2017...the adventure continues.
2016 was an incredible year, we were extremely blessed to shoot with some amazing companies and individuals. Our last big shoot of the year was with Elizabeth Marks (pictured above), and to say the least she is one of the most inspirational people/athletes you can imagine. With that incredible momentum, and new year's in the recent past, I thought it would be good to get the year started off with a blog about what's coming in 2017!
First of all, you might wonder why I haven't really posted on any of my social media channels (or at least I like to tell myself you've been wondering) and that's actually pretty easy to answer, I've been with my family. One of the main things I want this blog to be about is the importance of priority and scheduling. As I have blogged about before, I am a husband and dad before anything else, that's what my main priority is. When we ended 2016 I was working anywhere from 70-100 hrs a week just to stay on top of the deadlines, and we needed to take a minute to regroup as a family and get some quality time. Next week I will be back in full swing, but I wanted to take a second to challenge you as you go into this next year with a couple of thoughts:
1. Get yourself into a good headspace - This can mean different things to different people, whether it be through prayer, meditation or even just sitting quietly, take a minute every day to visualize your day and your career. I still struggle with this, but every morning I wake up, make coffee and take the first few sips just for me. You can look to people like Chase Jarvis, Marie Forleo and I am sure a million other succesful people for more ideas on this.
2. Take Care of your body - I definitely struggle here, but I have been working really hard at making sure I exercise and eat as healthy as possible. I hate the gym, but I go, and try to take a minute to breathe. We all work long hours, and this industry takes a toll on you, but you will be able to handle it better if you are healthy. Plus, for all my fellow dads out there, it will help you be focused and have more fun with your kids if you can still pick them up at the end of a long day :)
3. Take time for creativity - This can also mean a lot of things, it could be sketching in a coffee shop, walking through the city, watching a visually inspiring movie, etc. Make no mistake, creativity is nurtured, it needs love and time just like any other skill.
4. Schedule it! - I think one of my favorite quotes from Marie Forleo is "if it's not scheduled, it's not real!" I totally agree with this, and as crazy as it may feel at first you need to make sure you are scheduling yourself. I am not just talking about scheduling those meeting you have, I am talking about scheduling personal deadlines, projects, e-mails, marketing, etc etc etc. If it's important to you it should be in your schedule.
Alright, so with those nuggets in hand, what can you be expecting to see from us in 2017?! I am excited for what's coming, and while I can't talk about all of it, there are some really exciting projects we are working on. In the next couple months we will be finishing our huge video series on composite photography, shooting in studio and on location to show you guys how it goes together. I am also working on more Photoshop tutorials to give you guys all the puzzle pieces you need! A little birdy has been chirping unconfirmed rumors of a podcast...but you'll have to wait to hear more about that one :) Of course we have a bunch of shoots coming up, and we'll be posting all the bts and images through our different social media channels.
I am also planning on broadcasting live on Instagram this year, so keep your eyes peeled for that!
In closing I wanted to open the floor to all of you! I would love to hear what topics you'd like to learn about in 2017, whether it's lighting, business, composite, Photoshop, or anything else, please feel free to leave a comment below and I will do my best to respond or possibly do a tutorial!
Thank you all for an awesome 2016, and now, go BE AWESOME!
Ballet meets Dia de los Muertos
My team and I just finished an incredible shoot last week and I wanted to share the results with you. We were able to shoot at a beautiful location in Colorado Springs (abandoned locations are by far my favorite type of backdrop). If you add in 3 amazing dancers, 2 very talented MUA's (Tasha Ditchman and Molly Hardee) on site working all day, assistants and lots of lighting, you get some pretty awesome stuff.
Below you'll find the BTS video (Filmed and Edited by Andrew Forrer) to give you an idea how much work goes into a shoot like this, and some of the images that we ended with.
Thanks to my incredible team and I hope this inspires you to dream big...now, go be awesome!
Personal Project - The Dolls
A while ago I did a personal project called "The Dolls Have Eyes". I had originally shown these on my old blog but that has been taken down so I wanted to put them up on the new page for you guys to see!
The idea was relatively simple, take pictures of dolls and morph them together with human features. What I wanted to see was if people could tell, if they knew they were looking at a doll with some real feature. It's my exploration of how a lot of what we see in media today isn't real at all, and if it seems to good to be perfect to be true it probably is!
Hope you enjoy it, or you think it's creepy...either one :) Until next time, be awesome!
Re-Banding: Hydrogen Skyline
You've heard of re-branding before...well this is kind of like that. A little white ago I sat down with the band Hydrogen Skyline (www.hydrogenskyline.com) and talked to them about creating a new image for their band. I wanted to share in this blog what came from that collaboration and a little behind the scenes at some of the composite work I did.
Before I get to the images I wanted to take a second to talk about collaboration and a couple of things to help you get started!
1. Bring something to the table - We literally sat around a table at a coffee shop when talking about this project and everyone brought their ideas to share. Don't be the person in a collaboration to show up to the table empty handed, bring ideas, bring good juju, bring something!
2. Be Flexible - Don't bring ideas that are not flexible to the table and be willing to have ideas shot down, especially to meet the needs of the client. We all think our ideas are the best ideas, it is an unfortunate truth that a lot of times they aren't...but that's why you collaborate, so if your ideas suck someone can help make them un-suck.
3. Do your homework - The other day I sat down to have a meeting with a potential client and they hadn't even looked at my website, they had just heard I was good. Not only was it insulting to me, but it was a waste of time because they didn't know what I specialized in. Before I met with the band I had looked at other band album covers, seen what was popular in their genre, and come up with ideas that would work for both of us...they had done the same. Don't be too cool for research and homework, you're clients will appreciate it!
