Monthly Archive for May, 2010

Logics Fashion Show

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 31, 2010
in Collections and Series
. 0 Comments

When hairstylist and Logics Artistic Director Chrystofer Benson told me he would be styling a show with Rachael Domingo’s custom designs I couldn’t help but be intrigued.  Shot at the Radisson in downtown Salt Lake City.  When my assistant (Anna) and I arrived they took us to the suites they had booked for a possible shooting location, immediately I decided they wouldn’t work at all.  They were big, beautiful rooms, but not quite anything close to what needed to be done.

So, we went exploring.  We wandered all over the hotel, including in places I’m pretty certain we weren’t supposed to be in… did you know they have a giant room dedicated to storing table linens in a rainbow of colors?

Finally, I found the spot.  A stones throw away from the front desk near the entrance to the coffee shop. We’d only have to move a couple tables and create a little bit of commotion but hey, what fun is a photoshoot without a commotion?

I talked to a few people in charge and got as close to official permission possible and then, the shoot was on!  To all you folks in the lobby, I hope you enjoyed the shoot as much as I did!

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Enlightened Collection

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 27, 2010
in Collections and Series and Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 8 Comments

Sometimes you just have to be part of something amazing.

This happens to be one of those times…

This series will be part of a 30+ image gallery show opening Friday June 4th, 2010 at THE HIVE gallery in Trolley Square, Salt Lake City, Utah.  7PM to 9PM – Open to the public!

Art Director: Steven Robertson
Hair: Steven Robertson and Janae Johnson
Makeup: Paula Dahlberg
Custom Wardrobe: Michelle Boucher
Models: Katherine Franco, Michelle Smith, Macy Chapman, Ashle Hansey and Paris Gibson
Photographer: Jake Garn
Photography Assistant: Ryan Muirhead

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Druid Series

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 24, 2010
in Collections and Series and Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 5 Comments

Sometimes you just need to be a part of creating something utterly amazing.

This happens to be one of those times.

This series will be part of a 30+ image gallery show opening Friday June 4th, 2010 at THE HIVE gallery in Trolley Square, Salt Lake City, Utah.  7PM to 9PM – Open to the public!

Art Director: Janae Johnson
Hair: Janae Johnson and Steven Robertson
Makeup: Paula Dahlberg
Models: Katherine Franco, Ashle Hansey, Macy Chapman, Ashley Spainhower, and Ashlyn Fullmer
Photographer & Digital Illustrations: Jake Garn

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Solution: Exercise in Photoshop Forensics

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 19, 2010
in Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 15 Comments

Thank you to everyone that shared their opinions on how I achieved the Spiraling Out effect in my first Exercise in Photoshop Forensics post.  I definitely think it was successful enough that I’ll do another one in the future but for now let’s get to the solution!

Ofir Abe’s description was correct in his guess about my technique, which was to process multiple iterations of one image (using Adobe Lightroom) and exporting each version to Photoshop where I exposed different parts of each image using layer masks.  Why do it in Lightroom rather than adjustment layers?  Well, it’s a matter of bit depth and tonal range and pre/post demosaicing… by doing it in a RAW file I have access to ALL the data the camera captured, whereas if I converted it to a JPG/TIFF/PSD first then the file has doesn’t have access to all the data captured by the camera – especially if it’s been converted it to an 8-bit file.  Now if you convert it to a 16-bit file then that’s better, but if you ask me it’s still better to make all the adjustments before locking in your settings and exporting it to a JPG/TIFF/PSD.  By making the changes in a RAW editor (like Lightroom, Aperture, Adobe ACR) you have more power in your exposure, saturation, white balance, tonal curves etc.

To sum up for all you non-technical folks, shoot in RAW (rather than JPG) and use a RAW editor to make any color or exposure adjustments to your image, then thank me later.  Sure there are some downsides to using RAW – specifically they are a larger file size and take longer for your camera to process, but for 99% of the projects I work on RAW is so far superior it’s not even a question on what should be used.  RAW is most akin to a digital negative whereas JPG is akin to a digital print.  In a print/JPG what you see is what you get, there is no extra detail that can be extracted.  But in a negative/RAW file there is a lot of non-visible detail that can be extracted, if you know how.

