Taylor Claiborne Photography

Location Lighting Wrap Up Post

2013-05-18T11:55:00.001-07:00

So this is my final post of my location lighting class. I had a lot of fun in the class but it kind of made me realize what I was missing in most of my previous portraiture. It isn't more light but more control of my light. As much as I like natural lighting there is only so much natural light can do. My main goal with these lights were to create a fill light and balance out the natural light which is a goal I accomplished pretty well. The only thing I wish I did was use more of the larger lighting packs and played more with beauty dishes compared to umbrellas and bare bulb. I wish I had more time to update though the last semester but I am going to try to update on an almost weekly basis again from now on. I was extremely busy this semester which is part of the reason for the lack of updates and the lack of sleep I have been getting. I have improved my color pallet which I am extremely happy about but I don't feel like I made enough progress in other areas.

I also need to scan in my other two project or take images of them to show you guys my awesome gold leafed portraits and my shrink wrapped strange food items. Both of these projects are in books but the strange food items are pretty funny.

Anyway I am going to be doing some new projects soon so keep your eyes peeled!

A small update

2013-04-13T12:57:00.000-07:00

For my readers that don't follow my flickr feed here is a small update of what I have been doing digitally. I have a bunch of cyanotypes I am going to be making a post about soon but I have been busy in all of my shooting classes this semester which totally killed my new years resolution of an update a week. I am going to try to get back on that track to help keep myself better organized. I did do a couple of really cool things as well recently like build a room in my condo for coating paper and prep of liquid emulsion and tin types. I have been playing with the idea of working with fuji-lifts and fuji transfers since I picked up a day lab and a new instant film camera but I haven't had the time or slide film to do it with yet.

Anyway I been focusing a lot more on color now and trying to make my compositions a bit more interesting and different than what I have been in the past. In order to grow I must change what I am doing a bit and improve. I have found a good couple of ways to do this in post production but for some reason figuring out color has become increasingly more difficult the more I learn it. I have found ways to get the colors how I would like but I am still fine tuning the details in this process. Since each photograph is different this can sometimes lead to a massive photoshop document if I want to keep certain things looking one way. So far though I have made this semester a rousing success in terms of progressing my education in modeling shoots and in color theory even though I don't have a color class pushing myself to learn and understand it more is going to hep me long term. Which is what I want anyway, long term knowledge.

Location Lighting week three through six

2013-03-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

So the last three weeks or so I have been completely swamped with school and work. It has been a great learning curve but I have been pretty exhausted come Friday. Since I haven't been able to update the blog as frequently as I wanted to I think I will do a couple of posts over the next week or so to give a total update of what I have been doing.

So my recent location shoot have used a Profoto 600B or Canon 580exII units for lighting. Pretty much every shoot from this point forward is going to use a 600B unless portability is going to be an issue, like in the shoot I did with Brianna. In that case I might have a couple of 580ex's but we were pretty much in the ocean shooting the images of her.

Other than that there isn't much to say about most of these images really. I been working on paying more attention to color and manipulating it to suit my needs through various different methods. Depending on how much I can figure out how to fine tune my current method I might end up doing some tutorials on it. Possibly a video tutorial so I can put my Yeti microphone to good use instead of just using it for bad league of legends videos.

Anyways the last two images are possibly going to be the last real shoots of my trusty ol' 50D. The first two images are from my new 6D. It is an amazing piece of equipment.

Location Lighting Class

2013-02-25T00:47:00.001-07:00

So since I failed my resolution on updating once per week when school kicked in I decided now since I am working on more finished photographs instead of everything that I seem to cook up I can hopefully bring more of a quality posts.

At any rate I started my location lighting class which is awesome and my first assignment which is shown on the right. This shot was done with the 530 exII as the master and a 430 ex on photo right for the other light source bouncing off the ceiling. Longer exposure to burn in more of the ambient light behind me. Other than that I just had them as a bare bulb. No special modifiers on them since the 430 was just laying on its back.

