Sunday, December 30, 2007

Out With the Old


This week several of my favorite images that were photographed during 2007 are not only here in my final blog for 2007, they are available for sale on eBay.
Both are open edition black and white silver gelatin prints on fiber paper printed by me to archival specifications. The images are 8 by 12 inches on 11 by 14 inch matte paper. The starting bid for both is $10.00, which is considerably less than the amount charged for gallery prints on my website.

The first image displayed in this blog is of model Dwain Leland. The shot comes from one of my favorite shoots of the year.

The second image is of Alan Demond, an amazingly gifted bodybuilder.

I enjoyed working with both of these models so much that I shot them twice and each time the results of our creative collaboration were amazing.

The image of Dwain is available at this URL
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150200901027&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:1123

The image of Alan is available at this URL
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150200906048&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:1123

Since the image of Alan is a full frontal, you will need to have your eBay filters set to allow access to items for Mature Audiences before you can see it.

I have two other photographs listed at the same time. One more of Dwain and one of Olivier Herranz.


Monday, December 24, 2007

Sean IR

This week the images are infrared photos of Sean from my recent photo shoot with him.

After you finish enjoying the images in my blog, take a look at my website, which has been refreshed with all photo galleries and images.

The galleries are built with a freeware tool called jalbum. Not only does it make it easier for me to create new galleries, which means I will be able to update my website more frequently, it also provides a link from each image to purchase gallery prints.

Until now I have only refreshed my web site about once a year because of the effort involved in formatting the images for the web and constucting the galleries in html.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Tree Trunks

The tree trunks to the left belong to Sean and are the photo shoot last week.

This image was shot digitally and composited to darken the background.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Sean - First Light


This Sunday the image is of model Sean J. from a photo shoot this afternoon. The original image is digital. It has been turned into a black and white image, toned and then Orton-ized, if I may create a new word.

The second image from the same shoot I left as a full color image.






































































Saturday, December 08, 2007

Alex Orton




Another image of Alex W, this one edited in Photoshop with the Orton effect. This is the first time I have tried this on a black and white image. It struck me the other day that applying this effect on a black and white image might approximate some of the work I have been doing with infrared film. It does create some of the softness and the glow of the IR film, but the effect is still somewhat different. In some ways it is more interesting, but not enough for me to put away the IR film just yet.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Arch Again


You are not imagining it. You have seen this image before. I don't ordinarily repeat photographs in my blog, but this is a special case.
This weekend I spent some time in the darkroom and made several prints of Alex Westfalen, including this one.
I have put the print up for sale on eBay today.
The print is a silver gelatin print on glossy fiber-based paper, printed to archival specifications.
The image itself is 8x12 inches printed on 11x14 inch paper.
The starting bid is only $10, although there is a $6 shipping fee to points in the US.
Although I have always offered prints of my work for sale, this is the first time I have offered one of the items from my blog on eBay during the week it appeared in the blog.
The normal price for this type of print on my website would be $75, so if you're lucky you could grab this one for a pittance.
If this auction is successful, expect to see more coordinated print sales in the future.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Hanging Around



This image is from the recent photo shoot with model Kali. The image has been toned in Photo Shop.
Kali, like Damon before him, has names tattooed on his forearms.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Lamb

Most of the images of Damon I shot picked up on his sexual energy. This image is one of the few that shows a sweeter, more vulnerable side. The grain and the soft light is a result of the IR film, but the eyes are courtesy of Damon.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Kali

These two images are from a shoot last weekend with Kali. Both are shot with IR film in the studio. The first image has been toned.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Variations on a Theme

More work this week with Damon. These two images are the first with infrared film -- both from the studio.

Sometimes a model has one outstanding bodypart. Damon has a chest like a iron roman breast plate, so most of the best work from this shoot features his chest and parts of his shoulders and arms.

Extra points to the reader who can read the tattoo that runs the length of his left bicep. It spells his last name.

