STREET PORTRAITIST

Annular Eclipse Tokyo

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:03:03 +0900

Taken from my balcony at about 7:30am this morning.

Portrait Session - Starring Tiffany

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:29:52 +0900

Shot with model and punkrocker Tiffany Cadillac recently. She had some creative looks that she had come up with so we decided to meet up and shoot them. Hair, makeup and styling was all done by her.

We did maybe 7 looks or so. Still processing the photos but here are two quick photos from some that were taken.

Will post the rest maybe next week when I have finished with them ;D

Portrait Session - Starring Sascha

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:47:03 +0900

So, took these pics maybe 2-3 weeks ago of model Sascha

A bit before this Mijonju brought out his lappy and gave me a quick lesson on photoshop
and how he edits images. Got some good advice and was able to do some basic editing of some photos.

However, for any type of beauty work you need to do a lot of stuff in post so I subscribed to Lynda and watched a few photoshop series by Chris Orwig then decided to use the above
photo as a “lets practice retouching” photo.

I pretty much have opened the picture up in photoshop everyday for the past 3 weeks. Some days I just opened it stared and asked what? why? how? and never actually edited it at all and in the end just closed the file.

Other days I would do a little editing, sometimes leaving the result, sometimes deleting it and starting again.

As with anything you dont really know what you like untill you know what is actually possible.

I went away and started looking at other photographers work to see how it is processed.

It is funny once you know about editing because you can look a photo and see what the person did in post.

I saw a lot of amazing work that pretty much blew my mind.

Also at the opposite end of the spectrum saw a lot of “Got plastic?” “Got airbrush?” “Oh no, they went too far….” type of stuff.

I guess in the end it is what is. You edit stuff the way you feel and according to your vision so there isnt really any right or wrong solutions.

This image might be about 95% finished. There are maybe 1-2 really small niggly details I would like to fix, but I think im not too sure how and I am cool with the way they are for the moment.

Oh well, got quite a few shoots lined up this month. Should be fun to see where it goes!

Probably start shooting street portraits again next month :D also have a lil fun project lined up for when I go to climb mount Fuji again this year.

Getting my cell phone photography on

Sun, 06 May 2012 13:19:17 +0900

Getting my cell phone photography on

Polaroid Fun

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:23:38 +0900

Was shooting a bit of retro/old skool ish and took a few polaroids.
Think the polaroids might end up coming out better than the shots on digi ;o

Portrait Session - Starring Stacey

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0900

So with the weather sucking since forever decided to do a bit more studio stuff. After all the bad weather rainy season is probably also around the corner which sucks even more…

Decided to up some shots with Stacey from a week or so ago. Messed around with a few setups, beauty look and some other stuff.

Ended up making a composite out of one of the looks.

Shot some film too.

Medium format with the Pentax67:

End up going darkroom the following weekend and making some prints.
Was going to post a little darkroom field report but forgot some of the prints in the darkroom lol…

Pretty happy how the film dev is going. Have had thin negs, badly damaged and scratched, completely ruined negs… However the past few devs have gone really well, close to flawless in terms of density and scratching/dust etc.

Shot some large format too:

Noticed from the last shoot I did that my large format camera needs a lens hood. Using a light on the back ends up creating some very funk effects without one…

Oh well, got a few more photos from another shoot to try process and also might try to line up a few shoots for GW ;o

Pretty interesting though. With street photography and stuff I found myself not really caring too much or worrying about doing any post processing to my work (or even really the quality of my work just the content). But with this type of photography you kinda have to. As a result, I find myself staring at my photos for ages thinking about them, what to do and how to make them better. Kinda like in the darkroom making prints. Actually making me a bit more detailed oriented :)

Quick Portrait - Stacey

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:27:06 +0900

Quick pic from a portrait session I did with Stacey last week. WIll post some more pics and a write up later.

Actually went darkroom 2 days ago. Will up some scans and a little report about it tomorrow or something.

Have a nice day folks.

Portrait Session - Starring Julia

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:20:54 +0900

Did a shoot with Julia about 2 weeks ago. Alani came along too. Shot some outdoor and indoor stuff. Been trying to learn some photoshop recently. It is funny I find that at this point I jump between Lightroom, GIMP and photoshop depending on what I want to do…

Was shooting large format outdoors so maybe only took 3 different looking shots. Came inside met up with Maity and shot one setup. This is the shot I liked the most from the indoor setup:

Feeling ridic lazy and tired recently.. so much film to scan so many shots to try and process…

Re: your overexposed Portra, I think that just proves the principle of 'with negative film, it will be fine'. Shooting a roll of slide through my RB67 made me realise how much my guessed exposures vary, but on FP4+, Reala and Ektar they turn out just fine.

