Personal Space

I hate to resort to traditional bodybuilding poses when I photograph bodybuilders and fitness models. One of the things I often do to loosen up a model and to help them find new positions for the studio is to have them twirl or dance. Then I have them freeze position when they hit a pose I like.

The Chair

The fantastic physique of Dwain is featured in this image, which is a black and white rendering of a color digital image taken several years ago. This image has been made available in my Fine Art America gallery today.

Alex Repose

I am having a lot of fun this week rediscovering the dozens of raw digital images I have created over the last few years and experimenting with Silver FX. This image of Alex Westfalen is today's case in point. I have no idea why I didn't finish and post this image before. When I look at it now I love it.

Alan Study

This week I will be experimenting with a new photo processing program called Silver FX. The program is a plug-in to other photo editing software such as Photoshop and recreates many darkroom style effects on digital images.

This image of Alan is the result of the first experiment using a warm tone style, reducing contrast and cropping the original image to focus on Alan's torso.

The Return Of Reese

An image of Eric Gordon from a shoot last year. This image was shot on Ilford B&W film.

Web Site Update

Just finished a refresh of my website at www.photographybythomasmitchell.com

The refresh adds five new galleries and re-authors the whole site in a new tool called Freeway.

Rock Star

Digging deep this week to unearth a shot from one of my very first photoshoots...

Toned

Today's post is similar to the image from yesterday, but the image was cropped and split toned in Photoshop. Split toning involves shifting the darker tones toward a bluish cast and the lighter ones toward a brownish cast.

Side Glance

This profile image of Leonard was slightly warm toned.

Mage

This IR image of Alex also accentuates his grace.

Grace

This image from last month's shoot with Alex was shot with IR film, which is responsible for the lovely grain in the final image.

Alex is not only in superb physical shape, he holds himself with uncommon balance and grace, which I think this photo accentuates.

Leonardo

This image of Leonardo is from a shoot today.

Alex in IR

This image of Alex was photographed with infrared film. In this case the main affect of the IR film is an increase in film grain.

I loved this pose so much I shot it twice. Once with film and once with my digital camera.

At Rest

Ordinarily my posts follow in rapid succession after a successful shoot, like the one earlier this month with Alex. However immediately after the shoot with Alex I took a vacation and when I returned I discovered my laptop no longer worked. So for the past week or so I have been migrating to a new computer. Most of that work is over now, so let the posts continue...

Salute II

This full body shot of Alex shows his perfectly balanced physique -- his thin waist and his well-formed thighs.

Alex

An image fresh from today's photo shoot with Alex Haun. I had worked with Alex several years ago. We recently reconnected as he was passing through Los Angeles working with several photographers.

Alex has wonderful proportions, natural balance and a good physique modeling instinct. Always a pleasure to work with.

Last of Reese

This image may be the last of Reese for a while. I have finished my post shoot production work on the images for now.

Next weekend I am looking forward to a shoot with someone I have worked with before, Alex Hawn.

I Must Be Going

Still doing finish work on the raw digital files from the shoot with Reese Rideout. This one stood out as I worked on it today. I like the sharp contrast. I like the way Reese seems to be coming out of the image at you. And of course what's not to like about Reese's muscle definition.

Mood Variation

This variation of yesterday's posting is an Orton effect version of the same image.

Cross

This image of Reese Rideout is another of the Kata series.

Detail

The majority of the images I capture in a shoot tend to be full body images -- so much so that I have to discipline myself to move around the model and start capturing different angles or smaller slices of the body.

This image is a small section of Reese's body, but not captured by moving closer. In this case I simply croped the image to highlight the strongest part of the his physique in this position -- his tricep.

Kata

This is one of a series of images that resulted from having Reese work through martial arts exercises. I have used this technique with several models over the years as a way to create fluid, graceful positions that are not standard bodybuilding poses.

Centaur

This image of Reese with trailing legs reminds me of a centaur.

Defiance

I like this image of Reese from last weekend's shoot because is captures the size and separation of this arms and particularly his triceps.

Reese

This image is from a photo shoot this morning with model Reese Rideout. I think the unusual, off center, close cropped body makes it more visually interesting than the usual center or one third composition.

Kudos to Reese and the fabulous shape he was in today.

I'll be sharing more images from the shoot in the next few days.

Salute

Another image from the same shoot as the last few.

The Stars

It is rare that I work in color and rarer still that I post color images to this blog, but as I worked through the raw images from last weeks' shoot this one cried out to be preserved as a color image.

Chad

This is also from Sunday's shoot with Chad. Another favorite. This one highlights his torso, shoulder and upper arm. Not only was Chad in great condition for the shoot, he was one of those rare models who is very creative in terms of his body positioning -- all around a real pleasure to work with.

Chadwick

Today's image is from a photo shoot this afternoon with Chadwick, a local personal trainer.

This image is for sale at my Fine Art America page.

Mystery

This is also from the recovered shoot of Derek Russo. The image has been treated with the Orton effect to blur the focus and then split toned. Dark tones are slightly blue and light tones are slightly brown.

Closet Light

This image of Derek is from the same series of recovered photographs. The harsh overhead light creates brings his physique into sharp focus.

Shower Break

Another of the recovered images from the shoot with Derek Russo. This one is taken in the shower/tub.

Bathroom Vanity

This is another image from the recovered negatives of Derek Russo. The shoot was at a friends house papered with limestone and plate glass. This is from one of my favorite series of photographs shot with Derek sitting on a bathroom vanity with a plate glass wall either in front of him or behind. 

Lost and Found

I had thought the negatives to this shoot with Derek Russo from almost ten years ago were permanently lost. I noticed they were missing a half dozen years ago, and even though I turned my office upside down many times over the years looking for them, they never turned up.  I am very organized with my negatives, and this was the only set in over a decade that I ever misplaced. 

