Recently I was reading Part 3 of Don Giannatti’s interview with Selina Maitreya titled 4 To Do’s for Photographers and in the very first item Selina says “taking the time energy and effort to develop a visual product before going to market is key. Ask yourself what do I shoot and what is my visual approach to my subject?”. You can’t create a body of work (step 2 of Selina’s To Do list) without knowing what your vision is – what exactly do you want to shoot?

What kind of things do I like to shoot? Well, let’s start off by taking a look at some of my favorite images on Flickr:

One of the things several people have suggested you do when trying to define your style is to go through magazines and pull out your favorite images and see what they have in common. Find things that inspire you. So I did that with Flickr since there are tens of thousands of images to choose from. After going through my favorites I noticed several things in common with a majority of the images that stood out to me:

• portraits
• interesting locations/environments
• interesting lighting, both natural and artificial
• strong contrast, both in colors and from light to dark
• medium to high amounts of post-processing

Now, not every image meets all of the above criteria, but a majority of the images meet a majority of the things I listed above. So now I know what images I find compelling, I can break that down into a statement about the work that I want to shoot and show:

I’m a portrait photographer that shoots people juxtaposed to interesting locations and environments by utilizing light, both natural and artificial, to create contrasts in both light and color. I use post-processing to enhance these contrasts and to help realize my vision for the images I create.

It’s a work in progress, but you get the idea. That statement is a fairly accurate representation of the images that excite me and of the images I want to create. Hopefully you see this theme throughout many of the images that I have shot and shared with you on Flickr:

It’s not perfect representation of what I said I want to shoot, especially at the beginning of the set, but I feel that my more recent images are all starting to lean towards that central vision I want to adopt for my work. And yes, there is some studio work in there as well, which negates the interesting locations/environments portion of my vision statement, but shooting in the studio can really allow me to bring out my other talents, especially in the lighting and post-production departments.

Time and time again you here that you cannot market yourself until you know exactly what it is you want to shoot and be known for. If you don’t shoot and promote that work then you’ll be known for shooting that type of work, which will keep you from reaching your goals. I know I don’t want to shoot weddings, kids, maternity shots, etc. I want to shoot interesting shots of people, in interesting or relevant environments, that can be used to tell a story, or create a story or interest in a particular subject. Ultimately I’d like to shoot higher-end commercial and editorial type work, stuff like Joe McNally or Douglas Sonders shoots.

While we are on that subject I want to mention some photographers that I really admire. Photographer’s work who inspires me and makes me want to reach their level of ability and success. I already mentioned two:

• Joe McNally
• Douglas Sonders

But there are several others who’s work I really admire (in no particular order):

• Joey Lawrence
• Jeremy Cowart
• Dustin Snipes
• Zack Arias
• David Hobby

And that’s just scratching the surface. There are so many photographers out there that have amazing work that inspire me. But each one of them has photos that share part or all of my vision of what I want to shoot that attracts me to them. McNally’s use of light, color, and the environment. Sonder’s and Joey L’s use of light and post-processing. Hobby’s use of light and the environment. Each one of them shoots in a way that I strive to shoot and just by studying their work I’m learning more and more about what I like and don’t like. And, if I ever had the chance, I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the ability to learn from them in person, to meet with them and pick their brains about the hows and whys of what they shoot. And, if I could ever be so lucky, I would drop just about anything I had going on for a chance to work with them, to be their assistant (or whatever they needed), whether it be for a day, month, year, or longer. They all inspire me and would love to be able to work with them.

What/who inspires you? What’s your vision for your photography? What do YOU want to shoot?

I’ve seen several shots like this recently and I liked the idea so I decided to give it a try myself. The latest one I saw that I really liked was shot by one of my favorite photographer’s, Douglas Sonders, where he shot the cover for Independent Banker Magazine. After thinking about how I wanted mine to look I headed out this afternoon with Josi to make it happen.

I wanted to do something similar to Douglas’ shot, with the clouds in the background, but unfortunately for us we had a pretty overcast sky with just a little bit of defined clouds in the sky. Lucky for me I got a decent shot of them before they broke up while I was getting my base exposure set up, so then I just had to tweak it and drop it into my final shots. It was cloudy and overcast, but that didn’t really help my exposure out – I ended up shooting at 1/200th at f/8 at ISO 100 to get the definition in the clouds that I wanted, so that meant my flashes were going to have to work harder than usual. And, once I had my camera setup on the tripod the clouds began to break up and move leaving me with a pretty uninteresting background.

