Romantic Landscape Idea

The Romantic Era was an art movement that peaked between about 1800 and the 1850s. It was mostly a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment, which put people solidly at the center of the universe. During the Romantic Era landscape painters would often paint these large, sweeping landscapes with a teeny tiny human figure in there somewhere. They were all about emphasizing the grandeur of nature towering over humanity. Kinda like this painting by Thomas Fearnley from 1838 (notice the tiny human in front of the glacier):

Thomas Fearnley, Grindelwald Glacier, 1838

So I was thinking about that art movement, and how it seems like nowadays (especially in advertising images) whenever you have an image of man and nature it’s usually one of man dominating the environment, the human subject is big and towering, often in a “conquering” type pose. Nature is the the arena in which the subject is winning. Kinda like in these:

Here the emphasis is very much on the human overcoming. It’s more about the human surmounting nature and being superior to it.

So my idea is to pair up images that explore both of those concepts. Perhaps an image of a mountain peak (with tiny human) next to a picture of a person scaling the face of the peak. A picture of a massive twisting river winding around a tiny campsite and then a closeup of a person kayaking dramatically through the rapids. By going from nature is epic and towering over humans to humans are pushing through nature both concepts are emphasized. I think if it is done well, the viewer would walk away thinking that 1. nature is huge and impressive and 2. humans are even more impressive for getting out there and persevering.

So that’s my idea. I probably won’t get after it, since I’m not a sports photographer, but I think it’s a good idea, and would be an interesting project to undertake.

Romantic Landscape Idea

Recent Lighting Test

Recent Lighting Test

Lights / Makeup / Retouching Comparison by Karl Taylor

In this video Karl Taylor demonstrates the importance of each of the steps involved with creating an image. He walks the model through from the beginning to the end, showing how switching to studio lighting improves the image, how makeup changes the appearance, and finally how retouching polishes and removes any distractions. In my opinion, switching to studio light and adding makeup causes the most dramatic change to the image. It’s good to see this kind of a breakdown, it really demonstrates all the ways that an image can be improved (and the importance of hiring a makeup artist).

No Makeup, Makeup, and Retouched

Lights / Makeup / Retouching Comparison by Karl Taylor

Bayhem

I’ll admit it. I’ve been a bit obsessed with Michael Bay here lately. His movies are terrible, but I’ve still been rewatching Bad Boys a lot and trying to figure out how to cop Bay’s epic style and panache. And then here comes a video from Every Frame a Painting, explaining exactly what it is I’m digging in Bay’s work, and how he achieves it. Check it out, it’s great:

I have several pictures in the project pipeline at the moment that are biting on Michael Bay’s visual style. I’m not quite ready to talk about them yet, but when they’re done I’ll come back and connect all the dots between what Bay does and what I was trying to do.

 

Bayhem

Found Light Test

A few days ago my neighbors parked their car in front of their house, and as the sun set their rear reflector caught the light perfectly and bounced sharp red light through my blinds and into our office. I thought it looked pretty cool, so I grabbed my camera and took a quick shot of it. Like this:

Kinda cool. I found some light, and it was decent. Today I started thinking about that light, and how bouncing in sunlight through blinds could be interesting in other ways. So I grabbed a light stand and a mirror, taped a green gel to the mirror and set it up outside my office window like this:

(Tako’s not sure about all this)

The mirror was way more reflective than my neighbor’s tail-light, and a lot more light came in than I was expecting. Also, since I taped a gel to the mirror, the light was really really green. When using gels and mirrors, you have to remember that the light is going to come down, pass through the gel, hit the mirror, and then pass through the gel again… so you effectively double the gel when you’re doing it this way, since the light goes through it twice. After color correcting for the super-greenified light, I got this image:

It’s a cool effect. The mirror and gel are making a really interesting light pattern on the wall behind me. I wish the light source was higher, since it’s about at my eye level so the shadows are going a bit weird. It was also really intense, I had to squint in order to not be blinded by the light.

This is really just a proof of concept type setup. If I wanted to continue with it I would probably start setting up some flash equipment and move toward really defining shapes in the picture. I do like the pattern the mirror + gel is creating on the background, I can definitely see myself using that part again in the future.

 

Found Light Test

Woman as Car Idea

This is an old idea that I had, I was looking at some pictures of cars and I realized that a lot of the same lighting techniques and approaches are used when photographers shoot nude women as when they shoot cars…. there’s an emphasis on line and curve, form and lustre…. so I was thinking it would be interesting to shoot a nude-ish picture of a woman who is being prepped the same way a car would be…. skin being polished, a buffer shining up this area or that…. to kind of connect the dots between woman as object and car as object. I see a lot of that kind of thing…. take the techniques that are usually applied to this kind of image, and then apply it to that kind of image. So you get nude as landscape, or body as product (very common), there’s a lot of that kind of cross pollination in photography. It would be even more interesting to go the other way…. shoot a landscape the way you would a portrait (gonna need a really big beauty dish for this one) or shoot architecture like a car. There’s a lot of possibilities there. A lot of conceptual things to consider. Keeps things fun.

Woman as Car Idea

New Work - Casual Portrait for Rosemarie

Copyright 2014 All Rights Reserved * Tim Lewis Photography

A more informal portrait of Dr. Rosemarie Downey-McCarthy. This setup only has one light, so it’s very simple. I often like to start with simpler setups because they’re less distracting to me as a photographer. I’m not adjusting four or five different lights, busy trying to balance all these spinning plates, instead I can slow down and spend ten or twenty minutes talking with the subject, slowly getting them to relax, getting them used to my style of shooting, the pace, the random things I’m going to say to them… Starting simple like this can calm the subject a bit, and you can move to more complicated setups afterwards. Plus you get great results like this one on the way.

New Work - Casual Portrait for Rosemarie