10 Favorites from 2012

It has been forever since my last blog update, so I feel that it would be proper to post an end-of-year top 10 to recap some of the work that I've been doing:

To this day, I still consider this photograph one of my best overall images - light, pose, composition, setting, all came together for this instant.  On camera right is a reflective umbrella with two speedlites providing the one main light.  Outside of the frame, and also on camera right, I had his mom and my assistant hold a white sheet to diffuse the sunlight.

I don't often shoot ambient light, so it's sometimes tough for me to realize when to put down the speedlites and modifiers.  The soft light fits perfectly with their embrace...I couldn't see it working better any other way.  Also, finding this location came about through simply getting out of the car, and chatting it up with the locals.  Otherwise, I might have driven past this spot a hundred times without ever noticing, and recognizing its potential - it has since become a go-to for my couples portraits.

This photograph is from my first engagement session.  When planning any session, I always come with at least one new idea to try out - one 'go for broke' kind of shot, and this was what I had in the back of my mind.  We attempted three leaps, with the photograph above resulting from the third attempt.  For the set-up, I slightly underexposed the ambient while front-lighting the couple with a pair of speedlites camera left.  I feel that there a perfect amount of motion blur (from the ambient settings) combined with their expressions frozen by the flash.

The summer months were a bit slow as far as work was concerned, but I think that a lot of families were simply waiting for the magic of the Southwest in fall.  This was from near a location that I knew well, but had not ventured back along the paths very far until I location scouted for this family.  It always pays to have an understanding of where the sun will be at a given time of day, because otherwise you'll have a group of people waiting around for that 'best light!'  To that end, this session was planned around the movement of sun across the sky catching the best light in each location as the two hour session progressed.

From the same session, but taken later in the day, back to the location that I knew transforms beautifully just prior to sunset.  If you're photographing the fall leaves, there is a tremendous difference between leaves that are front-lit (with the sun behind you), and ones that are side or back-lit (shooting into the sun).  There's a glow about them that simply cannot be matched. 

Along the same lines as the black and white couple portrait above, it never hurts to chat it up with the locals about potential portrait locations...especially since so many great spots are privately owned!  This photograph came about after purchasing a bag of apples from a local couple's roadside apple stand, mentioning that I'm always on the look out for new locations, and them inviting me over.  The timing could not have been better, as only a week later a frost hit and most of the leaves and apple were gone.    

As evidenced in a lot of my work, I rely heavily on the dramatic light that is created by shooting into a setting sun and then front lighting the subjects with off-camera speedlites or strobes.  This is especially useful out at White Sands National Monument, as the ridges in the dunes only reveal themselves with low-angled light.  At any other time of day (other than sunrise, of course), the dunes will photograph very flat and featureless.

When brainstorming for this session, what started out as an indoor studio product shoot for the steampunk corset, soon progressed into an on-location session based upon a story line.  It was my first time attempting to tell a story through a series of photographs, and with that mindset, really helped me guide the models and progress the theme.  Of course, mother nature lent a hand with one of the most brilliant sunsets I have yet witnessed here in the Southwest - a perfect aesthetic for the hero and heroine.  

Hopefully one day I will have a 'method' named after me, but until then, here's an example of what can be achieved using the Brenizer Method.  This is actually a composition of 27 separate files, combined in Photoshop, to create a wide-angle photograph with an impossible-to-otherwise-achieve depth of field.

As 2012 comes to a close, I am reminded (in this photograph especially), that it is not always about perfect light, perfect pose with everyone smiling and looking a the camera...that most times it's those off-guard moments that reflect best who we are as people, as families, as partners in life.  And, isn't that what portraiture is all about?

A big thank you once again to everyone who has supported me...here's to a happy, and healthy new year!

~Michael

White Sands Family Portrait

The one photograph that gets referenced most when folks call me about getting family photos done is this one (click images for a closer look):

A fellow photographer, and friend, asked me recently for a few tips on the creation process behind it...and I'm finally getting around to writing it up.  So here's the long story short: add perfect weather, time of day, a couple off-camera lights, a bit of Photoshop magic, a coordinated family, and presto!

Now, for the long version...

This is actually my first "cold call" customer - one where the mom landed on my Google Place page, liked what she saw, and contacted me for a family session.  Up to this point, I had not done any White Sands family sessions, and all my 'clients' so far were friends from work.

Once I was contacted, I dragged Ally and Sheba out to White Sands to do some practice shots - just getting comfortable with balancing my lights with the ambient.  In essence, it all revolves around the "look" that Annie Leibovitz pioneered, where you slightly underexpose the environment, and slightly overexpose the subject, in order to make them "pop."  This is an example from the test shoot:

So, getting back to the family, we had rescheduled several times leading up to this day (I think she first called in May?).  One thing or another would prevent us from heading out to White Sands, but one day in late July, everything worked out and we met at the visitor's center around 6pm (sunset this time of year is around 8-ish).  From there, I was planning on heading out to a fairly distant location, away from people, and full of the big swooping dunes.

Unfortunately, I was a little too enamored with the incredible skies that day, and missed the transition from 45mph down to 35mph.  I subsequently got pulled over by a park ranger getting ready to do the sunset stroll, just a mile or so into the park.  I didn't get a ticket, but lost quite a bit of time in the process - ask Ally, I was freaking out the whole time: new clients, a perfect sky, and I couldn't do anything but sit and wait!!!

Because of the delay, I scrapped the original plans to head deep into the park, and just got out where I was pulled over...I had no idea what this area would look like over the dune blocking the view, but I didn't care - I had to get that family out there before the sun got too low!  We climbed out of our cars, up over the dune, and to my relief, there wasn't a soul around, and the view was perfect...better, actually, than what I had planned.