I ended up using a two-light, cross light setup for this shot. My key light was the SB-800 at full power camera right into my new 43″ while umbrella (the old one had seen much better days) and for a slight rim light I used the SB-600 at 1/2 power through a Honl grid. Here is the setup shot:

There was quite a bit of Photoshop involved with creating the final image, and there is definitely much room more improvement. I really need to work on my masking and compositing skills. Regardless of that, I think I did a decent job. I took the shot of the clouds and edited it to be bluer and boosted its contrast and clarity to make it very well defined to use as the backgrounds. I stuck the shot of me holding the camera on top of it and did my best to mask away the crappy sky in order to reveal the good sky. After I got that done I moved on the the portrait itself.

I used the same cloudy background for the portrait and masked away the crappy background once again. Then I did my usual retouching, skin softening, sharpening, and soft light/high pass layers until I got the portrait looking good. I then made a new copy of the finished portrait and resized it to fit over the screen of the iPhone. I finished the whole thing up with a curves layer in Photoshop and them some slight warming and vignetting in Lightroom.

There’s definitely room to improve, especially in the masking part of composites. I’ll continue to practice and hopefully get better at it. Practice, practice, practice.

I also did one of Josi while we were out:

She wasn’t too happy to be out because it was a little chilly, but she’s a trooper for helping me anyway. Thanks, Josi!

That’s it for this week. Until next time…

Sorry this one is so late, but I have a good excuse this time. Sunday was my grandpa’s funeral, so I was on a last-minute flight to Colorado on Friday and wrapped up in the sadness and togetherness of the family while I was there so taking my weekly picture was the last thing on my mind. I did snap this photo from my iPhone at the funeral though if it makes you feel any better: http://bestc.am/Ke5

He was a great grandpa and he will be missed. I’ve been telling everyone that “he’s the grandpa that every little kid growing up should have.”

I want to shoot something in the near future in his honor and get some prints made and send them to the family, but I’m not sure what exactly to shoot yet, but once I figure it out you will know about it.

Since everyone was sad all weekend we tried to keep some humor going as much as we could and one of the running jokes was how we are all feeling “dark and cold” (aka emo LOL) inside, so I decided to shoot a few shots tonight depicting that feeling, especially since I’m still feeling the sadness of grandpa being gone.

I used a simple one-light setup that I read about over at the Lighting Essentials blog – a single flash through a white umbrella off to one side to create the shadow and then a fill card on the other side to open the shadows up a little. I fired off a few shots before my roommate had to leave, which meant I had to move all of my stuff away from the garage door.

When starting the setup I had this dark, noir, black and white theme in mind, and every time I think about shoots like that I think smoke and cigarettes, so I wanted to try and incorporate that into my shot somehow, even though I don’t smoke.

Luckily there were some laying around from one of my friends, so I lit one and fired off like three shots before I couldn’t take it any more and put it out. I’ve been coughing ever since LOL. The smoke didn’t show up (because I was shooting against white, stupid me), but I liked the feel of the shot anyway. It definitely does the “dark and cold” feeling some justice.

Here is the setup shot:

I have another noir-themed shot coming up in the future, so hopefully I can play with the dark, moody light again soon!

That’s it for tonight – just didn’t want to get behind on my project. I should definitely be able to get out and shoot some this weekend since it’s warming up here a little (going from 8 F to 40 F feels like a heat wave at this point LOL).

A few months back one of my friends that I’ve shot with a lot asked me if I would help her put together a calendar to give to her boyfriend for Christmas. I’ve been wanting to do a project like that for a while, so I happily accepted. It ended up being a lot of work, but it was pretty fun. I wish we could have went outside for more shots, but we did the best we could.

Some of the shots are shots I’ve shown before, but I also want to share a few new ones we took just for the calendar, so here is a preview of the 2010 Kristen Calendar!

February

June

August

November

The rest were either too revealing or not as exciting as these. It took a long time to put this together, even with re-using some shots that we had done in the past. I think we did 3 or 4 separate shoots to get the missing months and then we tried different ideas for each month. Then there was all of the editing and post-production to be done. We spent a lot of time together working on this, so I hope her boyfriend appreciates it.

