Ork.be blog

In this post I wanted to write about how we created the Dance of Life shoot which I've just put online. This shoot is continuation on the earlier Wild Hunt shoot with Annicke, but with a slightly (and literally) darker theme.

Both shoots were actually taken on the same day, but we wanted to take some extra time for post processing. During that time I tried a variety of conversion styles to get from original RAW's to the JPG pictures, and we ended up liking two completely different sets of end results.

Both styles are present in the end result. The first series of photos use slightly desaturated color tones for the skin. The remainder of the photos were created by a selective black and white conversion, keeping a distinct tone of blue intact. By tweaking the white balance of the originals this resulted in a beautiful almost black-light effect on the bodypainted lines.

However, just putting them together would cause an abrupt change of style, and lack consistency. I decided on using the poem Annicke wrote for the set as a basis:

For me this poem speaks of the dance of life as the path though life everyone takes, a never ending dance from birth to death, though that still might be a bit hard to visualize in one set of pictures. I therefore took the liberty of re-interpreting it as a more abrupt transformation: the dance depicts a shamanistic dance to guide the dancer from the human realm to a ghost/spirit realm. Using smoke effects we created a series of pictures in which the dance slowly evokes smoke, which then transforms the body from one realm to another. The smoke itself was added using multiple layers of available public domain smoke textures*, each recolored and transformed to the movements of the dance. The final result hopefully shows this transformation.

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Last edit: 2010-08-09 19:38 -  Digg it!  -  permalink  -  comments

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* Or alternatively: what happens when you over-engineer a photoshoot workflow?

As you might've noticed I've restructured my site(s) again. Gone is the way too long list of photoshoots, and in with the new "You only get the highlights" portfolio style! I'm still tweaking the latter, so expect a few more changes before everything is finished.

Why the change?

Short answer: it's about what do I want people to see? Ultimately, I would like to be able to get my hobby to pay for itself. For that I need to have an attractive portfolio, which just shows what I can do, what I like to do, and how I can help you with getting the pictures you seek.

However, after talks with many of you I found the old list of shoots to be a hindrance there. It made the site perfect for everyone who already knew the site, but horrible for people who don't know me (yet). That had to change. I did however not want to change this by removing the old shoots entirely. They're all cool and beautiful in their own right, but unfortunately I had already reached the limits of what the gallery system of zenfolio.com, my photo hosting provider, could do. I had to do something else. That's done now!

Ultimately, my portfolio needs to be even smaller and more consise.. But.. little steps.

So what's where?

In short, two things:

• Photos.ork.be is my photo portfolio. It shows a summary of my work, and what I (can) do.
• Ork.be is my personal site. Primary function: to provide updates on what I do. It contains both my blog and the list of recent photoshoots. This last one is new, and contains a nicely clickable list of shoots and the people I've worked with. Oh and everything has RSS feeds as well of course :)

And now for some technical details:

I don't like manual labor. I like automation. If it wasn't for automation I would not be able to do this at all, since it would take way to much time away from thesis-work, which still takes up most of my weeks.

Luckily, zenfolio.com provides a nice API to everything I put online on my portfolio. After some searching I found a nice Django plugin for Zenfolio, created by Scott Gorlin. This plugin allows, amongst other things, automated synchonization between a local Django database and the zenfolio database. This means that photoshoots I've put online at photos.ork.be automatically get synchronized to ork.be. There, a local script parses the description fields of any new shoots and matches these to a local database of models and shoots. This, in turn, is used to render ork.be/shoots and ork.be/models.

So, what's my publication work flow?

I've got several in fact. First, the photoshoot workflow:

1. I create a bunch of images
2. I work through these and share a set of photos with the model(s), usually using a password protected link on photos.ork.be.
3. I await their response(s), and determine a nice selection of cool photos to work on some more if needed (more Bibble, more Photoshop, etc.)
4. The resulting images are then again sent through to the model(s), and if and only if we both agree on what should be put online, I put that series online.

Though the extra model review steps are strictly speaking not necessary, I like doing shoots this way. Showing results early to models is my way of saying "thanks" for helping with a shoot. Also, the extra time spent on listening to critiques is very helpful. This in turn helps with making the end result just a little bit better.

The publication workflow:

Okay, bunch of photos ready for publication.

1. First, I place a bunch of photos in a new gallery on photos.ork.be, and add titles and tags where needed.
2. I flip the switch on that gallery from "Offline/private" to "Online".
3. Then several things happen. My main site picks up on the newly created shoot using the zenfolio API, and creates a new index on in the shoot list. Any known models get tagged automatically, the rest I manually add later.
4. Usually I then select a few images in zenfolio and mash the "Publish to flickr" button. This leads to nicely titled, tagged, resized and watermarked images on Flickr.
5. I mash the "Publish to facebook" button and type some text. This creates a new facebook link to the shoot.
6. I write a blog about what I did
7. The published images on flickr are automatically uploaded to Hyves somewhere around 05:00 that night.
8. The published blog (if any) is automatically added to Hyves too.

As you can see, steps 3, 7 and 8 are fully automated, and steps 2, 4 and 5 take no time at all, but still give me loads of options to control the publication. I like it that way :)

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Last edit: 2010-08-02 17:06 -  Digg it!  -  permalink  -  comments

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For outdoor photographers there is no such thing as important as the weather. It influences and ultimately decides how a shoot should go.. Catching the morning sunlight is difficult with clouds, and catching a thunderstorm is difficult when there's no cloud to be seen. But even when the weather itself is not the subject it still influences how subjects should be lit. The typical Dutch weather only gives us a dreary uniformly overly bright white lightsource. I find that a bit boring, so you'll often catch me grabbing extra flashes even during bright daylight. However, the weather can also provide some very interesting contrasts. For example, compare these two photos:

Originally, both of these shoots were planned as a single shoot with a "contrast" kind of theme: what kind of contrasts could we make? Facial expression? Mood? Clothing? Action? Location? We tried a variety of studio shots just to see what kind of clothing would work, and then decided on doing two separate outdoor shoots at two separate locations in two separate seasons. This worked out, and we ended up being able to combine everything: from sad, cold, darkish running to warm, sunny, happy dancing! Without the weather this contrast would never have been as strong. I'm happy with the results!

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Last edit: 2010-07-23 13:57 -  Digg it!  -  permalink  -  comments

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"Beesies!

Ze zijn lief! Zacht, pluizig en in prachtige kleurtjes te vinden. Het is een hele uitdaging om er zoveel mogelijk te ontdekken! Echter, pas maar op...ze zijn klein, maar als ze hun krachten bundelen weet je maar nooit wat er gebeurd.."

Met dank aan de Albert Heijn voor hun WK-actie, zonder welke we nooit zoveel beestjes hadden.



Model: Sanja
Locatie: Flevopark, Amsterdam

Klik op de foto voor meer plaatjes. Ondertussen ben ik nog rustig aan het doorsparen voor deel 2: There be BEESIES in my BASEMENT! ;)

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A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to do a photoshoot with Annicke. We were lucky: the weather was absolutely amazing, and we ended up shooting several themes both inside and outside. The first of which, Modern Geisha, is now online! Here's some in character flavor text:

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