Russ Robinson & Tampa Band Photos - Commercial Music Photography Blog

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Extreme Makeover: BAND EDITION

Are you a musician, band member, DJ, or producer? If so, do you need some world-class promotional images to take you straight to the top? Of course you do.

Well, you're in luck-- I'm giving away a package worth over $2000 in the very near future. All you gotta do to enter is post a picture on my Facebook fan page wall by October 24th at midnight.

Complete contest details, along with several examples of my work are here: http://bit.ly/freephotoshoot

Good luck!

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Before & After, Episode 17

Here’s another great example of the sheer power of Photoshop, and a case where a little bit of forward thinking on my part really paid dividends once the shooting was complete. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, then you already know that when I’m commissioned to produce promo images for a band, I almost always shoot each band member separately in the studio. It allows me to work within the confines of my relatively small studio space, and affords me much greater latitude in post-production. But here’s a case where I took things a step further….

LIGHTING

When I was originally planning this shot, I decided that it might look really nice if there were a gorgeous sunset behind the band, and I knew I could accomplish this later in Photoshop with a reasonable amount of effort. However, I also knew that folks with sunsets at their backs tend to have an orange “rim light” that appears along the edges of their clothing and hair, and this, on the other hand, is *extremely* difficult to simulate in Photoshop. So I knew that I’d have to find some way to produce an orange rim light around each person in order for the final composite to be believable. As you’ll see from the “before” shots, I accomplished this by placing a strobe behind each person….but the key is that I placed a full CTO gel onto each strobe to color the light orange. If you look closely, you can see that this does in fact give the resulting light the appearance of a sunset.

POST-PRODUCTION

Using Photoshop CS5’s new Refine Edge tool (which, by the way, is an absolute godsend for digital compositors— I hardly ever have to rely on channel masks anymore), I extracted each band member from their respective original shot, and placed them all into a new blank document. I then dropped in a new sky with a nice glowing sunset, and proceeded to really increase the light intensity in the sun area by applying a Levels adjustment with a radial gradient mask. I also increased the lightness levels along the sides of the two band members’ faces who are standing right in front of the sun. Next I added an artificial lens flare to really drive home the effect. I also had to add a couple of shadows, since band members standing that close to one another would undoubtedly cast a shadow on the adjacent person. I dropped the exposure of the bottom quarter of the image to draw the viewer's eyes upward where they need to be. There were LOTS of local contrast adjustments along with the usual dodging and burning, and finally I introduced a slight orange color cast to the entire image with a warming photo filter.

Here are the before shots. Notice the light stand on the floor behind each band member (with the full CTO gel, as previously discussed).

And here is the final composite, complete with all of the adjustments mentioned above:

Your comments—good, bad, or indifferent—are always deeply appreciated. And of course don’t forget to Like/Share!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

How To Create a "Share Us" Tab on Your Facebook Fan Page

Ever since being featured in Mari Smith and Michael Stelzner's webinar, "9 Companies Doing Facebook Right (And What You Need to Know)", I've seen a surge of activity on my Facebook fan page, and most new fans seem to be particularly interested in how I created my "Share Us!" tab. So in lieu of sending PMs to each person who asks for help (which is what I've been doing thus far), I decided to go ahead and post my entire FBML code here for all the world to see.

As I mentioned in my recent interview on the Composure Marketing Blog (be sure to check that out if you're interested in learning about the social media strategies I've used to grow nearly 1500 fans on my Facebook page), I'm not a web developer by trade. And since Facebook is constantly changing the way FBML and fan pages work, my code generally needs to be "touched up" fairly regularly. With that said, below is the way my code looks at the time of this writing.