But onto the step by step process of how I created them!

Straight out of the Camera

Using a classic lighting technique for beauty photography (over/under softboxes) we get a nice even lighting that provides a perfect palette to paint shapes on.

If you think it’s easy to get hair to look this perfect think again, Janae Johnson had to spend a long, long time perfecting nearly every single strand!  Lucky for me Paula Dahlberg’s incredible makeup skills combined with Sarah’s statuesque looks makes for an easy retouching job, making this out-of-camera shot nearly too perfect for a “before” image… yet that’s exactly what it is.

First Lightroom Export to Photoshop

Basically I wanted to shift the entire color palette around making her skin a near-neutral white.  To do this I adjust the Temp/Tint along with the exposure, vibrance and saturation sliders in Adobe Lightroom.  I would give the exact values I shifted but they wouldn’t translate correctly to an image with a different starting point so if you are truly interested in experimenting then you’re going to have to do just that, experiment!

Obviously shifting the yellow in her skin to white requires adding a blue hue to the entire image which is how the white wall changes to blue. Once the image was brought to this point I exported it to photoshop where it became the bottom layer soon to be joined by…

Second Lightroom Export to Photoshop

I loved the blue shift on the entire image and how it created an understated quality to it but I wanted to bring back some vibrancy to the hair, which I would later match the color of the patterns with.  So I brought the color balance back to where it needed to be but this time I increased the vibrance and saturation in all the colors to give it all an other-worldly pop in saturation.

First Layer Mask

This step is simple, I overlaid the new vibrant layer onto the first layer and using a layer mask I hid everything and “painted” back her hair and a white gradient into the blue-ish background.  Incidentally, I did all the masking by hand using a very precise Razer mouse.  I’ve seen some promising shortcuts but nothing beats good old fashioned manual masking… though it seems CS5 may have made some progress in smartly refining masks… but I didn’t use their new tools for this, just good old fashioned painted on mask.

Third (and final) Lighroom Export to Photoshop

Basically I adjusted the white balance to get a color that matched the hair, then I dropped the exposure way down which made an all around darker tone, using the tone curve in Lightroom I brought the highlights up a bit to give it a more shiny appearance rather than just a darker appearance.

Second (and Final) Layer Mask

Using only the default brush set in photoshop I hand-drew all these shapes, once again using a highly precise Razer Mouse.  It will be stated (I’m sure) that I should have used the pen tool and created the shapes using bezier curves which would have resulted in a much cleaner vector shapes.  Though I am quite proficient with bezier curves (from my days as an Adobe Illustrator guru) I find whenever I’m creating vector shapes they lose a certain organic appeal, all the curves become a little too precise, a little too polished.  For that reason I opted for the old fashioned process of simply painting in the crazy shapes and allowing my imagination to stay less focused on the details.

A look at the Layers

Here is a closer look at what my final PSD looked like, notice I added a heal layer so that I could do some slight touch up on the hair fly-aways, other than that you can see the three images with the two layer masks.  Very simple.

Thoughts or Questions?

I’d love to hear them!  Leave a comment and I’ll respond, and if you liked this series of blog posts on Photoshop Forensics let me know because I could definitely be talked into doing more in the future!

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Spiraling Out: An Exercise in Photoshop Forensics

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 17, 2010
in Photoshop and Lightroom and Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 20 Comments

How was it done? You be the judge.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The solution to this exercise was posted in a separate blog post, you can view it here if you’d like http://jakegarn.com/solution-exercise-in-photoshop-forensics/

I used a couple very simple techniques to create these images and rather than offer a post-processing tutorial I’m going to turn the challenge back onto you, my blog readers.  Sometimes the best way to learn your tools is to imagine how other photographers are using them, so in that spirit look at these images carefully and leave a comment describing the post processing techniques you think I used to ‘paint’ these images, if someone gets it right I will be sure to let you know!

(Click the images for a larger view)

Hair by Janae Johnson

Makeup by Paula Dahlberg

Models Sarah Whitmer, Crystal Coleman, Alexandra Mathews

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Test Shoot: Lianna Michelle

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 14, 2010
in Test Shoots and Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 8 Comments

The extraordinarily beautiful Lianna!

I used the following equipment to make all these images.


