Warm weather

Last weekend I was able to escape the snow and spend some time in Greensboro. The weather was beautiful and I spent a great deal of time outside with friends. It was absolutely amazing simply to see grass again. I had forgotten what lovely little greens blades in the ground do for your winter spirit.

Anyways, a few of the pictures I have been editing in different ways and creating a grainy effect in post. This isn't normally something I do but I thought the results were interesting.

Just a little messing in between work.

Thanks

jh

Developing

Early tonight I finally finished developing all of the negs from my past weekend. I have a few photos edited with many more to come.

I'll post when I've finished them all. Enjoy

jh

Personal Work Again

This past weekend I traveled back home (6 hours one way...) into the snow to continue photographing people for my personal project. A few post back I posted some black & white images from my "life long project" of people who have impacted my life. These images are a continuation of that same project. Over the weekend I roughly ended up shooting 70 black & white 4x5 negs (13 people) but I also took a digital snap shot of everyone incase something happened during development.

I'll give you a run through on the lighting before showing you the images.

I ended up shooting all of these in my bedroom and I only used 3 lights. On the background I had 2 lights and the subjects were lit with a 3ft octa. Since I was shooting in such close quarters the lighting was a little tough but I survived. I'm going to start the wonderful task of developing those 70 negs today. I'll keep you updated along the way. A big thanks to everyone who ended up coming out over the weekend to be photographed!!

Here are the digitals:

Dad

Mom

Bunny

Janel

Uncle Walace

Aunt Jo

Audra

Mr. Roby

Mrs. Roby

Mr. Jim

Miss Lana

Tabor

Pat

I know it's a long post, but at least it's pictures right? Anyways, you might have noticed the floor in my room and seen that it's just plywood. There's an explanation for that. The upstairs of my house is having hardwood floors installed and they were supposed to install mine on friday, but didn't. So everything was moved out of my room and the old floor was ripped up. That's why you see plywood. I just thought an explanation was in order.

Thanks as always and I'll be posting more images as soon as I develop them!

jh

Archiving...

Everyone does it, and everyone does it differently. Archiving images has changed drastically since digital has taken over the industry. I'm still unsure of how I will be archiving my images in the future. All I hope is that the system I use now will easily integrate into the futures systems. If you ever shot film how often did you throw out your negatives? Probably never. But storage is expensive and multiple back-ups cost you more money (valuable money that you could put towards lenses, lights, and travel) Digital storage is something I try to keep up to date with as often as possible. My favorite brand for storage devices is G-Technology. I first experienced them in NYC when I interned there 2 years ago. The photographer I worked for used G-tech drives for his archiving. I loved the drives (since I spent a lot of time archiving and editing) and since that I have bought several of my own.

Anyhow, not to go off on an advertising campaign or anything (just love the gear). The point of bring up archiving is because I do a lot of it. I'm constantly shooting therefore I'm constantly backing up and archiving. Yesterday while I was organizing (a constant up hill battle) I stumbled across some old ideas I messed around with for a little. The beauty of having everything backed up. These is a small series of images I took last year, and basically it's the result of locking myself in the studio with a bunch of fruit. (Food photography rocks because you can eat it afterwards!) Now, I'm not a "food photographer" but I am always trying to expand and gain knowledge to make myself a well rounded photographer.

Yes, this is me dabbling in photography, and fruit. Hope you enjoy, thanks again!

jh

Motivation.

What is motivation?

Do I possess motivation?

How do I maintain motivation?

Those are questions I am constantly asking myself. I have struggled with staying motivated my whole life. I often want to do great or be the best at whatever I do. I guess it's my competitive nature. But whenever it comes down to really working hard at something I have given up in the past. My motivation for success seems to vanish when I realize I'm not the best. I tried baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, biking, skiing, architecture, mathematics, and physics. (just to name a few things I've tried in my life)

I keep thinking eventually I'll find something I'm naturally talented at or something I can excel at without trying. You know, like those people who you hate because they know EVERYTHING. I've grown up enough to know that isn't going to happen. I know I need work as hard as possible at everything I do if I want to excel forward.

