The first of several portraits that I took of Yeni back in November for another class. The bottom image was shot with a Nikon N80 and the head shot was taken with a Horseman LX 4x5 and a 210mm lens. Both images are on Fuji Provia 100 color transparency film, with minor retouching and color adjustments in Photoshop, other than that they're pretty much straight scans. I'll upload more images from these shoots in the next few days.

A few old shots I was working on last night. The first two were for an extra credit assignment that involved going out and shooting something "blue." The last picture is an outtake from the shoot I did with my friend Phil and some of his guns back in September.

These two images were from another assignment involving the use of "blackglass" to control background lighting and to highlight a product on a specular surface for catalog style photography. The images I've posted here are the cover pages I digitally created for each shot and placed into my composition book for the class.

Here's a shot of one of two theme assemblies I had to create for my studio lighting class. All of the shots I've posted from that class were created at the Brooks Institute of Photography studios in Santa Barbara, Calif. I used Mole-Richardson hot lights on every shot (we weren't allowed to use strobes for "learning" purposes).

For those of you who might be curious about the technical details, here are a few shots of the studio setups I used to create a few of the images I've posted here. Sorry for the low quality of these, but I shot them in low light without a tripod. Hence they're not the best photos in the world, but at least you can get a general idea of what the set looked like.

Well, here are three shots of a travel mug from one of the local coffee shops that I frequent. I did a little cropping on these for the final presentation, but they're posted in full frame here for your viewing pleasure. Keep in mind that some of them have issues like a crooked horizon (top photo) or extra stuff around the edge of the frame (all three), that I knew I would fix when cropping the final images.

Okay. I'm finally done with my "Lighting Studio" class at Brooks Institute of Photography. This class has been one of the most challenging, expensive, time consuming, and informative experiances I've had in about 8 years. I don't think I've learned this much about photography since I first picked up camera and said, "what happens when I push this button?" As the name indicates, this class was all about how correctly light specular and diffuse subjects for shape, texture, form, and seperation. I also spent a lot of time working with the theory of reflectivity... (angle of incidence = angle of reflection). Alright, I know that just got a little technical, but knowing how to practically apply that theory can lead to an incredible amount of lighting control in the studio. I have to admit that I'm not really into tabletop photography, but I love learning new skills that will improve my ability to communicate my vision. I also realize that, whether I'm into it or not, knowing how to shoot small products will improve my ability to pay off the insane amount of debt I'm going to be in when I get done with school. Alright, enough rambling. Now, I'll get to posting some of my photos from this class. However, I have to throw in this little disclaimer: These photos are not scans! They are just digital shots I took of my 4x5 transparencies on my light box for the purpose of using them in a composition book I had to create for class. I didn't even take them out of the negative sleeves before shooting, because I wanted to give a rough "behind the scenes" look to the book. That being said, I thought they looked pretty good for what they are. So, without further ado, I'll get to posting some photos.