These are some of the pictures from UCMO’s Three Musketeers production. My fiance, Isaac, helped me shoot production photos. He took the wide shots, while I used the telephoto lens. I’ve often found that it is helpful to work with him on these photoshoots—it helps speed up the time and also keeps me from carrying two cameras or switching back and forth between lenses.
Flickr Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157626923685400/show/
Filed under Client Work
These are some of the front of house pictures I took for UCMO theatre department’s production of The Three Musketeers. It was an excellent show, and both me and my fiance thoroughly enjoyed it. With its comedy interspersed between the tragedy, and fun-to-watch swordplay involved, The Three Musketeers has been one of my favorite productions to watch at UCMO.
Production Photos and stage combat practice photos coming soon.
Flickr Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157626923364684/show/
Filed under Client Work
Sometime a light doesn’t work. Or it comes with a missing screw when you go to attach it to the backstand. Or the chord’s too short, and you switch that chord out for the one in the bag with the non-working light. Either way, backups are useful, and when you don’t have two lights, it gets time to be creative with one light.
During class we worked in groups to take pictures of each other for a couple hours. We were supposed to use a hair light, but seeing as we didn’t have the second light, we tried positioning each other on ambient light and against windows and reflections.
I had a large part of my fun in the editing process– playing with harsh light versus soft light can have very different results.
Flickr Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157626415138428/show/
Filed under Advanced Color Portrait 2011
Last weekend I asked Joe and Cherise if they were interested in being the couple for my assignment. Luckily it turned out that we had great weather on Saturday, and the lighting was perfect for what I wanted (long shadows, warm lights). We went out to the park on Holden and Lion’s Lake, starting around 4:30pm. I was particularly interested in the light I expected to come at around 5:10 pm, and it came as hoped.
I also brought along Isaac, my fiance, as photo-assistant, as well as a Canon 580ex Flash. (Which I had read the manual just before the shoot). I built a softbox out of white posterboard and wax paper (Isaac’s idea for the wax paper diffuser) and put that on the flash. While the flash worked, it was nice lighting. Unfortuanetly something caused the LCD to start flickering and it stopped firing, so I had to put it away after the first few poses. It was nice while it lasted. Over Spring Break I plan to learn more about how to use it.
Anyways, these are the resulting pictures, using Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2.
Flickr Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157626280849202/show/
Filed under Advanced Color Portrait 2011
For my Advanced Color Portrait class, we needed to use a beauty light. So I checked out a beauty dish from the photo checkout, and used my own alien bees and fabric backdrops (held up by ducttape, safety pins, and a curtain rod). I talked my friend Kel into being a model, and after the last face paint I did, decided to try something a bit more light hearted. I wanted to include some digital editing, so I used textures and a couple other techniques. In the meantime I had the song, “Butterfly” by Smile.dk stuck in my head the entire time I was working on these pictures.
Flickr Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157626069901626/show/
Song that inspired this shoot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_qwUS8Uqjg
Filed under Advanced Color Portrait 2011
In my materials and processing class, our last assignment was refraction- showing bending light waves and such. I wound up shooting dice in a champagne glass filled with water for the assignment, then made it into an advertisment/public service announcement.
After hearing a couple of friends talking about how much money they spent getting drunk and partying (and basically acting stupid), I decided it was time to create an anti-drinking poster. This was the result.
It started out with a class assignment to create refraction- the bending of light. Notice how the bottom dice looks bigger and in strange proportion to the others? They are actually all the same size, sitting in a glass of water with sunlight shining on them. Note, aside from basic levels adjustments and sharping, I only edited the text. The dice have not been digitally edited.
Filed under Materials and Processing 2011, Personal Work
These are a few of the production photos I took for University of Central Missouri’s production of The Birds. Due to the nature of multiple things happening on stage at once and the use of acrobatics (the birds flew across the stage, meaning that even certain staged shots had to be moving), I asked Dr. Mollenkamp (the director), if my fiance, Isaac Flint, could help me out in shooting these production shots. Since he’s more familar with the Rebel XS, I shot with the 30D. I gave him the shorter lens, letting him take the wider, full scene shots, whereas I went for the more troublesome closeups. I think about thirty of the hundred-some pictures I turned in to the threatre were shot by him.
To see all hundred-something photos of the colorful performance, see the my Flickr slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157625754405596/show/
Filed under Client Work
These are the front of house photos I took for University of Central Missouri’s production of The Birds. The play was directed by Professor Mollenkamp, and was their first enviromental play. The costumes and staging was all recycled or reused, and the audience sat in the round to watch the acrobatic antics as the story unfolded. I used the on-camera flash, covered with a piece of clear plastic to soften it for the tech photos, and alien bees for the cast photos.
I intend to upload the production photos in the next couple of days.
Flickr Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157625612759777/show/
Filed under Client Work
One of the last assignments in my Origins of Photography class was to emulate a photographer. We were told to choose three photos that we were interested in trying to emulate, and the teacher signed off on one or two of the photos. Once we knew which photo we were doing, it was our job to make a photograph as similar as possible to the original one.
One of the requirements was that we had to show a before and after- or if using a lot of Photoshop, we needed to show the unmanipulated photo. I chose a photo by Colin Anderson (http://colinanderson1.wordpress.com/), because I like his style and the science-fiction/adventure illustrations he has created appeals to the type of work I would like to be able to do.
His Original:
My Emulation:
All of The Photos Used:
The point of the assignment was to be able to carefully scrutinize a photograph to study lighting, poses, placement, color, and any number of things. In general, it was not expected that we would be able to perfectly replicate the photograph. And in any case, it is not meant to be an infringement on copyright, only a learning tool. The things that I learned in this process were how to previsualise, along with gaining a better understanding of digital painting in combination with photography.
First of all, I looked at each part of the image and decided how I would get the picture, or where. All of the images needed to be our own work. For the car, there is a hill overlooking a parking lot, which I wandered by several times until I found a car that looked close enough for my purposes. I took a few different shots of it from different angles to achieve the needed angle. For the model, I started her off in the basic pose, then slowly worked up to the actual photo in the picture. This turned out to be a really good exercise in direction, a skill I’m weak at. It also turned out to be a learning point in Photoshop CS5, when I discovered that the puppet tool allows you to move the subject matter in a realistic fashion to obtain the final pose you need. I never did get the back leg quite right, however. One of my favorite things to play with was the fire- which was done using digital painting techniques and a Wacom tablet. Her armor is also made using digital painting, and the overall image underwent a number of layers with blending modes to try to achieve the finished image.
There are still a number of issues that I can see with the final image I created that keeps it from being at the level of Colin Anderson’s work. A lot of that comes from a need to practice more with Photoshop, and to learn more techniques that will finalize the image. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this assignment, as it forced me to test the boundaries of what I can do in an image while learning new Photoshop skills.
Photos posted with Colin Anderson’s permission.
Filed under Origins of Photography 2010
Last semester I took Advanced Digital Imaging along with Creative Photography. Somehow I neglected to ever actually post any of the images I created on Flickr or WordPress, so, since I’m due to make another blog post this week, here are images that I edited or created during Advanced Digital Imaging with Wilson Hurst. (You can see more pictures on my Flickr account).
Flickr Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157624408578277/show/
Filed under Advanced Digital Imaging 2010
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 