Choices and Choices....

I love the the possibilites of working with RAW files. Importing a fresh batch of pictures is like opening all your Christmas presents at once. Of course, if you have done your job as a photographer correctly, you should have a pretty good idea of what you should be getting. There are so many directions that a picture can go, sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming, especially when you have a vast amount of engaging pictures. I struggle sometimes to focus and figure out what it is that I want out of the picture. The matter is only made more complicated by the fact that I shoot mostly people. The challenge as an editorial/ portraiture photographer is to carry the feel or atmosphere of one or an entire series of pictures through from the time of looking through the lens to the final delivery after post-production. Often what I see and imagine to be there or not be there, is very different to what the final viewer encounters. This is the real challenge, making sure that this consistency is present throughout.

Im just going to include everyone here instead of just us photo-nerds. For those that don't know what a RAW file is, here is the breakdown. The file format you get out of a normal point and shoot camera, iPhone and most other consumer camera's is a .JPEG. JPEG's are a compressed file that holds a less informative digital signature. Looking at a print of the a JPEG side by side with a RAW file straight out of camera you cant tell the difference. The beauty of RAW is that it contains all the information that you could want for post production, this is where JPEG falls short as it does contain some digital info, but very little. I guess a fitting analogy would be to say that shooting JPEG is like going to a shop and buying a sandwich off the menu, shooting RAW is like owning a sandwich factory. Get the point? Good.

I recently shot a model from the local agency, I have been "babysitting" the pictures for about two weeks now, this is a long time considering that they were extremely minimal headshots and 3/4 shots. I have been throwing some thoughts around regarding what I want to do in my post production phase, and tried some of them, failed, lost hope, tried again, got bored, failed, tried again, got side tracked, lost motivation, failed. It went on and on until now, whilst offshore with a solid few hours to kill I sat down with a full box of snus, an endless supply of chocochino's and some cookies I managed to produce. Half a snus box later I had something to show for. The only problem is that I think I produced too much. Yeah, I might have got a little bit carried away with experimenting with different colour palettes, tones, textures, split tones, effects, exposures, presences and hues. There is an endless combination of things and techniques you can apply to a set of pictures. To make things slightly easier to start out with, I narrowed down my selection to one photo. Something that would be easy to work with in terms of pure post-production. Something that had a near perfect exposure to start out with. I enjoy working with skin and eyes in particular, so this narrowed things down a bit more too. Eventually after making my final selection I took one that I met all of the above criteria. Here's what came out: 

This is the original image, straight out of camera, no post-production, no retouching. As I said, this met all the criteria, near perfect exposure, good skin tones to work with, interesting, sharp eyes, a clean headshot all in all. There is one thing that bugs me though, the model's right eye is not holding the catch light as well as the left one. Something which is completely my fault. #inconsistency. However, no train smash. Another thing that helps is that the background is just shy of pure white. This way I have some room to play around with the shadows and fall-off light. Whats next?  The work that goes into making a picture like simple, but thought out in details you dont see. I will not go through all of the points here, but here is a brief outline.

*Compositon- Notice how she isn't placed smack dead centre in the middle of the frame? Rule of thirds, a valuable tool, and worth remembering to add balance by creating an off-balance.

*Exposure- I shot this with two lights, one through a pure white umbrella, that was roughly 45degrees off to my right, angled down and +-80cm away from model, and the other behind the model facing the wall with no modifier, 2/3 of power over the key light.

*Catch lights- I always try to light the eyes in my headshots evenly, I blew it here, but it is an easy fix in post. The first thing you see when looking at a picture of a person is their eyes, this why I always try draw the attention there with a catch light. I always focus on the eye closest to me aswell. 

*Make up and hair- I went for the minimalist look here, when you see the rest of the pictures in the series you will see why, the models natural features stand out more for headshots this way too. I also purposefully placed her hair behind her ear closest to me. This it to play on the shallow DOF I was shooting, notice how that ear is not in focus but they eyes are? Thats what I look for in my headshots.

*Posing- I play around with different poses when I shoot headshots, as a general rule though when I shoot guys or girls, I like to have the shoulders clean an neck clean, no bra straps, no jewellery, nothing that will distract from the models natural features. Posing also has a lot to say when shaping mood, feeling and atmosphere, here it isn't so apparent as this is just a headshot, so It comes down more to facial expression. I was fairly happy with the pose here, I liked the fall off of light on her neck and under her chin.

Right, so assuming I have covered these points whilst I'm shooting, I should be consistent and getting good results when I start looking through the images in post. So assuming I have got all the above to an acceptable standard, and that I am happy with what I am seeing on the camera, I shoot. I go through an entire shoot keeping all of these things in check. Finished shooting? Double check I have all the shots I set out to get, I like to think of this part as the Pokemon part, "gotta get 'em all!". Now the bittersweet process of post production can begin. For the sake of making things easier, I will exclude all the pictures I played with in Photoshop CS6. Photoshop is whole other can of worms when it comes to experimental portraiture. All of pictures that follow were retouched in Lightroom 3.5. Now you can see what I mean with the whole endless options of shooting RAW thing. These are a few of the images that I retouched from the original posted above. Will put up the full series in the next few days, until then, stay classy. N.

