Basically, the concept was that I was too busy running errands that my feet never touch the ground because I’m constantly rushing from one thing to another.

In terms of how I shot this, I asked my roommate to stand in the area where visualized myself standing then set up my tripod, composed and adjusted the camera settings, switched it over to manual focus and traded places with my roommate. I set the shutter drive to continuous high speed shutter and told my roommate to press and hold the shutter as I was jumping to get the right “floating” shot where the clothes weren’t moving all around as I was in mid air. I also put my hair in a bun so it wouldn’t go crazy and move around too.

The chair shot was the hardest to shoot. I had to make sure my thighs were parallel to the ground and my butt had to land on the chair. My butt did not feel good after shooting. I was constantly landing on my butt. THAT CHAIR WASN’T EVEN SOFT.

I arranged 3 photo shoots with 3 amazing ballet dancers and shot at different locations in San Francisco. I didn’t have any permits to shoot at any of the locations so I was worried about getting kicked out of the area or worse, getting fined or even worse, getting asked to delete my photos. Luckily, no one asked us to leave. A couple of people just stopped by and watched.

Here are a few set up shots below. I lit all photos with a soft box and a couple of photos with a soft box + speedlite and reflector.

I really love the light on the model’s face, it’s just that her hand is gigantic in comparison to her head. My instructor called it “monster hand.” (´∩｀。) He suggested cropping the hand out but I like the wide shot. But for my portfolio, I’ll get that fixed. Aside from that, I like how I was able to balance the ambient red light with the strobe and speedlite. I dropped my shutter speed down to 1/8 second since the couch area was very dim. I had to bring out my flashlight to set up equipment. I also like how her lips stand out!

One of the things I did in editing was retouched and smoothened the skin, blurred the wrinkles on her shirt, brought down the highlight on her forehead, added color tones and cropped in on the right just a little bit because the distortion was making her thighs look bigger. You can see the original photo below.

And the set up shot! I always like seeing and showing behind-the-scenes shots.

We used a Profoto 7B pack which was too powerful even on the lowest settings since we were almost shooting in the darkness. The softbox was also too big so we flagged down half of it so it wouldn’t spread too much. I shot my photo much closer in, not including the wall, or else that would’ve been too distracting if I included it in.

Throughout the shoot, the crew of Ruby Skye were starting to prepare for that night’s event and one of them brought their small poodle who kept running around. The poodle was so cute! I told my friend, before we leave, I’m going to kidnap the dog while the owner was busy working. It would’ve been great if I did. I also wish I had a clearer picture of the dog but he kept moving so much.

Though I wish it was true, Danbo, the Amazon box figurine, is a metaphor for my neighbor’s cat, Bobo. I live with myself at a studio apartment and occasionally, Bobo would scratch the outside of my door and I’d always let her in. On that day, she came when I wanted her to. No, she didn’t make me tea though her presence was like waking up to tea because I LOVE TEA.

I wanted to keep a clean look throughout the film so in the process, my apartment became a lot less cluttered which I’m so happy about! I created more breathing space when I didn’t know there could be more. Wanting to enhance the simplicity and the pastel color palette, I batch-processed all 1161 frames in Photoshop; slightly increasing exposure, adding fade, saturation and contrast for a hint of whimsical and dreaminess. When I first moved to this apartment, I wanted to film a stop motion, using the same emotion and song and I hadn’t gotten to it. A year later, now it’s done!

Here is a photo of Bobo on that day. She was a great companion for the day, just a little bit distracting. And this is also the story board I created.

I recently learned how to contour and how to create a rough look in a portrait. It looks like the photo is a pencil drawing because of the effect. I’m liking the Photoshop class I’m taking this semester. I’m finally learning tools that I can put to use in the kind of photos I take. It makes me want to go back to my old photos and re-edit them which is what I did here. I shot Francesco way back in August and for my Photoshop homework, we have to create a rough portrait. I went back to this old photo so I can re-edit this photo + do my homework.  Yaaaaaayyyy! I like seeing before-and-after shots of photos so I made a quick how-to on how to get the rough look. I like seeing how things are made and how the process looks like.

        Original photo

        Convert it to black and white

        Adjust the photo with Curves and use the Healing Brush to remove blemishes

        Use the High Pass and Add Noise filter

        Selectively lighten and darken the photo with Curves and masks to contour.

I was taking a walk when I saw some kids throwing paper planes. And airplane just happened to fly by and when I saw how the paper plane and the actual plane looked together, I used it as my next concept to shoot with. I took a few pictures of the plane with my camera but the angle and lighting didn’t work well enough create a decent photo. The airplane was dark in the bottom and was too small in the photo because the zoom on my lens couldn’t go that far (85mm). So I decided to use a toy plane and sure enough, it was at a dollar store in Japantown in the form of an eraser. Using flat and soft lighting by means of a soft box, I shot the toy plane and folded up a small paper plane so they could be the same size. I originally thought of shooting the subjects with a plain white background but decided to Photoshop an image of a sky I took early before to replace the white background. But now after shooting this, I wonder if I should’ve made the background toy-looking also but cutting and pasting construction paper clouds or cotton clouds on a sky blue paper to show a consistent toy-look feel.

Comparing the simplest form of an airplane to an actual airplane, the concept of this photo is based on the phrase “flying high.” We all have big ambitions and we all start out small. My ambition is to be the best photographer I can be, creating work along the lines of professional photography. To be my ambition, I will get the best equipment, take amazing photos and then be the best photographer. However, why not start out big? Why not already work to be the best photographer you can be with the current equipment and gear you have now and then the amazing photos will follow and then you can get the best camera gear. That is what this photo is about. The paper plane wants to be like an airplane and so it chooses to fly just as high as the other airplanes.

I edited a colored version of the image and found out I like it much more when it’s colored rather than black and white because the clouds are much more apparent.

Just to show how small the plane is, here it is on a mound of cuties!

Expected

Using a bar as a location for this shot, I wanted a classy look on the model, holding a classy drink in her martini glass. I used this as the expected photo because this is what I usually see at high end bars.

Unexpected

For this photo, I shot the model in a bath tub that’s not located inside her bathroom, much less the building she lives in. The bath tub is outside in a random location. This time, she’s holding a double shot glass to suggest her drinking hard liquor while in the bath tub.

Also, here is a set up shot of the second photo to show the location of the bathtub. It’s so random.