photorama

Ah halloween.. my least favorite holiday of the year next to my birthday. Normally I don’t dress up. Last year Ayres and I went as Mac and PC. Which I thought was cute. This year I decided to go as Greenman from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He’s an inspiration to us all. But that’s not what this is about. This is about the greatness that is Skratch Bastid. Dude is a monster on the decks. A fucking behemoth blowing fire and throwing pumpkins and just generally being an awesome and entertaining dude. Also big ups to my cat for resting his head on my hand as I type this.

GO-BAMA!

LETS GO PHILLIES!

Today when my buzzer rang, I assumed it was Jehovah’s Witness to say hello and give me pamphlets. I went to the window and saw the UPS man so I buzzed him in thinking it was for another apartment in the building. But, when he approaches my door and asks “Are you Ian?” I began to wonder.. what did I order and why would I have it shipped here. The only things that are ever shipped here are my Apple Developer renewal kits and large items that are too big to carry home from work since I have everything else sent there. Once he hands over the package I notice it’s from teNeues, and I recall a photo shoot I did with my friend Annie a few months back. She asked me to take pictures of two of her tattoos for this book, so I obliged. I actually asked her about the book a few weeks ago, wondering if the project got scrapped, or the images weren’t accepted since the deal was that I would receive a free copy of the book from teNeues. Annie told me she wasn’t sure the images were accepted, but that she also thought the concept of the book was a bit different than how it ended up being. (I’m unclear as to what it was supposed to be to begin with, otherwise I would clarify)

Anyway, you should check the book out if you get a chance. It’s beautiful, and the images are wonderful.

Inked. (note: Cover image is not mine.)

Dave Nada and Matt Nordstrom form the dynamic duo Nadastrom. Just check it out.. you don’t need anything else from me.

Been a minute since I’ve posted anything new.. frankly, I’ve been too busy trying to readjust my life from 110% work mode to a more manageable balance. Never realized how difficult it would be. Fall is approaching and New York is the best place to be for that. Looking forward to shooting more stuff.

In a previous entry, I posted an image I took in San Francisco.. it was essentially as I had scanned it. After downloading a couple of Nik Software plugins for Aperture, I was playing around and came out with a much better looking image. I think it was then that I really understood the value of good post-processing. Not to say that the above image is “good” by any means, but it made me face my fear of post-processing. (note: I *do* fancy the image above, quite a lot) Normally I’m a bump saturation/increase contrast/crop type of post-processor. I kind of enjoy finding one good image and trying to tweak it to make it stand out, rather than take it as shot and say, well that’s how the camera captured it… next! I just need to keep telling myself, this is your art, make what you want with it.

I’ve been debating between buying some Pocketwizards and another kind of wireless trigger system. Being an owner of some Alienbees B800 (3 to be exact) and having seen the offer of wireless triggers, I thought why not? The price was right and having had a good experience with Paul C. Buff before, I ordered 1 transmitter, and 3 receivers (battery powered). I received them the next day and I tore open the package immediately and took one out to plug into my Nikon SB-800. Thankfully the package included a short PC sync cable. All it takes to get going is put the transmitter onto the hot shoe of your camera, make sure you have the same channel set on all transmitters and receivers then fire away. My tests were short-lived as I was at work.. but I finally got some time tonight to really put them through their paces. I’m having an issue with 1 receiver, but I have yet to narrow down whether or not it’s due to my SB-800 or if it’s a defective unit. In the image above, I used 2 B800s, and 1 SB-800. The SB-800 seemed to go on standby way too quickly but hit the test button on the transmitter and it springs to life again. I am definitely ordering a couple more of these to go with my Vivitar 285HVs. That should give me good light plus great portability. All things considered, they were WELL worth the price and like I said, I’ll be buying more.

You can check out the light set up of the above photo here, here, and here. There was a preliminary photo, but the lighting wasn’t what I wanted.. which is I went back and re-shot it.. that lighting set-up is here