Before we jump right in, however, there are a couple of key points worth mentioning. First off, you'll need to generate a custom/alias URL that points to your fan page's main address, because using anything with "facebook.com" in it will will yield errors when folks actually try to use your Share tab (it has something to do with the fact that Facebook's domain has been blacklisted by anti-spam companies). I used http://bit.ly to create my alias, but feel free to use whichever service you prefer. Once you've done that, just plug in your custom URL wherever you see "YOUR PAGE ADDRESS" below, paying special attention to the quotes (don't add any or take any away from what's already there). And of course replace anything else in RED letters with your own info. Here's the code I currently have on my "Share Us!" tab:

<fb:request-form
method="post"
action="YOUR PAGE ADDRESS"
type="YOUR PAGE NAME"
invite="true"
content= 'TEXT FOR THE TOP OF YOUR INVITE BOX <fb:req-choice url="YOUR PAGE ADDRESS" label="TEXT LABEL FOR THE
SEND BUTTON-- e.g. GO or SEND" />'
<fb:multi-friend-selector
actiontext="What you want the invitation to say-- e.g. Check out my super-awesome page"
cols="3"
max="8"
import_external_friends="false">
</fb:request-form>

Naturally, in order to be able to use the above code, you'll need to have the Static FBML application installed on your page. Check out this great Custom Landing Page tutorial on Mari Smith's blog if you need help. Alternatively, a quick Google search for "install Static FBML" will yield plenty of step-by-step tutorials as well. It's really not very difficult at all....just a few steps.

Please click "Like" and leave a comment below if you found this code helpful, or if you have any additional questions about the methods I used to design my page. Thanks!

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Before & After, Episode 16

Being that I was a recording artist and aspiring rock star in a past life, I have a special place in my heart for shooting promo images of musically-gifted people. Although this certainly wasn't my typical band promo shoot (because my subjects weren't rock-n-rollers this time around, but rather internationally recognized DJs/producers Viro and Rob Analyze), the basic premise was still the same-- create some visually engaging images of the highest quality (suitable for worldwide distribution) that really capture their style and personality. Basically, these guys were looking for CD cover & liner notes shots, as well as a few images to include in marketing materials and on websites.

For the shot below, I used a 3-light setup-- two on either side as rim lights/kickers (as you can see from the "before" image), and a beauty dish up front as key. The kickers were fitted with barn doors and 30° grids, and the beauty dish also had a 30° grid on it. I'll be adding stripboxes to my lighting rig in the near future, which will provide much more even illumination on the sides of my subjects, but that's a topic for another post.

I had my subject probably 12-14 feet from the background to control spill and ensure that the light falloff from my strobes would keep it solid black. I used a black shower curtain (yes, you read that right!) because it was handy, and because I was really only concerned about keeping his head/hair surrounded by blackness-- I knew that the rest of him would be quite easy to extract later in post, but hair is always much more challenging if the background isn't solid.

Speaking of post, once I got my subject cut out, I began applying the special effects. The background was simply a pure black layer onto which I drew a tic-tac-toe pattern with the brush tool and applied a radial blur. I then colorized it green & beige with a Hue/Saturation layer. For the particle effects, I used several different splatter brushes, sampling the color from the edge of his skin/clothing. I also used those same brushes to apply a mask along the edge, which provides the "disintegration" effect. Lastly, I really amped up the contrast with LOTS of dodging/burning to polish everything off.

To see the before & after, just move your mouse pointer over the image for a few seconds until it changes. Then you can switch them back and forth as much as you like.

ROLLOVER IMAGE

For further examples of my work, including high school senior pictures, baby & family portraits, and fashion & glamour, please visit my website at http://RussRobinsonPhotography.com

VERY interested in hearing everyone's feedback on this one, because I really pushed the envelope and took some major risks here. Fortunately the client loved it, but what do YOU think? Please sound off below, and be sure to Like/Share!

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Pic-A-Week, Episode 5

As many of you know, I've been super-busy over the past few weeks with a newborn at home. However, I've managed to get some editing done in the wee hours of the morning on several occasions, so here's the fruits of my labor. Enjoy!
Newborn baby pose on arms