experiment

Experimental Series: The Progression of A Bottle

January 31, 2021

Experimental Series: Progression of a bottle

Having come to the conclusion that I enjoy this manner of editing even when it takes several hours longer and at times makes me angry

Does it matter what anyone else thinks about my work? Well, yes, if one is wanting to be employed or wants their work to sell to an admiring public. When either of those are influencing what we do, then yes, the opinion of others matters.

For the moment, though, I am past caring. With long days of sitting here without any interaction outside of family, focusing on writing, and wrestling with what seems to be a growing number of health issues, caring about what someone thinks about how I edit pictures kinda takes a back set. Anyone who hasn’t purchased a picture before isn’t likely to change their mind and do so now, so why bother catering to that market?

Not that I won’t submit quality work to art shows if they indeed happen again. That’s always an option and it sits outside the online galleries that have yet to be worth the trouble of participation.

But what that means is that instead of whipping out a new set every week, this one took three weeks. Instead of whipping out 40 images a day, most of these took the better part of two days each. Inherently, that makes them more valuable but since no one’s buying anyway that’s not my concern. I’m more focused on whether they meet my goal of what I want from both the image individually and its place in the series.

These were shot on a plain white background, which is evident in the first image. We were a couple of hours into the shoot and the bottle in the model’s hand is empty for presumably obvious reasons. The effect of the wine was just starting to hit with the first image and grew as we progressed. No one was inebriated, but the buzz generated smiles and giggles that were entertaining to capture.

I can’t say I’ll stay in this funk. Part of me is anxious to return to straightforward editorial shots but for that to happen the environment for shooting them has to be safer for everyone. But for now, this is where we’re at. I have more images to edit, but I’m not rushing them. Each will reflect how I want to interpret the scene and situation. If that bothers you, that’s your problem.

[tg_masonry_gallery gallery_id=”17619″ layout=”contain” columns=”2″]

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Totally Unrelated To Anything

September 27, 2015

Oops, it slipped (2010)

Providing meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures – it is the designer’s job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting.—Paul Rand

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Welcome to our grand experiment, one which is far from being scientific and authoritative in nature, but still slightly more than anecdotal. You see, for websites like this one to be profitable, one of two things has to happen: either it drives enough traffic to make advertising ratios work, or it drives enough traffic to actually impact business. Neither of those has happened yet. There are a number of factors involved, of course, but one of my frustrations is that the content of the articles seems irrelevant to their popularity. What matters is how provocative are the pictures. Last week proved that premise quite handily. The pictures were totally unrelated to anything. We knew we were pandering, and it worked; our weekly hit count was higher than it’s been in months.

So, this week we continue in the same vein, but going a step further. The articles this week will not only be unrelated to the pictures, but they’ll be unrelated to anything. They may be funny, they may be nonsense, they may occasionally be serious, but you won’t catch us talking about technical things like how the mirror reflected light awkwardly back in the model’s face in this picture. Nor will I tell related stories like how it snowed nearly nine inches while we were shooting this set, or how the place where we shot no longer looks anything like this now, which makes me sad. Instead, I’ll talk about something totally different, like trees.

Except that, for the moment, I’m not really interested in trees. I’ve not done any research on trees. I have noticed that our lack of rain is ruining the fall foliage. Rather than turning colors, leaves are simply dying, turning brown, and falling. How depressing that is. No pretty colors. Rather sucks when you think about it. We had all that rain back in the spring and now we get nothing. I suppose this is making it easier to get in the fall harvest; fields aren’t muddy so farm implements can roll across the crops with optimum efficiency. I have cousins whose business involves leasing combines and such for the harvest. I would imagine their business is doing rather well at the moment.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]For the two or three people who actually attempt to read the articles, this week could be either entertaining or frustrating, depending on what happens. What I’m expecting is that I’ll get up each morning and just go with a stream of consciousness based on how I’m feeling at the moment. Milan Fashion Week wraps up on Tuesday, Paris Fashion Week starts Wednesday. Both require me getting up earlier than usual some days, but at least Paris is only a five-hour time difference versus Milan’s six. That extra hour can be brutal when there’s a critical show at 3:30 AM our time. I’m not sure I’m capable of anything resembling consciousness at that point.