If you want to know more about how a shot was lit you can click the image to go to it’s Flickr page and read more about it. This is definitely something I’d like to offer to other people, but because of the amount of time and planning involved it wouldn’t be something cheap. If you conservatively plan for an hour per month for shooting, you’re at 12 hours already, plus a few hours for planning, and then probably at least another hour per month for post-production and you’re looking at about a 30 hour project, minimum. At commercial photographer rates you’re looking at about 3-4 days worth of creative fees, which could run anywhere from $500/day to $10,000/day, or if I were to just charge a very nice hourly rate of $20/hour you’re still looking at $600 minimum, or a more realistic hourly rate of $50 or more would push it up to $1,500 or more. I’d settle for a happy medium around $1000, depending on the shoots you would want.

So, it wouldn’t be a cheap project/present, but it would definitely be unique. A one-of-a-kind calendar for that special someone in your life. I’d definitely be willing to do it again, so if you’re interested in getting a calendar made and are willing to put in the time and effort and can afford it, shoot me an email and we can make it happen!

We got a decent amount of snow this weekend (3-4″) in Springfield, so I decided to take my roommate’s dog, Sylar, out back and play with him in the snow and try to capture the magic that is Sylar running around like a fool with my camera at the same time. He’s a one year old Siberian Husky, so the cold and snow are nothing to him, but it was a little much for, so I bundled up and headed out with just my 50mm f/1.8 (so I didn’t have to worry about zooming), set it on aperture-preferred mode at f/5.6, +0.7 EV (b/c I knew the camera would try to underexpose all of the white) and on continuous focus (because Sylar doesn’t stand still when playing is involved) and snapped off several pictures before I got too cold and wen’t back inside.

The shot above was taken after I successfully managed to steal Sylar’s duck away (not an easy task) and he actually sat still long enough for me to take a decent portrait of him. Usually when I have his toy he looks more like this:

Ready to pounce or run as soon as the toy leaves my hand. Most of the time he has his toy though (in this case, the duck):

He’s playing with it, but he’s got his eye on you and he’s ready to take off the moment you get too close:

And then it’s rinse and repeat: get away, lay down, run! He’s fun though, and you can tell he loves the snow – it’s like he was bred to love it or something.

Hope everyone is having a great 2010 so far. If you’re some place where it’s cold and snowy, stay warm, and most of all, stay safe. And if you’re someplace where it’s warm and sunny, then we should be friends and you should invite me to come visit.

2010

Well, another year has come and gone and it’s time to dive head first into 2010. I did a lot last year to further myself as a photographer and I think I’ve come a long way, but it’s time to “kick it up a notch” as Emiril would say. So for 2010 I’m setting some goals for myself as a photographer:

1. Figure out exactly where I want to take Matt DeWitt Photography by writing a business plan and getting everything together to start an official business.
2. Formally create Matt DeWitt Photography as a business entity with all of the formal incorporation, tax, and business paperwork that goes along with being a real business.
3. Set up and maintain solid bookkeeping for all of shoots, equipment purchases, expenses, etc.
4. Develop a marketing plan for senior photos and get it out there in order to attract new senior clients for the 2010-2011 school year.
5. Continue to refine and define my brand, image, and style.
6. Work on transitioning into more of a commercial mindset and begin developing a marketing plan for gaining commercial and editorial clients.
7. Get over my “gear lust” and learn to do the best with the equipment I have. Sometimes constraints breed creativity, so I need to embrace that.
8. Keep shooting and editing. Shoot for myself and shoot for others. They only way to get better is to practice, practice, practice.

Eight things to do throughout 2010 – shouldn’t be too bad. I have to stop putting these things off and just do it. There is never a “right” time, so now is just as good of a time as any, so 2010 is going to be the year that I try to make a living with this along side my current day job and if things go well, hopefully transition into doing photography full time within the next few years.

It won’t be easy, but if I never try, then I’ll never know. I’ve been reading lots of books lately to give me the information I need and if you’re in the same boat as me, then I highly encourage you to check them out:

1. Best Business Practices for Photographers by John Harrington
2. VisionMongers by David duChemin
3. Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
4. The Photographer’s Survival Guide by Amanda Sosa Stone and Suzanne Sease

Lots of good information in them so far and I still have a lot more to go. I guess that’s a pre-goal to everything else – finish reading these books so I can make the best and most informed decisions about my photographer business.

