Photographies Number 1.

I'm going to start posting my photos on this blog.



I've only recently felt like I'm starting to get better. The initial learning curve was big, but for the last year or so I've been a bit stagnate. To be honest, I felt like I've gone backwards. It seems like the things I've learnt in the last year or so have actually introduced constraints that I was free from before I knew, it seems like I can't quite get back.


So, I want to record where I am and I how I get to wherever it is I'm going photographically.



Writing about it will hopefully enforce lessons learnt.


Ideally, because of the below post, I would like to become a half IT guy/half photographer guy so I'm aiming to get to a point where people would totally pay me money to take photos of them.


One thing that has held me back has been my choice in models. I've always chosen models who have fairly shabby portfolios so that anything I produce for them is exciting in comparison. While this has been good ego-wise, it's been terribly learning-wise because it's hard to learn off people less experienced than you. I have no contact with other photographers and am heaps not good at absorbing words via internets. Mainly I've been learningby trial and error, but my photographic excursions have been too few and far between to retain learnings.


That all ends right now. Forevs or similar.


Below is Kat. She's an experienced model, totally hilars and is very willing to share what she knows. This photo is as is, straight out of the camera.


She taught me about hotspots.
I had heard the term but didn't really understand.

Say you're taking a photo of friends on a night out. Looking back, you might notice that their nose, or their forehead or their elbow has a bright white spot on it from the flash. While this is usually okayish, if I'm going to be ace, I have to try and eliminate hotspots.

One way is by further diffusing the light (softbox, bouncing it, moving it further away) and another way is by putting translucent powder on the model. If the skin is a little shiny (which happens quick under lights) then the shiny bits will pick up hotspotsmuch more than the not shiny bits. Powder fixes this.

I did the makeup in this shot. I was aiming for natural looking makeup because she had a casting straight afterwards.

The foundation didn't go great, I put it on two heavily in parts and too sparse in others. Evens Stevens is so the goal in so many makeups.

I totally forgot to contour the face and to highlight just below the eyebrow.

I also feel like the colour of the lipstick didn't fit the 'natural' brief,too bright, too pink.

Things I'd do differently:

- Pay more attention so that the black dress or jacket don't fade into thebackground.

- Think more about colours to fit the brief.

- Make my own dagnam decisions makeup-wise instead of asking my model everystep of the way.

- Do the makeup faster, 1 hour 30 minutes is not going to get me any gigs.