The location for this particular photo was in an old church my school bought and was using for a lecture hall. I do have some more images from the shoot but none of them stand out to me very much. I will be making another post shortly with some of the film I shot last semester because there are two images in particular that I really like that I haven't been able to get online yet. Since my alt process class started as well I will have some more film prints coming out. The most recent shots are from a pinhole camera to a giant film negative. I need to clean them then print them on some fiber paper before showing off the images. The pinhole camera was made out of a tea tin so it was a pretty fun little experiment. There will be more on that and I might make an DIY pinhole camera post in the future. Hopefully I don't get swamped and can actually go through with it unlike the infrared tutorial. Which I do have the majority of the images but I am trying to get the proper film for it. Just so there will be a good base on how the final effect is suppost to look unlike how people are making it out to look. If I get my Mark 3 before I have the chance to order and shoot the film I will probably just send my 50d out to get modded into an infrared only camera which would work as well.

At any rate let me know how you guys like the image on here or on flickr! It would be great to start getting more input on what I been doing.

Garage Project

2013-01-31T12:12:00.000-07:00

So recently I started to clean out my garage, this small undertaking was mainly done so I would stop getting parking tickets for being in my own driveway and it turned out into something a little bit cooler than that. For the readers who don't know I live in a condo in San Francisco which has been around for ages. The garage has essentially just been a storage place for things for probably the past fifty or so years easy. So there is just tons of stuff and a lot of garbage in it. Which will be recycled, thrown away and possibly sold.

Which is all good and dandy but before that I wanted to catalog some of the items and play around with lighting a little bit since I haven't been able to use my alien bee strobe as much as I have been wanting to. All the images were shot at f/22 as well which I have been on the total opposite side of the spectrum playing with f/1.4 - f/2 for the past 4 months or so. I figured this would be a good exercise as well to remind me to not niche myself so frequently just because I like a certain look.

Which since I did that I am happy with how these have turned out so far. I am still going to do more when I have more space for some larger items but the surroundings of these with the straight clarity but still looking like there is a small bit of depth of field is pretty awesome in my opinion. These aren't super refined though as the horizons could be a level and there are some hot spots on the paint brush but beyond minor refinement and looking at just the ascetic I really appreciate the look this has brought.

So beyond expanding on this project I will also be applying this to portraits as well and I might be going to an extreme with it. I am not too sure since the idea flow for portraits is a lot different than going with something as simple as looking at some forgotten tools and cleaning supplies from my garage. I do have more access to some more models now, which the next one might be used in an upcoming shoot soon. It will probably be something silly but I need to go to the idea book and figure out some stuff before badgering them to do it.

From Mesa to San Francisco

2013-01-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

So recently I went down to Mesa, Arizona to pick up my car from my mother since I haven't had a place to park it up here in San Francisco. So naturally I brought my trusty old 50d along for the ride. After a couple hours on an airplane and a short drive I was in Arizona again after being out of the state for about a year. Since I just got my brand spankin' new 50mm 1.4 I couldn't resist the urge to use it constantly as my kit lens for the journey. Now I started using the lens just recently for a concert in my last post featuring Critical Bliss but this si the first time I got to use the lens with a decent lighting situation, and honestly it preformed with an amazing ease that I was not expecting for a lens of it's price. The first image here is of Mahkayla in a book store on Venice Beach, which to me the depth of field is spot on and there are a few small things I would fix if it was a studio shot or not so much as a snap shot like the hair leading to her eye on the right and the small hot spot in the lower left hand corner but other than that which are my fault really the quality of the image is stunning.

Soon I am going to be starting on a small project called "In my Garage" where I will be photographing items under a studio light set up of what items I have found in my garage that I am cleaning in my new place here in San Francisco. I think it has the potential to be really cool, I am starting to figure out how I am going to be shooting the project but I am probably just going to clear a space in the garage and shoot it from top down or eye level to the items. Since it will be a small series on still lives it should be a pretty interesting shoot.

