“ORANGE/CARROT SKIN”  Now i suppose if if was a vegetable,  having an even coating of  warm orange could be sexy, but we’re not vegetables!  Mammals (us)  are multi dimensional with different shades of color throughout our bodies.   I have warned my models for years to not spray tan before a photoshoot.   Digital cameras particularly  emphasize these tans … perhaps through anomalous color reflectance or by capturing every nuance that might have been lost on film… it just looks bad!.

Here is a retouching nightmare!  Lets pretend that the tones of orange can be corrected out… what do you do about the uneven skin?  Unbelievably I  didn’t even notice this during the photoshoot,  it was far more subtle in real life.   Notice how the sock lines removed the tan…anywhere you sweat lightens up and drier areas like the knees, heels and wrists get darker.

My rule of thumb is:  Never spray tan for a shoot!  Hit the tanning beds instead… the vitamin D will do you good,  clear the skin up, and provide a much more photographic body.   Stand up beds are preferable since they give a more even tan… just give yourself at least three day break before your shoot.  Be careful not burn yourself, the camera picks that up just as much as being orange.

The Germans invented tanning cream (dihydroxyacetone DHA) back in 1920.   DHA has been tested and used since the war, so the product has proven to be safe (unless you inhale it).    This is the common ingredient in almost every tanner, so regardless of the formulation,  the exact same undertone orange glow exists in every product… just the application methods and extra dyes  added vary.

Check out their youthful orange glow:

This creative was with Colleen Napier.   I let her loose on Teal to do any look she liked and this was the result.

I had some nice pieces of jewellery from Carola Bun from a previous shoot, so I thought i would put the choker to good use again.  Both images were shot against a white background with the add’l effects added in Photoshop.  I’ve been on a trend lately of desaturating my images and dialing the color temperatures down.  The top image has a bit more green in the undertone… I wanted this look to approach an ‘old photograph’ with fogged highlights, but with a modern look.  Traditionally aged images have bluer blacks and yellowed highlights… which is why i went green/yellow.

I tried a couple composite images with this next shot, but since i did not originally plan on changing the background, it was hard to  separate her hair from the similar toned background (would of normally shot this high key).  I saw a neat filter once on a website: Auto FX Mystical2 … although the program is a bit pricey ($200),  and you can certainly achieve the effect in Photoshop manually,  you will be getting to your results much faster.

Brianna Errelat, my makeup artist wanted to do an image that was inspired by Kevyn Aucoin.   The amount of creatives I have done can liteally be counted on one hand… after all when everyone is paying you and with so much creative freedom there is no need… right?   Well I’m starting to think different about that… cutting the strings and doing just what I want purely without any clients needs in mind… that is always a factor in a hired shoot.

Meet Shazmin!  we’ve been FB friends for almost two years now and I figured it was finally time to meet in person for a creative.  I thought that she had the eyes and range of expression to create an enticing beauty shot.

We originally tried the orchids bunched around the neck like Acoin’s image but it just did not feel right.  Getting that vision from the mind to reality can sometimes be a nightmare.  We tried wire, clamps and floral tape but the flowers were just not cooperating.   If this had been a high key shoot with pale makeup concept, this style may have worked… I just thought they were too stark around her neck.

For the above  image,  I pulled out the Super 77 spray glue and literally attached petal to petal in a lei style.  This was delicate work and limited Shaz’s mobility but I was happy with the net result.

This image was combined with a shot I took in Maui years ago in the bamboo forest.  The lighting naturally fit the highlight on her shoulder and lens flare was added to emphasize  it further.    I’m looking forward to see what we can come up with next.

So this may be a bit of a diversion from photography, but it’s such a great find i had to share.  I’ve been really impressed with some of the products Costco has been bringing into the Vancouver store recently.  I tell my friends “before you ask me where it’s from,  fill in ‘Costco’ and if it fits, that’s your answer”   If I could change my Facebook status to ‘in a relationship with Costco’, that would also work.

So on my last weekly visit i came across this gem,  100% recycled paper that IS NOT bleached.

It’s almost too good to be true, made with renewable energy,  no trees cut,  no Chlorine bleach (one of the most caustic cycles in recycled paper) and 100% recycled.

The one negative would be that the paper is not as pure a white as the traditional office papers which are bleached and do come from trees,  but in this ‘green’ age, beige could be the new white!

I ran a test on the inkjet between the two papers and you might think the ink would blend more on a ’softer’ recycled mix, but the printed text actually looked slightly sharper on this paper… Wow!