Photography I've made the exception to my motivation. Photography, like everything else in my life, has its ups and downs. But, as long as I work just as hard during those ups and downs is going to be the key to my success in this business. I'm not about to give up on photography simply because I have to work hard at it. I'll be the first to tell you; I'm not supernaturally talented in photography, I just try to work hard and shoot a LOT of pictures. I have to many goals to not stay motivated.

more pics hopefully soon, thanks

jh

(btw the way, Wikipedia defines Motivation as such: Motivation is the activation or energization of goal-oriented behavior. )

Cold Nights

Late at night I often choose to shoot indoors rather then outdoors for two reasons.

1) Shooting outside when it's completely dark using 1 or 2 speedlights is difficult when you're trying to interact with you surroundings. However, not impossible, and sometimes I really enjoy shooting late at night outside.

2) (And probably the main reason) It's been super cold at night.

Instead of going out the other night my friend Meg came over to stay inside my warm apartment. We ended up only shooting for a little bit, and looking back I wish I would have continued to mess around with the light. This is one of the first images I got from the night.

Inside the closet were 2 speedlights (an SB-800 & SB-900) both lights were powered up by 1 stop. The light from the closest is really cool, but I wish I would have kept messing and changing the light.

Here's another shot I got, and unlike the first picture, I played around in post with this image.

Post work is something I need to continue to improve upon. Every time I sit down in front of photoshop I learn something new. This is both good and bad. I enjoy learning new things; however, I still only know a fraction of photoshops capabilities.

Many thanks to Meg for being so willing to model for me!

Thanks again

jh

Side note: It's already February? Where are my days going?

Headshots

Lately I have been shooting a lot and often multiple times a day. Please forgive me if this post is short, I have a great deal of editing to do. Anyhow, I had the pleasure of shooting one of my friends Ryan Davenport yesterday for a bit. Ryan is an actor and I had him "act" out several emotions for the shoot. Here are a few of the selects.

Most everything you see in these pictures was done in camera. Post was just a little sharpening. I might tweek them out a little more later. Can't decide. The lighting set up was pretty simple for these portraits. A main octa above me, a light behind Ryan on the syc wall, and a light pointed at the back of Ryan's head for a little highlighting. Props to Zach Stirewalt for the assist.

After I was done shooting Ryan and got home when it started snowing (and I'm not sure if it's stopped yet). My friend Kaitlyn decided we should go out and shoot in the snow. Her roommate Emily was kind enough to model for us in the cold snow. I was able to grab this quick shot before my hands froze.

One SB-800 with a snoot on the right shooting thru an umbrella to soften the light.

Thanks guys and I'll post more once I get some of this editing done.

jh

Film?

Sometimes I just have to shoot. I can sit around thinking about photography as much as I like but unless I actually do something it's generally wasting time. Yesterday I had some free time and I knew I was going to shoot, but I didn't know what (or how?). Seeing that my digital camera was at home I had to go get it. However, once I got into my car I realized my old Mamiya 645 (The old school kind) was in the back seat with a few roles of black and white 120! I have cameras hidden everywhere. It took a little convincing to make myself shoot film (other then large format I haven't shot film in over a year) rather then digital, but I'm glad I did. I didn't have a lightmeter so I walked around for the rest of the day estimating (fancy way of saying "guessing" with some reason) what the exposure would be.

Once I finished the role off I developed the film by hand in a darkroom (What's that you ask? Why check it out here for a little forgotten history!) Then I scanned the film. It was a pleasant surprise to see the film products. Granted it isn't portfolio work but it was a very peaceful almost spiritual experience to be reminded of where all of todays wonderful digital equipment comes from. Even though it might not be the most practical thing to shoot; it's such a beautiful, and relaxing experience to shoot 120 black & white film.

Very surreal.