Early morning writing requires help. I have a browser plugin that not only checks my spelling, which can be atrocious early in the morning, but also checks my grammar. Sometimes its grammar checks are a little too strict for this style of writing. I am, after all, being rather conversant. This isn’t the New York Times by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, it pains me to see any writing where the grammar is totally ignored, and when the plugin corrects things it usually does so with good reason. I miss things when I’m tired. I also have difficulty caring when I’m tired. I’ve been tired a lot, lately. The plugin has been working overtime.

Totally unrelated, I’m wondering what would be too explicit; at what point would a photo be so audacious as to actually turn traffic away? Is that even possible? At the same time, I more frequently wonder what it would take for people to actually start sharing these posts; that’s what it’s going to take to really bump the hit counts. I can only reach a limited number of people at any given time. For us to get the big numbers, where the website begins to pay off, people have to share what they see here and that’s not happening. But then, how many people are doing anything more than looking at the pictures, anyway?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Totally unrelated to anything.[/one_half_last]

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One Voice

August 14, 2015

Hitchcock makes it very clear to us. There’s an objective and a subjective camera, like there’s a third- and a first-person narrator in literature. —Manuel Puig

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Oops, sorry, but if you were looking for the Barry Manilow song One Voice, this isn’t it. You can find that song here, if you’re really insistent. And old. Like me. Actually, it’s the only song from the 1979 album of the same name that I like at all, and it’s actually the 2010 version he did with acapella group Straight No Chaser that I prefer. You can find that one here, but again, the song has absolutely nothing to do with today’s picture. They just happen to share a name. That’s it. Hope you’re not too disappointed. If you’re younger than 50 you’re probably wondering what I’m even talking about.

What we did with today’s picture, which was completely reprocessed from the original to fit the video format, was experiment with adding a voice over, one voice, specifically my voice, to the video. Narration of this kind is a fairly common thing for short videos such as this, so I figured it couldn’t be too terribly difficult, especially given the challenges we’ve already had this week. My assumption was that this might not be easy, but would be reasonably doable without having to purchase new equipment of any kind.

Let me just say that equipment certainly does matter and the absence of a high-quality recording contributed to the challenges of laying a voice track over everything else. In an ideal world, the voice over would be recorded separately where it could be appropriately equalized and its levels adjusted professionally. Instead, what we ended up with was a recording that caught every possible background sound and left my voice sounding as though I was shouting into an empty room. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]To its credit, Adobe® Premiere Pro™ has a number of filters built into its effects selection that did a great job of removing most the background noise. You probably won’t hear the air conditioner running. You definitely won’t hear the cat jumping into my lap in the middle of recording. You won’t even hear my hand bumping my coffee cup right toward the end. The tools in the software are not sloppy by any stretch of the imagination. Any deficiency here is mine. To be able to properly utilize those tools, though, would take much more time than what I have to offer the project this week.

Adding the voice over to this picture was made somewhat easier by the fact we didn’t have to follow complicated motion or animation that would have required precise synchronization between the audio and video tracks. Yes, that capability is there, but again, we would be looking at a severely steep learning curve that doesn’t fit well with the remainder of my schedule this week. There are other things to do. Such as laundry. Lots and lots of laundry. As much fun as synching a voice to animation might be, that’s just a luxury we don’t currently have.

What we have, though, is one voice over what is actually two images. This allowed us to reveal the photograph slowly so that one actually listens to the narration. I like the overall effect, but, perhaps like most people, I’m less than thrilled with the sound of my own voice. We never sound how we think we’re supposed to sound. There’s a scientific reason for that but it would take a lot of time to explain. Barry Manilow is more interesting.

The original image and appropriate credits are below.[/one_half_last]

A Second Thought (2012). Model: Kat Gulling; Makeup: Danelle French; Hair: Kelly Walsh; Styling: Jantina Anderson; Studo assistance: Brian Logan

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Subtle Transformation

August 12, 2015

My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat – or in film’s case ‘run on’ – manifests my belief that we spend much of our lives seeing without observing. —Andy Warhol

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]The Warhol quote is appropriate for this morning. Today’s video experiment is one you may need to watch more than once before you actually observe the subtle transformation that takes place over the 30-second duration of the project. I’m not going to tell you right away exactly what it is. Sure, you’ll see the video move; that part’s rather obvious. But there is a subtle transformation that occurs slowly, one that changes the emotion of the image, but avoids being dramatic in its presentation. Don’t be embarrassed if you need to hit the replay button more than once before you realize what’s happening.

