and it, too, turned out to be a credit card-related site. Not sure what's up with this. I checked on both sites and couldn't find any links to my pages and I wasn't able to identify any random links.

Edmonton's elite basketball school, Red Storm, held a two day workshop over the past weekend. I believe the age range was from those enrolled in elementary school all the way up to grade 12-aged students. There was a well-known and highly qualified coach coming up from the US that was nothing short of phenomenal. I was a bit skeptical of shooting this event at first but after the first hour and a half I was treated with some really interesting shots. All of the photos from this event are available online.

I'm not exactly sure what is up with this photo. I see that there is no net in sight but it looked like everyone was doing something and it looked sort of cool so I thought I'd post it here.

Just before MGTSC 431 I was sitting in Winspear Business Library and noticed that on the bottom of the "Arts & Life" section of the National Post there was a small lost and found announcement accompanied by a photo of a mitten. This mitten happened to have been found in Ottawa. Though the URL was mispelled it was simple enough to figure out. Missing a glove or a mitt? Check out this site: http://www.nationalpost.com/mittens. What a weird project. Whatever . . .

About two weeks ago I started painting this canvas square measuring roughly 5.5 x 5.5 feet. I need it to do a mockup hair ad for a marketing class at school. Michelle sold me the remains of her roll at a really, really good price and lent me some paints, brushes, and acrylic medium. Leanna's mother hemmed one edge to make a loop to drape over the crossbar of my backdrop stand. Though the photo shows it in an unfinished state, it's currently drying in my basement with some purple semi-regular cross-hatched pattern embedded with this gold interference stuff. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with it but it looks good . . . I took a test shot of it with fluorescent lighting and I was pleased with the results but I'm not going to post any photos of it until after I have a finished product.

More about the assignment - our class, arranged in groups of four or five students, is to develop an integrated marketing communications plan. I must admit that I haven't really been paying attention in class but I understand that this plan consists of a detailed identification and profiling of potential market segments for a product or service, analysis of a products current or desired placement within a competitive continuum (inexpensive --> expensive, negligible time expenditure --> time intensive, etc.), development of a proposed budget for promotions, and some sample advertising for the product or service. I likely won't be able to contribute much to the more theoretical parts of the project however I sense that I'll be useful when it comes to developing the actual ads for the product. In addition, our group has discussed repackaging of our product and, price permitting I might be able to get one of my good friends to build the new package.

Though this entry is filed under my shoot journal, this entry is really about a shoot held by Robert, a local photographer who shoots models for various projects. He shot four models in my studio on Sunday. I have to say that all shoots went pretty well and there seem to have been some good shots out of the session. Furthermore, Robert is very good at posing his models, keeping on schedule, and keeping a good pace of work and supporting the model's interest in the shoot. However, out of all honesty, I was a bit disappointed with his self-proclaimed "laziness" when it came to setting up lighting and attending to little details. I suppose there are several philosophies when transitioning to digital imaging from film. One is that the transition should make it possible for a good photographer to, with practice, become even better at what he or she does as he or she will have new and more flexible tools along with the addition of instant gratification available to them to develop images for themselves and their clients. Another is that digital photography will allow a shooter to become lazy and still leave with a decent-looking set of shots. Often, "symptoms" of the latter involve disuse of a light meter, malexposure of backgrounds, notice and disregard of details of a shoot that could have been corrected at time of shoot as opposed to during post-processing. Please don't be the latter!

I already had a preformed opinion of three of the four models that Robert shot during his studio session. Of these three, all performed better than I had expected. If any of you three see this entry, good job to you.

I've decided to bid on a lens adapter to allow me to use Hasselblad V-system lenses on Nikon F-mount cameras. The idea is to be able to use high quality medium format lenses on my S2 Pro in hopes of achieving that beautiful bokeh and increased depth that I've seen in photos done using a larger lens. I currently have the standard Hasselblad 80/2.8 Carl Zeiss T* lens (older version). On a full frame camera this lens would work as an 80mm but on the S2 Pro (or any other camera with a 1.5-1.6x crop factor) this lens will have the equivalent focal length of about 120mm. On my Hasselblad 501CM, this lens was not able to magnify enough to fill the frame with a person's face as the minimum focal distance is roughly three feet. You have to remember that an 80mm on a 6x6 camera is the equivalent of a lens with roughly 50mm focal distance on a 35mm full frame camera. Therefore this lens will now perform (at least in theory) with almost 2.5x the effective focal length on my S2 Pro. In other words, if I was getting a full torso and headshot on the 6x6 I'll likely be cropped down to just a headshot from three feet or head and shoulders from about four feet. That would be the distance from which I would normally shoot when in studio.