Critical Bliss

2013-01-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of images from the Critical Bliss concert last night at Martuni's martini bar. It was a great night out and one of the few reasons I still venture to downtown San Francisco. I probably should get out more than just work and random excursions but I am very happy where I am currently and until I pick up my car from Arizona next Tuesday I will probably just be day dreaming about a warm beach. Anyway this post specifically will be about the 50mm 1.4 Canon lens.

If I had to give it a rating it would be game of the year. The lens itself is solid, unlike the f/1.8 which makes it a good deal heavier but at triple the cost it damn well better be. The lens performance is also a lot higher than the f/1.8 and since it has eight leafs in its aperture the backgrounds are a lot creamier looking. That sounds crazy, it looks like a more realistic blur. Anyway the blur looks a lot better. It is one of the things that you wouldn't expect to make a big difference but it really does. It is easily seen in the out of focus highlights though. Crazy lens though, it will become my kit lens on the 5d Mark 3 to replace the 35mm lens I use all the time now.

A more "Vintage" feel

2013-01-04T03:33:00.001-07:00

So I been playing around more with editing now that I cut back my hours at work and I been having this horrendous photo bug which makes me want to shoot all the time and it has been helping me develop my style even further. Which is good and bad because now I am becoming ultra finicky about certain dumb things but these were on my 35mm f/2. I have just ordered my 50mm f/1.4 which I am extremely excited for. This will be my fastest lens to date which is pretty cool. Once I have gotten the 5d Mark 3 it will become my base lens as well. So for something that fast as my kit lens will be pretty awesome.

"iPhoneography" and New Years Resolutions

2013-01-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

Well the first post of the new year is going to be about photography using the iPhone, nifty. Anyway the images here are all done with the the iPhone 4s and honestly it is a solid device. As a camera it is piss poor in a lot of situations but it can get the job done. One of the nice things about it are the stupid filter effects you can add like in all the these images.
It is hard trying to be positive about something I don't really care about. The iPhone is a great phone but a mediocre camera at best it has a ton of limitations but is discrete enough where people have no idea what the fuck you are doing since so many games and things are done on the device. There are neat things like lenses you can get for the iPhone but they look dumb as hell and really if you are going to put lenses on your phone just buy any compact system camera. Keep in mind the camera is made for small media viewing, like the phone screen or a 1080p computer screen. It isn't a device made for print in mind. It is true you can print small images with it but they still aren't to the quality of a crappy 80 dollar camera.

Also these images were taken within the last year as well. I am working on some new stuff at the moment but I wanted to update with and tell everyone that can read my new years resolutions for this blog. I am going to update twice a month. I am going to attempt for once a week like I had in the first year of the blog but we will see. When the blog was born I had no real responsibilities until I got into school then from there it was work almost full time with school almost full time and it just kept stacking where I had no real time for myself. Thankfully since my move I don't have to work as hard anymore and can focus more on school and editing so everything should move at a much faster pace in a more positive direction for my work as a whole. Hopefully this will provide with some really cool stuff and I will also be doing lighting diagrams as well on the blog as well for some of my studio or location lighting stuff.

Also I have recently purchased an infrared filter to use along side the photoshop tutorial I been working on for ages now. If everything goes well I will have a tutorial for the effect, images of the actual effect and a review of just the filter for the effect. The images I will use will most likely be from my buddy Miles Nitz. For what the real film looks like in comparison to the digital effects that are available now.

Anyway Happy New Year!

Brenizer Method

2012-12-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

So these images are rather old now, they were shot back when I still lived in Downtown San Francisco. The end of last Spring is closer to the time they were shot. I think but these were shot with my 85mm f/1.8. What is cool though is that the depth of field is much more than a 1.8 generally is. This is because of the Brenizer effect. Basically it is panorama portraits which when stitched together are these HUGE images that depending on how decent your computer might take about a half hour to process.

