Black Diamond Productions

So while chatting with a fellow photographer today and I give him full credit for the idea for this post, I was showing him the latest  feature Adobe will be releasing in CS5 – Content Aware Fill. Go to 2:40 and watch that demo:

There sure were allot of oooo’s  and ah’s in the audience – I assume none of them were thinking about the possible consequences.

So how does this help photographers – Well it helps greatly by allowing us to fix massive mistakes & possibly save huge jobs. But the real question is what happens when Adobe empowers editors with the ability to remove anything easily from an image? It is really a problem we have daily and that is how to mark or watermark your images to hopefully maintain some kind of control over the images and the content you created. This incredible tool like many things great in our world can easily be used for evil.

I believe we all know that we as photographers should not impede the creation of such great time saving tools but on the flip side i ask Adobe: Can we please have a good way to secure our content when tools like this are released?

Adobe has very smart people working for them, they have and to this day create great products, now its time to make a reliable, secure way for photographers to lock down their images. We have asked for it for years and with the introduction of  Content Aware Fill it’s time to see some better options.

In diving a bit deeper into this topic it does seems Adobe is working on solutions as I could only image they would be, this article: http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_digintegr.pdf and a few others show the high level of concern we all have but in the end we still have no real tools available to secure images.

Will any of these unknown security tools solve the problem, doubtful. But just like with “The Club” on your car steering wheel the harder we can make it the better.

Hello,

I wanted to introduce myself. I am the photographer for Mystique Magazine, Mark Daughn. I’m going to be in San Francisco this week. I wanted to give you several invitations.

Here is the deal: I want to do the first of a series of meet up’s in San Francisco. "What is a meet up?" you ask. It is a time and a place that I hang out and meet with people, fans, models, students, art directors, all in a social setting. At each of these I’ll drag along what ever model I can get, so all you photographers and fans can meet them in person, book shoots, say hi, and get comfortable in a non shooting environment. The wonderful Miss Luana Lani will for sure be there. She is in San Francisco that week shooting. If you have wanted to meet her or shoot her, this is a great chance.

So come check out my first meet up! You can come pick my brain for photo wisdom, or I’ll tell stories, or maybe we all will end up dancing on tables. Who knows what will happen?

I have no idea how popular this will be, might be just me and a bunch of beautiful models hanging out drinking wine or a bunch of folks. I’d like you to just send me a quick email telling me you are interested and will attend.

Date: Wednesday, Feb 10

Time: 6 PM to 8 PM

Place: Library Bar in the Clift Hotel, 495 Geary St

Last but not least, I am available for consultations and mini workshops, seminars, etc. while I’m in town. If you’re interested in any of that, email me for details and tell me what you want.

I will be announcing a bunch of workshops for this year in the next few weeks so keep an eye out for that as well. You can sign up for my newsletter that will keep you up to date on all of my workshops, shoots and seminars at

http://markdaughnworkshops.c.topica.com/maanMgbabV7LzaTtoYvbaeQFoD/

The best address to email me is workshops08@markdaughn.com.

Sincerely,

Mark Daughn

See my latest post on Photofocus.com – Click the image above or this link:

http://photofocus.com/2010/01/08/glamour-photography-that-sounds-expensive-2/

Here is a video from Outdoorphotogear.com for your viewing of the biggest piece of glass Canon Makes.

Well done over there on getting this segment for all of us big lens lovers…..

Sadly they will not allow embedding of their video so just check it out at their site

2009 AUGUST 13

tags: glamour

A Crash Course in Glamour Photograph

Guest Post & Photo by Brent Burzycki Follow Brent on Twitter

What do I need? How much will it cost? Why are models so expensive? Do girls hate me?

Those are just a few of the questions I have been asked as I have made my way through my short glamour career so far and as far as answers, well, some are easier than others and that last one is a tricky one.

So if you read my last post here it dealt with rapport and the model interface. The bad part about this is I failed to mention who I learned that concept from and I need to clear that up. About four years ago I met a photographer (well two actually) that have become my mentors and my friends. Mark Daughn and Wild Bill Melton are both great photographers in their own right. Yet I think both excel in the most important skill many photographers are missing and that is people skills and the ability to teach and learn. To be able to teach and yet still learn from your students is something that is a rare commodity and those are the teachers one should look to learn from as that willingness will make you a better photographer in the end. Please take a second to check out both the sites, sadly Bill was lost to us in 2006 in a tragic car accident but many of us try to keep his spirit alive in our photo style and customer relationships.

So this is where four questions can turn into multiple posts so let’s concentrate on one at a time and look for the answers or at least my views to the others in upcoming posts.

#1 – What do I need?

To answer this you need to ask yourself many questions that you hopefully already know the answers too. (hey life is full of questions – get used to it). What style of glamour photography am I shooting? What mood or tone do I want to have in my photos? What will my specific subject matter be?

Since I really only know about what I do, let’s start with how I look at what I need. I shoot primarily Glamour. My style of glamour work uses the subject matter of women and a tone of sexuality, power and beauty. Basically my plan is to make that subject the sexiest she has ever been in a very comfortable environment. Sometimes this is easier said than done but I can expand on that later. I need a few simple things to get this done. A camera, an off camera flash setup and a location. I rarely use more than one flash, a large umbrella modifier and a camera. My setups are extremely simple because I tend to be lazier than I should and also I am on a strict budget per shoot. But simple setups also allow me to move quickly from space to space and keep the model interested in what we are doing and hopefully allow the shoot to flow a bit better.

Budget is one of my largest concerns and one of the questions I get all the time. The deal is simple; you do not need a lot of money to get beautiful light. Your light will cost less than you model in most cases so it’s the first thing you should spend your money on. Over on Mark’s site you can grab a copy of his lighting DVD and get an in depth tutorial on setups but in a nutshell one light and one light modifier and you are good to at least start on your way to beautiful lighting.

So you have your light, you hopefully have a camera. A very important note here thou, your camera must be able to function in fully manual mode and must be able to properly sync with an off camera flash. Remember we are not using a TTL style flash here this is a fully manual strobe head and camera method. Can you shoot glamour with a TTL flash? You bet you can, just for me it does not give me the control or desired effect I want in my portfolio.

Last you will need a light meter and well your model. Start your shoot setup as far ahead as you need before your model gets there. If you are uncomfortable with setup use the prep time to your advantage and be ready for when the model arrives. A model that feels you are unprepared will only feel her attentiveness and professionalism is as important as yours seems to be, be ready, be professional and shoot.