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:27:23 +0900

Yeah tell me about it. Because of that reason I am scared to shoot the Astia that I bought for my 4x5 camera :( Last time I shot it on 6x7 I guess I didnt meter properly because I didnt get great results…

Darkroom Coat

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:05:43 +0900

So yeah I was talking about getting a lab coat for going to the darkroom when Joanne offered to get me one :D (she works as a mad scientist).

We discussed colours and I said that blue would be good. However, no blue was available. She said she would dye a white one blue for me. However, it didnt quite turn out blue, ended up purple…
But its all good, purple is rapidly becoming one of my favorite colours.

The day we met to exchange the goods I was expecting some lighting stuff so I asked her if she wouldnt mind helping me test it out. Waited till 9 o’clock but the delivery didnt come. Checked the internet and it was actually due to come the next day .. doh

Figured since she was here anyway i would try using some lights I hadnt used before and try experiment a little, and also get her to take a pic of me in my new pimp lab coat.

Pretty abc lighting, but I liked this pic:

Thinking of going to the darkroom this Sunday maybe, gonna have chicks all over me….

Portra 400 shot at 100

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:45:07 +0900

Picked up some film last night which was a mixed bag of this weekend and a shoot from 2 weeks ago.

I shot two rolls of portra400 on my pentax67 with Adriana, reason being was after shooting the first I realized I adjusted my f-stop in the wrong direction and exposed for iso 100 instead of 400…

Shot another roll straight after at the correct setting. Sent that roll to the local near my house, comparing what he did to what the people at Ebisu did is pretty crazy, results are like night and day. I already knew the local guy sucked as he has ruined a few rolls of my film, but I was feeling lazy and impatient. I think Ill make a bet with myself and start setting 1000 yen notes on fire anytime I drop film off to him to get developed….

So yeah dropped the roll to Ebisu and they said they can only pull one stop (needs to two stops) and it will cost twice the price. I was like wtf?? Told them to put the order on ice till I get back to them. Did some research and heard people talking about shooting portra at 1600 and developing it normally and getting good results.

Decided to just dev it normal. Results are interesting. Looks slightly on the washed out side, but might be able to fix it in the scanner or lightroom.

Also picked up a large format shot too. Not sure if my eyes are getting bad or the focusing screen sucks but seems like im unable to see stuff in the background too well…

Quality is pretty nuts, although you cant tell on by looking at it at this size. Shot with porta400 slightly overexposed.

Hanami with the missus

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:20:25 +0900

Was out doing Hanami (checking out the cherry blossoms) with the missus on the weekend.
Took out the camera so she could take some pics of the flowers and stuff and so I could take a few of her.

Got to near the end of the park trail and hadn’t taken a single picture of her yet, I was too busy using instagram to take photos of weird people and stuff.. (follow me on instagram “streetportraitist”).

She turned to me and said:

“Y U No take my photo?”

I smiled, took the camera and spent a few minutes snapping away :D

Adriana on Film

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:14:20 +0900

Shot some photos of Adriana on film. Developed them last night and they came out nice. Might be the best batch of negs I have done so far, nice density. Still have a little dust and a few scratches though but way better than the past two batches….

Shot some colour too, but bw looked way better. Not sure if its due to me letting the dude in my local shop dev them… (i never learn).

Tried to get the iso400 film I shot at iso100 by accident developed, but the shop told me the most they can do is develop it at iso200 and it will cost 2x the normal cost LOL (gamboooollll).

I told them to chill to not do anything and I will decide today if I want it developed…

Instagram

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:51:26 +0900

Android has finally released instagram. Catch me on there, username is:

streetportraitist

Portrait Session - Starring Adriana

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:59:00 +0900

So yeah did a shoot with model Adriana and hair makeup partner in crime Maity recently.

Fun times :)

It was the second time shooting in my home studio setup. Had a post about the first shoot I did but tumblr deleted it :(

Few months ago I thought to myself, why not turn my home to a mini studio? Did a bunch of research, checked around and came to the conclusion it was not feasible because the ceiling is too low and layout is too narrow. So I gave up on the idea….

Ended up paying to use other studios for a bit. Next thought was how about finding a dirt cheap building to rent and maybe turning that into a studio?