These were fun shoots all together but there are multiple things I would change about each one of these images. Minor background things for a lot of the images but small lighting techniques as well.

Traditional Darkroom Final

2012-12-13T02:16:00.003-07:00

So for my final in my darkroom class at the Academy I had free reign to do whatever I pleased. So long I had an artist statement and some other stuff I didn't pay too much attention to and should probably look back to see what else I have to do. Anyway these are some of the prints I have made for the class. Keep in mind these are all hand printed on RC paper so it isn't fiber like I used to print on but it is still pretty nice. I would have rather printed on fiber to be honest but I just don't have the time to constantly print on it. Hopefully I will in the near future but as of right now I have been too busy. Oh yeah, and the film it was shot on was this.

General Update and Some Portraits

2012-12-10T01:04:00.001-07:00

So it has been a long time since my last post. I want to blame this on me being busy with work and having mainly printing classes this semester which is partially the case. The other part is that I have been extremely unhappy with my old Canon 50D. I have been shooting a lot of film but sadly since I have moved and gotten rid of my older film scanner I been waiting on a desk I ordered that never came in since the website I ordered it from never completed the transaction even though I got a delivery date. Eventually I will get a new film scanner though and show off some newer stuff from the past couple of months but I am unsure of which one to get. Before I had the Epson v300 but I am probably going for the v600 model now. So eventually there will be some nice film scans of my older medium format images that I never been able to get online, let alone printed because I shot them extremely thin. There will be some awesome stuff up in the future and it will be glorious.

Recently I have gotten a few emails every so often about the stuff I have been using. So starting now I will be linking the items I am playing around with in the blog so you can see the stuff I am talking about or thinking of getting for myself. So don't fret about the links they will just take you to the product on the Adorama website.

So there are a couple of things I am slowly beginning to work on now that I have began to drastically improve my use of any high end printer. The first is my straight up image quality. Which wasn't "bad" before but it has improved to the point where I am dissatisfied with a lot of the stuff I have done in the past which is really a step in the wrong direction for me. The only recent images I have made in the last couple of months on digital are the two in this post. The first one of my friend Johanna and the second of Mahkayla.

The image of Johanna was shot on my ol' 50D which still has a good quality to it but it isn't anything I am satisfied with, since I know it could be much cleaner if it wasn't for the noise I get at the mid range ISO's on it. It was taken using my 85mm lens, and honestly looks great because of it. The other image of Mahkayla is using the holga lens, for a Canon EF mount. You are able to get them in the different mounts depending on your own camera system but I actually found out that using this digitally is almost as fun as shooting with a real holga. The lens is awesome considering it is a chunk of slightly over priced plastic. Eventually I will start having images with my new Lensbaby Composer that I bought myself for my birthday but I am so picky with the images I have taken for it that it is unreal. For some reason I can't get my focus dead on even with being able to pick my sweet spot. The Composer is a lot easier to use than The Muse but I just am not willing to not use f/2.8 I guess.

Summer Classes and Fall Ideas

2012-09-21T09:52:00.002-07:00

So since my summer semester is finally over and I have had time do a bit more than just working, moving to a new place and practicing on league of legends. So over the summer I did a class about photographing people. Most of the assignments were about street photography and setting up the scene for the shot you are looking for so there is a lot of waiting involved. The bulk of what I was looking for came for when I was taking a long rest and just people watching.

Modeling Shoot in Sonoma

2012-07-28T23:51:00.003-07:00

So my people photography class went on a trip to Sonoma to do a small modeling shoot in this landscaping/garden art gallery place. The name of it alludes me at the moment but I think it is Park 121but it was a super fun time. The models I had were great and I had a delicious hamburger there as well. The landscapes were amazing considering how small they were but I was able to get some pretty interesting shots!

As for the blog it isn't dead, I just been working and summer school has been moving so fast I haven't had a whole lot of time to do much else beyond sleep and editing. So with my first larger break I wanted to get these up. Soon I will have other images since I been doing a lot of work in street photography and have some cool shots that will go up hopefully within the next 7 days or so of that and you guys can see what I have been doing.

