Hi! I haven't updated this blog for quite sometime now but don't worry! I'm still shooting though not as often as before since I'm busy with work and saving up every single penny that I can manage because I'm getting myself a Google Nexus 7 (which btw is still not yet available here in RP. WTF Google!) and a new computer before the year ends (hopefully).
On other notes I have a new job and this is what I do, also I'm going to be a part-time teacher (I think haha) so I will be extremely busy to post new work and updates. If you happen to check my blog regularly you can check out my other blog. This is where I just dump my visual inspirations, random musings and some other shit whether or not its related with photography.
Photo above: I attended the 7th year of Pipho which was a butt-load of fun despite not being able to win any shizznit.
Vogue, the most influential and most sought after fashion magazine is going to celebrate its 120th year on September and the best way to celebrate its 120th years is to do a massive photo shoot features some of the most influential people like Florence Welch, Rooney Mara and Jennifer Lawrence to name a few. While the list is filled with A-listers in their respective industries it is inspiring (and pressuring) to know that all of them are all under 45 years old! Norman Jean Roy was the man behind the lens in this editorial shoot who is also a top dog in the fashion industry.
Here are some of the photos:
Raf Simons
Sarah Burton, Christopher Bailey & Stella McCartney
Peter Copping & Erdem Moraliogu
Ricardo Tisci & Rooney Mara
Phoebe Philo
Jennifer Lawrence
You can view all the photos with a detailed description about the people in the photo here.
After seeing all the photographs I was naturally psyched to see the BTS video and Vogue was good enough to post one on their Youtube channel.
So what do you think? I'd love to hear what you guys have to say so hit the comment and let's discuss.
This recent set of images of VS Angel Doutzen Kroes that was released by mistake in the Victoria's Secret website for a upcoming September catalog has rekindled the age old discussion of real beauty and heavy photo retouching. In my opinion these images are good to go and to be honest its refreshing to see raw commercial photographs of women and most specially the models of Victoria's Secret in a raw and unedited photograph.
Maybe I'm just lazy or this photographs are really good to go after tweaking the exposure on the skin just a bit and cloning away some of the blemishes. What do you guys think? I'd love to hear what you have in mind so bring those comments in.
My senior art director told me about this wonderful website that definitely takes way the confusion from lighting modifiers and setups which is somewhat similar toVirtual Lighting Studio. Enter Strobox.com a nice and free community-based website that allows you to share your photographs with their corresponding lighting diagrams. You can also create lighting diagrams in the website which you can export as either jpg or png file formats.
Just check some boxes and search then you are all set.
Nifty lighting diagram there.
One nice thing about strobox is that they have a iOS app which you can definitely download for free. The app actually lets you make your lighting diagram in png format which you can share with anyone.
Neat-o!
I have been popping in and out in this site for quite a few days now since I'm buying a 400 w/s flash head and I'm torn between a beauty dish and octobox so I am using this to compare and see the limitations of the said modifiers.
Let's start this week with something completely awesome.
Imagine yourself making a music video but then you think its too bland for your taste so what you did is you printed all the stills of that video and handed it strangers in a pub and photograph them while holding that still then you merge it into one awesome stop-motion video. Add the music, vintage color tones and post it on youtube.
Cool? Yeah, this is what you'll get:
According to Animalnewyork.com: J. Views or Jonathan Dagan made this special music video to interact with his fans (the strangers holding the stills) while doing a tour in Israel and what makes this one really awesome is that the fans can tag themselves in. Now, that is what I call quality "fan service".
Back in college we were taught how to do simple clay animation and to be honest the "simple clay animation" is an understatement. We did a 3 minute video which is equal to 6000 frames of still images to get that nice smooth movements of the characters, but enough of me telling you what we did since that project happened years ago and compared to this upcoming 3D movie its nothing.