This shot was created pretty early in the session...pretty simple, just have the family walk and look towards me.  The set up involved two bare speedlites on stands about 10 feet away from my left side.  To get the sky and sand exposed properly, I metered off of the clouds - I figured that a "0" in-camera meter reading would give me a slightly underexposed landscape due to the bright parts of the clouds and sky, and resulted in 1/200, f/6.3, and ISO100 camera settings.  That aperture setting, coupled with a 35mm focal length, I knew that I would have a large depth of field, and most of the scene would be in relatively sharp focus.  Of course the sun would be "blown out," but I chose to include it in the image because you just don't get weather like this every day out at White Sands!

The two speedlites were set to full power, and were about 15 feet away from the subjects.  I knew that I would need a lot of light to balance the people and landscape, but to be completely honest, the light settings were an educated guess, after a few practice shots.  Also, I placed the family on a ridge line to better mask any shadows that might be created by the speedlites - I was able to reduce them in the final image, but you can notice them in the original file, with default RAW settings applied:

Once opened in Adobe Camera Raw, I knew I had a great image on my hands, but it could gain from a bit of added contrast - most of which would come later in Photoshop.  In ACR, my exposure was spot on, but I did add a touch of fill light, raised the black level a smidge, added +36 of clarity (which simply adds more contrast in the mid-tones), and the tone curve was given a shallow "S."  That's it for ACR.

Now, moving to Photoshop, I imported the file and ran a custom action that is based off of a lomo photography tutorial that I found on the web, but tweaked for my own use.  In it, I add a layer via copy, do a global curves adjustment (slight "S" again), fill a new top layer with black, change the mode to hue, and adjust opacity to 40% - this gives the image a slight desaturation/silver kind of look.  Next, I merge all layers, change the mode to Lab, select the Lightness channel, throw on a good bit of unsharp mask, then convert back to RGB color.  This is what adds the "punch" to the image - high contrast all around, but especially in the mid-tones without affecting the color saturation.

If you notice, the dad's head is turned differently, and the daughter isn't quite smiling.  These two elements were grabbed from another file and composited into the image.

Finally, a touch of dodging brush was used on the family's faces - it's a tool I don't use any more, since there are less destructive methods of doing the same thing through the use of a curves layer and masking.

The final result works perfectly against the high contrast lines in the sand, the broken clouds and the family's wardrobe.  In the end, it was a perfect confluence of subject, location, weather, lighting technique, and post-processing that I feel makes this image really stand out from the crowd.

These Photos are Junker

This was a fun one...a faux fashion/product shoot with some friends who have interesting clothing.  A majority of the items are from Junker Designs, who in my opinion, needs some better imagery for their wares than what they already have (basically, they don't do their products justice!)...but, then again, they're outfitting people like Steven Tyler and Xtina, so who am I to critique!?

As you may have seen already, I'm going to school for photography.  One of the things that constantly gets drummed into our heads is to find our own voice, our own signature style through the lens.  I'll be the first to admit that I am not breaking any new ground with these shots...in fact, I'm treading dangerously on very cliched post-processing and lighting technique waters here.  But, I wanted to at least give this technique a go and hopefully make some progress from it.

While the lights were moved around and adjusted in power, they pretty much stayed in the same general position during the whole shoot - one on-axis reflecting umbrella for front fill, two kickers on either side of the subject, and one against the back brick wall.  My camera settings did not change: 5D, 50mm (nifty fifty), 8.0, 1/160.  I included a before and after post-processing example to show the extreme difference maxing some sliders in ACR can make...for the most part, Clarity plays the biggest part in the "look."

So that's all, just wanted to put something out there since I haven't updated the blog in awhile - school started again, so while that is taking up my time, I should be making some great, fresh work this spring, so stay tuned!

Oh, and everything is copyright Photography by Michael Grados...I may be a photography student, but I've got the funds to track you down and sue if you use without permission and compensation.  You've been warned!

My First Infant Photoshoot - "Explosivo!"

Well, just like in the first post where I proclaimed that I would never shoot families or small kids...I had my first photoshoot with an infant.  12 days old to be exact.  We did a bunch of 'safe' shots, in front of a white background, very angelic-like.  My 'big' idea was to have dad, without a shirt, hold his 12 day old daughter - sans diaper - against his chest.

By this time in the shoot (about an hour into it) the kid had already spit-up, peed on a blanket, and dropped #2 (at least the latter was into a diaper), so I figured we were good to go as far as any fluid output was concerned.

The set-up here is just one speedlite through an umbrella camera right and slightly high.  They have an excellent sun room with pure white walls that allowed for some good bounce from any spill.  The background is just a white shower curtain, which I brightened up a bit in Ps, but didn't put any extra light on.  Pretty minimal all-in-all.

So, the moment comes for the dad and daughter shot...the tripod is set in place, focus is set, everything is good to go.  At this point my main concern was focus and composition, so I really wasn't paying much attention to any specific action going on - just the big-picture stuff.  I guess Murphy's law then kicked in milliseconds prior to me releasing the shitter, I'm mean shutter:

It was the one and only shot I got of my 'big' idea.

Here's two you can cleanse your eyes with:

So, in the end, I now have a new found respect for those that specialize in photographing infants.  If you're in the Alamogordo area, you have an infant, and you'd like to have portraits done of said infant, I would give a shout to Living Dreams Photography.  It's a dirty job...I'll stick with the three year olds!