Marguerite Pole
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Speed Round
Added a new blog post from my latest shoot http://www.melhaynesphoto.com/kayla-promo-shots. Decided to work on a project for a friend. Nothing fancy and it was quick. Best of all I didn’t have to leave the house 
Kayla promo shots
Our friend Kayla is trying out for one of Colorado’s sports teams ( ok I am not sure which team or what she is trying out for…cheerleader? Sorry I don’t retrain much when people are talking while Im prepping for shots haha ) and asked if I would take some quick shots of her. I thought “how hard could that be?”. Sadly it was tougher than charging the batteries, slapping on a lens and polorizer and walking around the neighborhood and snap some shots. She wanted something a little more edgy than a straight shot and it seemed every shot I took around the house was too “senior portrait” looking, so Marguerite suggested I actually set up some lights and shoot in her dance studio. Is a converted TuffShed that she uses for teaching dance. It has high ceilings and is wide enough for some side lights and can even fit my boom arm and giant softbox that I love to use soo much. I did a shoot for Marguerite a while back ( still in post ) and used some sheets of plastic I bought at Home Depot to shoot lights through. It has a cool effect and it was just lying around so we set it up to use as a simple backdrop.
the simple backdrop used for this session
The lighting was straight forward. I had 2 set up high on either side of the model behind the sheets. I metered them to around F11 ( probably a bit lower after all was said and done ). I then threw in the key light in above and camera left with a beauty dish. That was about F8.3 or so. I cheated and chimped a bit. I hate doing that, but I was in a hurry.
Adjusting the Alien Bee 800 with beauty dish
All lights were fired by pocketwizards. I have not looked at camera gear in a while since I decided to start doing more film projects, but I took a look at the latest pocketwizards and I may have to grab a couple. I have a broken one and I’d love to be able to do some TTL like I have been lucky enough to do with my Nikon D300. The Nikon CLS system is awesome for small lights on location and I think it’d be cool to do that with the Canon…I guess Ill see if it works as well.
Other than that, it was just a matter of firing away. Since it was just in the backyard, we loaded the shots right away and picked the ones we wanted. I did some simple adjustments in Lightroom and voila. Thanks for reading
Hiatus
When I decided to pursue photography as an artistic outlet, I had no visions of taking photos to make a living. I never wanted my style, my eye, to be a slave to the dollar. When you take money from someone, there is always compromise. I have been paid to take photos for people who are way into themselves to care about how good a photo looks. They complain to me that they are too fat, too this or too that and when I give them what I think represents my style, they just come back at me with “I don’t like it”. I have become very jaded about this craft and ended up hating everything about it. I have done more for others than I have done for myself and like I mentioned in the first sentence, I went into this for myself and as a way to express myself, not give people what they think they want. I don’t make a living at this and the money I do get from it does not even come close to covering all my expenses.
There are soo many people trying to make a business of photography that just plain suck. There I said it. All they focus on is the money and the easiest way to make a picture that will give them more bang for the buck. I hate being associated with this group and even get to a point where I am embarrassed to even say I am a photographer. I feel the growing crop of “shooters” look for shortcuts, plugins, and easy tutorials to make their work better rather than take the time and energy to actually learn anything of value.
(I totally wrote a giant rant here, but decided to delete it. It was not the driving force of this post)
I acknowledge the fact that there are amazing photographers and I appreciate them and respect them. I don’t feel the world is 100% point and shooters. I am not bashing everyone nor do I care anymore. My point here is I am stepping out of the Thunderdome and taking my name out of the hat. When someone is looking for a photographer to enhance their model mayhem profile, they will no longer have me as an option. I don’t want to shoot another band where they all line up with their hands in their pockets. Finally, I no longer want to spend hour on hours thinking of sets and colors and locations and working on blemishes only to have some shallow stuck up, worst-model-ever-but-thinks-she-is-one-because-her-boyfriend-is-kissing-her-ass say she is too fat in a photo and if I could spend even more time shrinking down a half ounce of normal healthy skin.
I’m out. I may change my mind later, who knows, but the little money I make is soo not worth it and is not fulfilling the needs I have as an artist and the reason I picked up a camera in the first place. I will pay people if I must to be in my work so I am no longer a slave to their opinions and thoughts. I will do what I want and perhaps heal my soul from what this path has damaged.