Enter The Pirates a movie made by Aardman a British animation studio behind the famous Wallace and Gromit. The said movie is made out of one million still images shot with 50 Canon 1D Mk IIIs. I am pretty sure that you are now wondering why did they shot the entire movie with just 1D Mk IIIs when there are a lot of High-end DSLRs which boosts fancy HD features. In an interview with TechRadar, Tom Barnes Aardman's technical director explained that they chose the 1D Mk III based from their experience and the camera's consistency. They also need to make the 8 inch tall figures to look life sized so they opted for a smaller sensor since they need an adequate amount of depth of field. Barnes also said in the interview that they have to modify their lenses to behave as much as cine lenses because cine lenses have a larger rear end element making it incompatible to the DLSR.
Source: TechRadar
Now that the movie is done the 50 Canon 1D Mk IIIs are sitting inside their drawers since the cameras just finish a arduous task and will be staying there for now. Barnes noted that they are inclined to try the new 1DX or the Nikon D4 but for now they want a camera that has been around in a long time and has proven its reliability.
Seeing the trailer I think that the guys of Aardman not only did a spectacular job but they also gave a statement that not you don't need the latest and the most expensive HD camera gear to create a master piece.
I just saw one of the most innovative accessory and probably a must have for every photographers and videographers. Enter the Nori SquareBounce, it is a fresh take from the collapsible reflector that is as compact and as easy to use as an umbrella and did I mention that it also works as an umbrella too.
Here is a short introductory video of the Nori Square Bounce:
My initial reaction while watching the video:
I really like the concept of the SquareBounce since my 55" collapsible reflector is way to big and sometimes too bulky that I often leave it at home when I go travelling. Now my only problem I have right now is that this is too expensive since I got my 55" reflector for just about $25 and if I am getting the Nori SquareBounce it would cost me $189.
I thinking wait and see for mean time and maybe see more variations in size and improvements, hopefully some reviews and of course other useful applications with the said product that can convince me that having a SquareBounce is worth investing.
HOLY MOMMA! Is that a lens? It looks more like a orb straight from a Indiana Jones flick! Well apparently this huge chunk of glass is a Nikkor 6mm F2.8 and is known to offer the world's most extreme wide angle.
The lens was first seen at the 1970 Photokina trade show in Cologne, Germany. The genius doesn't stop there this glass offers an angle view of 220º enough to cover a 24x36mm image area. 1970s and 220º angle view at F2.8? It seem to me that during that time photography is waaay ahead of times. According to the post in British Journal of PhotographyGray Levett a co-founder of the Grays of Westminster states that he and Tony Hurst spent six months on locating this beauty and found it somewhere overseas. Of course any camera geek/collector would want to have this in their collection so if you are already having the shakes just by looking at this piece of glass then you better hit the jump and learn more about this lens. If you just have a spare £100,000.00 by your side or sitting idly in the bank then you are in luck.
No need to worry if you are using a Canon camera since there are lens adapters out there in the market.
41 megapixels. Yep you have read it right! The Nokia 808 PureView has 41 megapixels which beats the crap out of the iPhone 4S camera. As much as I would like to talk about the technical aspects of the smartphone I'll just show you this clip from youtube where they released a video which is totally made using the PureView. Keep in mind though that the video is made of entirely by professionals who do a hell of a fine job.
I would love to have this kind of phone since I live and breathe photography but I am having second thoughts since the phone is running on a dead platform which is a Symbian apart from that the phone costs around 450 euros which is almost the same amount of money for a lens or probably a second hand Sony NEX-5. If OS is not only an issue I'd buy this one in a heartbeat because of its portability and of course it is a smartphone but as the old saying goes "you can't have it all". Hopefully in the near future (maybe after 6 months) this neat piece of a phone will have an update and improve the OS issue.
What do you get when you suited a fashion photography student with free falling gear, gave him a smartphone to use as a camera and have a super hot professional free falling supermodel?
Well, you get this:
Cool right? This is the latest TV ad for the HTC One X where they took Nick Jojola a fashion photography student and his model is none other than Roberta Mancino aworld renowned skydiver turned supermodel.
Nick Jojola showing the shot.