Derek is an extremely talented model, besides being a favorite of many, many afficiendos of male nudes. He has a natural talent in front of the camera and an artistic style of posing that belies his rough appearance.

This shoot was the second time I shot Derek and the black and white negatives I misplaced were of some of my all time best work, thanks to Derek, who managed to give me gold even though I was relatively inexperienced.

I like this particular image even though on close examination you will probably notice the focusing is a little peculiar. It is Derek's wet arm in the foreground that is in focus, and since this was shot indoors with natural light and a very wide aperture his face is slightly out of focus. The effect leads one's eye to one small part of his body just like one's eye might have been drawn to it momentarily. 

The negatives resurfaced in a most peculiar, magical manner, too. A few weeks ago I had been organizing my office and put a stack of notes into the bottom drawer of an already full desk drawer. This morning as I was searching for something else in that drawer, a few of the papers on the top slid down behind the drawer. As I opened and closed the drawer to dislodge the papers, a manila envelope containing the negatives slid out from under the drawer! Had the envelope not been marked with Derek's name I wouldn't even have opened it.

Over the next few days and weeks I will post more of the images from this shoot, especially ones I have never before posted to my website.

Desert

This image was photographed east of San Diego in the desert. The model was one of several men participating in a workshop for nude photography hosted by tencasting. 

It was through a workshop hosted by tencasting that I began my work in male nudes.

As some of you may already be aware, tencasting ceased their operations after the recent and sudden death of their founder and principal, Bob Stickel. 

This post is dedicated to Bob, who cast dozens of men my way over the last eleven years and in the process became a friend as well as a business associate.

Aquaman

This image of model Bryan R. was shot near Long Beach. Bryan is wearing a strand of sea weed.

Alan Orton

This image of Alan Valdez was warm toned and treated with the Orton effect.

Ben Again

Not exactly in the same vein as some of the my other models, Ben was a bit of a sex kitten. Some of his salacious side comes through in this color image. The image was slightly desaturated to preserve more natural skin tones.

More Ben

This is a digital image converted to black and white in Photoshop and toned with a pantone warm grey 5C filter.

Benjamin

Today's post is an image of a model named Benjamin from a photo shoot this afternoon.  Almost as exciting as Benjamin, this is the first photoshoot using my new camera. I have retired my Konica Minolta 7D (listed on eBay) and purchased a Canon 5D Mark II.

Window Light 2

This is another from today's shoot.

Brandon

This image is from the same shoot with Brandon.

Window Light

Today's image is from a photo shoot this weekend with Branden, a model I met on Model Mayhem a few weeks ago. The image was desaturated in Photoshop.

Back

As I have been building a gallery of work for Fine Art America, I have been looking through many old negatives and culling interesting work from prior shoots. This image is one that I don't believe I even printed when I first shot it, yet the light play on David Mahoney's well defined back muscles is nothing short of spectacular.

The Difference

This image is another experiment with digital double exposures -- double exposures created using layers in Photoshop. The model is Craig Davidson. The two images I used to create the double exposure are one frame apart on the same roll. That might seem obvious since there is very little difference in Craig's size and position between the two images, but in most cases the images I decide to use for this effect are not adjacent on the roll. Sometimes they aren't even on the same roll. To create this image I used the Photoshop blending mode "difference" which inspired the title of the image.

Labor Day

This image is from the same photoshoot with Dave Clark as the last post. Shot on color transparency film with a Mamiya 645AF. The rich color is a result of the wonderful medium format color transparency film and the time of day. It was early evening. The pool was completely in shade, creating lovely indirect light with a bluish tint.

The weekend I shot this I was renting the medium format Mamiya to evaluate it before buying one. Moving from 35mm to medium format film seemed like the logical step in my artistic evolution. A few weeks later I bought the Mamiya -which I still have but use infrequently. Once I buy a Canon 5d Mark II - which is a 22megapixel camera - the Mamiya will be completely unnecessary equipment for me.

This will date the shoot further. It was the Labor Day weekend before 9/11.

After the Sun

Over the last few weeks I have held off updating my blog because it always seemed that I was just a week away from a new shoot and having new photos to share. Unfortunately I have been plagued with model cancellations.

So this week's photo is another from my catalog. The model is Dave Clark.

This photo is available as an inexpensive print on Fine Art America from my photo gallery and has been getting a lot of views there.

In case you are interested in purchasing a glicee print or a canvas print of this photo or any of the others at Fine Art America, the link to my gallery is
http://www.fineartamerica.com/profiles/thomas-mitchell.html

Follow Me

This photograph from a shoot several years ago of model Bryan Cramer seems a fitting image for the following announcement. In addition to this blog and the web galleries on my website, my work is not being exhibited and sold on fineartamerica.com. You may visit my gallery on their website by clicking on the following link http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/thomas-mitchell.html?hideadministration=true The images on display at fineartamerica.com range from my earliest to my latest. I will be adding to the gallery every month. Paper and canvas prints are available for purchase from fine art america starting at $37. Fine art america also sells custom mats and frames for every print you buy. Prints are available in a variety of sizes from around 8x10 to 20x30, depending on the image. All the images display there are also available as gallery prints.

Morning

This image of model Morgen Red is from a shoot several years ago, rescanned from the negative and toned. Over the last few weeks I have been reviewing images from prior shoots and reworking them to improve the originals.

It's been a gratifying process. I am discovering that some of my preference for my later work is due to better post production work on the latter work. When I start over with negatives or raw digital files and apply what I have learned over the years to my earlier work, often the results are surprising.