But after a bit of research that wasnt feasible either. Everywhere was too expensive, and the places cheap enough didnt have the right layout to make it work. So I gave up on that idea too….

About 2-3 weeks ago I started thinking about it again and went to Yodobashi to check out the price of seamless background paper and a stand to mount it on.

Not too expensive, but I still wasnt sure.

A few Saturdays ago, I remember writing a tweet about backdrop stands and Uchujin (check out his photography and vid documentaries) who I ended up bump into that same day
kindly offered to lend me his background stuff. In the end I opted to just get my own since it was cheap enough and didn’t wanna make him go through the hassle of lugging heavy stuff around.

That same day as I was walking through Shinjuku station pondering about whether to get the stuff or not someone tapped me on my back. I look around and its Genevieve (check out her photography). She said she recognized my hat from afar lol..

Spoke to her a bit and I tell her that I saw a cheap backdrop mount and was pondering getting it. She tells me she has the exact same one I was thinking of getting and we speak a bit more about it.

That more or less makes my descion for me to get it.

So yeah FF back to the photo shoot. The plan for the day was to initially do bunch of beauty shots using different colours. But things ended up going a bit slow and after the first natural look shot kinda just changed it up and improvised.

Adriana was great though, she brought quite a few outfits.

After the beauty shots it more or less turned into a game of how many looks and trying to push the limits of my house.
Ended up moving the light from front to front to side to side, used tables with white cloth for reflectors, black paper as scrims, added a bunch of lights, took some away, used multiple modifiers, moved closer and further to get a different colour background.

All this while Maity rocked the makeup and Adriana rocked my camera.

Probably still a few things left to try and to try improve for the next time, but pretty happy with the way things worked out.

Might try shooting some beauty stuff for a while ;o

Shot some film and managed to expose iso400 film at iso100, and waste some large format. Seems im forgetting or unable to use the camera efficiently since I havent used it regularly for a while…

Might post some film shots if any came out ok…

Learning Post Processing

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:10:19 +0900

Ugh, I think I bought my first camera, a d70, in like June 2010. After shooting for a few months I realized that I wasnt happy with the way the photos looked and to make things worse had no idea how to fix them…

The escape route was to start shooting film :D. With film you can more or less just use whatever u get out of the cam and still get decent results.

But the side effects of doing that is that I only really know what I want/like from an abstract point of view (composition, colour scheme) but havent really got a clue on a more detailed level.

For example, I spent a bit of time on the above image but got to a point where its like, do I keep her eyes the same or make them brighter? Do I find some tutorial and find a way to make her skin super duper magazine smooth or is it cool like this, do I brighten the shadow, completely remove it, leave it as it is? Try and dodge and burn to add more dimensional? Am I happy with the way it looks or can I make it better? haha the list goes on… And unfortunately the answer to most of these questions is a shoulder shrug…

I guess the only way to find the answer is to face my demons and actually try spending time with a lot of my images and trying to figure out what I like and what I can do in camera and with lights to try and get better results in camera.

Should be interesting hitting the darkroom again after processing a bunch of photos. I might actually be able to save myself some paper.

If anybody is using GIMP and knows any cool plugins, let me know :D

SixtyEight & SixtyNine

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:57:14 +0900

My timing has been lovely as of late. Seem to bump into people or cool stuff wherever I go. Maybe it is more induced than anything since I do stuff like get a different train to work everyday and end up riding on a different carriage each time. I also walk home and to work via different routes depending on my mood and go to lunch at a different time everyday. My life is pretty random…
Based on that I seem to end up changing my fate or something. I suggest you do the same and see what happens ;p

Anyway, last week I tried to go to one of my regular spots for lunch but for some reason I couldn’t get in. I decided to go to a different spot and headed towards Meguro river. Just before I got to the traffic lights I see the dude in the above picture crossing the road.
Light bulb goes off, I know this guy… Lol my first day out shooting street portraits in Tokyo back in September at Yoyogi Park I took a photo of him. I saw him and thought, “Woah dude looks cool”. I stopped him and with an exchange of very few words took his photo and thanked him.
Unfortunately the photo was complete garbage and despite all the cropping in the world it was unusable.

As he got to the other side of the road the light changed and I couldn’t cross. Thought meh, can I really be bothered to wait for the light to change then run after him when the place I am heading to is in the completely opposite direction? However, when he got to the other side of the road he stopped to take stuff out of his bag or something.
I stood and observed, the light changed to green and he was still there.. If that is not some sort of sign or something I dont know what is..

