The "Dave Hill" style...

A couple weeks ago Airika and I got to hang out with a few of our photographer friends at Ella Blue's house along with Sarah Rhoads and Yuriy Manchik. We had an absolute blast eating dinner, playing games and of course talking shop. One of the topics of discussion that evening was Dave Hill. He's photographer with a unique style of photography which I can only describe as illustrative; that is, they almost look like cartoons. You should really check out his stuff, it's very original, something which is very hard to come by with the saturation of photographers out there. I've been pretty intrigued by his work ever since I was introduced--mostly because I wanted to figure out how he does it. One thing is for sure, it's not a simple process! From what I can tell, the two main components are the lighting and the post-processing. The lighting is typically a fairly complex studio setup that essentially surrounds the subject with light from every angle. The postprocessing however, seems to be a very closely held secret. A search on the internet will quickly reveal nothing but a lot of other people asking the same question as you.


Anyway, I had a chance to play around with some studio lights that I use at the PRO Sports Club (working on ideas for a future cover shot for the magazine) to see what I could come up with. I actually got with some pretty interesting results--as long as you can get over the goofy look on my face, my silly work uniform, and the fact that I am leaning way forward to trip the shutter on my own. I hope you get a good laugh at my expense. Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of the lighting setup... I will do that next time!





Gerald

Breaking news for GP Photo!

Hey everybody!

I have some exciting news to share with you. Effective March 14th, 2008, I will be working full-time for Gerald Pope Photography! Many of you know that Gerald and I both work "day jobs" outside the home--Gerald as the photographer for the Pro Sports Club and the Pro Pulse magazine in Bellevue, and me as the Program Manager for Fuller Seminary's extension site in Seattle--but our business has been growing so incredibly fast, that it is time for me to "come home!" We are so excited about this for many reasons, but the primary one is that it will allow us to serve our clients and other photographers even better, and give us more opportunity to connect with all of you in"real time."

Over the next few months, I will be intentionally connecting with local wedding vendors (planners, florists, venues, etc.) to find some of the best people in the industry. I am committed to providing all of our clients with an exceptional wedding photography experience with Gerald and I from beginning to end, but I also want to give them/you the resources they need to help make the wedding planning and the wedding day as smooth and enjoyable as possible. If you have any vendors that you would like to recommend, please shoot me an email at airika@geraldpope.com or post a comment here and I will check them out!

We greatly appreciate all of you--our clients and our photographer colleagues--you have played a huge role in helping our business grow so quickly, and we look forward to growing in our relationships with all of you in the future.

Have a wonderful week,

Airika

Beyond the (A) Mode: Dragging the Shutter

This post will be the first in an occasional series that will give you some creative ideas for using your own Digital SLR or Point-and-Shoot camera. I know for a lot of people, turning that little dial on their camera past the "A"(auto) mode can be a little intimidating if you've never been there before, but doing so opens a lot of creative doors for a photographer.

One little trick that I love to play around with, especially when shooting indoors or in a darker environment, is called "dragging the shutter." This is basically when you decrease the shutter speed in your camera to get various blurring effects, while using your flash to illuminate the main subject so that they appear sharp. Here's an example of one that I shot at a wedding two weeks ago...

It is just a fun way to make your subject stand out, while giving the background extra energy and movement.

First you will need to find an appropriate place for this type of shot. An important part of getting this to work is making sure that your subject is backlit, that is, without any major light sources shining on them (from your perspective). The only source of light that you want to hit your subject directly is your flash. Any other lights shining directly them will cause them to appear blurred in the photo.

Next, you need to set up the camera.

Step 1: Set your camera to the "Tv" mode. This is also known as "shutter priority" mode. This mode will let you choose a precise shutter speed. Choose a shutter speed around 1/4 - 1/15 of a second.

Step 2: Turn on your flash.

Step 3: Compose your picture and snap away! You can make the blur effects more interesting by rotating, zooming, or panning the camera as you take the picture.

Now quit reading and go give it a shot!

Gerald

CS3 Photo Merge rocks!

I just loaded up the new Photoshop CS3 last week, and it is pretty incredible! So far my favorite new feature is the updated photo merging tool. Hands down this is the best photo merging software I have ever seen, and I have tried my fair share. Every other photo merging software (that I am familiar with)gives poorly aligned results with blatant discrepancies in brightness between the images that have been stitched together.

Because of this, if you wanted to have a presentable result, you had to spend hours in Photoshop cloning out areas that didn't line up correctly, and doing your best to blend together the lines caused by the differences in brightness. The whole processes is extremely tedious and time consuming.

Those days are gone. Here are the results from a recent engagement session Airika and I shot in Discovery Park in Seattle.
Click on the image to get a larger view...

This particular image was put together from about 10 images, creating a 360 degree view of this tree canapy. Once Photoshop did the hard part, all I had to was crop it and turn it into sepia. 60 seconds of work and I am done!

GP

WTD "Crappyright"

Here is another recent "What the Duck" cartoon from Aaron Johnson...

I love this cartoon! Airika is always getting on me about posting my images here and on my website in such a way that they can be copied and used by other people. Unfortunately there's just no easy way around it unless you make your images uselessly small, or print your name across teh entire image. The only problem is that I want to go big so that you can see every little detail that I have captured without plastering my name all over it. However, this means that anyone can go an take any of the images to use for whatever they like (this is called stealing by the way... and no I did not STEAL this comic, Aaron Johnson gave me permission). When my new website comes out, (soon) it will make stealing the images more difficult, but not impossible.

