This last week’s Thursday evening was yet another fun one. Saw a few new faces and I think we all managed to learn a thing or two. Here’s my favourite pick from it all. A shot of the inside of a diner or something. A bit hard to tell but something about the shots sticks with me.
Dave
Taken during the construction of the studio. This is a shot of my cheif contractor, Mansur (or Mansi for short). He’s doing a great job so far, and I liked this pic a took real quick today.. PS That’s my studio-to-be behind him!!!!
Lates,
David Dvir
On Thursday we saw the badlands yield some fun picks, but on the way home I snagged an image of a church that I thought would be a perfect photo of the week. I decided to run it as an HDR and here is a before and after of the image. Just a neat little view of the difference post production can make – I thought it would be neat to show the before and after. All work was done in Aperture 3.0. In about 3 minutes (mostly getting that wire out). Below is the HDR photo of the week in the best view.
I used a plug in for the HDR, touched up a few spots and used a simple clone and stamp tool to get rid of that wire scorching the middle of the image. Below are the 5 original shots taken to merge into the HDR composite above (left).
Photo of the week!
Hope this little bit of info is helpful, feel free to ask any questions. More photos of the week to come!
David Dvir
This is going to double as a photo of the week entry and a little bit of of a general post.
Hello Everyone,
We have our skill set, we have our tools, and we do what we can to promote ourselves.. but how do we go about getting better? Sometimes it’s through our own desire to improve, or we work a gig that allows us to grab some better gear, but ultimately my most favourite way is being FORCED to get better. Acquire a new skill or drown in the fleshy mass that is the sea of other photographers that haven’t picked up the new lessons. It’s great to teach ourselves and I encourage that as well. It’s just that thrill of someone asking “Can you do that?” and replying to them is absolute certainty “Not yet!”. Other times the question isn’t even asked by anyone but yourself.
A while ago I decided that there was something I could do, but had never done. The “Invisible Mannequin”. I was asked to give a bid on a catalogue/live shoot and show some of my work. I had a decent catalogue sample but I knew it could be better. And the client deserved better. I thought that my weak point was the mannequin shots. So I forced myself to figure out how to get it done and if not, well, there was no if not. Turns out there were some challenges, and I’ll be sharing the technique as soon as the studio is done and I’ve got a proper environment to start pumping out real how-to videos, but in the mean time it worked out great and now has become relatively straight forward and even almost easy. It’s just that need to improve what you can offer someone or cut down the time it takes to do something that I love. As well, it turns out another almost identical job materialized and although my previous work wasn’t appropriate to use as a bid on the new job, I was easily able to take some fitting shots (see below) and send them to my (hopeful) client to for their consideration.
It always feels great to learn something, and as mentioned, I encourage that we all continuously strive to better our abilities as photographers. Am I a professional, yes. What’s always going to be my opinion of my own capabilities: I can be better. I will be better.
So new ventures in photography aren’t worth doing unless they pose a challenge? I disagree. Although I do think that any challenge is a venture worth doing. That is where we can always better ourselves. So don’t decline a job or opportunity just because it’s something you’re too familiar with or because it may not earn you as much profit as you would like. However do seek out those chance encounters that can find you becoming skilled in an area you didn’t even think about in the past.
As promised here are some invisible mannequin shots – big difference from actually having the mannequin in the shots, or keeping the garments on a bust, or especially just hanging or folded or lying on a table. Personally my favourite way to view garments – especially of a sporting nature.
Thank you for reading!
David Dvir
So pretty much right off the bat with my photo of the day idea and it turns out I don’t have the schedule that allows me to keep it up. It was such a nice thought to be forcing myself to activate my creativity on a daily basis but as business is progressing and work gets piled up, I have found myself unable to capture a new image a day. As a result I’m going to have to alter this concept to a photo of the week one. I can’t promise much at this point but I will do my best (for my own gain only) to capture something once a week that I think is important enough to share.
I am a bit disapointed in myself thus far. It didn’t take long for a great idea to be out of my reach. Although it’s not actually out of my reach, I’ve somewhere in my mind made the decision I don’t want to do a photo of the day I guess, I can’t say otherwise. It’s just not working for me. My apologies for falling short on this one – I will do better.
Here’s a photo to prove it!
David Dvir
Ok, here is another photo. These guys are absolutely the cutest thing I’ve seen this week. The brown ones are female and the yellow is male. We’ve got these little guys in for a fun shoot and here is 1 photograph from said shoot. For anyone who’s concerned about their well being, we’ve already found a farm that will take them off of our hands tomorrow. We picked up 6 of these chicks last Thursday and have been taking care of them since. They’re fairly hilarious as well for anyone thinking about getting one for a pet. The only downside is they do eventually turn into ugly chickens.
David Dvir
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