With all that said, I still have amazing and talented friends that I am sure I will still help and collaborate with. I have met some great people through this craft and will continue to work with them as I still get a joy out of helping them visualize their ideas. If I get a call or an email from someone who still wishes to work with me even after reading this, I will hear them out. Perhaps there are still people out there who would like to get what I have to offer, but to those people who visit my work and think Im going to give them something that doesn’t represent me, I will just politely send them off to the pool of other talent out there.
Latest Shoot – The life of a Male GoGo Dancer
This latest post is the start of a series about the life of a male gogo dancer and the stories he wants to express.
The life of a gogo dancer
One of the actors in my upcoming video is a go-go dancer who flies across the country strutting his stuff in various clubs and events. After a shoot for the video, we got to talking and he mentioned a desire to do a series that showcases the sights he has seen and that paths he has gone down or has seen others go down. I was very interested in this series and agreed to do this. First up was a scene involving a theme of “heroin chic”. Not a autobiographical image, but he has seen many people go down the dark paths and wanted to show it off in this series.
For this shoot, I decided to use the small bathroom at the studio. It is very textured and unique and we both felt was a great backdrop for his vision. The biggest concern I had was it was a small space and having to light it in a dark way ( yes that is a contradictory term ) would be difficult. I could do it, but it is a bathroom that is shared across tenants. I didn’t want to monopolize the space in case an overworked artist, full of coffee or “other” liquid needed the space. I had to be in and out without throwing all my equipment in the bathroom. Truth be known, I was worried that someone would pee on it. There I said it.
For the shoot I used a couple of my go to low tech options. 2 fluorescent light strips. I wanted a gritty look so I was not worried about the grain of high ISO. In fact the high ISO produced a grain that I was happy with and added to the feel of the shot. There was a frosted window in the bathroom, but the light was coming in strong so I used 2 fluorescent lights for fill and the main light. Another fun aspect of this bathroom is it has a hot water heater in front of the toilet so I taped the lights to it. I then had all the money thrown around and went to shooting.
Because this is one in a series, I only needed one or two shots. I tried various angles from different perspectives, but the final one was the low to the ground. I tried shooting above ( I never like that angle but I thought I’d try it ), one from far away, and some other angles, but, as I always say, the best shot was the one that was most difficult to get. I got on the ground, trying not to think about all the misfires that a mens bathroom could be the victim of, as well as someone in need of the bathroom coming up and seeing a man lying next to the toilet surrounded by cash and an almost empty bottle of liquor. I shot a bunch of frames, but overall this shoot went really fast. I think the make up and shoot were around an hour or so.
(cue batman spinning logo)
Back at HQ, I loaded the photos up in Lightroom and went through the usual process of removing the bad, out of focus, whoops forgot to move that trash out of the shot, missing limbs, and just ones that looked bad out. I got down to about 10 that I felt were candidates. The great thing I like about Lightroom is how fast I can get down to that final stage and once there I can fiddle with exposure, crop, apply treatments all to one photo and basically copy and paste the rest of the photos and be done. This set required more work than Lightroom has tools for so I did the final treatment and “cosmetics” in Photoshop. This is suppose to be a dark look into the life of a male go-go dancer and the raw shots were too light. The porcelain was too white and the overall image was just not dark enough. I spent some time playing with curves, color filters, and other adjustments, but came down to a simple greenish gradient ( I used the color of the bills as a source color ) and some vignette. I thought the money played an important role in this image so I wanted to apply a tint that reflected that.
After a few exchanges with Cisco, I got down to the final image. I am happy with how it came out and hope he is too. Thanks for reading. hit me up with any questions or comments.
Mel
New Band Photos Blog Entry
Check out the blog entry showing the latest photos from the band Red Tide Rising. This shoot was done a couple weeks ago and was delivered to the client just recently. Hope you enjoy. I plan on chronicling the process of this shoot in an upcoming blog.
Upcoming Projects
I don’t have much to report here, but I have had a couple meetings with some folks on reviving an old idea. I am really excited about it and am going to be doing a lot of photography and film documentary to get the business some buzz. Stick around and Ill be posting more on this project. All I can say is we have until May to make it happen. I can say I have never had the thought “Well I have nothing to do”…sheesh
Site Design
Welcome to the new site design. I am not a web designer by trade, so the task of building a site was difficult. I like the flexability of WordPress to do amazing things and as a software developer, I took advantage of it. I wanted to be able to update the main page without using some xml file or updating html and this fit nicely. I know this is way off topic, but for those interested, below is a quick breakdown of the madness I did to poor WordPress.