A clue: at first I thought it spelled the name of the county in California that he came from, but word is one or two letters different.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Toned

This image is another from this weekend's shoot with Damon.
I have been experimenting more and more with creating black and white images from my color digital files and then using Photoshop to add warm or cool tones to the images.
This is another example of that technique. This is a bronze tone applied in Photoshop.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Twins



The images this week are composites created with Photoshop. Regular readers of my blog will recognize them as part of the ongoing series of photos shot in the French Doors at the back of my house. These particular shots are from a photo session yesterday with a model named Damon.

I turned Damon into twins by opening two of the photos in Photoshop, dragging one photo on top of the other to create a layer over the first, then masking part of the top layer to expose the image of Damon on the bottom layer. In order to make it easy to match the two photos, the entire doorway photo session was shot with a tripod to keep the camera in exactly the same position relative to the doorway. All the
camera settings (aperature, shutter speed,
white balance and focus) were kept the same from shot to shot. Damon was clued in to the plan so that he stayed on one side of the doorway or the other and occasionally gave me shots where he appeared to look to the side at his other self.

Friday, November 02, 2007

Bronze

The image at left is from the same shoot with Derek. As with all the others from this particular shoot, it was shot digitally. To create the black and white toned effect I changed the image mode to grayscale, discarding the color information, then changed it back to RGB mode and using Photoshop Curves I gave the image a bronze tone.
I think the tone suits the low key mode of the photograph.


Sunday, October 28, 2007

Derick Orton


Several months ago I wrote about the Orton effect -- achieved in film by sandwiching two slides together, one slightly out of focus and over exposed -- and recreating this effect digitally.
The image to the left is another example of this technique applied to an image of Derick from last week's shoot.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Another Door Opens

From time to time I work with models on a trade/test basis. Basically they trade modeling services for free copies of the images that result from the shoot.

The photo at the left is from a trade/test last Saturday. I "met" the model on one of the many social sites for models and photographers. This one is called Model Launch. The site allows models and photographers to post examples of their work and network with one another.

Although Derick is not as muscular as my usual models, he is well defined and has an undeniably beautiful face.



Sunday, October 14, 2007

Alex in Red Light

These are two images of Alex shot on Kodak HIE, an infrared film. Just got the film back from A&I yesterday and scanned it.
As usual the IR shots are some of my favorites from the shoot. Part of the reason is that I love the grain, the glow and the contrast. Also, in this shoot I didn't start with the IR film like I normally do, which means both Alex and I had time to warm up, making the poses more creative.
The reason I usually shot the IR first is because it needs to be loaded in complete darkness, which makes it difficult to do in the middle of a shoot. I usually load it in my darkroom before we start. This time I loaded it in the darkroom, but used other cameras until we warmed up -- a lesson to remember next time.



Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Grace

This image of Alex shows his grace of movement during the studio portion of our recent photo session.

Friday, October 05, 2007



This image was taken with Rollei's near IR film. The tint was created by lying to my film scanner. I told it that the film was color negative even though it was really black and white. The scanner attempted to compensate for the usual orange mask on color negative film and created the tint.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Arch




The image at the right demonstrates the flexibility of model Alex Westfalen. This is one of the black and white film images from last weekend.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Westfalen




This image is from the studio work with Alex Westfalen yesterday afternoon. Again, one of the early digital shots. I just dropped off the film this morning to be processed. Maybe by next weekend I'll have some of the IR film work.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Back to the Doorway




Returning to the scene of the crime, here is a photo of a different model -- Alex Westfalen -- in the french doorway. This from a shoot today in rainy Los Angeles. Eventually a down pour forced us to move to the studio inside. Alex was inside and dry, but the photographer was getting wet.
If you saw this photo on the day it was first posted and then again now, you might notice it looks different. I went back into Photoshop to work on the camera raw file and correct the color temperature.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Lord of Light



For some reason this photo of Alex from our recent shoot suggests to me that he is holding in his hands some of the soft light that surrounds his body.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Bedroom Door


I have been working on a series of images framed by the french doors in the back of my house for several years. This image is part of that series, however this time, instead of the doors that open to the living room, I used the doors that open to the master bedroom. I also used a type of near infrared film from Rollei and a Mamiya medium format camera. Near infrared film has some of the softness and grain of true infrared film, but it also picks up quite a lot of normal light, so the infrared effects are not as pronounced. The model is Dwain. This is from the most recent shoot with him this August.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Dino

Two shots this week of a local Los Angeles model named Dino who did a trade/test shoot with me this morning.

