Another Crab in my portfolio

I must admit, I’ve been slacking recently, not only with my blog but also with my portfolio.  It was actually my girlfriend that made me realise that… I was sitting down, writing another idea,  when she asked me when am I actually going to shoot some? So I did, the day after.

Now, I must say, I know literally nothing about fish,  so when I got to the fish market, I just looked for the most photogenic fish hahaha ( take it how you want it). Then it was all down to setting everything up and trying to figure out the composition. I knew straight away it will be a one light setup with some additional bounce cards.

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CORRECTING SKIN COLOUR FOR A HIGH END LOOK

Retouching has come a long way and today’s industry supports it in every way. Yes, there may be occasional moments where post production is not encouraged, but these are rare cases. It is important to remember that postproduction did not just appear out of nowhere along with digital era. It existed way before that. In fact, it was used quite often to manipulate important, historical (analogue shots), but it was done in a very precise way so that it was not evident to the audience. But let’s move away from this literally ‘colorless’ talk and let’s dive into this tutorial where I will be explaining how I got from this:

Behind the scenes of Golden Chicken

Creativity is a constant struggle (at least for me)  but from my personal experience it is best to not overthink anything; don’t try forcing yourself to come up with amazing ideas, because whenever you do, they are probably shit ideas anyway. I do it myself, but from time to time when I wake up in the morning, I just have an idea that, whether it works or not, I want to shoot. Photographing ‘Dine Like Kings’ was exactly a reflection of that; one day I woke up and said to my girlfriend, ”we are going to town because I need a chicken”, at first she probably thought, ok, we know what’s for dinner, but then i said…’and a gold spray paint’. The conversation stopped and we were both staring at each other, in total silence. I’ve quickly explained the concept and next minute we were on our way to town.

Update 4.8: Golden chickens, szwedo.co.uk and Tasha…

 

Every year there is this period where for some reason, work just piles up, whether that will be my own fault because I was putting something off to the side and eventually it just became a massive pile of work, or simply because number of clients have decided to contact you and offer to work with you. Well in my case, it’s a mixture of both, I was putting my work to the side, (because I was working my personal projects, just developing portfolio), then I see an opportunity  to work with someone else, so I offer my ‘skills’ and that leads to a shoot, but shooting means planning, so it takes some time away from working on my personal project (ongoing problem), then the next part that comes in, is my own stupidity. Knowing that I have my own project going on and a client, I look for more, typically I finish it off with some retouching work for some photographer which allows me to work from home.

Light test #404

From time to time, we have to go back. Whether that would be in our everyday lives or photography. Simplicity is a key. But doing it differently to everyone else is just as important and that part is not as easy.

Above you can see one of my recent shots (of my girlfriend) which was just a quick lighting test for my final uni project but as I was looking through the photos, I thought it would be horrible not to edit one of them.

 

Ohhh Crab…

Its been a long two weeks: Brand new studio, plenty of new ideas, work and new people that want either work with me or I want to work with. But from time to time you just have to turn off your phone, get whatever you need and lock yourself in the studio. Get shit done. Run away if you may. Let the magic happen and remind your self why you fell in love with photography in the first place. For me, it was always the ability to mess around, play with stuff and get something amazing out of it and that was exactly what I have tried this time! I always wanted to shoot something that involved paints but I never had balls to do it…mainly because I know it equals big mess and possibly ruining stuff including studio, but I finally had a chance and courage to do so.

Bon Appétit !

Over the past few months, I have shot quite a lot fashion. My true passion, the Still Life work has kind of been put to the side mainly due to opportunities that came across. That is why I have decided to dust it off and shoot some new work. I’ve seen makeup shots many times, in a way you could say its been overdone, but for some reason I always wanted to shoot it! It could be simply because I wanted to destroy something so fragile but other than that, I had a feeling that I could do it differently, I wasn’t exactly how but I knew I could.