Every year, I shoot photos at an “Pet Blessing” put on by Summit Northwest Ministries, a local Seventh Day Adventist church. The goal is to get photos of people and their pets, as well as photos of the various events. Last year, it was kind of a flop, so we decided to promote it a lot more during the event, so I made fliers/postcards to pass out to promote the service (which is free).

I wanted to design something eye-catching, so that it would grab peoples attention, so I wanted to include several colors. I was able to use photos that I took last year, as well as recycle old photos which seemed to fit it. That truly is the benefit of archiving old projects.

Anyway, above is the card I designed. I will post some of the photos later this week. I have had a drought of blogging since school got out. I really need to post some stuff soon, I feel behind.

© 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.

This first one is of Zack Thornton. He came in and wanted a photo of himself for a friend… So I took him to the studio and got some shots. The first ones had some problems. One of which was that one of the strobes wasn’t firing. I posted some of those pictures below, just to show the problems.

EXIF:

• Shutter: 1/100 sec
• Aperture: f/8.0
• ISO: 100
• Lens: 50mm f/1.8 II

The first photo I took (of Zack) really was just to get a nice professional looking portrait. There are no special effects… No photoshop… no funny props… Nothing. Just a good pro portrait. This could be an id card photo… maybe.

Next, I went on to get some photos of Jared Pierson. I saw this fancy bamboo plant and was inspired to shot some photos… so I did. I suppose I could use my brother’s site as a influence… since he used the same bamboo plant for a portrait of Brandon.

This photo was really just shot spontaneously. Jared came into the class and I was practicing some strobe related things, and I just shot this photo. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the synch cable or pocket wizard, so I just used my on-camera flash to trigger the strobes. This photo, had a little more creativity involved. But it really isn’t a top notch photo, just something unique. I did some selective color, some unsharp mask, and other Photoshop magic.

EXIF:

• Shutter: 1/60th
• Aperture: f/4
• ISO: 400
• Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.8
• On-camera flash: forced

Next, my brother, Stephen, was in my room, and I just took some quick photos of him. Below are some of the results.

These photos were shot using strobes, at my house. I was experimenting with lighting ratios, and getting good looking portraits as practice for SkillsUSA. In Photoshop, there is a RAW conversion, then I did some levels, unsharp mask, highlights and shadows (just a little though, too much looks bad), and some cloning.

Finally here are some mistakes, rejects, before-and-afters and the contact sheet:

Anyway, I decided to shoot some portraits of mi hermano. I shot photos on various backgrounds that had bright colors, then I desaturated all other colors to bring attention to main color. I think it turned out pretty good.

The photo to the left was shot in front of the San Francisco Sourdough Eatery (quite possibly the best sandwich shop ever). It was closed at the time, so the red gate made a great background.

The next image is next a green door, and I desaturated mostly all colors except green and cyan. I was originally going to desat cyan also, but I thought it looked good as this way.

Also, I just noticed a weird Safari bug, it seems to make images look less saturated than they are in Photoshop… So the image looks way different than what it did when I was editing it.

And here is the contact sheet of all of the images shot during this shoot.

Location of first images.

On another note, I shot some senior photos for a friend, and they just got back to me with some more photos that they wanted me to edit. So I went through and edited more, and made some adjustments to the original images.

These images were shot a while ago, but recently they contacted me to do some more editing.

The inspiration for these images is: This flickr pool

So what your saying is that you finally got around to posting your blog and you want me to go and look at it again?

–Bruce Twitchell

As per request of my teacher, I blacked out some information that maybe should be posted...

Over the summer, I didn’t end up taking too many pictures, as my camera was jacked out of my car. As you can see from the scan to the left, it was stolen out of my car one night. Luckily, the insurance company covered nearly the full price (with a $500 deductible).

Anyway… I started the summer with my final project for school, (which I forgot to post at time). Below you can see the photos I did the the final.

The assignment was to choose a topic, and then create 8 images that represent that topic the best. I chose macro, but it mostly evolved into a stop motion. As you can see, most of the images are stopping motion.

After school was out, part of my photo class went on a trip to Kansas City, MO for the SkillsUSA Nationals. Mike Mattson, my teacher Mr. Twitchell, and I qualified with our Promotional Bulletin Board that we got second for at state. While there, I took a bunch of photos. Some of which you can see below, in the previous post. On the flight, I shot the photo to the right.

More recently, I was hired by a friend to take his senior portraits. To the left, you can see one that I selected, that I thought I did a good job on. There are also a few more below.

Lastly, for the past 2 weeks, I have been in California. I traveled to many different places, such as Eagle Lake, Susanville, Paradise, Chico, Sacramento, San Jose, and Santa Cruz. Below are a few pictures that I have edited from a few of those places.

Portrait of my cat, Max. Used Photomatix to create a HDR effect.

Portrait of brother, Stephen. Over exposed and sharpened for different look.

The above photos are of Tyler Grigsby and Zack Thornton, respectively. Taken at Coeur d’Alene High School in the studio.

Coeur d’Alene High School

Senior portrait created for Josh Stevens. The second one is one that he edited and ended up using.

Map of Tubbs Hill