Cups? Cups!

As I mentioned in my previous post, one of my favourite things about sharing a photography studio is getting to play with what the other photographers keep in the studio. It's a little like sharing a giant toy box, and a little like going "shopping" in your friend's closet; except, you know, with a much more mature, sophisticated and photographic twist.

... Yeah.

One of our members kindly contributed an espresso machine to the studio. I don't drink espresso (any any other kind of coffee, really), but that didn't stop me from being excited about it, because the machine had these really cute little cups that looked like they needed to be photographed. So one day, after an unrelated shoot, I did.

At first I tried some white-on-white stuff, then experimented with grey and black backgrounds, going for a monochromatic theme, but everything looked deeply uninspiring. On a whim, I leaned a gold reflector against the table on which I had the cups set up on a piece of black plexiglass.



When that didn't turn out too bad, I decided to ditch the black and white thing and add a bit of colour into the mix. The cups are still on black plexiglass, against a grey background, but this time with a bunch of red beads (from a random necklace we also had around the studio) spilling out of one of the cups.



When that worked as well, I decided to try a similar thing with blue. This time the cups are on clear plexiglass, with a sheet of bright blue paper underneath, and the blue beads spilling out of the cup are yet another prop necklace we had around.



I think I only stopped because I ran out of necklaces.

Doing this completely impromptu shoot was a lot of fun and reminded me of a side of studio photography that I love: taking things and playing around with them until you make them look good. They might not always be the most significant or groundbreaking of subjects, but there's always a way to make the mundane look extraordinary.

Ever been inexplicably drawn to shoot something apparently insignificant? I'd love to hear those stories!

Maria

Another post in the Embarrassingly Overdue Photos series.

Question: what happens when you put 2 girls in a room with a bunch of make-up, an umbrella and a camera?

Answer: An awesome photo shoot, some cool photos and a lot of cleanup.



Back in (gulp) August, my friend Maria and I got together for another photo shoot. It is my deeply held belief that most girls have at least one really great dress that they bought with high hopes but don't have a chance to wear or, worse yet, have no good photos in. Add to that our love for make-up and Maria's innate modeling talent, and it was already starting to sounds pretty good.

And then it got better. One of the things I love about sharing a photography studio is that everyone uses different equipment and there's always something new to borrow and experiment with. This time, Guillaume had brought in an amazing umbrella that I was itching to put in front of a camera, rather than in front of a light.



The results were some great shots, a few Singing in the Rain moments (minus the rain), and I hear Maria got a good arm workout out - seems enormous umbrellas get heavy after a while!

You can see the full set here.

Eventually the black dress on black background got a little old, so we switched it up with a bright red corset for a different look.

DJ shoot

Playing catch-up on old shoots again. And when I say 'old', I mean 'this summer, when life was lovely and weather was fantastic, staying inside writing blog posts seemed like endless tedium not to mention a waste of perfectly good sunshine, but now that winter is here and all I want to do is hibernate, I feel a bit silly posting photos that are over 5 months old'.

So.

Back in June, I did a photo shoot with a friend of a friend who also happens to be a DJ. He had seen the results of my RoMagazin shoot and liked that we used a big pair of headphones as a feature, so he wanted to do something similar. A couple of the results are below, and more are in the Flickr set.

Copyright

I interrupt the long silence on this blog to ask you: photographers, how jealously do you guard your copyright?

This post brought to you from Art Works 2011 and Strobist

Yesterday, I attended Art Works 2011, a fantastic conference seeking to endow artists with a little more business sense. I could go on and on about the great speakers I had a chance to hear and meet and the wealth of information I managed to capture, but for the sake of brevity (and our 3-minute attention spans), I’ll cut to the chase. One keynote address was provided by Jennifer Dickson, a highly regarded Ottawa-based photographer. In her speech, she advised all artists to guard their copyright ferociously against “thieving bastards” and copycats. In particular, she recounted an instance in which a student had presented her with a portfolio; the student had mimicked Dickson’s style and dedicated the portfolio to her. Dickson was neither touched nor impressed; on the contrary, she saw the work as copyright infringement and reprimanded the student for it.