Alright, enough tips...let's look at some pictures! Hang on for the last one it will show an animation of the composite.
Until next time, go collaborate with someone and BE AWESOME!
3 Things
When I first started photography I wasn't good...and I think that's the case with a lot of people. However, there were a few things that really launched me in a different direction and I wanted to share those with you.
1. Shoot in RAW
If you're just getting started in photography you probably don't even know what I'm talking about, and no, it's not a vegan diet. RAW is a file format that your camera puts out instead of a JPEG. You can usually do both, but I would recommend getting used to just shooting RAW. If you aren't shooting in RAW now I would encourage you to learn not only what it is, but also how to work with them. In a nutshell RAW images contain a MASSIVE amount of information that JPEGS throw away, and it enables you to make larger changes later on.
I remember when my good friend Zak took me out to shoot about 7 years ago and he asked me if I shot in RAW, I looked at him like he was speaking a different language. It was on that day that I switched over and then learned what the heck he was talking about, it was the beginning of the journey for me.
2. Start Learning Lighting
It all started with a reflector. I think it was about 6 years or so ago that I bought my first reflector, and I was blown away! I thought most certainly that my images would be on the cover of Vogue any day (not even close!). Once I started getting more serious I bought an off-camera flash and have now used most lights on the market, from Profoto to Elinchrom and Broncolor to Alien Bees. I think lighting and use of lighting is one of the main things that separates the pro's from the amateurs. So start with a reflector, learn how to use it, and then the skies the limit!
3. Learn How to Edit Your Images
I use Photoshop, a lot. In fact I have even retouched for massive companies like Ariat, Tazo, Coca-Cola and more because I like it so much. Obviously you don't need to become a retoucher to edit your own photos, but I think a lot of people skip this step because cameras are digital now. If you are thinking about becoming a professional photographer you need to at least know the basics of editing photos, just like you would need to have known the basics of how to use a dark room back in the day.
If you're looking at all these things and feeling a little overwhelmed, there are lots of great resources to get you started. Places like Lynda.com, Phlearn.com, and Kelbyone.com are just a few that I've seen that offer great tutorials on everything from using your camera, lighting and handling files. I learned most of the foundations from Lynda.com, then I mixed that with school, a lot of terrible photos, books, and internships, that is how I became what I am today.
Finally I wanted to say this; when you're new it's ok to suck, but in order to grow past that you'll need to invest time to keep growing...then one day it will all click, and you'll get it! So check out this video for inspiration and then go be awesome!
Why Landscapes are important.
I wanted to take a moment to talk about Landscape photography, which you will notice is not in my portfolio...sort of. I think one of the things you need in photography is an outlet, something you like to do that you may not end up making money off of, something that has no clients and no rules, that you do just for you. In my case that's Landscape Photography. When I go out to shoot landscapes I get to do whatever I want, and I don't have to think about what other people will want out of the photo I am taking. Sometimes people like them, and that's great, but that's not the point.
There is one more benefit to Landscape Photography that I wanted to mention for all of you photographers out there who want to do composite imagery...having landscapes in your library is VERY helpful! A lot of the time I don't actually need to go anywhere to shoot a background for an image, I already have it sitting on my computer.
Below are some examples of my landscapes...I highly recommend finding something you love to do that doesn't have anything to do with clients or work and implement it into your work flow. Until next time, be awesome!
Pathing and Quick Select Part 2 - Edges
So this is where the rubber meets the road, literally. If you spend all the time in the world pathing and using quick select tools but the edges aren't right your picture will look weird. Sometimes people won't even be able to tell you what's wrong, it will just "feel" wrong. Here's a couple cool tricks to get those edges looking snazzy!
First you need to turn your path into a mask which you can do a couple of ways. If your path is currently active you can just hit Cmnd or Ctrl Enter to turn it into a selection. If your path is not active then you can just hold down Cmnd or Ctrl on your keyboard and click the path with your mouse, either way works, but now your path is a selection. With your new selection active hit Shift + F6 and feather your edge by .5 pixels (you can also find it in the dropdown menu Select > Modify > Feather). Once you've feathered your selection click the create new layer mask icon and you will have your initial mask.
I am going to pause really quick and tell you that I came up with .5 pixels for my initial mask based on personal experience, no feather at all looks too hard and 1 pixel can make some edges too soft depending on the subject...play around and find the perfect setting for you!
Wouldn't it be nice it that's all you needed to do after an hour of pathing? I do to, but it's not! This is where a lot of people go wrong, they just leave the person/object with hard edges and continue on. Sometimes this will work, but I have found that those occasions are rare. Granted, you will leave some of the edges hard, but you'll want to make visual decisions for the rest.
Look at your subject and see if it feels correct. I always have another person look at it as well, sometimes I am just too married to the picture to be objective. Now, if you have some edges that look hard here's what you do:
1. Click on your mask so that it's selected
2. Use the lasso tool to circle the edge that you think is too hard
3. Feather your selection by 25 pixels (again you will want to play with this). This step is to make sure your new edge will blend into the old edge.
4. Click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
This is a really cool way for you to see what you're doing to the mask, believe it or not the feather and Gaussian blur use the same technique but the Gaussian Blur allows you to see what you're doing! TIP: If you don't see what you're doing make sure the "Preview" box is checked. Here is a before and after on a mask so you can see what it should look like!
BEFORE
AFTER
You can see the blur just below the neck, it is subtle, and it should be! It is the subtle touches that mean the most! I am working on some video tutorials for the future so stay tuned and I'll be releasing new images, series and behind the scenes soon! Until next time...be awesome!