The ad in youtube garnered a great deal of mix reactions, there are those who liked it and said that they are considering to buy the phone while some people dismissed the idea of using a smartphone to take photos while free falling, others are some what annoyed for some reason and lastly some are probably Apple kids trolling.
I'm a bit skeptical on the video since there are is lot of stuff to consider one is like how was he able to capture that photo since the phone is touch screen while wearing gloves? And how come he can hold the phone steady as if he was on land? I have so many questions to them but nonetheless I am impressed with the advert since most TVCs here in the Philippines are fucked up to the point of no return.
Case in point:
Before we close in I figure you guys should check out the documentary of the advert too.
So yeah while we may not exactly know what really happened or whether if the ad and the documentary was telling the truth or not at least we know that maybe in the near future there is this one phone that can serve as a kickass camera without the bulk where we can take anywhere. For now I'd like to get my hands on a HTC One X for a phone upgrade.
You think you have one hell of a shutter finger for that perfect moment? No? Well, worry not as it turns out there is this awesome thing called Nero Trigger. This trigger has highly sensitive optical, sound and laser sensors that can be programmed to capture that moment like a high speed shot of a bullet slicing a playing card
or that splashing something on someone's face.
The trigger can be mounted on Canon or Nikon hot shoe (good news to Canon and Nikon users) and runs on a pair of AAA batteries. Normally I would rejoice like throw confetti but this awesome trigger costs about $200 which I think I should spend on something practical but hey— if you have the money then by all means get this one.
I just recently read about this awesome web-based lighting simulator at Strobist. Basically the Virtual Lighting Studio offers you to do a somewhat lighting setup with 6 lights with 3 modifications ( the bare strobe, ring flash and soft box) to choose from. The website is still in its beta stage but it really looks promising and hopefully in the next update they would add a female subject (which hopefully is not as creepy as your bald guy) since I usually have issues when lighting the hair. A full and half body and lastly more lighting modifiers but for now I'm going to play with this and work on some new lighting setups that I could use in the future shoots.
Here's some screen shots to show you how awesome this website is.
Well I am guessing that almost everyone has heard the news that social networking giant Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars in cash and stock. The best news from this deal is that Instagram is going to stay as an independent app with stronger ties to Facebook, so to everyone who worries that Facebook might change Instagram to its whim fear not! This will definitely open more doors (and more moolah) since Instagram just recently launched its Android app. This is definitely a great news to Instagram users (this means more likes!) and to the company as well.
Here's a statement taken from Facebook's head honcho Mark Zuckerberg from his timeline regarding the purchase:
I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.
For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.
We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.
That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.
We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.
These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.
This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.
We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.
With this news one thing is certain, we will definitely see a great increase of instant and self-gratifying images in pretty vintage filters on our Facebook news feeds. Cheers to that!
Yes ladies and gentlemen, you have read it right. Adobe is letting you to try their newest version of Adobe Photoshop. The Adobe CS6 which is currently in its beta mode looks a whole lot better from its predecessors, aside from the new UI the CS6 sports a whole lot of new and improved features as well. Making them faster and efficient. The downside to this is that the CS6 is best used in a 64-bit computer but regardless this is still the beta phase and you can still save up and have a 64-bit system.
In this video Senior Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes discusses one of the many new features in CS6
To know more about the beta version of photoshop just click here or download it here.
This past few weeks I have been reading up on articles on increasing blog traffic and I decided that to increase it I need to change my URL since I find that my old URL is too childish and has no recall. So after a few clicks I am now using a new URL which is easier to remember and definitely sounds better. I am also planning to change the layout of the whole blog as well as design of the masthead since it was there since the very start of this blog.
The new URL www.neverstopshooting.blogspot.com is not some sort of a pro-violence gun totting advocacy and it will never be connected to any of those stuff (not unless we are talking about war photographers and their works but we'll talk about that some other time), the new URL is more of a sincere encouragement from one photographer to another to never stop shooting photographs. Hopefully in the coming months I will be able to buy my own URL so as to shorten this one.
I am deeply sorry for the inconvenience that the change I made has brought on to you but rest assure that I will be working on some new stuff and definitely a better content.
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