I’ll try to post more on my blog as well, but I’m not making it an official goal…yet. But I’ll keep up with it as best as I can.

Here’s to 2010!

I know it’s a few days late, but I’ve been traveling and settling back in after the Holidays. I snapped this on one of my last days in Colorado – I’ve been wanting to do some more HDR as I really like the way the images look, even if they are way overdone (to a certain extent), hell, HDR is one of the reasons I picked up photography initially, so I decided to give one a shot.

The sunsets over the mountains in Colorado are beautiful – maybe someday I’ll be able to live there again.  I wanted this shot to have it all: trees, grass, snow, mountains, sky, solar flare – I could do without the road in the mid-ground, but oh well. I put my camera on Aperture mode and bracketed it at 3 shots: -2, 0, +2 at f/22 and fired away on a tripod.  As a side note, shooting at f/22 lets you see all of the dust spots on your lens/sensor

I did the tonemapping in Photomatix and did some clean-up and enhancing in Photoshop. It’s not great, but at least it gets me thinking in the HDR mindset, so perhaps I’ll have more of them to share with you in the future.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (or the holiday of your choice) and I hope you’re ready for 2010! I’ve got a few things in the works that I’ll keep you posted on as they develop. I’ll leave you with a couple for fortunes I tweeted this morning that I’ve been saving as motivation for things to come:

I know it’s not technically Christmas yet (at least here it’s not – 1:15 to go…) but I snapped a few shots of my parents living room after Santa came tonight but before it gets totally destroyed in the morning and I wanted to share them with you before I head to bed to dream of sugarplum fairies and what not. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Like I said yesterday, it’s snowing here, so we decided to go out and have a little fun. We waited until later in the day, which made it harder for us, as the temperature dropped and the wind picked up, which let us shoot for all of 5 minutes before the wind took my SB-800 into the snow.  Not wanting to risk my SB-600 we headed home before getting anything usable.

I knew Josi really wanted some snowy pictures so we stepped out into our backyard and I dumped the SB-600 into a ziplock bag this time before shooting.  It was still really cold and windy, but we managed to get a couple of decent pictures that I wanted to share. Here is a more standard portrait:

I knew the snow was going to create a really muted picture, so I threw a 1/2 CTO gel on the flash to add some warmth and color to Josi while we shot. What little sun was out went away so I was able to shoot at f/4.5 at 1/200 for both of these images.

I think most of the snowing has stopped so hopefully we can get some blue skies in the next day or two and we can get out and do some more without the elements working against us.

Two more days until Christmas – hope everyone has everything done! Merry Christmas Eve Eve.

It’s snowing! Josi and I are at my parents in Colorado for the Holidays and it’s looking like we are going to be having a white Christmas this year. It’s snowing pretty heavily tonight and it’s supposed to continue on into tomorrow. And, thanks to Josi, I’ve got 4 new eBooks to read for Christmas!  She got me the last 2 eBooks by David duChemin that I was missing (Chasing The Look and The Inspired Eye, Vol. 1) and also the 2 eBooks offered by Mitchell K. (Seeing the Light and Understanding Post-Processing).  I finished reading Chasing the Look today and wanted to talk about one of the points David mentions in it.

One of the main points David makes in Chasing the Look is Get the Best Amount of Light In, But In the Best Way. Changing your aperture and shutter speed have profound effects on your photographs, and which combo you choose depends entirely on the look that you are after. Let’s take a look at two shots I took tonight during the snow for an example:

15 seconds at f/22

1/2 second at f/4

Everything else is essentially the same: ISO 800, 36mm focal length, same post-processing.  The exposures are the same, even though the aperture and shutter speed vary drastically between the two images.

For the first image I chose a small aperture to give me the nice starburst effect on the light, which caused a long, slow shutter speed, which causes the falling snow to blur together to a point that you can’t really tell it’s snowing.

On the second I opened up to a larger aperture in order to get a quicker shutter speed to allow the falling snow to still appear in the final image.

Which one is correct?  Well, that all depends on the look that you are after. Personally, I like the first one, as I’m kind of a sucker for starbursts (if you couldn’t tell from some of my other images).

Which one do you prefer?