I’m going to have to watch this post today. I’ve been uploading the videos to my YouTube channel because not only is that the easiest and most dominant method of video presentation, it also integrates well with our web design. I don’t have to go through a number of steps for it to work as I do with some sources. I could upload the video directly, but I tried that with the first one and was less than pleased with the result. However, YouTube, like many other forms of social media, sometimes goes apoplectic over artistic material. Unlike Facebook, where I can set some images to be seen only by specific, appreciative friends, YouTube videos not set for public viewing don’t embed in other websites. There’s a chance the video won’t survive the day. Or it might. One never knows.

As a backup, I’ve uploaded the video to Vimeo, which has a more tolerant policy toward artistic material. I have to take a couple of extra steps to embed it, should that become necessary, but if it happens that, too, should be a subtle transformation that is less than obvious to the average viewer. There are so very many considerations when working with video.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]I will also be watching to see if today’s video is more popular than yesterday’s. Once again, I was disappointed in the lack of attention yesterday’s image received and have to assume that it was largely because there were no humans in the picture. This is why I post so very few landscape and other non-model oriented artistic images. When we post a photograph to the website, we need for that image to draw people in, to make them curious and interested at what we are doing, what there is to see here. Ultimately, we want people to click on the booking link and set an appointment with us, or contact us if they have questions. That doesn’t happen when I post pictures of barns, even though I think the effect in yesterday’s video was very cool.

I get it; subtle transformation is something that happens in our head the moment we see an image. We glance at a picture and instantly decide whether we want to give it any more of our attention. People, especially faces, are easier for us to engage on an emotional level. We look to see if the subject is someone we know, what they might hold in common with us or someone else with whom we are acquainted. Our instinctive response is to try and personalize a photograph on some level and having a model in the picture makes that easier because, if nothing else, we’re all human. Allegedly.

Subtle transformation is, I think, I good approach to today’s image. One needs to not just look, but observe carefully or they’ll miss the entire point and purpose of the video. I’ll be watching to see how many times the video is viewed. I’ll explain the transformation below the original image. [/one_half_last]

A Quiet Moment (2012)

If you’ll watch today’s video very closely, you’ll see it slowly moves from black and white to color. That’s the subtle transformation!

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Moved By The Music

August 11, 2015

Music really becomes the soundtrack to the major events to your life. —Sheryl Crow

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]We all know that music plays a fundamental role in film and our lives. As I sit here writing in the morning (the clock just flash 4:30 AM), I have my headphones on listening to the soft, lovely voice of Sarah Brightman singing Time to Say Goodbye. Like many people, I have different soundtracks saved for different moods and different times of the day. An hour from now, I’ll switch to the “Morning” playlist just before waking the little ones for school. Later this morning, it’s likely to be classic rock blaring through the speakers as I’m editing photographs. For a vast majority of the world’s population, music is what keeps us going through the day and even, in some cases, keeps us from giving up and walking out.

Advertising creatives know all too well that music, or any sound at all, can make or break a commercial, especially when one only has 30 seconds or less. The first sound one hears does more to set the mood and viewer expectation than does the first image. Pictures can be interpreted any number of ways when left sitting out on their own, especially when the photo is rather innocuous and void of copy. The soundtrack guides the viewer toward a specific interpretation, whether that be serious, emotional, or humorous. When the match-up between music and imagery is done especially well, no voice over or copy is even necessary. A good commercial can be like a mini music video in its effectiveness.

When one only has a limited bit of time, though, finding music that fits a concept can be challenging. Advertising creatives like pop songs because they provide an instant level of recognition and even an implied endorsement on the part of the artist. The problem with that approach is that, A) it’s incredibly expensive to gain the rights to use a genuinely popular song from a popular artist; the whole budget can be blown right here. B) They don’t write 30-second pop songs, so someone’s going to have to do some creative cutting and mixing; a task that sounds so much easier than it actually is. A bad mix of a good song can have the exact opposite effect from what one was wanting. This is not easy territory.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Knowing all this, and knowing that I’m less than proficient at mixing and mashing soundtracks, selecting music for this week has not been easy. Our filtering process went something like this:

Is it free? We have no budget for this experiment (as usual). Our only choice was to use clips that are either public domain or have an attribution only Creative Commons license.
Is it too long? It’s more likely that we can work with a clip that is under 90 seconds than one that is over two minutes. Limiting the length of the clip immediately cut our choice by two-thirds.
Is it cheesy? A significant number of the clips available are pieces some budding composer authored sitting at their midi keyboard, and the sound betrays the cheapness of their base instrument. Eliminating anything that had a cheesy synthesizer sound again cut the options dramatically.
How does it make me feel? Music affects emotion and certain emotions match with different kinds of photographs. I needed clips that matched what certain photographs make me feel.
How does it make Kat feel? Because we never trust our own opinion to be valid outside ourselves. She has different tastes and immediately vetoed some I would have considered.

