Mary’s Head

Improper Bostonian: Eric Gaskins

Here’s a scan of my portrait of the delightful fashion designer Eric Gaskins from last weeks Improper Bostonian.  Below is another shot from the sitting that I liked a lot.

HAC in an old Chevy

For those interested in the lighting setup…  two speedlights, one behind the car into an umbrella to spread it out. The other bare and on the dashboard of the car with it’s beam focused down a bit.  35mm lens.

Charis

An extra shot from today’s ‘Laid-Off’ shoot.

Laid-Off: Charis Haines

Charis Haines – Dancer, Upper West Side       (Click image to view larger)

BusinessWeek – Kim Matheson

Another BusinessWeek shoot I did months ago finally showed up in the mail. They only publish this magazine every 8 weeks so I expected it to take awhile.
The one they chose wasn’t my favorite shot of the bunch, however did they use it double spread which is exciting!  My choice from the selects is also below.

POZ Magazine – Luz

September’s POZ magazine has been released, containing a some pictures I took of an HIV positive mother named Luz de Jesus Roman.  We had two sittings together, one last year while she was pregnant and then another a while back with the baby.  Probably the longest photo lead time I’ll ever deal with.

The ones against the the grey were taken in Luz’ kitchen in the Bronx.  5′ wide seamless taped to the wall, and one large octabox crammed into the corner and me with my trusty 28mm wide-angle lens about 3 feet from her with my butt against the kitchen table.

I had originally converted the cover shot to black and white (see 4th image), but the magazine decided they wanted it in color after all.  I think that third photo is my favorite.

Dexter

A few shots of author Dexter Palmer taken on a west side pier.

Why I shoot RAW

Here’s a great example of why shooting RAW is a good idea.

Yesterday a magazine requested the image on the left.  It was very bright and in the middle of the afternoon with the sun to her back (this was an incidental test shot they really liked for some reason).  As it was, it wasn’t up to my standards and had I shot jpeg, there would be very little that could have been done about it.  Look how blown out the sky is, and how dark she is. How day-glow the grass is…

The image on the right is what I ended up with after an hour or so of fiddling.  Developing the RAW into two images, one for the sky and one for her blended together in photoshop along with a bunch of curves adds up to the final image on the right.  All that information is in there in that RAW file.  Most of the time it’s not necessary and we or the camera throw it away.  But damn if it isn’t handy in a pinch.

BusinessWeek – John Borthwick

My portrait of real-time web investor John Borthwick is in today’s BusinessWeek.
Thanks to Josh Gerritsen for the assist.