JoshAdwell.com

Quite Possibly The Cutest Thing Ever

Josh — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:17:44 -0900

This is quite possibly the cutest thing I’ll see all month:

You’re welcome!

Love,
Me

52 Weeks–Week Fifteen

Josh — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 12:42:06 -0900

This past week was my birthday, so my best friend decided to throw a party for me!

He’s not he biggest party animal though

This shoot was a lot of fun to concept up. Originally I was going to be included in the shot along with Kosmo, some balloons, and some Miley Cyrus decorations. After having some difficulties obtaining all the props (except for Kosmo), I decided to simplify things a bit.

Luckily Kosmo is a good sport during shoots; he basically just laid there the whole time. And if you look closely at the cupcake, you can see that the candle is nearly all the way burnt out. The only difficulties that he gave me were that he would flinch when I would toss the confetti.

Lighting Info:

This setup was quite similar what I use in Lynn’s Watch Lola Grow project.
A B800 in a PLM to illuminate the background at about 2 stops over the main.
A B400 in a strip box (orientated horizontally) as my main light.
A B800 placed far camera left and pointed a few feet in front of Kosmo to illuminate the confetti. The light was placed so far away to provide consistent exposure across the frame (that whole inverse square law thingie).

52 Weeks–Week Fourteen

Josh — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 12:09:55 -0900

This week’s photo was actually taken on Easter Sunday (yeah, I’m running several weeks behind on this blog).

This week was been filled with a lot of rain; and this time of year when we get a lot of rain, we also get a lot of baby turtles migrating through the neighborhood between the fields and the lakes. That also means that we usually find them squished on the road during our walks with the dogs.
Today when Lynn went to the grocery, she noticed a bunch of them in the roads, so she called me and asked me to rescue them all and take them down to one of the lakes. After I finished collecting them all, I noticed that I had 14, which happened to be the week that I needed to shoot today. At that point, I just knew that I had to shoot these little guys.

Lighting Info:

A B800 shooting in to a PLM52 with white diffusion, boomed over some white tileboard about 3-4' off the ground. Camera was on a tripod with the arm extended out and placed directly beneath the B800.

Later in the day, we rescued 8 more little baby turtles for a total of 22 that day! More photos of these little guys can be seen on Easter Turtle Rescue set on Flickr.

52 Weeks – Week Thirteen

Josh — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:08:27 -0900

This week I worked with Cord – a model who contacted me through Model Mayhem – to add some shots to his portfolio.

Cord is the first model that I’ve shot with from that site, so I was a bit nervous at first. I was nervous about being fully prepared, and being able to deliver quality images that he was likely anticipating based on the images I have shown in my profile.
We had decided to meet in a park that I had never been to before, and once I got there, it didn’t help to calm my nervous energy. The park wasn’t what I had in mind and I was really struggling to find an area with a decent background to shoot at.
Luckily I found some very large concrete wells in the back part of the park that provided a simple background to work with. In addition to not being very busy and distracting, they provided an excellent grungy and textured look that complimented a few of the items in his wardrobe really well.

Lighting Info

The lighting on this shot was from a single Alien Bee B800 from high camera right with a grid on it to tightly contain the light to only his face. The hard light from a gridded light source was perfect in this situation. It created a raw / edgy feel which matched perfectly with this shirt, pose, and the background. A gridded light source is also pretty unforgiving with its placement. Upon further inspection, it appears that it might have been a bit low and pointed more at his neck.
I shot at my maximum sync speed of 1/250th to underexpose the ambient light as much as possible. This also helps to create that darker look and feel to the image.

Final Thoughts

Working with Cord was a lot of fun. He was really easy going with an energetic and enthusiastic personality. He was truly there to create great images, instead of just showing up to have some photographer take some photos of him. He would regularly make suggestions for the shoot, which was wonderful because it helped to take some of the pressure off of me, and it was just nice to be able to share ideas.

Overall I’m very happy with how this photo turned out, as well as the other photos from the shoot. Here’s a link to all the photos from my shoot with Cord.

52 Weeks - Week Twelve

Josh — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 07:13:51 -0900

Once again, I decided to give your eyes a rest from being forced to look at my mug, and stepped out from in front of the lens this week. Instead, you get the pleasure of viewing Lynn :)

I recently joined a website that helps connect models with photographers and other visual artists (stylists, makeup artists, etc.). Since joining this site, I’ve had several models contact me to shoot them. A couple of shoots are going to be done in downtown Louisville, so I decided to do some location scouting and have Lynn help me by being my model for the day.

I spotted this location a few weeks ago during one of my weekend long runs. It’s located in a semi industrial area with lots of brick and metal structures. As you can imagine, this building and door really stood out.

Lighting Info

For this shot, I used an Alien Bee B800 in a medium octabox from high and camera right. Seriously, it’s an octabox; just check out the reflection in her sunglasses . The light is not too far out of frame. I wanted the light to be close and directed at her head, so that it would fall off below her torso and keep the focus on her face (lighter areas draw attention).

Later I had decided to add a small flash coming from camera left to help separate her dark shirt from the door.

As you can see, this really really made her stand out from the door. Ultimately I didn’t choose this image because I favored the pose, motion in her hair, and the partially covered door knob of the other image.

Final Thoughts

Now that it’s getting warmer outside, I want to get out more and start working with other people. Working on location provided a few challenges, but a lot of creative opportunities. It also allowed us to meet the resident of this building, and his friend, which ran into again later during our scouting session.

