Monday, June 27, 2016

ComicCon Germany 2016

Hey all you comic and super hero and super villian fans!

Below you'll find a set of photographs I had the privilege of capturing this weekend in Stuttgart, Germany at the 2016 Comic Con. Since I couldn't find the time and somewhat lacked a little inspiration this year, I decided to find said inspiration in a photographic project. The opportunity presented itself when I had to return home and cut my tour with TUI short. I had purchased two tickets as a birthday present for Flo (a good friend of mine) and now just happened to be local...

The day began off real easy as we (Kira, Medina, Kassandra, Oli, Sebi, & I) rode to the convention center at the airport, sporting a thirty-rack of Pabst-Blue Ribbon-- although you'd usually only find us playing ultimate frisbee and drinking on Saturdays but thats a story for another time. We spent the first hour or so catching people on their way in and animate them to have their picture taken by a strange German/American dude with on awkward accent. We had tones of success outside, using the various locations I could find directly outside the center.
As you can see from the pictures above, pretty much everyone was open to participating in my little project. This makes working a photographer so much fun--when everyone is 'all about' the work we do and can contribute to a fun set of images like this one!

As we continued inside we found more and more photographic possibilities and used every opportunity to take a picture here and there-- at the cost of my group eventually getting a little frustrated with me because I wouldn't stop. Everyone knows that 'one person' who always makes the going out with friends difficult...this time that person was me. Anyways, we stoled the grounds, soaked in some of the atmosphere and enjoyed the rest of the day at Comic Con Germany 2016.

For this project I wanted to go 'low-key' and photograph my set under the radar with no equipment but a camera. I opted to use a Fujifilm xt-10 with a 35mm f/1.4 lens instead of my heavy Nikon equipment. This gave me the optical feel I was looking for even though it kind of limited my workspace somewhat. The camera performed fantastically throughout the entire day, only losing focus from time to time-- something that still frustrates my a little about the x-line of cameras.

Above, you'll find two pretty ladies, dressed as super villain badasses-- on the left a retro Harley Quinn and the 'Joker's wife' to the right. This makes things so fun and always interesting, knowing there are so many photo opportunities to take advantage of-- find the character, place them in an appropriate scene and take an awesome picture ;-) 

Sunday, June 12, 2016

A Spontaneous Wedding in Rome

One of the best thing about traveling is trying to figure out how to make the best out of a brief yet moment as this one here. While at the Vatican working a couple traveling alone with a camera attempting to take a good picture approached me. Since there was a brief window for free time, I used the moment to capture an image of the two from Poland. 


Here I'm shooting with a Nikon D7100 and it's 18-200mm zoom. This camera is advanced enough for what I ask it to do in a shooting environment where were-and-tear is the cameras worst enemy. It's reliable, fast and takes decent images.  

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Coming Soon!!!

Hope you're ready for some really cool pictures!!?? If you are, then you're in for a treat with this set of images captured aboard the TUI Mein Schiff 3. As a personal project, I wanted to take individual portraits of the artist that perform in the Variete show. Since the show has a circus-esque type of theme, the images needed to represent a similar look. With the little amount of tech available to me and the very limited space available for a studio, we built a makeshift location and got to work.


While the various talents were getting their make-up and costumes ready for the show, the first ones had their picture taken. Now, this all went very fast as they had to be on stage minutes after the picture was taken-- so, all in all, I believe the maximum time spent with each person may have been about 30sec. to a maybe 1min.  This of course presented a challenge of sorts in making sure I got a decent image out of each talent.

For this project, I used a Fujifilm xt-10 with a 35mm f/1.4 lens. For light I brought in two Nikon SB-800 flashes synced with my camera using a set of PocketWizards. One of the flashes had a full CTO filter and the key unfortunately had to sport a soft box. I also used a large reflector to bounce in some extra light where it was needed.