This is a local photographer, Laretta Houston, that I found through a recent Creative Circus grad by the name of Malik Williams. I just love her work. Seeing her Flickr stream of photos really encourages me. You can go back to her early 2006 photos when she shot with a point and shoot to the day that she got her Canon 30D (which she still uses) and to now where she is getting out there as a pro. She has a degree in art from Spelman and is self taught as a photographer. You can see the art is her photos.



Check her out at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/halfpinay/
http://www.larettahouston.com/
http://www.modelmayhem.com/larettahouston

OK. for some reason the blog will not allow me to post any images. it says there is an internal error going on. I will try to repost later.

Painting With Light

A couple more long exposures. Both are 30 sec. exposures. I used a LED flashlight

One of my more successful JJ coffee can shots...damn if i didn't block out the last letter on the bottom left can, though.  i used two layers of translume to keep the cans shiny without blowing out the labels...

Here is my flare flair.  Don't worry...I'll be passing it out on the FB later.  For those of you wondering, it's homemade flare, created right in my dining room (once i took the table out to make room for lights) with a black card and tungsten lighting.  

I was looking up food shots on Workbook.com and came across the work of John Blais. He had a cool shot of a cake that I liked. When I got to his website the food shots were not on there. But I did come across some really cool lifestyle shots. This was one that stood out to me. I'm just diggin' the shadows on this shot. The way they fall onto the subjects makes this shots something special.

These images illustrate the difference of on camera flash, using a reflective surface and straight on flash. I love how much change you get just from using various angles of lighting. Way to go flash!

Bounce!

One of my personal favorite lighting techniques is to bounce light off the floor. These photos demonstrate the beautiful soft light you can get from bouncing sunlight or artificial light.

Figured I'd post this since we have been talking about flare in class. I used 2 lights. One on the left and another on the right. I think the flare frames her face nicely. 

This is a portrait taken on the street in Washington, DC.  Despite the fact that I had my light meter set incorrectly, I managed to get some usable images. This was taken on a bright sunny day (midday) but the sun was filtered by many trees (and partially by a tent in this shot, if I'm remembering correctly).

This is my first attempt at indoor portraiture using tungsten lighting.  I used one diffused tungsten light to her left side and filled in with a white card on her right side.  There was also a white card above and slightly behind her head to add some brightness to her hair.  I lit the background with another tungsten light, no diffusion.  My intent was to play with mom's eye color through use of the bright background.

Links are posted.

I've posted links to the slideshows we looked at in class for class. Look in the inspiration links on the right.

I didn't shoot this. Dan Schultz, the mighty master of mirrors (my A.K.A. for him not his) did this shot. It is a shot from his website, under his Lifesytle collection. While I am extra inspired by his product shots, I'm curious to see more shots like this from him.

I think this is an amazing shot. I have tried to recreate this exact same shot at a park near my home but have not been able to catch the light in such a dramatic way. Hopefully once my kids get out of school for summer vacation I will have more time in the morning to catch this kind of light.

Overcast days are some of my favorite for shooting (especially pups and kids due to quick movements and lack of enthusiasm for posing) since light is diffused, eliminating harsh shadows that undoubtably show up in straight sun!

School bus shot at ISO 200 f/22 for 15 secs. I like shooting long exposures at f/22 to achieve the starring effect of the lights 

Creative Inspiration for the Tabletop Assignment

Hey y'all,

Sorry I couldn't find these images earlier, here a link to see the
images http://www.tmoxrox.com/tabletop/inspiration/ I pulled these
off of workbook.com, any of these photos would get an A.

Let me know what you think.

tmox

Here comes the sun

Reflective light has become an interest of mine recently. I love the way you can use different sources of reflective material to produce different effects of light. This could come very useful in the future ... :)

Downtown Atlanta on Peachtree across from the Woodruff Arts Center. Again, just looking at the effects of shooting through different lighting. I stood in the sun, shoot through the covered parking garage and to the sun lit brick building. I metered for the shaded part of the parking lot which over exposed the brick building and the sun lit portion of the parking lot. It made a very overcast early morning shot look like a sunny midday setting.

Mid-morning sunlight coming through a glass block window mimics water as it reacts with the wall's paint color and the reflection of early evening light warms this cobblestone street.  Though these photographs don't necessarily stand alone, I see potential for use of these effects in future concepts...