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Test Shoot: Nicole Bullard

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 13, 2010
in Test Shoots and Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 4 Comments

Just a simple test shoot with the beautiful Nicole!

I used the following equipment to make all these images.

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Review: 2 Light Kit for Less than $400

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 12, 2010
in Product Reviews and Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 8 Comments

Review: 2 Light Kit for Less than $400

About a month ago I received an email from B&H asking if I’d be interested in reviewing photo equipment on my blog, all I had to do was tell them what I wanted to review and they’d send it out.

Well, I could have done the selfish thing and found something ultra expensive that I’ve been dying to use (for free) and asked for that, but then I remembered how many people ask me about what lighting equipment I’d recommend for someone that is just starting out, without a big budget.  My stupid bleeding heart got the best of me… so I requested to see some lighting kits with these qualifications.

  • It had to be at least two lights
  • Include EVERYTHING needed to get started
  • Cost had to be less than $500

My very helpful marketing rep from B&H gave me some choices and a few days later UPS dropped a single (big) box on my doorstep.

Here are all the fully retouched images… see if your eye is keen enough to spot any tell-tale signs that they weren’t shot with more expensive lighting equipment.

I used the following equipment to make all these images.

The Lights!

Impact Qualite 2-Light Soft Kit. $369.99 at B&H Hot light kit (meaning the lights stay on all the time and don’t flash).

Pros

  • Hot lights are fantastic for learning about how light falls on your subject.
  • This kit was very easy to setup, and take apart.
  • The kit comes with two good quality soft boxes that you can definitely use even when you upgrade your lights (about $80 each to purchase separately)
  • Lights are very light and easy to move around and small enough to be used in a spare bedroom of your house!

Cons

  • You can’t adjust the power of hot lights, so if you need to change their intensity your only choice is to move them closer or further away from your subject.
  • The hot lights are not as powerful as strobes so you need to shoot fairly wide open with a slower shutter speed.
  • Light stands in the kit are pretty cheap and probably won’t support much heavier lights/modifiers.
  • I generally prefer to use larger softboxes, so to fake a large softbox I placed these side by side for a couple shots.

Overall

This kit is EXACTLY what I wanted it to be, a very inexpensive, easy to use set-up that is perfect to learn and experiment with.  Are there lots of technical limitations?  Yes.  But the biggest limitation on getting started with using any studio lights is not starting your experimentation, and this will be a good way for you to jump right in, for not very much money, and start experimenting with studio lighting in a spare room in your own home!

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Test Shoot – Isabella

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 5, 2010
in Test Shoots and Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 3 Comments

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The Ingredients of Success?

Published
by
Jake Garn
on May 2, 2010
in Photo Philosophy and Whimsical Fashion Photography
. 7 Comments

10,000 Hours

Awhile back I read a fantastic book called Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. The author discusses the notion that to become great at anything it requires about 10,000 hours of dedicated work to achieve it.  This number rings true for everyone from Tiger Woods, to the Beatles, to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Beethoven… superstardom requires a tremendous amount of work.  Work is only half the equation though…

Where and when you were born also has an enormous impact on your ability to achieve that next level of success.  Did you know, for instance, that the founders of Apple, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems were all born between 1953 and 1955?  Or that two-thirds of all professional hockey players have a birthday in February or January?  There is a very good reason for both of these and it seems to have very little to do with coincidence.

With names like Avedon, Ansel, Ritts, Mann, among dozens of others, you might think that the best time to revolutionize photography has come and gone, but I would make the argument that right now is better than it ever has been for any photographer.  Never before has access to photography been this open both to the photographer and to the viewer. Access that would have been unbelievable just over 10 years ago. What has made all this access possible?  Two things:

  • High Quality Digital Cameras
  • Massively Adopted Social Media

Digital Cameras

Let’s face it, some photographers will be better than others well before the 10,000 hour mark and some photographers may not be anywhere near great well after 10,000.  That being said, I think it’s safe to say that in order to start realizing the highest potential for greatness inside your work then you’ll start to see it around 10,000 hours of good, solid, brow-to-the-plow experience. So, to invest 10,000 hours into photography you are looking at doing 5 shoots a week (3 hours each) for 7 years give or take.  Not too bad actually.