Here are a few of the shots I got. Enjoy!

As always thanks!

jh

People Who Matter

One of my on going projects is something I stumbled across last year. I was shooting a lot of 4x5 film and I was starting to shoot some portraits. I'm not able to think about large format portraits without thinking about Richard Avedon. I have always been drawn to Richard Avedon's portraits on white- mainly his American West Series. I love how Avedon captures everyone's personality and how the portraits look so personal. The images seem to jump off the page at me. Here is a self-portrait of Avedon.

The series I based around shooting on white with large format cameras (typically 4x5 film). I told myself from the start the most important thing to me was if the pictures mattered to me. I had many different ideas about what "subjects" I should photography. Finally one night I decided to photograph people who influenced my life. It's a way for me to have an image for people who are important to me. Since I started it has grown into a "life long project" and it's no where near finished. I still have some of the most important people to photograph, such as my parents and little sister. Their are plenty of other people who are important who I grew up with that need photographed. Also, I will constantly be meeting new people and making new friends for the rest of my life.

Here are the final images that I developed last night:

Steve

Ronda

Caroline

I'm still learning and exploring different ways to evolve this series of images. I hope to continue shooting large format film and I hope to keep creating images which embody these peoples personalities to me. Unfortunately this isn't as quick as shooting digitally and take significant amounts of time to produce 1 final image. However, the feel and look of large format film is hard to beat.

More images to come as I shoot and develop them! As always thanks.

jh

Michael Alvarado

Yesterday I spent the greater part of the day photographing my good friend Michael Alvarado. If you don't know who I'm talking about, you soon will. Mike is a absolutely fantastic musician and he asked me if I would shoot his next album (which hits iTunes and your house in March) I eagerly jumped at the chance to work with Mike again. We worked together previously for his last EP and we always have a good energy and a balance when working together. I guess it's what happens when you put to creative people in a room together with an outlined purpose. When the album is released I will post again with production shots and final images! Thanks and make sure you check Michael Alvarado out on iTunes and here! That way you can tell your friends you listened to him before he was famous.

Thanks

jh

Camp Bryan

We never really realize how connected we are until we experience life without cell phone service and internet. I was fortunate enough this past weekend to travel to the North Carolina coast with some friends and relax. However, I was planning on having internet and cell service. Once we got to Camp Bryan at 1AM Saturday I quickly realized I didn't have service of any kind for miles. At first I was upset and rather annoyed, but I quickly changed my mind and soon enjoyed being without a phone 24/7. As bad as it may be for business I think everyone should turn their phones off sometime and just enjoy life. We get caught up in our electronic life so much we forget about the people we have with us in person.

I wasn't able to shoot as much as I would have liked in between mudding, hunting, and riding. Seeing that I'm not made of money (unfortunately) and I wouldn't be able to replace my camera had it fallen into the lake, or been covered in mud. The risk of damage was simply to great. One of the times we were out late at night, 2AM or so, and we were crossing back over the river to get to our 4 wheelers. (Sounds so redneck doesn't it? Whatever you wanna call it, it was a blast.) My friend Alex went out on a dead tree over the river and the tree collapsed right when he got into the middle. Besides the fact that he was screaming because of the cold water, my mind kept thinking about how it could have been me in the water with a ruined D700. Thankful between all of our stupidity that was the extent of any injuries, really really cold basically freezing water.

I'll be shooting more this week so keep a look out for new

posts and pictures! Thanks as always.

Here's a quick snap off the back porch of the cabin.

Thanks

jh

Panoramic Test

Yesterday I was wandering around looking for a new interesting place to shoot (story of my life) and I stumbled across this hall way. Well it was really more of a dead end then a hall way (so a dead way?) but I thought it had a little potential. So I really quickly snapped 5 photos and I figured I would make a panoramic of them just to have a true visual snapshot of the area for future reference. This is the dead way.

(Pieced together so professionally right?)