So until next time when I have a larger up date I will have to see you guys later!

Antelope Canyon

2012-05-27T14:05:00.001-07:00

So in my recent vacation I had the pleasure of going to Page, Arizona and hitting up Antelope Canyon. This was a trip that was originally planned by Miles and I last year but we ended up not having the funds for it. Unfortunately Miles wasn't able to make it this year since he now resides near the northern parts of the United States. So I took this trip with my lovely girlfriend and my mother. The only complaint I really have about the whole canyon is that there is only one area I am aware of that you can go into, and it is only with tourist groups. This is kind of expected since it is on Navajo land so I can't complain too much but I feel like there is more unseen parts of this place. It is hard to get unique imagery in a place like that because of the saturation of similar images because of the one singular place.

PH115 Final

2012-05-16T08:26:00.001-07:00

So the main idea behind this shoot is to add abstraction between texture and architexture. The

project will be loosely based on Colburns early work with vortographs because of the opics used to make the initial images. Other than that there will be little influence of his work in this project. The strongest images to the viewer will be the most abstracted from reality, so my concept is removal from reality. Since all the images will be of architexture there will be key shapes to focus on to help bring the project from reality to a more dreamlike, lucid, state. It would be hard to discribe what a viewer would see since it isn't a concrete item I will be photographing. So a lot of the viewer's ideas of what it could be would be projection. These images will be geometric and breakdown into the basic elements of design, while trying to keep the dream like concept in shape. Keeping a smaller square format will also keep it to being a quite and more elegant in design. The small size would also make it so to truly see the images one would have to go up closer to them, and the closeness makes it more personal for the dreamlike state the images appear to be in. The images even since they don't have a spoonfed story, because honestly if something was spoon fed that is like this project it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. The images should have a painterly feel and not feel like they are an actual photograph. For me, the images come off as a bit of a motion dream, where one has to go somewhere but they aren't sure where the destionation might be. The images hopefully will envoke a bit of serenity into the viewer with the mostly deep blues for a color connection for the viewer, also the blue is a symbol of sleep. The main techniques used will be to use a fast mid length telephoto lens to compress and give a tack sharp focus point that can drop other details out of focus. The speed of the lens will also allow me to use an ultra fast shutter at a very low “Iso” to make sure there isn't any motion blur most of the shutter speeds used will be roughly over 1/1,000^th of a second or faster in broad daylight. On more cloudy days it will be a bit different but the thought process is the same since the effect won't work as well beyond 1/500^th of a second.

Visulization Final Project

2012-05-08T23:15:00.001-07:00

So my final project in my Visualization class is going to be more graphic versions of my Vortographs. Utilizing the similar ideas of what I have done in the past but instead of making these more of an explosion of imagery I want them to be a bit more graphic. I feel like some of these have accomplished that. This body of work does need more work to it but I feel like it is on the right track to being completed.

A quick little Stop Motion

2012-05-08T13:39:00.001-07:00

This is coffee time.

I do wish I could have gotten a better sound for the stirring of the coffee but this is my first real attempt at a stop motion video. Which to be honest I did enjoy making. I might do some more of these in the near future and finally get good use of of Final Cut. Who said me taking media classes in highschool was a waste of time?