Today’s soundtrack immediately caught our attention because it seems to have been specifically created for the type of effect used on today’s image. There is a major chord precisely every two seconds throughout the track, with well-measured changes at points where we would want to alter the effect. Listening to the track, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the image, I just had to figure out how to do it.

Again, I’m more pleased with today’s video than I am the previous two. I hope that trend continues. By Saturday, we might have something truly special. The music and visual effect take a very plain subject and give it an all new level of interest. Can we ask more from a 30-second video? Well, maybe. The original photo is below.[/one_half_last]

What’s Left of the Farm (2015)

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Experiments In Moving Pictures

August 9, 2015

Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god… I loved his idea of what filmmaking was. —Martin Scorsese

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I have no idea what I’m doing. This week will either be delightfully interesting or a catastrophic disappointment. We are delving into an area about which I admit knowing very little but one which, it would seem, is necessary if one is to stay up to date with how best to present oneself as a photographer. Okay, up to date may not be the best term. Jumping the gun is probably more appropriate. Most people are still just fine posting still pictures. No one has told me that I need to change. No photographers of note have started doing anything differently than they always have. I’m responding to what I see as some “handwriting on the wall,” as it were, warning that we need to up our game if we are going to stay relevant.

What I’m responding to are changes in how material is viewed, and how often it is viewed, in social media. Whether one likes social media or not, and there are plenty of reasons to hate it, we cannot escape the fact that it is a dominant part of society, taking over the space that was once exclusive to newspapers and television. The good news is that, unlike newspapers and television, we can participate without it costing an arm and a leg. The challenge is that we cannot be successful with the same techniques we’ve been using since we first discovered the Internet.

We’ve known for quite some time that actually getting your pictures in front of the people on your friends list, or the people who have liked your professional page, is difficult. Facebook is continually revising their algorithms and other resources such as Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr change what gets preference in being seen. Where once that preference leaned strongly toward photographs, it now tilts even more strongly toward video. In some instances, video is three to four times more likely be seen than a photograph without paying for additional promotion, something most of us are reticent to do. So, we need to find a way to create video without succumbing to actually changing the photographs we take.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Creating moving pictures from still photographs is nothing new. We’ve been able to stitch strings of still images together with simple video effects for several years. Videos in that format are extremely popular at weddings and family reunions. They have their place. But, when a photographer places a photograph on the Internet, it is primarily for promotional purposes and ten-minute-long videos of someone else’s family don’t quite make the cut for that purpose. We need something short, something distinct, and something eye-catching that convinces people to take some kind of action, such as visiting our web site’s booking page. Something that acts more like a commercial.

So, all this week we’re taking still images, just one picture per day, and turning it into a video of approximately 30 seconds (today’s is actually 32 seconds). We’re using Adobe® PremierePro™ for editing, and Media Encoder for rendering. We’re at least starting with the basic materials that come with each product, though I can’t promise we won’t look for other sources by midweek. We’re pulling music from Free Music Archive, and yes, music is important for projects like this. We kept titles minimal today, but that may change through the week as well.

Everything I just mentioned in that paragraph involved learning something new. This 32-second video took all day to produce. I’m really hoping I get better quickly. One of the first things I’ve learned is that planning is more necessary than ever. But then, sometimes one can’t plan if one doesn’t know first how to do something. Ultimately, the matter comes down to whether any of this is actually effective. Will more people see the video in social media? Will we see more traffic to our website? Do moving pictures actually help? That’s the purpose of the experiment. We will see.

The original photo is below because we still like images that don’t move.[/one_half_last]

Back to 55 (2012). Model: Allison Hublar

Experimental Series: The Progression of A Bottle

Having come to the conclusion that I enjoy this manner of editing even when it takes several hours longer and at times makes me angry