Sunday, October 5, 2008

Wedding of the Teapot Clown: Fantasy or Reality


This is a photo from a wedding I shot recently. The Groom is actually in the background. The Clown is entertaining at the wedding.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Close up "Helicopter seed in Motion"


This is an extreme close-up of a seed we like to call the "helicopter" because of it's ability to navigate, with a helicopter motion, away from its source. When you photograph something this close it's impossible to capture motion and critcal focus at the same time (and forget about background elements being where they should be.) A shot like this has to be manufactured using Photoshop. In my studio using close-up diopters, I photographed a close up of the seed, critically focusing. I used a studio flash to get a translucent image of the seed. I also used aluminum foil as a lens hood to fill the front of the seed with light. The background was black.

Then I cut out the seed by removing the black background and proceeded to layer on the effects. The background tree canopy rendered out of focus with Gausian blur, about 20 layers of "seed motion" and then the seed itself. Lastly I flattened the image and accentuated the sun glare using paint brush so that it washed all the layers.