Craig Colvin Photography

Create Meaningful Home Videos

Craig Colvin — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 08:16:29 +0000

Over the past year Documentary Filmmaker David Hoffman has been doing an experiment with his home movies. I watched his first movie about his family’s trip to Paris and it inspired me to try the same thing my a family vacation (hope to have the footage posted soon). He recently did another one about his family’s trip to New York, I watched one about their search for toilet paper. This is one of eight documenting their New York trip.

In this video David explains the thinking by this experiment. Instead of having static photos of your family that will have no meaning to your future descendants the idea is to make a home movie in a semi-documentary format so that your descendants can get a real feeling for who you were.

David is a veteran documentary filmmaker with 40 years of experience. He is taking this experience and turning the camera around on himself. These videos are telling a story about him and his family, and what I enjoy about them is how personal they are, you really get a feel for his family, and their dynamics. It’s an interesting concept and I plan to do more of this with my home movies.

So what do you think? Is this something you might try?

This is Not Photography

Craig Colvin — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 09:04:09 +0000

This is a recent documentary about Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor. If you are not familiar with Jerry’s work you should visit his web site http://www.uelsmann.net/. He was creating interesting and artistic composites in the darkroom, long before Photoshop came along. His work has always been and inspiration to me and watching this documentary was fascinating. It really got my creative juices flowing and I’ve already come up with a dozen new photo concepts.

There have been a few public showings of the film, but can also watch it on Lynda.com at
http://www.lynda.com/Photography-tutorials/Jerry-Maggie-photography/90633-2.html

If you aren’t already a member of Lynda.com (and you should be), then this is a good excuse to give it a try.

California Photo Festival

Craig Colvin — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 08:00:58 +0000

Click – The California Photo Festival is an annual event sponsored by Light Photographic Workshops in San Luis Obispo, CA. I was able to attend 4 days of this 6 day event this year. This conference is unlike any others I have attended. Besides classroom workshops, there are a lot of hands-on workshops where the participants get the opportunity to go shoot with the instructors. Almost every day there would be a sunrise shoot, as well as a sunset shoot, with other opportunities through-out the day.

Here is a recap of my 4 days.

Wednesday

Shot with Lee Varis at the San Luis Obispo Mission de Tolosa, where he talked about the zone system.

Attended a talk by Playboy photographer David Mecey, where he discussed the various lighting and posing techniques used in his shots for Playboy

Kevin Ames gave a very technical talk about light meters and how 18% gray is used in today’s cameras, and software. I thought I knew this stuff, but was wrong. This deserves it’s own blog post.

Sunset shoot was Horses on the Beach with Rick Sammon.

Thursday

The sunrise shoot was with Lee Varis at a local vineyard. It had rained most of the night and it was still sprinkling when we arrived so we didn’t get the gorgeous sunrise we had hoped for, but it was still good to be up and taking photos.

Followed up the shoot with a classroom session with Jane Conner-Ziser about Mastering the Wacom Tablet. Then listened to Rob Sheppard talk about having focus in your photographic work. This is something I’ve been struggling with for the past year, so it was interesting to get Rob’s insight.

I then attended a session with Lee Varis where he demonstrated how to take a classic Hollywood style B/W portrait. This session was much more interesting that I had anticipated and I learned quite a few lighting tricks to get the traditional look.

The evening shoot was at the San Luis Obispo Farmer’s Market with Bobbi Lane, where we worked on balancing ambient light with flash, and dragging the shutter with camera movement to get some interesting lighting effects.

Friday

I did a mid-morning photo shoot with Playboy photographer David Mecey at a local winery. It was harvest time and they were bringing in the grapes. We had two models and recreated the I Love Lucy episode where she stomps grapes. Dave setup the lights, and explained his thinking as he did so, we then put the models in the vat of grapes and starting snapping photos. It was a lot of fun for both us and the models.

Back in the classroom. Lee Varis showed his technique he calls Lighting in Layers which was much more interesting than I had anticipated. The technique involves using multiple exposures with different lighting and then combining them in Photoshop to get the desired lighting effect. I plan to experiment with this technique and will do a blog post with the results.

I’ve been using Nik’s Silver Effects Pro for about 6 months and have never felt very comfortable with it. I can do the basics but always felt I was missing a lot. So I took a workshop with Ron Sheppard about Black and White photography and learned a great deal about how to make better B&W photos.

For the sunset shoot we all headed to Pismo Beach where I joined Jane Conner-Ziser’s group and shot silhouettes.

Recap

There was still 2 more days of the Festival but I had to head to LA to take another photography workshop which I will talk about in another blog post soon.

I enjoyed this Festival a lot more than I anticipated. I’ve gotten to a point in my photographic career where I’ve been exposed to and tried a large number of the photographic techniques that were taught in the classes and workshops. I now rarely learn anything major at a workshop, instead just picking up little tips and tricks along the way, but it was still beneficial to reiterate some of the things I habve learned in the past but haven’t tried in a while. I especially enjoyed the shooting workshops, having the opportunity to shoot horses on the beach, models stomping grapes, and getting up at sunrise to take pictures of a vineyard. Being at an event like this forces me to get out the and shoot which is the whole point to photography.

I highly recommend this Festival, it was well done, had great instructors and was a lot of fun. I plan to attend again next year.

Behind the Scenes – The Annulment and Love is Blind

Craig Colvin — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:00:46 +0000

Here is a first of many behind the scenes videos. This one is of the shoot that created the images “The Annulment” and “Love is Blind”. I didn’t have someone to man the video camera so just put it on a tripod and shot wide. Except for the fog creating water spots and haze on the lens it came out OK. Will try to improve in the future.

