Riding Steady

I finally got a really good chance to take some portraits in the studio last week. I am not sure if it looks like it at first, but a lot of thought went into these images. Once again I shot Steady, a local rapper that is on a mission.

Me and Steady work good together, seeing as how we are both trying to make it in our respective areas.

The thought behind each of these photos,definitely centers around the background. In a photo you have to find ways to be verbal. I decided to take the more literal approach and have Steady just paint the background with lyrics, song titles and really anything he wanted to say.

At first I wanted him to wear a suit or something, but after running around to countless thrift stores and finding no suit, I decided that letting him choose the outfit would be good. After looking at the photos, I am pretty happy with what he wore. It is very hip hop and very Steady.

The paint brush in is hand is trying to signify that he is fresh. I want to make the connection that he just painted the background, which he did. This is a young man with a hole hell of a lot to say, and I hope that is conveyed.

The door is an obvious symbol that he is trying to break through. I originally wanted an old antique wingback chair, but that was also very hard to find. I came upon this door and just fell in love with the idea. It was a pain in the a** to drag it up to the fourth floor and it eventually fell apart once i got it into the studio, but I am liking this photo more and more.

In all the photos, I really wanted to portray Steady as a young rapper who is on the upside of things. He just came out with a mixtape and is constantly trying to push his name. I wanted to show that he is serious about what he is doing. By writing on the background and him having a very serious face, I wanted to show that he just isn't talking but is actually saying something.

This was one of the first big shoots I've done, where I have invested a good amount of money and time. It took us about two hours to set up and shoot, plus all the time it took to find the materials. I am still unsure if it was worth it yet, I guess I'll leave that up to you.

Help a brother out

The more clicks Harvey gets the better. Also check out his other videos to catch up on what's happening at San Jose State.

Portaits

It's been a while since I have been blogging, school and work are catching up with me. But I had an interesting assignment not this week for the Spartan Daily. I was assigned to take portraits of two photographers, Valerie Mendoza and Kirkman Amyx. Mendoza is an instructor at SJSU, while Amyx is a graduate student.

I am not always sure what to expect when I am shooting a photo of a fellow photographer. Sometimes I expect them to be picky and kind of like a backseat photographer. But both of my subjects were nothing of the sort. Mendoza didn't really have time, as we had about five minutes to shoot and Amyx was a patient man as we tried to find some kind of shot.

For Mendoza I went in with one SB-24 and bounced it off the wall to the left. I figured since we were not going to have much time I needed to shoot in her office. I wanted soft lighting from the side. Couldn't get any simpler. She was a natural at posing, didn't really have to tell her to do much. The thing I love about her photo, is how she cocks her head slightly at a similar angle to the crow in the photo above her. The Daily ran a different photo than this one.

Amyx's photo, which is different than what ran in the Daily, came right at the end. We had originally planned to shoot in small studio that was displaying his work, but didn't have a way into it. So we went to Plan B, which was to figure out a Plan C. We took several shots in a really ugly room before I took an idea from Strobist Guru David Hobby. Amyx does a lot of his work digitally, inclding the piece behind him in which he compiled 10,000 rolls of dice. I pretty much just used one flash to light his print in the back and computer light to light his face and the light on my cell phone for the front of his computer.

This assignment was all about being resourceful, with limited amount of time.

I'm seeing blue

This semester I am taking Alternative Photo at SJSU. If working in the darkroom wasn't obscure enough these days, this class takes it a step further, by finding- you guessed it, alternative ways to print photos.

No need for any fiber based paper or lines of trays under the amber light (although may choose to create their negatives in the traditional darkroom, but is that so traditional?). Print on what you want: watercolor paper, wood, wool, cotton. Anything that'll let you really.

So for I first assignment, we did Cyanotypes. These print pretty well on watercolor paper, which is what I chose to use. One gal tried wood, but couldn't get it to work.

Since this is a sort of vintage process, I decided to go with some vintage cars as my subject. I had some pretty good shots from the Monterey Historics and wanted to pump those pics up a little more.

A quick rundown of the process is: you coat your paper (or whatever you want) with the solution that contains potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate. Then after it dries, you put an inverted transperancy on top and expouse in the sun for a few minutes. Next you rinse for about ten minutes, drop in a little hydrogen peroxide. All of a sudden you get this gorgeous blue print.

I made things hard on myself, trying to print large. I wanted 16x20s and the biggest I found to print transparencies was 8.5x11. So I put four of them together on one. I later found that I can buy rolls of Pictorico that are much larger (but also more expensive.)

The image on this post, doesn't do the process justice. But it gives you an idea.

Next is Van Dykes. Can someone say Cowboy Up?

Alexandra

So I am working on an assignment for class, and had to coax my friend into posing for me. I had to donate my money to some deaf turtles who some cruel people painted.

Just kidding. The money went to children of the Painted Turtle Camp, that her Sorority was helping out with.

But anyways, she did an excellent job modeling for me, even though she said she wouldn't. I used two hot lights for these photos. One behind and one in front of her. I got the lighting I was going for in the photos and she did an excellent job standing there, I mean modeling. The good thing about hot lights is that you usually get what you see.

I have not dealt with these kind of lights much or even bigger strobes, except when i worked at a studio. They are easier to manage than small strobes, though not as portable. One of my favorite studio photographers, whose name escapes me at the moment and it is killing me, used hot lights all the time and created wonderful images.

But these lights live up to their names and get really hot.

Blessed

I can't describe the week I had as other than blessed. The main reason: I got to cover my favorite football team, the New England Patriots, as they practiced at SJSU while on the West Coast.

Needless to say, I was pretty stoked. Here are a couple of pics of Randy Moss, who was not very media friendly at all.

Judo

So I had an assignment for the Spartan Daily, and was hoping for to come away with some better pics. Last week was one of those weeks where the obvious couldn't be more oblivious to me. So I look back now wondering why I didn't do this or that.

I went into this assignment with an idea in mind of catching San Jose State Judo athlete Jeff Fong throwing someone with some hard light coming from the front and back and hopefully blacking out most of the background. I only half accomplished that, as I failed to get the back all blacked out. But it is still an interesting photo.