Apples with apples

"Interesting Advertising" is the topic of this image and I have been a big fan of the iPad to show my work to clients. It is a big game changer in a small package. The image tried to translate that into a surreal setting (a downtown P-patch with the models wearing vintage dresses).

A quick run to the grocery store provided several pounds of apples...
Rachel and Lucianne were the models! Ari was my assistant. Jewelry from Rent the Runway.

Retouching: Janko Williams

Lady of the Lake: Using the Parabolic Light Modifier

I shot this image last Summer, the black dress was especially made by fashion designer Isaiah Whitmore (you can see some of his work on Ink Magazine). I wanted to continue with the same
cinematic look that I have been working with for some time, but apply it to a different setting, where the focus is the dress rather then the characters. Oh..some call it fashion..but whatever. This time the nod is to Arthurian legends of old, Vivianne of the lake was strong, beautiful..and a bit dark. So there you go. Tiffany Parente did the styling, MUA and hair..and stepped in to be a wonderful model for the shoot. Danny and Ari were great assistants! Oh the light scheme... just fill from the 7' Alien Bees silver reflector with the diffuser on. The AB1600 was probably firing at full power as it was a bright sunny day. f7.1, 1/125, ISO100.

The Horse. On Camera Flash.

I was day hiking on the Appennini mountains last September, when I met this small horse who was quietly grazing on the ridge I was walking on. The early morning light was beautiful and still low on the horizon, and I decided to take an image. I had my trusty canon G10, but that was it...how to get something better than just a happy snap? Think Fabio, think. Not that the horse was in any hurry but... I decided to go for a simple crosslight scheme with the sun, similar to what a lot of sport magazines do for their covers. The photographer often uses an on camera ring flash and one or two rim lights from behind the subject, depending on where the sun is. It gives that 3D feel to the image.

So I had the Sun behind the horse to camera right, underexposed until I got the sky and the landscape right (ISO 80, f4.0, 1/500th/sec) and bumped up the on camera flash (which I almost never use) until I got a good fill. I did not have an extra light to the left but I noticed that from one angle some direct sunlight hit the back of the horse..on my side. Bingo!

Not quite rim light, but it frames the horse's body quite well and it makes the image work.

Try covering it with your thumb and see how the image loses impact?

I did the color post processing at home, plus some trickery with contrast.

Sometimes you need to work with what you got.

Stranded!

Models: Ian, Chelsey, Chloe.

Stylist: Tiffany Parente Connors & Elizabeth Lodowski

MUA & Hair: Tiffany Parente Connors

Props: PJ Hummel and Sabine Foster.

"Stranded", a nod to "Paper Moon" and perhaps to some old Fellini movies took a couple of months of planning (props, vintage clothing, a few items from Anthropologie) but only 45 minutes to shoot. We were on our way to Odessa, WA when I stumbled onto the perfect location. It was getting dark and we "got the image" just before a rain shower poured on the set. A quick affair. Thanks to Laurie Clark and Danny Connors for assisting! Usual lighting scheme: large diffused softbox, next to camera, smaller strobe on Softlighter at camera left.

Space Queens of Skull Mountain

This the first image from the desert shoot. Inspired by B sci-fi movies of the 60ies we laid our scene in a dried lake bed, overshadowed by huge rock formations. Why are the queens battling on a strange planet? Who's winning? The weather set the mood as it was blustery and it drizzled all day. I forgot how much tulle we used but there was a lot. Make up and hair was complex and it took more than an hour. The inside of the truck was covered in mud, the sand (salt? radioactive waste? We did not ask) was covered in bullet cases of different (large) calibers and broken bottles of beer. Ah Eastern Washington. Having said that it was really a lot of fun to shoot "Space" and a great example of team work.

The light set up is a bit different from my usual. The 7' silver softbox (powered by an Einstein unit from Alien Bees) is next to camera, but there are two handheld speedlites behind our hero to the left and to the right, lighting the white cloud and adding some nice highlights. f7.1 1/200sec to darken the cloudy sky. Lens: a Tamron 16-35 f2.8, which turned out to be surprisingly sharp and it is becoming my lens of choice.

Fiona Pepe (of the Castaways and awesome photographer herself) styled the models costumes (some are from the UW theatre archive). Tiffany Parente Connors did hair and MUA and styled the models (C & C and I) on set. Laurie Clark assisted. Danny, sorry I had to erase you, you were awesome.

Done for the day? Not. We jumped on our spaceships and we headed further east....

East bound and down...(the trailer, courtesy of Ian Obermuller and Jerry Reed))

Central Washington from Ian Obermüller on Vimeo.

"Governato drives, Obermuller shoots" is the other title of this fun video taken with a handheld, window open, wind slapped, rain soaked Canon G10. A little more than a week ago a small group of photographers, including the world famous Laurie Clark, Chloe Scheffe and myself headed to Eastern Washington with a posse of artists & models, friends, assistants, stylists and a (diesel) truck full of props, costumes, equipment and food. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. There were dry lake beds, mud, tree stumps, swarms of mosquitoes, gale force winds, a pink flamingo on stilts, large fire extinguishers, tumble weed, old country songs on the radio and several shoots a day over a long week end and 670 miles of dusty roads.

Stay tuned for the images!

Of Wabi Sabi, film and The Five Obstructions.

Sunny Facer, my gloriously talented photo friend and I have challenged
each other to a photo duel. We are not as crazy as Lars Von Trier (a movie director who likes to inflict crazy projects on his willing subjects)..but close.

We had to take each other portrait in our own favorite style. The
subject got to choose the location. Sunny picked her almost empty
apartment (she is moving). I shot these two portraits with a very
simple set up: window light, a bit of fill from a speedlite mounted
inside a large softliter and some white sheets. The fun part was in
the editing where I get to play with Lightroom and Photoshop to get
that "old look" that I like.

Which comes to the second part of this post. Film? No thanks. Why?
It might seem contradictory as my photography often has a vintage/film/old camera/cheap lens look.

Mostly because I find film never gives me the amount of control on how
exactly 'imperfect' my images should look. Let's call it Wabi Sabi, which is an old concept in art. Yes often a bit of softness, vignetting, is exactly what the doctor ordered for an image,
but it should not be an excuse for sloppy images or for being passive in the creative process. Oh there I said it.

However, these days I have been playing a lot with my iPhone and some cool apps as "Camera Bag" (which simulates a number of specific film
looks) and "Plastic Bullet" (which adds some crazy artificial light leaks and coloring to your images). I would argue that it is art with creative control.

But that is for my next post.