Russ Robinson & Tampa Band Photos - Commercial Music Photography Blog: 2009

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Photography and the Human Condition? | NEW TAMPA CHRISTIAN PHOTOGRAPHER

As someone who is extremely passionate about photography, I find myself thinking about it constantly-- during meetings at work, while on my morning run, in the shower, on the pot-- well, you get the point. I'm always sizing up the world through the imaginary camera in my head, looking for interesting colors, lines, spacial relationships, and imagining how I might best capture those things in photographs. Not everything in our 3-d world translates well onto a 2-d medium, so it often takes lots of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to effectively capture the true essence of certain things in photos.

On a deeper level, however, I find it fascinating that when we press the shutter of a camera to take a portrait (or a landscape shot, or anything else that one might take a picture of), we're not actually capturing the person or object(s) that we see through the viewfinder. The reality is, we're capturing the light that's being reflected from that person or object. If you can imagine an actor standing on a large stage with a single spotlight on him and you were to take a picture, your photo would consist of whatever light was being reflected back toward the camera in that moment. If the actor were to take a few steps back so that he was in a totally dark portion of the stage, then you wouldn't see him at all in the resulting photo, because he wouldn't be reflecting any light back toward you. He's still there, of course, but the camera simply doesn't "see" him.

So the point I'm trying to make here is that, from the camera's perspective, if your subject isn't being illuminated by some light source, then all that can be seen is total darkness. And here's the kicker........it occurred to me the other day while I was on my morning jog (which, incidentally is where I do the majority of my "deep" thinking) that this relationship is profoundly similar to that of humanity and God. Now, bear with me here....and strap on your thinking caps, 'cause we're goin' in.

The idea is this: when it comes to "us" and "God", if we aren't being illuminated by some light source (I personally believe this to be Jesus), then we're pretty much in total darkness from His perspective. In other words, without Christ, you and I would never show up as glowing blips on God's radar screen. On the other hand, if you are a believer, then all God sees when He looks at you is the beautiful and perfect light of His Son being reflected back.

Maybe this is somewhat of a strained analogy, or maybe there's a little nugget of truth to be found somewhere in all of this. Or maybe you think I've just gone completely bananas comparing the photographic process to man's cosmic juxtaposition with God! ;-) But either way, no matter which side of the fence you fall on, I'd love to hear your thoughts below.

Well, take care, everyone, and have a very happy and blessed New Year!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Before & After, Episode 8 | NEW TAMPA SENIOR PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER

For this episode, I'd like to offer another behind-the-scenes glimpse into a recent photo shoot I did with a friend of mine. He came to me with a pretty interesting idea, which was actually based on a photo he had seen of one of his favorite guitarists.

After several failed attempts to capture him in a pose that really appeared as if he were falling forward, we came to a fork in the road. I realized that I basically had two options-- (1) either put a mattress or something soft in front of him so that he could REALLY fall forward without killing himself (or ripping his spiffy suit), or (2) dig into my bag of Photoshop tricks and try to achieve the desired effect in post-production. Naturally, I chose the latter, because I'm ~~a masochist~~ always up for a good Photoshop challenge. ;-)

Try this-- while looking at the before image in the upper left, imagine in your mind's eye if I had simply tilted his body forward in that exact pose. Since his front arm starts out parallel with the ground, it' s not hard to imagine that it would be sloping downward after the tilt, which clearly would NOT have made him look like he was reaching for the guitar floating straight in front of him. So I had to figure out a way to tilt his body while at the same time shifting his limbs back to where they needed to be.

If you draw an imaginary line connecting the two buttons on his blazer, then do the same thing in the final image, you can get a sense of how much I ended up tilting him forward-- probably a good 30-40 degrees. In order to reposition his limbs to the proper angle after tilting his torso, I mainly used a combination of the Free Transform tool, a few careful selections, and some good ol' cutting and pasting (with a few feathered layer masks). The most significant modification I made was probably the exaggeration of his back leg, whereas I kicked it up extra high for added drama. The end result is a much more off-balance appearance, adding to the sense of motion and tension in the image.

Cutting out the guitar out was a cinch using the Pen tool. Then I just used the Free Transform tool to reposition it and increase the size ever-so-slightly. Lastly, fake shadows were added to give the image a sense of groundedness, since you don't want your subjects floating in an endless sea of white. :-)

All in all, I think we managed to pull off what we were really going for with this image. If you've got any questions/comments/feedback, please feel free to leave them below. By the way, I *love* hearing everyone's different perspectives on these....it really makes it a lot of fun!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Woodall Family - 11/14/09 | NEW TAMPA WESLEY CHAPEL PHOTOGRAPHER

I am beginning to do quite a bit more family photography lately, and not only that, but I'm also doing it with natural light (as opposed to artifical light, [i.e. flashes/strobes, such as those used in studio photography]). This is a major departure for me, because I'm used to being able to control every aspect of the light. However, when you're outdoors, Mother Nature prevails.

As a result of this new direction in my photography, I've had to completely overhaul my Photoshop workflow, because I think it's really important to successfully capture the rich, vibrant colors often encountered in nature. I'm learning new techniques for making colors really "pop", and I've discovered some great ways to brighten skin and increase tonal contrast.

Anyways, enough technical jargon.....here are some of my favorite shots from a recent shoot I did with the Woodall family. Enjoy, and please leave me a comment if you like this look.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

John Miseroy - 10/31/09 | NEW TAMPA FASHION GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY

My long-time friend John stopped by for a quick shoot the other day. He's a musician in my church's worship band (among others), and wanted to see I could help him construct a particular image he's had in his head for some time now (the "floating guitar" shot below). Once we felt like we nailed that one, we decided to grab a few extra "modeling" shots to spiff up his Facebook profile a little. I really like how a few of these came out-- leave me a comment below if you do too.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Plant vs. Sickles JV Football - 10/23/09 | WESLEY CHAPEL FOOTBALL SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHER

I didn't have nearly as much time to edit/enhance these as I did for the last game I shot, but I realize that there are lots of players/fans out there who would still be interested in seeing them. So I've zipped them up into a single ZIP archive, which can be downloaded HERE (warning- the file weighs in at around 85MB, so it may take a while to download, depending on your connection speed).

Monday, October 5, 2009

Plant vs. Alonso JV Football - 10/1/09 | NEW TAMPA FOOTBALL SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHER

Last Thursday I decided to step outside the studio and try something completely different-- shoot a high school football game. Being a huge USF fan, I follow their recruiting very closely, so I figured it'd be really exciting to see some of these up-and-comers in their natural element. Turned out to be a total blast walking around the field, hearing the interactions between players and coaches, and being so close to the action I could almost feel the vicious hits. I'll definitely be doing more of this in the near future.

For all the Plant and/or Alonso fans reading this, you can view the images by clicking on the thumbnails below, or you can download them all in a single ZIP archive by clicking HERE.