It's fairly apparent that 5 photographs were used to create the panoramic. They don't fit right, lines don't match up, and it really looks bad. I debated long and hard about even putting this photo online.

The complete chaos of this pano created a curiosity in me of how to shoot this correctly. I simply stepped outside my apartment and shot my neighbors, actually I think I was still in the door way. However, this time I shot 14 or 15 frames. Piecing them together took a lot longer then the previous 5 and I thought my poor little MacBook was going to die. Here's the final pano.

(Pieced together a little better right??)

Not the most exciting image huh? Keep in mind, simply a test exploring and satisfying my curiosity. Because I shot so many images over lapping each other photoshop has more information when putting the 14 images together compared to the 5 images. Seems obvious right? There are many different holes in my test that I'm well aware of though, such as:

-The first pano looks 180 degrees while the second does not.

-The focal length of the lens is different in each series of shots.

-The first pano shows the ceiling where the second does not.

Those are things I plan on testing out again in the near future.

I tried one last pano that I'll show you. Since I was all excited about my "dead way" I discovered (feeling like I'm the first person to see this man-made hallway... yeah, life's good) I talked some friends into going back with me and shooting. My upstairs neighbors Kaitlyn and Emily came along for the fun of it. I was still thinking in terms of panoramic photos so I attempted a pano portrait. Surprisingly it turned out better then I thought. It's a series of 7 photos pieced together. I'll leave you with it, and I plan on continuing to explore panoramic portraits in the future.

(Natural fluorescent light shot with a 50mm)

Thanks

jh

Library Shoot

Currently, Boone (Where I attend Appalachian State University in North Carolina) is freezing and has snow everywhere. Instead of shooting outside last night in the cold (really cold & windy) I decided I would rather shoot indoors with some of my friends. I have always wanted to shoot in the library and have scouted it out many different times, so I decided that this cold winters night I would give it a try. However when I was pacing around the library I was snapping photos of possible places to shoot with my blackberry.

I liked this spot best, the color of the wall (can't really tell with the wonderful camera in the blackberry though...) and the repetition of the books.

I invited several of my friends to tag along to hangout and assist. Assistants are great, I will always value good help while trying to shoot. A good assistant can truly alter the outcome of a shoot, equally so, I bad assistant can have the same effect just with a reverse outcome. Anyhow, I had my roommate David (who often assists and shoots), my good friend and fellow photographer Madison, Amy (the model, its nice to have beautiful friends) and her boyfriend Patrick all with me in the bottom of the library. Thankfully the library isn't packed after the first day of classes so we basically had the place to ourselves. We went right to the location I had preselected and started setting up. Setup didn't take long at all and in a matter of minutes everything was good to go. That's the beauty of working with speedlights.

It's a very simple set up. I had a SB-900 on camera in Master mode which was simply communicating to a SB-800 off camera with a snoot. I wanted to vignette the photograph and thats when the 8 inch snoot comes in handy. The SB was above me and to the right pointed directly at Amy. The camera was dialed -1.3 EV and the SB-800 was +0.7 EV. The camera setting are as follows.

And who said you need to base your image off your histogram? Shooting completely wide open is somewhat new for me because I have always been scared of the narrow DOF (depth of field). I've decided I'm going to shoot wide open anyways and conquer that fear.

It's amazing to see how much you always learn just from the experience of shooting more. Can't wait to do it again. Anyways, more shoots to come soon. Thanks so much

(Here's to great friends putting up with my photographic habits, thanks guys!!)

New Chapter

Hello internet friends! This is my first blog post and it marks the beginning of a new chapter in my life. My goal with this blog is to keep my self accountable to my work as a photographer. This is sort of a public digital journal. On the posts to come I am going to be showing my latest work as well as discussing how my work came about. The work will not always be pieces for my portfolio but it will be more of my experiments in photography and exploring my curiosities. Also, I will be talking (or blogging as they say) about topics that simple interest me as a photographer and as a human. I look forward to the potential of this blog and I am excited to see what the future shall hold!!

- jh