PS! - Click on the first picture and then you can browse through using the arrow keys to compare.

This was the first one I got cracking with, love the subtle tones and the crystal clear, sharp detail.

Bit of an old Polaroid feel to it, digging the grain and "roughness" of it.

Converting from colour to black and white is something that either works 100% or not, was a little unsure about whether these were better suited to B+W or colour. 

Black and white with a soft hue to warm it up a little. Tried to avoid going to too much sepia. Hate sepia.

High contrast B+W,  think this is my favourite out of the B+W ones.

Little bit of a softer look, less contrast and some warmer tones. Peachy-ish.

Offset split tones, lost a bit of detail in the skin, kinda 50/50 on this look.

Also one of my favourite colour retouches, neutral and true. Maybe a little bit too polished.

Low contrast, softer and less presence, almost looks like it was shot with natural light.

All I want for my birthday...

Im a bit lost for words here. Im stuck between the verge of compiling another small essay for you to read and just saying fuckit. Its late, I'm tired, its been a weekend of epic proportions, and tomorrow the insanity of it all will continue. Given, I have a fair amount of what society would call "work" to do, I have a lot planned in terms of photography. Looks something like this:

* Shoot a rap star. Potential booty shaking, bling and boobs.
* Shoot headshot's of said rap star.
* Shoot a model out on location in the freezing cold.
* Shoot the second part of a series im compiling.
* Start shooting a new series that I am really, really, really excited about. Something very different.
* Shoot a dude with a massive afro.
* Shoot something else I am not allowed to talk about right now.
* Edit all of this shit.

All of this has to be done due to time constraints with regard to my departure back home. Another pretty good reason is that my mother may come for a visit. She recently learnt the phrase YOLO. Which apart from being absolutely magic to hear my mom say YOLO, is great because a spontaneous flight from London to Trondheim will mean I will get to kick it with the most amazing mom in the world for a weekend! ( Come on Neety! You Only Live Once!) I refuse to be caught up with the trivialities of the photo business on a weekend that my mother comes to visit me all the way from South Africa. I really would like to get done with all the shooting before I kick it home as well though. Time to get cracking and make things happen.

In the mean time though. I attended one of the best parties this weekend. My dearest friend Linn-Sara celebrated her birthday in typical style. What a rad Saturday. What a group of people. I kinda felt obliged to whip out the 7D and fisheye for this one. Love that camera and that lens. I have been debating selling the two for long time now. I have also been leaning towards keeping it, but now have come to the conclusion that after the SA trip, it has to go. I hardly shoot it anymore, and its an expensive piece of gear that I can't really justify keeping just because of one lens. Going to be sad. But strategically the right move. *cough* 5D mk3 coming. *cough*.

Here are some pictures of some of the love that was shared, the drinks that were spilled, the cake that was baked, the face's that come to life at night, and most importantly, the friendships I value so much today. Check in soon again. N.

PS. Creds to my buddy Stian for some of the shots. Cant dance, look like Tony Montana and shoot photo's all at the same time ya know!

A little handful.

I never went to photography school. Maybe it shows? I don't know. One thing that I learnt pretty early though is that there is less importance on good or bad than just being different. I see myself improving constantly. I also see myself making mistakes. I learn, I try again. I never had someone sit down and teach me the basics of exposure, composition, posing, the business side, and everything else that goes with it. I did however spend an enormous amount of time teaching myself. I watched days worth of tutorials, read .pdf's and books on possibly every subject related to cameras and lights I could think of, I read blogs, surfed websites. I listened to other photographers. I read books that weren't even vaguely related to photography, but got inspiration to shoot something by transcribing the feeling. One of my weak sides at the moment is my post-production. I just started learning Photoshop CS6 a few months ago. Holy shit. Its another world. It really gets 4 dimensional when you start playing in layers and compositing things in. I still have a long way to go in terms of being slick at it. But I'm getting there. One click at a time.