Ripples

Craig Colvin — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:33:48 +0000

I always have several ongoing photography projects. One of these is taking photos of ripples in nature. I’ve taken over 1000 images of this type but was never quite sure what to do with them. Individually an image might be OK, but rarely outstanding. I tried displaying them as a single portfolio on my web site but it didn’t have the impact that I was looking for.

At Photoshop World this past month I saw a video slideshow by Julieanne Kost that blew me away and I realized that this was the way I should display my ripple photos. So here it is.

Photo Shoot List

Craig Colvin — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 20:34:56 +0000

My new iOS application for photographers, Photo Shoot List, has been released and is now available in the iTunes App Store.

Photo Shoot List is a to-do list for photographers. You use it to keep lists of shots you want to take either at some location like a National Park, or in the studio, or at wedding. Along with each item in the list you can add a sample photo of the shot to take.

For shoots you do on a regular basis you can create shoot templates to use as a basis for the shoot list, or you can purchase pre-done lists from the iTunes store using in-app purchase.

More information can be found at PhotoShootList.com

Critique of my Photos

Craig Colvin — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 23:22:39 +0000

At the Google+ Photographer’s Conference they had a session of Blind Photos Critiques. Trey Ratcliff, Jeremy Cowart, Scott Kelby, and Matt Kloskowski were offering their critiques of photos sumbitted by the conference participants. I submitted 3 images. The above video is of the Blind Critique session. Critique of my photos begins at 28:24.

Meetup.com

Craig Colvin — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:53:28 +0000

At the Google Plus Photographer’s Conference earlier this week I talked to a lot of photographers who were just getting into photographing people. Several had shot some of the models at the conference and discovered how much they loved it. (I know the feeling).

Most of them were asking me how to get started with model photography and I recommended joining a local Meetup.com photography group and going to a few meetups. A lot of the groups schedule model shoots and they are great for learning posing techniques, some lighting, and just getting comfortable in the studio.

For the Bay Area photographers, here is the list of meetup groups I am a member of. Not all of these do model shoots, but they are all worthwhile. Check them out.

A SOUTH BAY DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP

*ARTISTIC GLAMOUR AND FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB*

Adobe Creative Suite User Group – San Jose

Art of Urban Exploration

The Artists Path to Cash

BAMPS – Bay Area Model Photo Shoots

Bay Area Fine Art and Fashion

Bay Area Glamour Photoshoots

Bay Area HDSLR

Bay Area Image Maker’s Collective

Bay Area Model Madness

Bay Area Night Photography

Bay Area Photo Cliques

Bay Area Photo Studio Shoots

Bay Area Photographers Working Together

Bay Area Photography

The Bay Area Photography & Exploration Society

Bay Area Photography Events

Bay Area Photography Group

Bay Area Strobists

Bikini Model Photo Workshop

The Candy Man Photo Shoot

Chasing Light N Photographing Landscape

Creative Portraiture in Santa Cruz

Digital Photography Society of Santa Cruz

EXPOSED – A Photography Showcase

Fremont Digital Photo Freeschool

Funtography Club

Hold the Eye Images Meetup Group

Jules CAFE Photo Peeps Meetup and PUG

Lollipop Girl Glam Shoot

Making Art Make Money

Northern California Bikini & Boudoir Workshops

Off camera flash photography

Pacific Light Studios

Photographers for Photography

Photography Classes

Photography Classes and Workshops – All Levels

Photogrartists

Photolight – Photography & Lighting (SF Bay Area)

Renegade Photo Shoots – Bay Area

The San Francisco Photography Meetup Group

San Jose Photoshop Users Group

San Jose Strobists

SF Bay Area Glamour and Fine Art Nude Photography

SF Bay Model Photo Shoots

SF Bay Model Shoots Inc.

SF Photoshop Users Group

SFBayArea “Trade For” Shoots

Silicon Valley Digital Photography Workshops

South Bay Fashion Photography

The South Bay Photography Meetup Group

Star Circle Academy

This Week in Photo (TWiP) & SmugMug Bay Area Meetup

Supermodel Cleavage Trumps Good Photography

Craig Colvin — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:34:46 +0000

I was walking through my local shopping center one evening last week when I was stopped in my tracks by this Skullcandy poster in the window of the Tilly’s store. What stopped me was not the model (is this a sign I’m getting old?), but the poor photography. It is not a very well done photograph. There are numerous things that I consider wrong with this poster and if I had taken this shot, I would have discarded it during my initial selection process. Here are a few of the things I think are wrong

Pig Nose – Kate has her head tilted back and the photograph was shot at a slight upward angle, resulting in a very unattractive nose. This alone should have sent this photo to the discard pile.
Reflections of the studio lights in the balloons. I find these extremely distracting and would have either rejected the photo of cloned them out.
Blown out hair on top of her head. Although my cell phone shot here doesn’t do it justice, the whole photo was poorly exposed.
You can hardly see the product! In fact, I did not see the headphones until after I had read all the text then gone back to the photo. Some say that might be OK, because I did read the text, however, I think you should have both.

Apparently the Art Director was judging the photos by how great Kate’s boobs looked and all the other stuff was secondary. Supermodel Cleavage trumps a good photo.

To give the Art Director credit I did find other shots from this shoot that are much nicer photographically. Here is one from Skullcandy’s Facebook page. I’m just shocked that this one made the cut.

22 Useful Photography Cheat Sheets

Craig Colvin — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:28:48 +0000

Here is a post on PhotoPoly where they have compiled a list of photography cheat sheets. Some great stuff here.

http://www.photopoly.net/22-useful-photography-and-photo-editing-cheat-sheets/