Dastardly Dave's Photo Blog

iPhone Camera shots of Sofija

2009-10-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

Eric at Hunt's Camera in Manchester and SOPHA are putting on a gallery show called "Tiny Pixels" this coming weekend at the DARKROOM GALLERY. This show features photos shot entirely using camera phones.

I borrowed Bud Thorpe's iPhone to shoot some images of my friend Sofija for the show.

I hope to do a series of shoots over the next couple days to make more images to include.

Here are a couple. There is some post work done in PhotoShop. The initial images had some issues but that was mainly due to my inexperience using the iPhone's interface and focusing system.

Blacklight Experiment

2008-12-23T07:09:00.000-08:00

I was hanging out over at Eric X's place with Matt from PoisonApplez the other night and Eric starts showing me a bunch of masks that he has painted with glow in the dark colors. I thought it would be cool to try to photograph them in black light to capture the glowing details.

At first I thought to shoot in a black room but I noticed that the white seamless paper in the studio was glowing and I thought I would try shooting on that so that the shape of the models would stand out as well. Our friend John happened to be at the studio with his spankin' new Canon 5D Mark II so I asked if I could borrow it. He graciously agreed.

I used three blacklight tubes clamped to lightstands, two on the right and one on the left. There is a second light on the left aimed more or less on the background. I wound up shooting at f2.8 at ISO 4000 with a shutter of 1/130 so I locked the camera down on the cinestand. The images are pretty noisy but I have to say I am pretty impressed. Images taken with my Canon 40D would have looked like a Seraut painting.

Delicious Ambiguity with Miss Krys

2008-12-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

I have been talking to this model for some time about working together and seeing that she is moving to Los Angeles right after Christmas I figured I should get off my ass and do it.

We did a couple outfits, one more glamour and another nude depth of field study but she had this idea and poem and I found it interesting.

The difficult part was painting the words on her body in such a way as to allow them to be as readable as possible. The layout of the paint also restricted the poses that would work.

I kept the light very simple using light gray seamless as the background and the Octadome to camera right as the only light source. The working aperture was f8, ISO 100 with a shutter of 1/125. Location is the main studio of SOPHA

Here is the poem, I don't know the author:

"Some poems don't rhyme, some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle or end. Life is about now knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity."

Everyone else is blogging I guess I should too

2008-12-16T06:37:00.000-08:00

I an attempt to share a little bit of my love for photography I am taking a page from Bud Thorpe and starting this photo blog. Normally I would just hand Bud an image and a lighting diagram (unless he was gripping for me and then he would make the lighting diagram, he has the file with the cool icons) but this will be a place to share some more adult images that are not appropriate on the SOPHA blog.

Lately I have been, in a sense, rebelling against the studio and shooting a lot of narrow depth of field images. With studio lights and in the studio of course but at f1.8 with the 50mm lens Bud got me for my birthday. Most of the time in the studio my working aperture is f8 or f11 so these images are a bit of a departure and are more challenging for me.

These images of Rabbit was shot on the white cyclorama with a muslin tossed on the floor. The 7 foot Octadome mounted on a White Lightning x1600 was just to camera right. The x1600 lamps are great for this because they have the quarter power switch and I am able to power down enough to get the correct exposure at f1.8 at ISO 100 at 1/125.