On the other hand, David Hobby of Strobist recently published a post defending Justin Lanier’s reproduction of Dan Winters’ portrait of Bono, arguing that many artists learn and develop their own style in part by mimicking the style of their masters.

As much as I detest outright copyright infringement and the disregard of intellectual property, I’m with David on this one. There is – and rightly so – a difference between claiming someone else’s work as your own, and mimicking a style or technique for your own education and improvement. I’ve also been known to reproduce some of my favourite images; far from trying to become or upstage the artists I admire, adding those techniques to my repertoire is helping me find my own style, by picking and choosing the elements that speak to me and adding my own twist to them. And I know that if I dedicated any of my work to a mentor who discounted it and cited copyright law to me, I would change mentors in a hurry.

What do you think? Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery, or should we all find our own path without crossing those of the artists we admire?

Cars!

I will freely admit that I am just about the farthest thing from a car buff you can get. I usually tell cars apart by colour or size, and asking me to identify the make and model of any vehicle will be just about as successful as asking my cat to do basic math: I'll likely tilt my head to one side and look cute until you give up and give me a treat.

That being said, I'm not altogether insensitive to automotive aesthetic, a discovery I made recently during a visit to the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

A couple of cars caught my eye, so I made it my mission for the day to explore the limited angles allowed by the museum exhibition and get a few good shots out of it. This led to some awkward contortions around signs and fences, and I'm sure the museum floors are just a bit cleaner after my visit. I'll let you be the judge of the results:

Salsa

Dance photography holds a special place in my heart. It's not just because dancers are generally beautiful people. It's not just that dance gives them a grace and self-confidence that photographs beautifully. (Although these are both excellent reasons to get a dancer into your studio right now.) What keeps me coming back to dance photography is the ability to capture the feel and emotion of a dance.

We recently had two salsa dancers in our studio, France Trottier and Chris Feist, for a "just for fun" salsa shoot. Big thanks go out to both of them for being the inspiring, expressive and exceptionally patient models they were. Here are the results:







See the full set here.

Behind the scenes tidbit: music usually plays an important part in my shoots. People respond to music in amazing ways, and more often than not this alone will allow you to capture a drastically different side of them than you might expect. For a dance shoot, however, music is all the more important, so we were doubly grateful to Chris, who is also a fantastic (salsa) DJ. Check out his Facebook page here.

Yoga with Diana

Some people are blessed with exceptional talents. Others, like myself, are lucky enough to be surrounded by these people.

One of my ridiculously gifted friends is Diana, a many-faceted artist who, in addition to sharing her passion for dance and the arts with the world, also teaches some of the most inspiring (and butt-kicking, all truth be told) yoga classes in Ottawa.

Jeff and I were thrilled when she accepted to model for a yoga shoot. Since Jeff was the mastermind behind the shoot, you can see most of the highlights here.

However, I had one idea to explore as well. Rather than the omnipresent warrior/lotus/dancer pose on bright white background, I wanted to see whether a low-key, mostly black on black image might bring out what I love best about yoga, which is the opportunity for peace and introspection it allows into our hectic lives. To me, inner peace isn't the exuberance of a brightly lit white expanse, but the quiet comfort of a dim room in which we let our own light shine from within.

The result:



You can see the complete set here.

Behind the scenes tidbit: to get these shots, we had to improvise a platform for Diana to sit on, out of a step stool, a piece of hard plastic, and a sheet of black velvet. Probably not an ideal setting to meditate or pose, which is just one more reason why Diana is beyond awesome. We hope, in time, she forgives us :)

RoMagazin

RoMagazin is a Romanian radio show, produced by my lovely friend Maria and her brother Alex.

They were in the market for some promotional shots to jazz up their web site (check it out, if you can read Romanian). Jeff and I were looking for new models to melt under studio lights. The result: a few hours of fun, with a healthy dose of sibling rivalry, and some decent shots, some of which you can see below.










Check out the whole set here.