Spring Quarter's End

I have no idea why this past quarter has been so shitty.  It was pretty much a general consensus that my classmates and I had a very creatively crappy 11 weeks.

Although they were not of the highest caliber, there were some lessons learned and new techniques acquired that will serve me well in the quarters to come.

From my Advanced Lighting class, we started with a gradated background and a simple product shot:

This was supposed to be a shot where we were to "sell" the product in some way that was flattering and appropriate to the subject.  Since these are Magic: the Gathering cards, and the cards above the pack are cards dealing with 'flying,' I thought this wholly appropriate.  The instructor, however, thought differently, and I had to reshoot...

The above was the result of the reshoot.  The first image is to be black and white, but because I wasn't approved for its go-ahead, I left it the way it was, in color.  The second shot was approved and it went forward.  

Assignment Two was the black on black image that was supposed to be something 'interesting' that would be cool to see in a black on black setting.  I wanted to keep things in the genre that I have been working with for a while now and take the focus away from boring boxes. I previously posted the image in an earlier blog entry, but here it is again for your viewing pleasure:

Though meeting the criteria of the shoot, technically, the instructor wasn't happy with the content of the image and wanted a reshoot to be done.  He found the most nit-pickiest of flaws to call for a new image to be created.  It was then that the nail was driven into the coffin for the final time.  I wouldn't be doing any arguing on my behalf, I would do as I was told and move on.  A reshoot followed:

Here is the result of THAT reshoot.  A very interesting box that was well-lit and a black on black epitome of quadrangular perfection.  Much better than the first image, don't you agree?

Assignment Three was that watch shoot that had us dealing with shiny specular parts of the watch with the pesky glass parts.  I made sure I did *exactly* what was required.  The watch was set at the exact time required, and I set it up on a very manly leather background, propped up on the backbone of a moose from Alaska.  It was quite dead and picked clean when we found it near a glacier.  We deduced the moose was hit by a semi and killed by the side of a highway near the national park where we saw how far back the glacier had receded.

This particular image was allowed to move forward without a reshoot!  Yeay!

Assignment Four was to be a shot of silverware where the fork was the main focus of the shot.  it had to be set up with a particular template layout and look very shiny!  This was my input for that particula assignment:

Needless to say it wasn't good enough.  I had to reshoot this image because the fork had a grey area on the belly of it.  So off to the studio I went not too much later to reshoot the image...

So there it is - the image that made it through.  Notice there is no grey on the fork at all, and it is very shiny!  There was an issue with the image because it lacked enough styling.  There was nothing that stated there was to BE styling, but that's the nature of the way we were given assignments...

Assignment Five was a portrait using a background light, a hair light, a key light and a fill light (which was to be a card to bounce the light from the key light).  The key light could be directly in front of the model (butterfly lighting), at 30º of the model (loop lighting), 45º of the model (Rembrandt lighting) or 90º of the model (split lighting).  I chose Rembrandt lighting for my image because I like the way that looks.  Here was my first attempt:

This, of course, wasn't good enough.  It was too dark and the hair light wasn't right because it lit part of the model's forehead.  So, after a bit of regrouping, I went back to the studio and reshot.

This was the result of the reshoot.  It did come out a lot better, I must say.  With ever redo I was learning some sort of nuance that I didn't have in my toolbox from the first shoots.

Assignment Six was to be a challenge since it was an outdoor portrait with lots of caveats.  I did have a pretty good place to do the outdoor image for myself, and I thought I executed it pretty well...

This was done in a kind of nasty part of town, near the highway and between downtown and an older part of the city that is very 'colorful' to say the least.  This image, of course, wasn't to the instructor's liking, and was said to be under exposed.  I just agreed and looked for another image in my list of images taken that day that would be closer to what he wanted, since going back out to do a reshoot would have been impossible.  Finals were looming and there was a lot of work in other classes that needed attention as well.

This was the image I selected for the 'reshoot.'  It was accepted though the sun was in the model's face, and the fill light wasn't right, leaving a shadowed gap between the light of the sun and the light of the strobe. Oh well - I knew it was not the proper image that time, but I was pressed for time and availability of equipment, so...  I took what I got and was happy to have it.

The last assignment was to take what we had learned and come up with an image that demonstrated our accumulated knowledge of lighting in an advanced manner - on a metal, specular (shiny) object.  It was to be a creative shoot that could be used in an advertisement or catalogue.  Here is what I turned in:

I titled this "Gun Safety Announcement."  I used what I learned from the silverware shoot, plus my modest abilities in Photoshop to create the image above.  There really wasn't that much in the way of Photoshopping done to the image.  I had a few shots with the gun bathed in red light like it was being reflected from an ambulance, as well as a few images done with a blue light like there were police cars present.  All I did was add the blue light onto the red lit gun to create what you see there. The concrete sidewalk was actually just a 16" x 16" slab from Home Depot.  They also had the caution tape.  I got kid's sidewalk chalk from Office Max to make the hand outline.  The revolver is my own and quite legal, thank you very much.

It was met with quite a bit of praise and verbal accolades.  Seems like I did a good job of 'telling a story' with my image.  See, this is the stuff that I want to get into - editorial photography.

I had other classes that were challenges, including Photojournalism, Psychology, Digital Illustration II (the images of which I will post later), and Alternative Processes I where I learned to create images with chemistry on cool papers.  I'll post those in a future blog post as well.  I really liked those classes, but they were overshadowed by Advanced Lighting - the frustration which I displayed above.

I *was* given the chilling warning that I need to step up my game.  I took this very much to heart, and have already vowed (internally, of course) to take the old motto from the shelf I placed it on after an admired colleague left school to pursue a life in our 50th state: "Go big or go home."

Well, now it's the summer break, and I intend to take the motto of the past and revive it.  I'll share the fruits of my labors once Summer Quarter rolls forward.

Thanks for reading until now.  I appreciate your patience...  :D