2009 May

Archive for May, 2009

back to the country

by AFS on May.17, 2009, under cameras, lighting & technique

Finally went back to the farm in upstate NY, shot for a magazine which is launching this fall…

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finally, the workshops!

by AFS on May.15, 2009, under lighting & technique, lighting workshops

The Work In Progress Photography Seminars are finally here!

The first two one-day workshops were held on Saturdays: July 11 and August 22, 2009. We focused on creating great lighting, composition, working with art directors, hair and makeup artists, models, etc.

I didn’t want this thing to get too boring, so we’ll be working in the amazing Metropolitan Building in NY, where the likes of Steven Meisel, Paolo Roversi, Diego Uchitel, Patrick Demarchelier, Annie Leibovitz, and Me have all worked

We’ll be shooting on one of these two floors:

Second Floor

Third Floor

Here are a few of the tear sheets from the Met Bldg’s promo materials:

http://www.metropolitanbuilding.com/tearsheets/index.html

And here are a few of my advertising images from the Metropolitan Bldg:

So here’s the plan:

There will be a maximim of 5 participants. The format will be fairly loose. I want you to get as much out of it as possible – and to that extent we will be doing what you all want to do the most. The space is huge so we will have plenty of space to spread out. I’ll be concentrating on using daylight and mixing it with strobes, bounce cards, gels, etc. Also discussed will be the pluses and minuses of front lighting, back lighting, side lighting, strobe, tungsten, modeling lights, and such.

So bring your cameras, tripods for sure because it can be a little dark in there, laptops if you want, small reflectors, and whatever else you like to work with.

And since we’ll be in New York, I will also have guest Art Directors/Makeup artists/Stylists who have worked on assignments for Vogue Italia, Kate Spade, Prada, Bergdorf Goodman, Victoria’s Secret, Surface, Allure, New York Times, etc. So part of the day will feel like a real assignment, because it sort of will be

We will also be using models from Ford Models, New York Models, and elsewhere.

[In case you are wondering if I know what I am doing, well...er...sort of

Actually, I do have a lot of teaching experience, including teaching photography at Parsons School of Design in New York as well as in Paris. I was also the Assistant Chair of the Photo department there for a number of years.]

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Cost of this workshop is $495 per person for the way, which covers: the space, lighting, models, make-up artists, breakfast and lunch. Not included are lodging and transportation.

PayPal e-check is the preferred method of Payment. If you want to pay by regular PayPal or PayPal Credit Card, please add in $14.85 (3%) to help cover the PayPal processing fee. When sending payment, please specify the date of the workshop which you would like to attend. Cancellation must be made 15 days prior to the workshop day in order to receive a refund. Payment should be sent to ron at ron purdy dot com. Also, any questions you may have can be sent to the above e-mail address, or posted in the comments section of this post and I will reply.

~AFS

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one light wonders: a magazine + video shoot with just one light

by AFS on May.03, 2009, under cameras, lighting & technique

So I am posting some unedited video clips from an editorial shoot from last year for SOMA magazine. The still shots have been on my photo web site for some time, and were in the 2008 Fall Fashion issue of the magazine. Theses will hopefully give some idea as to the lighting setup. I like to keep it simple, and on this particular day I used one light only. The lighting seen here is a Profoto strobe pack with one head inside of a 4×6 softbox with the two baffles removed, in order to give it a hard shadow – hopefully resembling sunlight. The model is one of my favorites – Juliana Imai at Ford Models. The assistant and video shooter was Arturo Sanchez. (we shot the video on a whim, as I had a Canon G9 sitting on my desk at the time…) Anyway, as I said, it’s unedited, a little jerky, and loud…but you can also see some of the excitement which can occasionally he had when you’ve got the right crew. (To be sure, most of my shoots are not quite as fun as this one was…)

Camera used for the stills was a Canon 1Ds mark III and lenses were the 85mm 1.2 and the 50mm 1.4.

(Of course, since we happened to be shooting video for all the web to see, the studio looks a shambles! But some of that mess is needed as you will read below…)

In these clips you can see the big black soft box to camera right, there are a couple black boards on the floor which are there to soak up some of the light so the shadows on the wall will go deeper black. Also, the black board on camera left at the back of thet set is there to make all of the shadows deeper – as we are in a small studio with white walls and a white ceiling, it’s very difficult to get dark shadows without the ugly black foam core boards scattered throughout

The below image is a fuzzy video still showing my setup for the SOMA shoot. Click it to enlarge it so you can read the labels which explain why the set is so cluttered