A personal project borne of the CreativeLive sessions mentioned in my last post led to the creation of a monthly project. This month’s offering is “Junk Store Superhero” and consisted of a trip to several second-hand stores, and an afternoon shooting photos out and about in the city of Calgary..

Starring in this installment was VonBonbon (“V” for short) and her mild mannered alter-ego Tasha. Makeup by Amanda Cook and hair by Mike Lindee.

I’d been itching to get outside and shoot for a while, and realized very quickly the limits of small flashes again..   Making use of our studio experience in Seattle was helpful, but I did fight a fair bit to balance natural light..  A challenge for sure!

The setup changed for as we moved around, however for the most part I used a single strobe shot into a smallish (40″??) umbrella.   Lenses were a 50mm and 90mm f/1.8′s and a 70-200 f/2.8 sat on a D700.

Since this was all an experiment things went right, annnnd..  things went wrong.  Some key takeaways for this shoot:

Long days:

We started in the afternoon and went pretty darn late.  Looking for inspiration for the costume and style in the junk store is great, but significantly increases the length of the day. I’d split the purchasing and shooting up in to two days in the future.

Food:

Food is always appreciated when you’re going for anything more than an hour.  I had enough water, powerade, and munchies for us to settle our grumbling tummies.  That was money well spent.

Have a plan:

The plan with this shoot was to have no plan.  This was a bad idea. It made things pretty helter-skelter when we actually got to shooting and reactive rather than proactive when it came to working in specific locations. I feel this shows in the photos.  Having a few specific shots (or at least a solid location) in mind to get started is a much better idea than ‘let’s see what we can find’

Continuing on with the benefit of a good plan, as the photographer having a clearer idea of what I actually wanted from the shoot would have also made things smoother in that I could have provided better direction.

My model was incredibly patient and willing to take direction, but I (in hindsight) feel like I was relying too much on her to just come up with superhero-ish poses and situations which was a bit unfair.

Tasha did a great job of doing the ‘model’ thing and the result was most of the images came across more like a fashion shoot than a superhero in a specific situation.  This was not intentional, and the results are pleasing, but not acceptable if we’re looking at this from the perspective of a commercial shoot (where, to be fair, we’d have a plan..  See where this is going?

Have an assistant

Having an assistant to help out with lights, bags and logistics would have been incredibly helpful..  Mike and Amanda did a great job of lending a hand but unfortunately weren’t able to stay ’till the end of the day so I ended up hauling gear and trying to focus on what I wanted to shoot..  I’m not good enough for that to be a 100% slam dunk yet.  Working on it.

Request for feedback:

So there ya go.  As always I’m open to feedback on the shots and the commentary above.  How do y’all think this turned out? Where could I make improvements? What would you have done differently? Also… How do the colors look?   I’ve just dug the color calibrator out and everything grey looks kinda pink now…  :0/

Here are a few of the shots for you to see..

Final Images

I’ve been pretty quiet (read: absent) on the blog since my return from Seattle, so I suppose I should do a quick synopsis for posterity.

Seattle was in a word, incredible.  The chance to learn from Zack Arias was a huge boost to my knowledge in studio lighting, an area of my knowledge I felt needed some development.   Generally I shoot what I see, setting up and orchestrating a photo is still a bit foreign but is becoming a lot more intuitive.  Zack, his family, and his staff were an incredible bunch of people, down to earth and incredibly talented the lot.

CreativeLive is a project that I’m awfully grateful for as well..  I wasn’t sure what to think about it when I first saw the advertisements, but after seeing the incredible amount of work they put in to their broadcasts, I’m humbled.  Their constant goal is focused around improvement of the programming they’re delivering, and ensuring that as many people as possible have access to to it.  Their commitment to the community is commendable.

Chase Jarvis is a key figure in driving the CreativeLive events, and makes an appearance whenever possible.  As with everybody else at the event Chase, his wife, and staff are as with Zack’s crew just an all-around wonderful bunch of people.

Humble.   If I’ve taken anything away from this experience it’s that you don’t actually have to be the arrogant-jerk to succeed.  Prior to my trip, I was beginning to wonder..

While we’re discussing the people involved, I’d be remiss if I didn’t introduce you to my fellow classmates.  Another group of wonderfully inclusive and incredibly talented people.  Well worth checking out if you need a photographer in their areas of operation too…

Aileen Reilly: www.aileenreilly.com
Eric Krebs: edkphotography.com
Jeramie Shoda: www.shodaphotography.com
Nicholas Lopez: www.nicklopezphoto.com/
Rachel Thurston: www.rachelthurston.com
Wilfredo Valle: www.wilfredovalle.com

So..  I did a lot of learning with the crew, but didn’t actually do that much photography of note during the sessions..   I’ll include a few images here just for kicks..

I ate a hot dog yesterday.. with cream cheese. I’m not sure about cream cheese on street meat but the culture seems well entrenched in the Belltown culture, these stands are everywhere..  At any rate, a few photos from my trip down to Seattle, and my first evening out on the town..  I’m headed for bed pretty quickly and need a good rest..

ready to get started www.creativelive.com/live chase Jarvis is here too! Bit.ly/zariasphoto

Getting ready to do #creativelive w/ @zarias in Seattle! Totally stoked, tune in & watch the session: http://creativelive.com/live/

You can tweet questions with hash tag #askzack

So go on, do it, tune in!

That perhaps, just maybe, some day, I too could be a painter..

This is a remarkably humorous and thoughtful presentation about terrible art.. I can’t believe I’ve missed MOBA on my last few visits to Boston but I’ll surely make a point of stopping next time!

Louise Sacco at Gel 2010 (Museum Of Bad Art – MOBA) from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

So, I’m a little more than stunned and definitely elated!   That video I posted the other day won me a seat at the CreativeLIVE training event starting June 11..   Sadly it overlaps the closing retreat for Leadership Calgary and I will unfortunately have to miss that, but I’m definitely at the point where my existential and intellectual needs are tended to and I really need to focus on Jordan the photographer and creative.  All I can say is Thank You to those on Zack’s decision committee that saw fit to invite me down to Seattle..

I’ve been using a fantastic little application called MAMP to develop my websites and do some work for clients over the past year or so..  However, after a recent re-installation of my MacOS and subsequent MAMP installation I got a little excited about getting things customized and wiped out the MAMP Start Page URL in my haste to get the proper document location configured. After countless web searches with way more information than was helpful I wasn’t able to find a link with the default start page path.

Unfortunately, reinstalling MAMP has no effect on the silly change I made, so I suspect the information is stored in some random hidden file..

So.  For the record (and so I don’t have to go searching for this info again).  The MAMP Start Page value should be /MAMP (and be sure to keep it upper case!)..

MAMP Start Page setting

Also for the record, I store my documents in a folder called MAMPserverData that lives in the documents folder of my profile.  This ensures that when I do a backup I don’t have to go searching for the code behind my development sites..

MAMP alternate document root

And one more also.. If you’re looking for a good quick tutorial or refresher on how to set up MAMP, have a look here!

Zack Arias is going to be doing a CreateLIVE event on the weekend of June 11th and I’ve submitted a really simple video asking nicely for a one of the remaining spots…

Pick Me! Pretty Please, Pick me! from Dromedary Creative on Vimeo!

just left xavier rudd thanks again to @x929 for the tickets! Show was superb. xavier’s Mic.was a bit hot but the music was tops!