A Studio Shoot with Sasha

2012-04-20T01:30:00.000-07:00

The last time I did a shoot with my buddy was way back around last year. Thankfully because of my forgetfulness it makes it look like it was a little under a year ago now from both of the blog posting. I also forgot about this post up until recently but I need to get back to work on the blog more. Forgetfulness is a bad habit of mine since I started working more and doing more school work with out much time for myself in my thoughts, or as Mahkayla would put it,"talking in circles to myself". Beyond it being almost a year since the last shoot there is a lot I have learned since then, it makes me feel like paying about 8,000 a semester is actually worth it beyond getting what feels to be a new life all together since I moved up to San Francisco. I am noticing a good style difference as well. I am getting a lot better with studio strobe which I will admit was a weakness of mine. I had the general idea and concept of studio light down but never really the actual lighting and playing with it. I am slowly graduating from my speedlights, even though I lust for the new one canon has put out. I am slowly getting myself some Alien Bee's and some stuff for them, but I am mainly interested in the beauty dish. Anyways from what I am aware of no one really comes here for my senseless ramblings to myself and more for Vorotographs, so I will be working on doing more of them soon. Also I might be patienting a vortographic lens of my design soon so there might be some on sale in the near future. Time will tell, but I know I will be using my prototypes ;)

Some Studio Work

2012-03-23T02:16:00.007-07:00

So beyond my normal work I been posting on here I thought it would be a good idea to incorperate some of my studio work on the blog as well. Seeing as I been extremely lazy and need to get back in the grove of posting my own work on here and not just school stuff I am hopefully going to start up on one of my projects again shortly. Yes, I know I need to finish the infrared photoshop technique tutorial. It has been on the back burner for ages now and will be finished when it is finished.

Other than that this was a simple limbo white background set up. Three strobes with bounce umbrellas going to another bounce onto a white seamless background. This also has an extremely large softbox for the main light. I forgot the power settings on the profoto pack but the average meter reading was about f/5.6 for the background.

Vizulization Assignment 6

2012-03-21T02:08:00.001-07:00

Reflections

So this is my shadows and reflections project for my visualization class. These are vortographs of something I use everyday since I have moved to the city. They are important items to me, yet extremely simple. They are water jugs, simple yet they have worked time and time again.

Shadows

Depth Of Field In Portraits

2012-03-09T02:14:00.000-07:00

f/ 5

This is a makeup assignment for the 5th assignment in my visualization class

f/25

My New Canon 85mm 1.8

2012-03-04T01:18:00.002-07:00

So this was one of the first images I have taken with my new 85mm 1.8 canon lens. Honestly it was a great buy for the price I got it at. At around 295, with out tax I picked up this beauty and it has been worth every penny so far. Both of these images were taken with the 85mm lens in studio. Which now getting used to the studio, which has been an awesome work space so far, I just need to get more reliable models. The ones I do get are awesome though. I can't thank Dustin and Sasha enough, you guys rock! In other news this lens is going to be wonderful for vortographs. I will end up having more vorotgraphs in the near future utilizing this lens in the near future.

Off The Grid - Food Truck Central

2012-02-29T19:28:00.002-07:00

So last Thursday Brianna, Mahkayla and I went to Off The Grid for the first time after getting my new 85mm 1.8 lens, which my next post will be about. Anyways this was beyond amazing, I had Fuji apples and Huey had a day of fun before he got his balls removed. I had a sandwhich with rice as the bread. It was amazing, my current level of intoxication won't allow me to go into much other detail beyond sounding like a kid with downs since I am sleepy as well and my judgement might be impaired but it was DAMN GOOD. I really want to go again this Thursday to try out the curry truck, get a steamed bun and then have some southern comfort food.
Long Live The Food Trucks!

Oh yeah and the images are from the sx230, I should have tested the toy camera mode for it. Or at least shot these in black and white but these are conversions with the black and white filter and the hue and saturation layer for the different tones.

Visualization Assignment 4

2012-02-29T02:20:00.000-07:00

So this is the shoe/chair concepting assignment. The idea behind these images is to have a concept behind the photos. The two concepts I have are a shoe's landscape and the back of the back.

The shoescape turned out pretty cool and I was extremely satisfied with the result of the whole thing. The back of the back didn't turn out as well as I hoped. The image is visually interesting, but I feel like either more could be done to make it more visually interesting, or I will probably scrap the entire thing. The original thought process of it was kind of a what your back feels and how it looks after you have spent the day in a wooden chair. So more of an implied chair from the imprint.