The Many Faces of Clay

My friend Clay had surgery recently. It was a fairly routine procedure, but it always helps to do something, anything, to deal with the anxiety, so we got together for a portrait session where I could test out some different lighting concepts I had been meaning to try.

For the first time I broke out my black background to heighten the drama, as Clay is an actor with a lot of personality that I wanted to bring out. I chose to do hard light portraits so I ditched my softbox for my key light and went with my Flashpoint XPLOR 300 sans modifiers. I also wanted to push myself to work with hair/rim lighting, so I set my Flashpoint XPLOR 100 in an overhead stripbox w/a honeycomb modifier. This is the first time I was using this setup and I was very happy with the results. I’m kicking myself for not using it before.

Overall I’m happy with the results. I did very little post processing which means I’m getting better at capturing results in camera. The shadows looked crisp, dynamic, and dramatic. The Rembrandt Lighting really brought out Clay’s eyes, both in color and intensity.

The loop lighting was a bit more mixed. Nothing bad, but the loop was often a bit longer than it should have been, hovering somewhere in between loop and Rembrandt. Sort of a long loop pattern as opposed to a short loop. Again, nothing bad, but kind of distracting.

My clearest success though, was that I was able to get very different looks for Clay depending on the lighting, angle of his face, and facial expressions. Clay turned into a bit of a chameleon here, showing off a range of emotions and I think I did a good job modeling his face to match the mood.

Teaching Myself Photoshop

So I've been putting this  off for a long, long time. I've been using Adobe Lightroom for a while to alter levels, cleanup, and make limited alterations. A skin blemish here or there, popping the whites, crushing the blacks, etc. But I let myself avoid Photoshop because diving into the vast array of tools seemed impractical when I could just move some sliders and make my photos sparkle.

So now that I've bit the bullet I thought this space might afford me a useful place to document and reflect on my journey through Photoshop. In Each entry I'll be providing a before/after shot, as well as a list of techniques and tools I used.

So without further ado:

This is a photo that I took at one of the post Trump inauguration protests that took place in Downtown Los Angeles. This shot features a protestor documenting the low-key but very noticeable police presence at the event.

In the original photo, I was happy that I captured the slightly paranoid flavor of the event, but I didn't like the tree in the background. It was too organic, too mundane and it detracted from the urban nerviness of the rest of the photo. So, I decided to finally take it out so that I could have the streamlined composition I wanted. In the finished product, all vectors point towards the police helicopter; the protestor's body and phone, the sign, the palm tree, and even the traffic signal all create a nice compositional pyramid.

For this photo, I used:

• Quick Selection Tool
• Paint Brush Tool
• history brush

in a second round of touch ups, I also used:

• Select and mask
• Stamp tool
  
  This was when I was still feeling my way through the basic tools of Photoshop, so this took a lot of trial and error. My first attempt saw me trying to first extract the tree because I didn't realize that was adding steps and it would be easier to simply paint over the thing. 
  
  After that, I had trouble forming a clean selection of the subject. I was able to select him and fairly quickly paint out the tree, but there were bit and pieces of him missing on the borders. To remedy this, I used the history brush to restore the chunks of hair and shirt that I took out of him with the first pass.
  
  On my first edit of this, I left in a portion of a building located in between the traffic signal and the palm tree. Much of the building had been taken out with the tree, but I felt that the remaining portion of the building look alright as a stand alone structure. I have since reevaluated my view on that, and decided to take out the leftover building right before writing this post.
  
  Since my understanding of Photoshop has improved, I was able to work more efficiently. I used the quick selection tool once again, but this time a I also used select-and-mask to clean up my edges before I made my alterations. Instead of using the paintbrush tool, I used the clone stamp tool which allowed for a more even hue that better matched the surrounding color. It was a simple alteration, but I still could tell the difference in technique from my initial pass.
  
  This was a pretty basic task that gave me a nice confidence boost and spurred me on to more adventurous tampering.

My Grandfather's lenses

About 4 years ago, I received 3 lenses and a film camera from my Grandfather. These lenses were Canon classics: 28mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.4, and a telephoto zoom 70-210 f/4. Unlike today's more lightweight Canon builds, these lenses were made of cold, sturdy metal with focus rings that glided with silky smoothness. All of these were fd mounts so my options were either return to shooting film or picking up a mount adapter. I chose to pick up the mount adapter and took these lenses for my trip to Ireland. 

Now, this was before I had really developed as a photographer, so I was teaching myself about proper exposure, lens choice, and all the niggling issues that can ruin or at least diminish a brilliant photo. To begin with, my Grandfather had outfitted the prime lenses with filters, but not just ND or polarizing filters, but diffusing filters and starlight filters. This was....a surprise, and for someone still trying to grasp sharp focus, quite frustrating. But through peeling off shot after shot, I began to notice certain trends such as how a telephoto lens flattens images, but that I could alter that perspective by layering the subjects in my photos. The graveyard shots and the snowy street in Brooklyn are examples of that.

Back in Brooklyn I continued to shoot with my inherited lenses, and began to notice more hiccups. Teaching myself to field focus with the primes was useless because the lens adapter threw off the markings on the barrel. The aperture blades on the telephoto lens had also fused together over time and so I was stuck on shooting wide open. I learned how paper thin the depth of field could get. Add on top of that an evolving but shaky grasp of motion blur and other technical fundamentals, and you end up with a lot of tragically missed shots.

And yet, the shots that worked are among my favorite I've captured. I caught a newspaper on the wind, it's edges razor sharp against a perfectly blurred background.  The bokeh on these things is a hazy dream and getting colors to pop feels so much easier even under less than ideal circumstances. A lot of the images are hit or miss but oh what hits they are.

I am thankful I had the chance to learn and teach myself on these lenses, just one of the many things that I got from my Grandfather.

Inauguration Protest and the Women's March

I attended both the Inauguration Protest and Women's March that took place in Los Angeles' downtown area. My wife traveled across the country to make her presence felt in DC and I am very proud of her for doing so.

I certainly don't want to use this space for polemics as we have enough sites devoted to political opinions, but I do think it is important to appreciate what went on this weekend. In a peaceful and creative manner, people delivered a message to the most powerful man in the free world: if you run your administration the way you ran your campaign, we will not be silent.

I was on hand with my trusty Canon and shot some of the protesters. Out of context, that's a horrible thing to say.

 

Wilkomen, bienvenue

Hi. Thanks for stopping by. These pages highlight my ability to capture people, places, and events with superb fidelity. In addition to updating my thoughts on this blog, I post regularly on Instagram under the handle @borkowskowitz. My postings on Instagram represent a bit more adventurous and experimental ideas, while the pictures contained on this site are a great taste of my knack for capturing moments.

As this New Year opens, I am looking for chances to work with new clients, customers, and partners in everything from event photography to more long term projects. This will be a year to remember, one full of expansion and productivity.

Maybe we can help each other out.