These two photos taken on the floor are some of my favorites from the shoot.

Every time I do a studio shoot I try to do a few frames with the model on the floor. Often the shots are not as interesting as the other work. This time is the exception. It didn't hurt that these came at the end of the shoot after we had developed a rapport and Dino had begun to get creative in his positioning.


Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Back to the Chair


Earlier this month I posted my favorite photo of Alex in the leather chair. This is another in the series.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Rapture


This image comes from a series that was the brainchild of the model. Dwain imagined that he was floating upward, being drawn into the heavens. As the series proceeds the images look more and more like his body is floating upwards against the black background, but this image where he is simply rising from his knees and looking upward is one of the most arresting and powerful.


Sunday, August 19, 2007

Sensual





Just picked up the film results from last week's shoot with Dwain. These images are film scans from the infrared studio roll. Since the IR film creates soft, grainy images, we concentrated on sensuous movements.







Friday, August 17, 2007

Dwain in the Corner

A few months ago I bought a small round backed leather chair to sit in the corner of my kitchen near the island. Thought was it would be a nice place for dinner guests to sit and watch me cook, because we all know how much dinner guests want to be in the kitchen when you are cooking, no matter how distracting that might be to the cook.

But in the last two photo shoots I have made a different use of the chair by moving it around the house and photographing my models squirming around in it.


This shoot with the chair in a dimly lit corner of the living room the images came out a little more flat than I like. I compensated by under saturating the files and increasing the contrast a bit.



In the final photo I used the Photoshop channel mixer to turn the image into a black and white.












Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Dwain L.


This image is an early digital shot from my session with Dwain L. yesterday afternoon.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Alex in Infrared


I love using infrared film in my physique photography, especially for those shots that have a naturally contemplative look. The film creates a gauzy glow.
This is one of the infrared shots of Alex W. from my shoot last weekend.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Saturday, July 28, 2007



Another favorite from today's shoot with Alex W. This from a series in leather chair under the skylight.

Sly



The sly smile to the left belongs to Alex W. whom I worked with today in the studio. Alex has a smile as sweet as ice cream. It could sell bibles to Buddists. The trick here was to soft sell it. I think he did a great job.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Violin




The long photographic drought is over. For those of you who check this space frequently and have wondered why the weekly photo blog hasn't been updated in over a month, well it's because I haven't been busy -- photographically speaking.
But that is about to change next weekend with the first of three shoots scheduled over the next month. I hope to have fresh work from each of those shoots posted in a more timely fashion.
In the meantime I've posted a photo of Dwain from a prior shoot. Although not explicitly asked to create this effect, Dwain's position reminds me of a violin player.
And good news, one of the upcoming shoots is a new shoot with Dwain.
Also check out a book called "the Romantic Male Nude" due in book stores in mid August. It features two of my photographs as well as work by many, many more famous photographers.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Just Black and White



This image was created from a black and white photograph of Bryan Cramer and altered in Photoshop to remove all the gray tones.
This technique mimics creation of prints using lith film, a process I have explained before in detail. (So I won't bore regular readers with a recap.)
The technique is best on photographs that are very contrasty to begin with.
This photo was taken in direct window light which created harsh shadows which were a challenge to work with when making a standard print with full tonal range if you strive to show detail in the shadows.

Marble Shower (continued)


This photograph is from the same photoshoot and series and the post from yesterday.
The marble's white reflective surface provides lots of even lighting.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Marble Shower




One of my all time favorite photographs of model Derek Russo from a photo shoot several years ago at a friend's house.
The most amazing thing to me about this photo and several others in the series is that all I did was put Derek in the shower and ask him to sit down. Derek brought the pensive facial expression and mood into the picture on his own. This was the moment I fully realized just how talented Derek is as a model.

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