Here’s the problem.  Ten years ago to achieve 10,000 hours (with a film camera) the financial cost would be significant.  Figure it cost at least $100 to process each shoot (film, develop, print).  So $100 a shoot, 5 shoots a week for 7 years would bring the bill for your 10,000 hours to roughly $182,000.   Ouch.  In other words, if you didn’t start making money at photography almost immediately, or had a spare $26,000 a year, you simply were not going to have the opportunity to shoot often enough to become good enough.  Oh, and this investment wouldn’t include any gear like cameras or lights or models or studio space.

Compare that to the expense of using a digital camera today.  You can buy the Canon 5D Mark II right now for about $2,500 (the camera I use).  That is about the same cost you’d incur to do 25 shoots back in the day.  I can’t be certain but I’m pretty sure that the Great Depression may have been caused by the enormous amount of money everyone had to spend developing photos from their brand new Kodaks.

Don’t have $2,500?  No problem, you can buy several cameras for less than $1,000 that are WAAAAAY better than the digital camera I was using about 10 years ago, which had an amazing 3 megapixels!

Social Media

Everyone has a facebook or a myspace account.  Well everyone except for that one weird friend (we all have one) that is holding out because they “don’t see what the point is,” even my grandpa is on Facebook for crying out loud!  This one simple fact has big implications in the world of fashion/beauty photography.  The biggest thing is there is a platform for budding new photographers to show their work off to thousands of people.  If you wanted to show your work off to thousands of people 10 years ago you needed a lucky break, win a big award, get published in a big magazine, find the right commercial client.  It required skill and quite a bit of luck to be seen, but now if your work is worth seeing it WILL be seen.  Sure, it still requires a bit of luck to land those commercial clients, get published in magazines or win those awards but now your chances of being seen by the right person are increased dramatically.

Being seen by more people has another effect. Things that were tremendously difficult ten years ago are now easier than ever before.  Take model scouting.  Ten years ago if you needed to find a new model you could call up local agencies (and in a small market like Utah I quickly found that most agencies had no interest in finding work for their ‘models’ – they simply wanted to sign new victims up and charge them for ‘modeling classes’ – but that’s another post) or you could hit the malls, dance clubs and movie theaters and try to find them yourself.  This was tedious to say the least, and when you finally did find someone they were extraordinarily skeptical about your motivations for approaching them… and thanks again to all the scam modeling agencies most of the potential models thought you wanted to charge them outrageous fees for modeling classes (if you are getting the impression that I’m not a fan of small market modeling agencies then you are hearing me quite correctly).

Facebook and Myspace changed all of this, in quite a dramatic way.  Now whenever I take a photo of a girl she posts it on her Facebook page and suddenly all her friends see her photo with my logo on it… as this happens several dozens of times it starts to become pretty easy to find new models because suddenly they’re all coming to me!  Not only that but hair stylists, makeup artists, wardrobe designers, body painters and all sorts of talented people ALSO start seeing your work because they’re on Facebook too.  Social media is the most pervasive form of networking ever invented.

As this cycle repeats itself you find a bigger and bigger audience for your work, which attracts even more talented people which attracts an even bigger audience and you soon realize that your work is being viewed by thousands without the lucky break.  This is a big deal.

But What About the Competition?

If you are one of the photographers that complains about the sheer number of photographers entering the market then stop, take a deep breath and realize something.  There is no better thing to push your work to new heights than good, old-fashioned competition.  In my opinion having so many people taking an interest in photography is nothing but awesome for the industry as a whole.

Out of all the places in the world you wouldn’t pick Salt Lake City Utah to be a hot-bed for producing amazing talent in fashion and beauty photography but you would be wrong.  There are some amazing photographers (and stylists and models!) here producing amazing work and I personally LOVE how they make me want to create better and better work, all of the time.

Here are just a few of my favorites that have been shooting in Salt Lake City for the past several years.  Go check out their work and while you’re there tell them Jake Garn said hello.  :-)

Ryan Muirhead Photography

Justin Grant Photography

Mitch Meyer Photography

Steven Wood Photography

(these photos have all been posted with the respective photographers’ permission – and I’m certain I missed several more amazing Utah photographers, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your faves!)

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