What I have learned part 3!

Ok the biggest and best over all thing i have learned this quarter is....SOCAL NETWORKING!!!... and how important it really is. I know that there are some people out that that think its "lame" to social network but they need to get their heads out of their butts and come join us in the 21st century. It is an amazing tool to build your name and work up and hey guess what..its FREE!!!!! Learn how important it is to build our web and shake the crap out if it was really great!

What I have learned part 1!

Thinking to what i have learned this quarter the first thing that come to my mind is Blogging. At first i wasnt sure how important it would be for us to blog but then i started to get alitttle business form my blog then i caught on :) Blogging Started of by forcing me to post new images every day and keep my name out there now that i do it all the time out of habit my work stays current and updated!

What I have learned part 2!

After we did the Blogger for a while we got to switch to Wordpress! Not gonna lie at first i did not like the idea of going to wordpress why would i want to do that when i just figured out blogger! But once i made the switch i never wanna go back!! When useing Wordpress i feel like it just looks and runs much more cleaner and nice! its amazing!!! I really think that my Wordpress will be what i use the most out of the different ways we have learned this quarter!

What I have learned #2!!!

I think my next big thing that come to my mind that i have learn this past year is all about the wonderful world of Photoshop! When we got to do our composite project i had tons of fun! I took one big picture of me then brought in abunch of little me's that were climbing all over the big me! it was super fun to make it. I also really zoned in on working my masked really well with that project.

What I have learned #1!!!!

When looking back on the things i have learned the first thing that comes to my mind is the one thing that i use the most out of any thing....that is the wonderful program called Lightroom. I am not sure what i would with out Lightroom now that i use it some much. I love having it for my work flow and just doing basic editing in it. It is so easy to follow and plus it just looks pretty, so what isnt to love!

PixelPiping it UP!

Check out what Pixelpipe is all about!

Fill Flash...in a Flash!

The other day A classmate Nicole Lord and I were sitting in our Lab and one of our teachers came in and told us taht we nee to go out side and take some pictures cause the sky was looking killer! So we hopped up and started walking out side! When we go out there we ook a few of the amazing sky then we thought we'd try to practice our Fill fash skills in that lighting...it was alittle hard but we had fun! here are a few images we got.

Thats right we are taking over facebook!

We are now on Facebook, and we plan to take it by store so go check it out! "Like" it :) This is were all the latest pics will be posted first from the every day shoots so you will want to be sure and keep up with it so you dont miss any thing to exciting!! (click image to go to facebook page)

In the studio viedo!

Here is another super cool video from Fashion Photography Blog of a behind the seance look at a shoot in the Studio! It shows how tha photographer works with the models and sets up the scene and lighting! Look at it and LEARN!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeALUjO3IQc]

A day in the life of Ice

I wanted to share with you what a Day in the life of Me would be like, So here are some images that i take with my cool phone all day every day! ENJOY!! It shows all the steps from out of camera to computer editing, to my car breaking down AGAIN!!! lunch with friend and to top it off a nice Hott Coco and some good Fashion!

the sun can be your friend

Here is a great Article on how to use the sun in different way from Eric Rechbaum

Using the sun to your advantage.

For most of the daylight hours the sun is harsh and gives off flat light, terrible for most photos. However, during what is refered to as the “magic hour” (more like magic 20 minutes) around sunrise and sunset the sun can be a better light source than all the Profoto lights and gear money can buy.
These four photos all use the sun in different ways, giving 4 completely different looks to each image.
These are some headshots/promo shots I did for my friend Alena this weekend in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. As we were walking along a trail I noticed a great shaft of light coming through the trees and had Alena walk up the trail and stand right in it. Perfect backlight on her hair. This is a great example of making the available light work in your favor. The sun was just low enough that it had a really nice yellowish glow to it, but bright enough that Alena’s face  and the trees behind her are still exposed well. 10 or 15 minutes later the sun would be too low and we would have lost those direct rays highlighting her hair. Perfect case of right place at the right time.

This next one is one of my favorites from the day. Alena’s dress is so bright and really pops out in the photo compared to the dull winter background of bare trees and dead grass. Her expression and posture is great. This is also natural light, with the sun behind me and almost completely under the horizon. This was one of the last shots of the day, almost didn’t happen, but this huge tree was calling us. I tried some shots with the wide angle to get in all the crazy branches above Alena, but it was just too distorted at that angle to make a nice portrait.

It was really hard to find any spots in the park where we could get the sun directly behind Alena’s head for some orange sky strobist shots, but we finally found a good spot just in time for the magic moment when the sun was nice and orange. This first shot was just a test shot to expose the sky without the flash. As a result Alena is pretty underexposed, but I liked the image so much, and it was my only one without the flash in this spot, so I tried to bring her up in photoshop, and ran the image through a cross processing filter, something I’ve been quite fond of doing recently.

For this last one, I setup a light-stand and shot a flash through an umbrella, camera left. Both this one and the previous shot were at 1/250th of a second, I just stopped down from f/3.5 to f/6 for this one with the flash to get a bit more color in the sky.

So there are four examples of different ways to take portraits using the sun to your advantage. Which one is your favorite? Leave a comment, and send links of your own magic hour portraits.