Master Your Craft

Whether your passion is painting, poetry, music, modeling, washing clothes, serving people, cleaning toilets, photography....do it to the best of your ability and practice, practice, practice.  Take every chance you get to improve your abilities.  Never take any job for granted.  Become the best "you".  Follow your own path.  Study the "greats".  Study books.  Study people.

I learned something about myself in this picture, shadows do not work well on my nose, they make my nose look a hundred times bigger than it is.  That is something that you have to take into account when you are photographing people.  Not everyone looks good in the same light.

Technical Info:

Lens:  50mm 1.4 set at f/8 for 1/125sec.

Lighting:  Beauty dish overhead, with a silver reflector in front to add just a little bit of fill light.  2 canon flashes, opposite of each other, pointed to the back/side of my face at a 45 degree angle.  You can see where the brighter highlights are on the sides of the face from them.  1 strobe pointed at background to make the spotlight behind my head.

Details:  I wanted this portrait to be a little dramatic with lots of shadows.  I was pretending I was a soul musician as I got into character.

Day 37/365

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Creatadome

Today Ashley and I  received our Creatadome from Moyeh.  If you haven't gotten one of these hand crafted pieces, please head over to her facebook page and inquire about them, they are warm, cozy and one-of-a-kind.  Moye is an inspiration to my art and I look up to her body of work.  Please check out her website http://profileartistmoye.com/ and you will see what I am talking about.

For this shot I used a three light set up.  For the main light I used a really big softbox camera right and the power was set to 1/2 power.  For the hair light, I used a strip box and the power was set to 1/4 power.  This is typical for these type of shots, usually you do a 1:2 ratio on the power between the main light and hair light.  All factors can be changed, this is just a starting point and it really depends how far your light is away from your subject and what-not.  For the spot light behind my head, I used a off camera flash with a grid over it and pointed it at the wall behind me. 

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For this shot of Ashley, we stepped outside and used some sunlight for some beautiful hair light.  I also used a canon 580ex flash on camera to add some fill light to her face.  My settings on camera were f/4.5 at 1/200 and iso 200 and the flash setting were set at 1/16 power set to manual.

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Day 36/365

To the Mountains

I went to the mountains this weekend with my fiance Ashley for our friend Christine's birthday.  The campsite that we stayed at was near Asheville.  There were about 15 other people who came to celebrate and about 7 dogs....AT LEAST.  Once the sun dipped below the mountain top, it got chilly really quick, thank god for adult beverages to keep you warm.  All I have to say is, say NO to Sailor Jerry.

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Sorry I missed saturday's post because I had no internet access up in those hills.  Day 35/365

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

I found out today an old friend passed away.  I learned from facebook of all things when I was sent an invite to her viewing.  I wish I didn't live so far away so that I could go and pay my respects.  It saddened me to know that she left three children behind, one who was just 6 days old and also a husband.  I still remember her generous smile, the picture is stuck in my head.  We all die, I understand that, but......

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Day 34/365 RIP Kate Jones Belcher

I love the winning, I can take the losing, but most of all I Love to play.

Well the first season is over for my friend, head coach at CHMS, Oneill Palmer.  I'm sure he has walked away with a ton of respect now for what it takes to be a football coach.  I'm sure he has learned a hundred lessons along the way also.

This game was tough to watch, I felt it from the beginning that there was a storm-a-brewin', and I'm not talking about the dark clouds that came rolling through.  The game started off well, with an onside kick recovery and a touchdown to follow, but that was about it for the highlights.  It seemed as though the defense could not stop the run at all, and the other team was just running right over them.  A bunch of mishandled snaps, some dumb penalties, and some costly turnovers cost the Cavaliers the game.  Not to mention the refs didn't help at all, with at least 5 missed penalties, and trouble spotting the ball where there should have been numerous first downs, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.  You lose some, you win some, but live to play another day.
 
Overall it was a good season, plenty to build on for the next one.  This picture is from the only score of the game for the Cavaliers.

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Day 33/365

REVOLT

I went and shot an event tonight for some of my friends Kelley Carboni-Woods, Tinesha Matthews, and Jessica Stanton.  They are owners of a natural hair salon called Revolution EGO.  The event went great, it started off with two different spoken word poets and ended with a hair, and fashion show.  There were two other visual artists there showcasing their work Carlleena Person and Chdwck, both dope ass artists. 

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Day 32/365

Reflection Eternal

I was driving around and saw a river below a bridge that I wanted to take some pictures of.  I was turning around on a private driveway when I noticed that they had a private lake.  Hmmmm.....I didn't see anyone home so I hopped a barbed wire fence and came upon a beautiful, little lake.  The wind was blowing and the trees making a reflection on the water looked so painterly.  This is the shot I came away with. 

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Day 31/365