Sharing The Roijoy

Especially when you're including architecture in your shots, there are times when the combination of the angle you are pointing your camera and where your point of focus is, leave you with an image Where all the vertical lines slope into your composition. Sometimes you want this effect to be pronounced and at other times it would be nice to be able to compensate against the effect. If your main job is doing architectural shoots you may have already invested in some high quality, tilt-shift lenses. If you're a Nikon shooter like me, you can purchase a very nice Nikon lens for just over $2000.00. If you have the latest versions of Photoshop or Lightroom CS, they include a function to assist you in fixing converging lines in your photos. But you can also do a simple fix to your photos manually in earlier versions of photoshop that you may already be running.                              Before fixing the ver...

My image "Breaking Up",  a conceptual image alluding to the pain and suffering of breaking up with someone or having a nervous breakdown.  has just won 2nd place in a competition hosted by Eye-Fi and Studentstock . I tend not to enter competitions because of the trend to choose winners based on likes through social media. I sometimes feel this method weighs things in favor of popularity above the content of the work. Not that there is anything wrong with this approach - it's just not for me. However, I noticed that this competition would be decided by a panel of judges and not based on social media responses, so I though why not.

Typical main street scene in Bangkok Prior to the shoot in Koh Samui , we were shooting in Bangkok City and at the floating market. As before, while the film crew were creating what went on to be an award winning film, I was capturing stills for the online campaigns. Even though there is an order to things in this city, it screams loudly at you with an inviting confusion. Vibrant colours and contrasts everywhere, and so many photo opportunities that had me out on the streets still shooting even in any free time I had for myself. The first shoot was in an apartment space and the challenge for me was to get my shots in between the film crew getting their footage. And why would that be so challenging? Well they were sunset scenes and we were all working to make the most of the diminishing light. And since we had no control over the sun as a prop, we all only got one go at getting what we needed, and a very limited window of time to do so. The film director was Alma Har'...

Comments about this image have included, "Did the police let you pose on their bike?" "Where did you manage to find the bike?" "You're lucky no one caught you messing with that bike." And leading nicely into this blog entry, "I know it's Photoshopped but how did you do it?" While walking around in the Mission district I saw this police officer signal for the car in front of him to pull over. The officer stopped his bike a little way behind the car that had stopped and put it on it's stand positioned slightly into the path of oncoming traffic.  I'm sure there's some thought or reason/ training for the position of the bike but that's not what this piece is about. The thing was that I could see the bike looking as if it was still traveling along the road in my mind's eye. Very quickly, the complete image formed in my head and I pulled out my camera to get my shots. I stood at the side of the street with my camera ...

Some months ago, I did a shoot for the launch campaign of the Dell Wyse Cloud Connect . The client had a video production team filming for the launch video and my job was to grab stills for static ads to drive campaign traffic. The shoot took place at office spaces in Silicon Valley. The production team were great and managed to successfully create multiple sets around the building that ranged from business corporate, to a scene set in a cosy home at night. Director at work There was various talent coming and going to act in the different scenes, but the main model who you see at the beginning of this blog, worked with us throughout the length of the shoot and worked straight through an 18 hour day of shooting! Yes it was a long day but the client, agency, talent, stylists, MUA's, and production team were all focused on getting the job done well. Everyone was cooperative and collaborated well and so we were all able to get what we needed from the day. Below is a quick ...

I created this image at home one day and have licensed it a couple of times as a stock photo image. I've had people comment that this must have taken ages to produce with all the work involved. The truth is, it took 3 hours from start to finish, including the photography. In some ways this is one of the simpler images I've ever put together. So here's how it's done. First I set up my lighting for the scene, set a camera on a tripod and locked the focus, white balance, and exposure. I would be taking 19 exposures and would not be touching the camera in between shots to avoid any chance of misalignment between one frame to the next. Base image of just the minimal scene The first shot I took was probably the most important of them all and its a shot of the scene minus any models and additional props. After capturing this base exposure I just carried on shooting while holding my floating objects in a different position in the air for each frame. You can see that...

I was briefed to capture images of families interacting with each other but as if they were skypeing with relatives or friends using computers, TV screens, or mobile devices. I needed to capture people with myself taking the place of the 'device' they were supposedly using and get natural looking shots. In addition, I was working with real people and not models in and around their own homes. I really love people so it was fun for me getting them to relax and not be self conscious as I was literally poking a lens into their faces. I must say it was a lot of trust on their part too but I'm pleased with what I managed to get. Also to get the angles I wanted, I got to put some of my contortion skills to the test while covering these two shoots :)