Every now and then something comes across your desk that changes the way you work; the brick phone,  dial up internet,  facebook,  angry birds, etc.    I’m gonna put this app in that group… it feels like the edge of change!  Right now the current version is about three bucks at the app store (their competitors are charging $30!!).   The nice thing is it’s universal for PC’s and Mac’s alike… and even android users.   I have to say however that my Mac experience linking it to the Ipad and Iphone was seamless.

After you download the software online and install onto your device, there is one more download to the computer you want to sync to.  You are able to sync to as many computers (Mac and PC) as you like and access them all through this interface.

The nice thing about the computer install program, is that they also include an uninstall script.  This program is downloaded from their website.

Click on the computer you wish to access ( I only have one set up at the moment), and you are taken to this window asking for your access code which you set up on you computer.   This can be auto filled or entered each time you access, but I highly suggest manually entering an intricate password  each time… it is the internet after all.

Voila!  you are now remotely controlling your computer (this take your system out of sleep/screensaver mode… keep this in mind as your system is now unlocked wherever it is)  What I find amazing is that you can operate any of your programs as if you were there… even ram hogs like photoshop and lightroom on your ipad(android, iphone, etc)

This is the window that shows up with a three finger tap.  My screen is set to native resolution which displays my entire (home) monitor, and can be switched between monitors (I have 2).   You can also choose  between ipad resolution and a fixed resolution.   The desktop can be scaled and moved between two fingers so you don’t need a magnifying glass.

So why do this anyway?    If you have ever had to help your parents or anyone over the phone  for ‘tech’ help?  Now they can watch live (and there is live voice too) while you navigate around the computer from another location.   Personally, I think back to my last trip to Mexico when I had a magazine call for some images and  could not get to my raid array to send them.   Now it’s as easy as signing in, accessing my files and remotely sending them from my home email.

So far Wifi has worked very well.  Now i need to experiment with my phone on the G3 network.   It would also be worthwhile to have a mouse with the ipad which would make this program so much more functional, but currently that is only available through a jailbreak.

Downsides:

• I am not able to activate my screen saver and lock the computer remotely (takes 15 min to fall in to sleep mode) because the screen does not let me put it all the way into the corner to activate the hot button… it may work in other screen resolutions.
• It’s challenging to get use to tapping instead of ‘clicking’… prefer a mouse option!

Upsides:

• everything else!

You can read more at http://www.splashtop.com/

For the month of November,  BC hydro is offering a $15 immediate rebate off LED bulbs at Home Depot in BC.  I was amazed to learn that changing out just the four – 60 watt overhead incandescent bulbs in my kitchen amounts to $456 in energy savings over the life of the bulbs.    Well so far, I’ve changed out about 35 bulbs of varying wattage reducing  1200 watts of energy usage… That is close to the equivalent of a space heater or or  hair dryer.

So according to the rated energy savings of these new LED’s over using incandescent bulbs,  that equates to appprox $2830 over the lifetime of the bulbs (rated between 25,000  and 30,000 hours ea.).  The cost of purchasing these lights so far has been $550.

Compact fluorescents contain mercury and produce ‘dirty electricity’ that can lead to chronic fatigue syndrome, which is characterized by muscle aches, weakness and fatigue, and may also may cause headaches, depression, aches and pains, dizziness, memory loss or confusion; and impaired sleep… this has been one of the main reasons i have switched back to incandescent (from fluorescent) and now to LED technology.

In the past I have used a combination of daylight, and cool fluorescents mixed with tungsten bulbs to get as close as possible to ‘daylight’ – 6500 kelvin’ light temperature in the makeup room and print media room.   You may be saying ‘you can get daylight fluorescents’, but they produce excessive UV and are missing noticeable parts of the spectrum.   I was very pleased to find a 40 watt Philips LED that produces 5000 kelvin which is a very acceptable color temperature for my makeup artist to work under*.    My digital camera is  balanced to 6500 kelvin as ‘daylight’ (•as is yours),  and my flash equipment is daylight balanced so it makes sense to create an environment for the makeup artist  that mimics daylight as close as possible.

Some additional advantages:

Instant ‘on’ light  •  Dimmable  •  Mercury and lead free  •  quiet (no hum) operation •  Emits virtually no heat and will not fade fabrics or furnishings  •  Color temperature stays consistent as you dim (tungsten goes noticeably orange)

While LED’s are still relatively expensive to make the jump, especially when the payback is over years,  you have to ask the questions about your health, overall carbon footprint, and practical uses to determine if they are right for you.

*refers to the the calibration of your digital camera – Daylight = 6500K,  not what you have it set on  i.e.  shade, cloudy, flash etc.

