This past week, we were ordered to create a masterpiece movie poster for a hypothetical movie called “The Student.” Although the stated goal was to inspire creativity into our projects, I think Twitchell’s real goal was to get free graphic design for his upcoming blockbuster of the same name.
Last year, I was conned by Mike Mattson into helping present a speech regarding a Promotional Bulletin Board at SkillsUSA State. Our team happened to get second place. We were slightly disappointed that we were unable to go to Nationals. But when we got back to school we had an email telling us that first had dropped out and we were being allowed to go to Nationals in their place to represent Idaho. We didn’t so so well, but I decided that the next year, we would do great… so this year, my brother, Stephen Sturges, and I were on a team to design a new one, and with the knowledge of last year, we created a masterpiece bulletin board and wrote a great speech that gave us First place at state, and qualified us to go to Nationals in Kansas City, Missouri.
After last week’s project, I decided that I have developed a new love for Richard Avedon’s portrait style… or rather making portraits look as if they were shot with Avedon’s Hasselblad. Last week, I shot portraits to look like Avedon’s in that they were black and white, showed true emotion, and had a washed-out, over-exposed background. After last week’s project, I decided to try some more, now that I have a better understanding on how to shoot them. The only difference this time is that I tried to get different expressions from the people; more than just true emotion, I tried to get the people to do different things, it really wasn’t posed, but rather showing the subjects doing things.
This first photo of Jared is probably my favorite of all of them. He is rather serious in the photo; he is showing a different side of him that we don’t normally see.
Above: Sadii Link, Brandon DeSimone, Stephen Sturges, Chris Shoup.
In the above photos, I feel that I captured a different side of the subjects, with the exception of Brandon: he is acting crazy as usual. The photos seem more serious that normal, but I think that these turned out way better than my first attempt at the Avedon style photos.
Over the week, I shot hundreds of photos, and ended up editing many of them. As a result, I spend many many hours on this project, probably the most of any other project in the past. Below are some the rest of the photos.
There were a few photos of Michael Camarino in the mix above, he came into the class to deliver something, so I grabbed him and show a few photos. They would most likely be considered posed, so I didn’t feel that they were the best.
All of the photos above seem to be more fun, but there were a few serious ones mixed in. I feel it provides for a good balance between seriousness and humor.
Finally, I felt that this project wouldn’t be complete without some self portraiture. So I went home and shot a few of myself with my borrowed lights. The setup was simple- but effective. Basically I set up a white sheet over my closet door, and set a strobe on full power behind it. Then I set up two more strobes on quarter and half power (respectively left to right). Finally, I set my camera on self timer for 10 seconds and waited. I actually (to my surprise) got some good shots. I posted them below.
Technical details:
Although the camera settings varied by a lot, there were a few common attributes: 100 ISO, f/8.0 Aperture, and a shutter speed ranging from 100th sec. to 160th sec. All photos were shot with my Canon 50D. The lens was mostly my Canon 50mm f/1.8, but the photos of Jared were with my Canon 28-135mm f/3.5-4.5 as my prime was not available at the time of shooting.
The lighting setup was pretty much the same for all of the portraits though: I had two strobes in front of the subject, with a 1:2 ratio of power, and a nearly full power strobe set up behind a white backdrop so that it would be totally white and washed out.
Finally, in editing, I opened the RAW file, bumped up the black slider, contrast, exposure, and recovery. Then I ran my “Avedon” action which consisted of a desaturate, levels, unsharp mask, and a mild high-pass filter on softlight. Then I added the Hasselblad border, resized to 700px, and saved.
Yes I know that this was posted a little late… but I spent nearly my whole weekend processing the photos (all of my free time friday, saturday, and part of sunday – I had to split it with my senior paper). There were many photos that I processed that I didn’t post. My computer was running nearly all day running photoshop actions, etc. Apparently it takes a lot of computing power to do this Avedon style. Please forgive me for the tardiness, but it was seemingly unavoidable as I couldn’t make my computer run any faster.
Other images from the project (contact sheet), and a sample of the unedited images (before and after):