I flash across the road and say, “Yoooo”. And tell him that I took a photo of him like 6 months ago. I study his face and it goes from a blank expression to a “I recognize you” expression.

He was like, “Wow you recognized me?”. Im like, “Lol dude I doubt anybody who met you before is forgetting what you look like”.

Ask him whats up and he says he lives not too far and is off to work. He works as a web designer. I give him my card and tell him to catch me online.

He adds me on twitter and we speak some.

Yesterday I needed to pick up my business cards near the station at lunchtime and I see him tweeting he is near Meguro station eating Ham tabehodai (all you can eat). I holla at him and say yo if you got time let me retake your pic!!!!

We meet at the station and he is with his chick. They both are blacked out, wearing sunglasses and look ridic cool. I apologize for calling him out while he is with his chick and he is like its fine they got no plans and are off today.

Do an intro with his chick and she says she just graduated yesterday. I congratulate her. She says that she does ballet. I was like “Cool, would love to see you rock it sometime”.

Compliment her on her cool jacket and she said that her bf picked it out for her. Take the guys pic first and then look around for somewhere to take the girls photo. Interesting thing about the above photo, before I would probably never have taken a photo of someone in the middle of the day getting hit by afternoon sunlight, normally I look for shade. But I guess after a while you realize that not everything is as simple as soft light = good and harsh light = bad.
Next I need to take the girls photo, I spot a green bridge that is really nice and decide to take the photo up there.
Was actually interested in seeing how the green would be rendered, came out better than I thought.

So after taking both of their photos I ask them if I can take a photo of both of them together. They said sure and we head towards the station to look for a spot.
I asked them what they had planned after and they said that they are gonna go furniture hunting ( would love to see what type of furniture they have…). The girl tells me that my jumper is cute and I say thanks in an nonchalant way, but on the inside do a couple of fist pumps. Was feeling pretty uncool hanging out with them lol.

Find a decent spot and tell them to stand next to each other. I suggest maybe they hold hands. They give a shyish laugh and then connect hands.

The End.

Oh well, weather is on the come up. Current plans, do a bunch of lighting stuff and try get a few more street portraits (along with a few mini projects). If all goes well will try make a Street Portraitist book sometime within the next 6 months…

Print Giveaway

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:08:05 +0900

Gonna be giving away some test prints that I make since they are probably gonna pile up and end up going to waste or getting thrown away (some old street stuff and maybe some newer portraits I take). Check out my FB page if interested:

FB Page

Peace

Rapper Micho

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:46:00 +0900

Did a little shoot with Japanese Rapper Micho a few months back.

She released an album last week that is available through free download and can be found here:

Download

Download it and give it a listen :)

Here is here music video on youtube for her single -> Youtube

She is also on twitter -> https://twitter.com/#!/MICHOmic

And has a FB page - Facebook

Go show her some love :D

The shoot was initially for a magazine that was suppose to be released this month, but ended up getting cancelled at the last minute.

Think it was meant to be a 2 page spread with like a small profile pic type shot with some text (pic above) and a biggish size composite taking up a large amount of the other page.

Ended up making 2 composites, first one above would have perhaps taken up a whole page and there would have been text at the bottom part that has some negative space.

Tried to make the pictures next to each other kinda flow like a sequence. This composite was the more of a chilled quiet atmosphere.

The other composite I made was a bit more loud and wild.

I was looking through a photobook called Portraits by Michael Thompson when I noticed he had a lot of these cool pics where he had JLo, Mariah Carrey, Fergie and a few other people dancing and took a bunch of those sequences to make one photo.

I asked a bit on twitter how to make something like that, then ended up issuing myself a challenge saying no sleep till I get it done.

Started 5pm went bed 2am that night lol. Ended up owning myself multiple times and having to start from scratch….

Oh well, at least I got a rough idea how to make layered composite now.

Actually liked this profile shot too, although it wasnt gonna get used, yellow and black is so nice ;D

Think there are quite a few other decent pics that got taken but they are destined to rot on the HD of my computer…

Anyway once again, download the album mayneeee:

Download

If you like it then feel free to reshare, reblog this or post the link on ur own page etc.

Peace!

Happy Sunday

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 08:09:39 +0900

Was looking through some photos and realized there were a few more of Lareina I took that I liked. Thought I would upload one real quick.

Have a nice Sunday peeps.