*Philips Lumileds’ patented conformal coating process addresses the issue of varying phosphor thickness, giving the white LEDs a more homogeneous white light – WO 2008104936

Retro seems to be a word thrown around alot these days, so I looked it up:  “Retro is a culturally outdated or aged style, trend, mode, or fashion, from the overall postmodern past, that has since that time become functionally or superficially the norm once again… It generally implies a vintage of at least 15 or 20 years.”

I just hope corduroy does not become the fashion again!  It seemed like forever ago my friends and I were going down to RollerRoyce rollerdrome to play Galaga and Pacman and strap these clunky wheels on our feet.  The only way they are going to be remotely  in my life again however will be in a photoshoot on a stellar (retro phrase!)  model like Katya.

The disco ball brings it all home… after all,  it was the John Travolta Flashdance era.   I really love shoots with themed colors… makes them look planned.   In reality the socks actually had blue stripes, but you can spend a day looking for matching socks or a few minutes in photoshop solving that problem.

If these shots look familiar,  it’s probably because they are from the banner of the front page of my website… If you guessed correctly,  come collect your free photoshoot at Bryan Ward Ph0tography Ltd… Just kidding!

The headshot was a reversed closeup of this shot,  did you catch that?   My backgrounds came from  vector art  of two wallpaper styles from Istockphoto.com…  I should probably revisit the last shot and add it in.

I sure hope you are regularly backing up your data!  For years i had thought CD’s were a safe choice to keep my important files.  Back then we were led on that this was the best choice.   Not until years later after backing up data to a raid array did I discover that certain brands of CD (Ridata for one) had high failure rates (5 discs / 100) starting to show up after 4 years.  Two more years later it was 7/100.

Now everything is safely backed up on a Raid array… or so I thought!  One day when two computers simultaneously accessed the same file… Boom!… Lost the Raid.  It took three months and two data recovery companies (Was going to cost me $3K) before i realized it was unrecoverable.    I though using a raid with a hot spare drive kept me safe with an archive of dvd’s as backup.    Now there are three raids on premise all mirroring each other… maybe overkill but better than then lose all those years of hard work… keeping my fingers crossed we don’t get that big solar flare but we’d all be screwed at that point anyway.

I have never been comfortable with shipping my info into cyberspace to backup companies (icloud)  and i did not like how Time machine kept filling up my entire hard drives.  I have tried so many backup programs that have fallen short.   At a recent seminar i was turned on to Chronosync… I tried the demo software and was impressed enough to buy it… and write about it!

It’s really impressive how much control this backup software give you.  One really great feature could be backing up your data to a laptop from your tower,  taking the laptop home and working on files, then the next day ChronoSync will update your laptop files back onto the tower, keeping everything current.

For my own situation with Raids topping 3 TB of data,  doing a full backup literally takes 6-12 hours.  ChronoSync intelligently looks for ‘Changes’ between files update and can  delete them from your backup drive to mirror you master drive.   The first time pressing the ’sync’ button was scary and I tried to call the company to make sure all the settings were right… sadly they have no phone support.  I diligently  read the manual a few times… not that this was a difficult process, but when it comes to this much digital info, you really don’t want to make a mistake.  In the end it was easy and I was impressed that it could scan  two 3TB raids,  disseminate file differences and do a  50 GB backup all under 30 minutes.

The program is $40… heres’ the link:

http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_overview.html

What an amazing app for the phone and Ipad.  So many times i have had to work with existing lighting that was not quite where i wanted it.  You start by either finding your current location (GPS) or searching for a specific location.  The one downfall i have noticed is when you move locations on the map by scrolling manually,  you must remember to hit the ‘update’ icon or your values will not be correct… hopefully that will be fixed in an update.

The Yellow line is the angle the sun rises in the morning, the red is the current sun angle/elevation and the blue is where the sun sets.   You can manually scroll the sun throughout the day to see where the elevation and angle is at for specific times of the day.  In the example below i was trying to figure out what time to shoot on the roof of the building below  (along the linear skylights)  for the sun to be at my models back…  approx 8:40 pm which was very close to sunset.

You can also move the calendar ahead days, months and years (if you do lots of scrolling).  It’s a simple app, only a few $ and for those times you need it totally useful.

Heres an image from that rooftop pictured in LightTrac:

I don’t even begin to know which portfolio to post this shot… maybe it’s time to start a new category.  What was interesting about this particular image was that between the angle of her body and the fact that she was looking head on at the camera,  I was able to mirror the image exactly.

My father once told me that there was a series of images shot of Marilyn Monroe that were then mirrored using the left side and right side of her face.  Apparently one side mirrored appeared much more beautiful over the other… relating to right and left brain influence.  This may be one of my next concept series for fun.

Genetically speaking,  symmetry is the truest definition of beauty… something to think about.