Recently since I've hit my shitty "Norwegian weather is the end of me" period again, I've been exploring other sides of what I can do with a camera. Stripped it down in a way. Im trying to avoid the annoyingly overused cliche of "back to basics" here. Essentially though, this is the actual happenings of all the wizardry that all of you see. I have been drawing a lot of inspiration from art, music, textures, tones, composition experimentation, people and the energy of living the amazing life that I have been given. Quick side note here, I have been listening to ALOT of Sigur Ros lately. I have this one song thats 10 minutes long as a favourite. I listened to it on repeat one night while chilling at home. The next day was a disaster, I was anxious, I was rude to someone for no reason, my internet cut out for a day and a half, my fingers were sore from climbing, basically everything went fucking pear shaped. I isolated myself, put on Sigur Ros and sat down on my fluffy carpet to just zone out for a bit. I just broke down and balled my eyes out for a solid 20 minutes. The music just to added to the melancholiness of it all. What a moment. Instead of feeling weak and pathetic for basically acting like a pregnant woman, I felt strong and empowered. I am in such awe of music that has an effect on people. I wish that my pictures could assimilate this kind of energy. Not necessarily to make people cry, but just to have an effect. To evoke a though, the create a drive. There is so much inspiration out there just waiting to be seen and heard. If you have not seen or heard the beauty that is Sigur Ros yet, I highly suggest you check them out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VvB_UmmIzk

Where was I? Ah yes. So my interpretation of this minimalistic approach is based around a thing. A physical, tangible object. It just so happens to be a camera lens. A while ago I bought some old gear off the net, namely two Mamiya/Sekor 35mm film cameras and some lenses in the 28, 50 and 135mm focal range. The first thing I love about this stuff was the simplicity of everything. Ok, its a given that the technology in the 60's was nearly as sophisticated as the toys we have today. Another thing is that all the lenses I got were primes. (Prime lenses are fixed focal length, which means you cannot zoom in or out, your feet do this part. In turn this also means the optical quality of the lens is superior to an equivalent zoom lens as there are far fewer moving components.) Primes lenses make everything more exciting. Really. I love my wide angles, so the 28mm ƒ2.8 was my new best friend. The other great and some what frustrating thing with this trifecta of goodies is that they are all manual focus and you set the aperture on the actual lens. I cannot for the life of me be bothered to explain how aperture and ƒ-stops work right now, but the manual focus part is fairly self explanatory. The one problem that exists is that the mount for the Mamiya is a M42 screw mount, obviously the newer Canon 5D Mk2 is not. This created a massive problem. Like trying to put diesel in a petrol car, It just wont work. Ever. I then spent a fair deal of time on E-Bay and various other websites and forums, I gave up for a while, but then I found out I was not the only one looking for such a device that would "Frankenstein" my two babies together. I found an adapter with focus confirm and one without. Focus confirm was a must because I had and still do have no idea how to back focus a manual lens.  I will now stop with the technical bullshit and get to the point here.

The result is something quite special. It has a unique feel. The whole experience is different. My usual first choice or go to lens is my Canon EF 35mm ƒ1.4, being a 12000NOK/ R14000, this lens is really in a class of its own. But with the Mamiya 28mm, which is worth not much except the sentimental value, things are gritty, raw, unrefined, almost elementary. With the lens on the camera, it feels like a camera should. The great thing this combination has taught me is to wait. To anticipate the action. The manual focus really forces you to take your time and get everything right before you fire the shutter. The whole thing is very similar to shooting film. Shooting film to me is like eating a box of Côte d'or chocolates, you take every waking moment to savour the taste, you don't just gobble the box up in one go like a greedy little piggy. Just like you don't blaze through a roll of film just to be done with it. Overall the lens is in "decent" condition, there are some scratches on the front element, the paint is tarnished,  and the focus ring glitches a little. Does it produce crystal clear super sharp images? Definitely not! Far from it actually. The contrast is terrible. Really terrible. It makes blue streaks randomly appear on skin, at ƒ2.8 it is softer than a care bear in a bowl of custard. And at ƒ9 the CA (Chromatic Aberration) is appalling. So appalling that it makes everything look like its rusting. Would you like your face to look like its rusting? No. Me neither. So essentially it only "works" in half of its actual aperture range. The manual focus is also an issue some times. It took me a while to calibrate ad get used to it. Aside from the fact that most other photographers would deem it as a fancy paperweight, I love it. I absolutely love it. Shooting this lens over the last couple weeks has brought me the utmost of joy. I have learned more about composition, and waiting for the shot more in the last six weeks than the last 6 months. I posted a little while ago that my camera was somewhat like a fictitious girlfriend, I need to correct that a bit, the camera with this lens is my lover. #fixed.

I guess what it comes down to is the quintessential simplicity of it all. The real beauty of photography, and part of my personal photographic philosophy. Being different, doing things that are generally steered cleared of. Given, I can produce BETTER images, is it as fun? Is at as rewarding? Does it matter? No. Not really.

The following pictures are of some of the people that make me laugh, people that are close to me, people that helped me move in, people that I party with, people that helped me assemble shit until 2AM, people I have had as dinner guests, people that are consistent, people that have inspired me to change, people that are friends. I take pictures of people. Seemed most sensible I stuck to doing that. Be different, but above all, take it easy. N.

PS: I know my grammar and spelling is not perfect, fuck off. Wheres your blog?