52 Weeks - Week Eleven

Josh — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:30:46 -0900

This week was a lot of fun for me. I’ve been tossing around the idea or working around a monthly theme to help develop a concept each week. I've also started paying more attention to movie posters and other movie artwork as inspiration, so I decided this week that I was going to mimic something from a movie. Since my neighbor is regularly telling me that I have a resemblance to Edward Norton, I found it fitting to start with one of his characters.

Interesting factoid: Norton’s character doesn’t have a name; he’s just credited as The Narrator.

I ordered a replica piece of Fight Club soap from Sin City Soaps on ebay for a great price and was shipped quickly. Next up was getting the right shirt and tie. A quick stop at Dillards took care of that.

Lighting Info

B800 in a stripbox on camera right about head height pointed downward slightly. The goal was to get a somewhat even lighting across myself without drawing too much attention to any one area. The focus was clearly meant to be on the soap.
A B400 with a 20° grid on camera left pointed directly at the soap and only a few inches away, so the power of the light would fall off sharply before hitting my face or chest. It didn't fall off as sharply as I would have liked, but it worked out well enough.
The camera was set around 1/200th for shutter speed to kill as much ambient as possible.

Final Thoughts

It was so much fun to be able to plan this shot days in advance. It was also a great relief to not go in to the weekend without a concept and have to cram for an idea.

What do you do to come up with concepts for shoots? Have you ever recreated a shot from a movie or TV character? Tell us all about it in the comments section below.

52 Weeks - Week Ten

Josh — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:44:23 -0900

I decided this week that I didn’t feel like putting myself in front of the lens, so I got Lynn to model for me. It wasn’t to difficult to get her to do that since she’s been dying to pose in front of the Westcott Modern Vintage background that I recently purchased.

Setup Shot:

A three light setup was used here.

Main light was a B800 in a 52" silver PLM without the white diffusion fabric.
Hair light was also a B800 in the normal reflector with a tight grid (I think 20°) on it.
Background light was my new B400 with a really tight grid on it, I believe this one was 10°.

I essentially tried all new lighting techniques with this shot, with the exception of the hair light, and found out some things that I didn’t like about it.

First off, I used the PLM without the diffusion fabric. I’ve heard a lot of talk about how contrast-y it is, and how much “pop” it creates. This does create a contrast-y modifier. Unless your subject has flawless skin, I would not recommend using it on bare skin.

Next was the background light. This is the first time using a grid on the background light. I feel like I definitely over did it on how tight I went. 10° was too tight for the length of this shot. It probably would have been more appropriate on a headshot. I also feel like I had it too low, causing it to not fully direct the viewer’s eyes to Lynn’s face.

Final thoughts.

Well it was a nice relief to not be working both ends of the lens, and to just focus on the model and the image.
Continue to play with my lights and modifiers to see what works and what doesn’t. Removing the diffusion fabric from the PLM was a great example of this.
Continue to practice posing Lynn, so I get experience in communicating with my subject.

As always, feel free to chime in below.

52 Weeks - Week Nine

Josh — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 17:19:00 -0900

This week my marathon training had to be reduced due to a hamstring injury. In an effort to help it heal and prevent future injuries, I’ve decided to start performing Yoga again in the basement.

Here’s the setup shot:

As you can see, the setup was pretty simple: a main light, background light, and a rim light (aka: kicker).

I have to admit, I’m starting to get a little tired of doing photos of myself, but this one was pretty fun. I really enjoyed coming up with a concept for this shot, and they shooting it. It felt good to actually have a plan and some direction to the shot well before I start.

52 Weeks - Week 8

Josh — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:58:00 -0900

This week wasn’t the greatest week for us. On Friday we lost a good friend, so I decided to create an image that hard a darker feel to it.

Dedicated to Tobey Magnum (‘98 – ‘11).

52 Weeks - Week 7

Josh — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:46:18 -0900

This week I just really had to get out of the house for the shoot.
After my long run on Sunday I took the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood and was eyeing a section of field where I was interested in doing this week’s shot. Once we finished our walk, I walked over to the field and started scouting out an area where I would have a nice background. While walking around I noticed some culvert pipes that I wanted to make use of. Luckily I found one at the end that was large enough for me to fit in.

The lighting for this image is pretty straight forward. I used a B800 in a PLM51 powered by my new Vagabond Mini which I’ve been waiting since December to arrive. I’m really looking forward to using it on more location shoots!
I liked some of the moodiness that was in the clouds, but they were very grey and quite dull. I decided to gel the strobe with a 1/2CTO gel. This creates a warmer source light, so that when I corrected the white balance, it would turn the clouds blue.

I recruited Lynn’s help to man the camera and make sure that my body was positioned how I wanted it to be. With it being 36 degrees outside, I really didn’t want to be messing around checking the composition while wearing a t-shirt. Besides, it’s always nice to have her help out and to get her input during the process.

Typically I don’t like to do a lot of dramatic post processing on my images, but when I previewed it with Matt’s Surreal Edgy Effect 4 preset, I absolutely loved it and felt that it really complimented the image well.

Takeaway from this shot.

Grab two sandbags when working with a PLM outside in the wind.
A lens wider than 17mm would have been really nice here.
Get out, walk around, and find some unusual places to use for a shoot.
Get ready to shave my head completely, because it looks like my hairline is rapidly disappearing.

Got something to say about this image? Been able to play with our Vagabond Mini yet? Still waiting on yours to ship? Got a wide angle lens that you want to let me borrow? Let us hear about it in the comments section below.