Anyway, one of the fun little features of this online comic strip is that after it has been posted, readers are welcome to leave comments and suggest names for the comic strip from that day. As it happens, this particular strip was the first one for which my suggested name was chosen...

"Crappyright."

Yes, it's a very exciting day in the history of Gerald Pope Photography.

Gerald

HDR Processing!!!

Here's an illustration of one of the many cool things you can do with Photoshop. I got the effect using a simple technique that produces similar results to what you might get from HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing (see below).

Step 1. Take a picture.

I took this one in Victoria, B.C this past fall. Here are some of the Specifics--1/70th sec, f/7.1, ISO 320, 17-40mm L lens @ 17mm.

One of the most important details for producing this kind of image however, is shooting in the RAW format. The file size will be about 3 times as large, but it allows you to have much more creative freedom later on. As you can see, this image started off very dull and flat...

Step 2: Process the image.

Using RAW conversion software, I boosted the contrast and brightened the image to properly expose the darker foreground area.

Step 3. Process the image again.

This time I darkened the image to accent the dark clouds in the background.

Step 3. Merge the two images.

There are a variety of way to merge these two images in Photoshop, and doing any of them will require at least a basic working knowledge of Photoshop. Here's the simplest way to do it.

Open both versions of the image. In the layer pallet, grab one of the images, and drag it onto the other image. Make sure the layers are properly alligned, then simply delete the area of the top layer that you do not want in the final image. If the darker photo is on top, then delete the areas of the photo that you want to be lighter. This will reveal the brightened version underneath. Tada! You can also use a layer mask to hide the unwanted areas of each layer, but that would take more time to explain... time that I would prefer to spend sleeping.

Goodnight,

Gerald

The last last Thursday

Ok, this is the last time I'll mention last Thursday. I promise.
...As soon as the bicycle photo shoot was over, I rushed into Seattle to meet Airika at Janet Klinger's photography studio for a get together with some other local photographers. The highlight of the evening was the speaker that Janet invited, Jonathan Ross. He owns a local stock photography business, and he is amazing! The process his team goes through to produce stock images really opened my eyes. From creating shot lists, to finding locations, to getting releases, to studio setup, to finding models--he has perfected the process to make his shoots highly efficient. The amount of planning that goes into one day of shooting is truly mind boggling!

Ever since last Thursday, I've been thinking a lot about what he said. Photojournalism is truly at the heart of my style, and something inside me cringes at the thought of putting together a shot list/meticulously planning every detail out. That would involve thinking ahead about what I want, writing it down, and when the time comes, manipulating the scene to portray what I am looking for. The whole process depends on me interjecting myself into the situation to get what I want--and it seems that this would be a far cry from "documenting events as they unfold."
Nevertheless, there was a lot that I was able to glean from Jonathan's stock photography process. I've realized that there's even more I can do to prepare for the shoots I do at the PRO Club.

When I shoot weddings, I have the freedom to let my photojournalistic style shine. My assignments are very different at the PRO club, and often involve everything from portraits, to head shots, to activities, to products, to architecture, to food, to just about anything else you can imagine. In those situations, something as simple as thinking through a shot list beforehand can go a long way in freeing up your creative juices to focus on important things like framing, lighting, interacting with your model, etc. rather than worrying about thinking up another creative idea for the next shot. I am anxious to work on this over the next couple of weeks to see how it will affect my work...

All that to say, last Thursday was a long day, but a good one.

Goodnight,
Gerald

Adobe Suite CS3!!!

Tomorrow is an exciting day! Adobe is launching the newest version of the Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, etc.), and we are going to buy it! It will be launched tomorrow in New York at 3:30, and if you are so inclined, you can watch this launch live with tens of other supremely introverted, reclusive, and debilitatingly geeky Photoshop freaks by following this link--click here.
I don't know. To an extent I am a little interested in finding out what could possibly be so interesting about this launch that it would justify a live launch. But then I come to my senses and remember that I have a life.
In any case, I am actually excited to get this software, and in particular, InDesign. It's the best software available for creating layouts for things like Wedding albums, which I will be doing a lot of this year...
That's all for now,

Gerald

DIY Macro Studio

I found these instructions this past week for building your own macro photography studio (little light box) for photographing small objects. Since I needed to take pictures of a few products at at my day job (at the PRO Sports Club), I decided to give it shot to see how well it worked. I was actually quite impressed, and the best part--I was able to build it with stuff I had availble in the office!

Here's a shot of what it should look like... mine does not look this good.


Here's a few of the shots I took with it...

Have a great day!

Gerald

Latest Wedding

Editing the photos is by far the most time consuming part of photography, but it's always exciting to finish up and show the Bride and Groom their pictures! For the last couple events I have been using a brand new program called Adobe Lightroom. Like all new software it still has a few kinks to be worked out, but all in all it's an incredible program that has helped me organize and streamline my workflow. It also offers some powerful photo editing/processing and RAW conversion capabilities.

This wedding was at the Lakeside on Lake Union in Seattle. It rained pretty much the entire day (of course), except for about an hour while we were doing pictures outside! Here are a couple of our favorites...

Gerald

Usage Rights

Usage Rights

Thank you for visiting our blog! While we're quite flattered that you appreciate our photos, please keep in mind that they cannot be used or reproduced without our written permission.

Thank you for understanding.

Airika & Gerald Pope