Last week, my photography class traveled to Boise to compete in a photography competition through SkillsUSA Idaho in Boise, Idaho. Our class competed in two different competitions, Photography, and Promotional Bulletin Board. Later, I’ll post the whole bulletin board project as I am finally done with it and I presented it successfully (1st place FTW).

Anyway, for the photography competition, we were bussed to Columbia High School in Nampa, Idaho to begin the competition. After we picked up some more students, we all went to Downtown Nampa for the shooting portion. We were assigned to shoot the Urban Decay of Nampa.

Below are the shots I chose and edited for the competition.

I ended up using the alley way shot a book cover project for the book Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Unfortunately, I do not have the originals for all of them, just the ones I edited, because the judges kind of stole our cards. So below I posted a contact sheet with the originals. Finally, the inspiration of this post was completely the judge, as he set the requirement for it to be urban decay, so I can’t really post an inspiration link this week.

– Scott

Story

Last September, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a result, throughout the past 6 months, our family has gone through many changes. One of them being my mom losing her hair due to chemotherapy. However, she has not let it affect her, and has developed many different ways of covering her head. When her Chemo ended, we decided to get photos of all of the styles of hats and scarves she wore on a daily basis. I set up my studio, and shot some pictures of each scarf and hat she has worn. I also got a shot of her simply without hair.

Shooting

I wanted to add a more dramatic look to the photos, so I felt that black and white suited the photos the best. I setup a white sheet, with a strobe behind it, then set up two more strobes, diffused by umbrellas, at 45° angles from the subject. I then used my Canon 50mm f/1.8 to get some nice torso shots of her.

Editing

The editing process was fairly simple, but took some time. First, I selected the photos that would look good in the poster — I tried to not get duplicate styles (read: hats) — and put those in a separate file. After that, I opened them up in Adobe Camera RAW, and processed them. This part was rather easy, as they were all shot at the same exposure because of the controlled light setup in which they were shot.

After processing them in ACR, I did some minor cleanups on the skin, changed all to grayscale, and sharpened them. Finally, I arranged then in a large canvas in photoshop so that it would look good when printed as a poster.

In all, I spend around 12.5 hours on this project, with around 2 ¹/₂ hours shooting, and 10 hours editing and processing.

© 2009 Scott Sturges

This first photo really turned out the best. I admit, it was used in the competition this week… but I liked it the best of all of my Avedon Photos. I have gone in and edited it a little more. I reduced the Unsharp Mask on the photo, as I was a little annoyed at how sharp it was. Then I found a border that was similar to Avedon’s Hasselblad’s frame.

This photo was taken in the school’s photo studio. I forced Brandon to be a model, and started taking some photos of him. He really wasn’t cooperating very well, Emily started throwing National Geographic magazines at him. His reaction was perfect. I feel that I accurately captured his emotions toward being abused in such a way – he was quite shocked to have magazines thrown at him… I would too after all.

This photo was probably the best of all of the photos taken that day, it was the only one that displayed his reaction, stopped motion, and was sharp. There are a few others available below for your viewing pleasure.

EXIF:

• Shutter: 1/160^th
• Aperture: f/7
• ISO: 100
• Camera: Canon 50D
• Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.8

© 2009 Scott Sturges

This second photo is of Emily Custer. We needed to do some Avedon-style photography… so we took photos of each other. This one was also taken in the studio, under the same circumstances.

I really didn’t do too much editing to this one. Simply a RAW conversion, De-saturation, Unsharp Mask, and added a border.

This photo – I feel – really shows who Emily is. No, it doesn’t show shooting deer, but it seems to show emotion and personality. This was just one shot of many, but this one really seemed to show who she is. Maybe I’m just over-analyzing the photo though.

Finally, there are some more of her below with the ones of Brandon and the contact sheet.

EXIF:

• Shutter: 1/200^th
• Aperture: f/7.1
• ISO: 100

Out-takes:

At one point, she was a little bit peeved at the photo shoot, so Emily flipped me the bird. While editing, she saw the image and liked it and said that it reminded her of the Johnny Cash photo of him flipping the bird. So… I edited it and came out with the result below. It turned out decent, especially for a first time doing something of the sort. The image below is hidden for the sake of censorship. The original is included below next to the contact sheet and the one of Mr. Cash is side by side once you click the “hidden” image below. No… it’s not exactly the same, but it’s good in it’s own light.

Oh, and if it wasn’t incredibly obvious, my inspiration was none other than the great…Richard Avedon.