Unbelievable! I Won Something!

First, if you've notice I've been a bit slow updating it's because I've been a bit busy with work. That's a good thing, right? Work = $$$ and that's an equation I understand and appreciate when it's, uhhh... working for me... the equation, that is. In fact, all of a sudden, I find myself with lots of days booked in the coming few months!

Oh! Did I mention I won something? I guess I did in the title. Yep! I won an Urban Disguise 30 camera bag from Think Tank Photo. How'd I do that? Well, when I attended the WPPI show in Vegas a few weeks back, I dropped a business card into a contest box at Think Tank Photo's booth. Last night, when I got home, there was an email from Think Tank congratulating me for winning the camera bag. Is that cool or what? I love free stuff. I rarely win anything so I was completely surprised!

Anyway...

I've been on a location shoot for the past three days. It was at a big, expensive home nestled in the beautiful hills and mountains that separate the City of Agoura Hills and Malibu, California. If you're familiar with that area, the location house was off Kanan Road. Kanan Road is a well-known, heavily-trafficked, exceptionally scenic, twelve-mile ride from the 101 Freeway to the beach at Malibu.

It was a fun shoot and not too demanding, mostly because the production was over-crewed, the caterers, I mean craft services people, fed us quite well, and the hours were positively humane. Gigs should always be like that. They're not, of course, but I can dream, can't I?

The eye-candy at the top is Penny from the shoot I just worked. It's a no-big-deal image: A simple, meat-n-potatoes, pretty girl shot culled from the 80 or 90 shutters I clicked during the 15 or 20 minutes the producer gave me to shoot her. It's the sort of pic the companies I often work for want and expect. Of course, they don't want them in B&W. That's just my way of making myself feel like an artiste after I've shot the stuff. The MUA was Marianne who, a long, long, time ago in a galaxy far, far, away was Kelly Nichols, notable adult film performer--it was film back in those days--from the (so-called) Golden Age of Porn.

I lit Penny with two sources: A bare-bulb 500ws monolight, shot through a 3' diameter silk scrim to soften it out and a 300ws back-light, boomed above and behind her, with a 30-degree honeycomb grid to keep the light focused and controlled. Canon 5D @ ISO 100, f/8, 125. Other than the monochrome conversion (using the Channel Mixer method) I didn't modify the image much. I used the Shadow/Highlight tool and some Levels adjusting, just the slightest touch of Diffusion Glow to some of the highlights on her skin, and a bit of sharpening with the Unsharp Mask. All in all, about 5 or 10 minutes of Photoshop processing. (That always sounds weird to me-- saying I sharpened with the unsharp tool. It's like an oxymoron.)