It looks like my link and banner has been posted up in the official photographers' section of Canada's Top Model's website. I have to admit I was a bit aprehensive about getting my name attached to this event/contest but after seeing another local name attached to the site I decided that it was pretty legitimate. The name of this other photographer is Francis A. Willey of Brightsoul Photography. On top of that, it appears that Canada's Top Model is being co-produced by Model Management International which is a name that I have heard before and they seem to have a good collection of models that they are looking after. There are up to three official photographers chosen per city or town. I'm still waiting to see who the third photographer for Edmonton will be. To be honest, I would liked to have seen Dong as the third photographer but one of the requirements is that the photographer must have some sort of website up for their operation and Dong's isn't up yet. Dude, get your site up!

http://blumchen.space-halo.net/blog.html

The self-degrading comments are sometimes speckled with insight. Check it out. =) I found this link off of One Model Place. The artist has posted an apology to photographers who have contacted her and has stated that she is no longer working in the industry.

She seems to be hosted on a [free?] hosting service, http://www.space-halo.net/. There are some interesting requirements for getting hosting here.

While searching for information on alternative DNG RAW processors I happened upon an interesting blog entry. As distilled by the blog author, an "average" person (whatever that means) has 600 photos and that's expected to go to 3,420 (or 7.2gigs) in five years. The blog owner seems to be well over what's expected to be an average collection in five years. And so am I . . . over 50,000 photos with about a third in Fuji S2 Pro RAF format at 12megs each. That's about 200gigs there. Heheh, most of the people I know have well over 1000 shots in their collections, film or digital.

It's about bedtime . . . all of my homework is done for tonight, both for school and for work. I just finished an e-mail replying to a Saskatchewan-based press photographer. He doesn't appear to have a website yet but once he does set one up I'll link to him. In my e-mail to him I mentioned my decision to purchase the Hasselbad H1 w/ a Kodak DCS Pro Back 645H and my intentions to use it for on-location event coverage like wedding photography and even selected special events. I scoured the internet for more information regarding the use of this digital back for wedding photography outside of a studio but was unable to find anything; it appears that everyone uses this back only for commercial, still life, relaxed portrait, landscape, and other similar, lower-paced work. I hope that my decision to purchase the system in hopes of using it as my primary wedding camera aren't fool-hardy. I've seen forum threads raised where people have complained about the lack of active cooling (built in fan) to keep the sensor cool. I believe that heat build up may affect the level of digital noise introduced into an otherwise grainless capture. Others have complained that the back burns through batteries (50 shots per battery?! Perhaps an older model of the back, as there appear to be two earlier iterations of the back.) Anyhow, this lack of concrete information from a person who actually uses their cameras for location work has inspired me to make writing a comprehensive review of this system over the coming weeks. In this review I shall also explain the reasons why I chose the H1 as my platform for digital adaptation, my lens purchase strategy, and the reasons why I have chosen the Kodak DCS Pro Back 645H instead of any of the offerings of Leaf, Imacon, Phase One, and Sinar. As you may have guessed, price was a big one but there are also other good reasons, many of which can be better attributed to the appearance of alternatives not involving the H1 at all.

I have decided to hold on to my Fuji S2 Pro and my 70-200/2.8 AF-S VR and my 17-55/2.8 AF-S DX lenses though I'm selling my macro, two cords, and my Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED w/ slide feeder to my friend Dong and my 50/1.8 to my friend Huy. Huy was considering the 17-55/2.8 and Dong was considering the 70-200/2.8 AF-S VR but Dong has talked me out of selling my S2 Pro and I'll have to break the news to Huy . . . or he may see this post before I speak with him. Still, the thought of tying up about $20,000 in depreciable capital assets distresses me.

I spoke with a longtime acquaintance from my faculty yesterday. I discussed with him my feelings of displacement and my sense of distance from my peers. I feel that I no longer belong in my school and the need to do something more worthwhile for my time tugs at me with increasing force every time I close my eyes and reflect on what nearly four years of accredited post-secondary education have given me, let alone the financial investment of roughly $30,000 plus a significantly higher figure in opportunity costs I see a dark void which consumes all that surrounds it. Speaking for myself, school has been a pit of fruitlessness and disappointment. I don't learn anything worthwhile in class, my contributions, though appreciated by my peers, are of trivial substance, and I have no respect for the vast majority of my instructors. I keep telling myself that I only have a few months left before I finish my degree. In fact, I could count the weeks if I were so inclined to find out when my last final exam is scheduled. However, I often could not care less for due dates. I find myself poring over technical documents about imaging, maintaining flows of orders with my computer businesses, and largely neglecting my girlfriend. What's ironic is that she is one of those people that told me that it would be more "pathetic" for me to have come so far and not to have gotten my degree than for me to possess a degree and perceive it as a badge of shame and disgrace for having been so stubborn to trudge through four more unrewarding years on top of a few more equally unrewarding years before those. I'm often told that the world belongs to the educated. However, virtually everyone who has told me this has been financially less successful than I already was before finishing highschool and these comments are almost always made in an economic context.