Hi all!
I’m sure a lot of you all ready got news of this, but if not here it is.
Chase Jarvis and company, have put together a plan, now in action, to teach free workshops live over the web, to do with different areas of creativity, Photography, Photoshop, Illustrator, HDDSLR, Programing apps for Iphones and Androids, and I’m sure they’ll come up with much more.
Classes are free as long as their watched live, and I believe there will be a cost if watched after wards from the recording of the live presentation.

Creative Live Workshops

I’m particularly interested in a 3 day workshop coming up at the end of this month with Vincent Laforet, about the gear needed to shoot and shooting with your HDDSLR.

I happen to find information invaluable. I also believe in the sharing of information, to learn,better ourselves and raise the bar for creativity.

Hope you find this as useful as I do.

Edit:

Just wanted to add a video that has a far better explanation of what this is about.

The format of the video is a bit wide for my blog, so here’s the direct link to it.

Creative Live Promo Video

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Here’s a little something to kick start your will and creativity.

Create from Pictage Films on Vimeo.

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Need I say more?…….. Of course I do.

Shanna Crooks, happens to be a rising star in the music world.  Based out of Nashville Tennessee, and blazing a creative trail through NYC,  Los Angeles, and many other places where the key players influence the masses.

Some of her most recent success credentials are  “Wakin’ Up to Love” as her first single, released through Atlantic Records and Clean and Clear,  which can be found on  I-Tunes.  And a song she recently wrote for Japanese super star Koda Kumi, which happens to be gracing the top of the Japanese music charts.

Shanna had the need for album art, and I happened to be visiting family in Nashville, so the opportunity presented itself .

The idea for this shoot, was to create a warm and somewhat dreamy image. Using a warm  afternoon sunset, and the wintry bare trees as a foreground helped create the image.

This was a simple and quick photo shoot, part of it because the afternoon sun falls very quickly, so to make best use of it , one must move fast, and the other is that winters in Nashville are quite cold, so we didn’t want to keep Shanna out to long.

On the technical aspect side of things, one of the only problems I was presented with, was balancing the Sunlight which I wanted to use as Rim light, but would cause her to fall in to shadows, so I added flashes to balance out the scene.

Since I was traveling, I had to plan for a light and portable set up. In this case my flashes (Canon 580exII, and 430ex) 2 shoot trough umbrellas, and 2 light weight stands which fitted in my luggage, was all that was necessary.  Below is a visual of the set up from above.

For quickness sake, to have best use of the sun, I set the flashes to full power, and controlled the intensity of the light falling on Shanna, by moving the stands closer or farther away from her.

Pic tech:

100 ISO

110mm

f/4.5

1/160/sec

Gear used:

Canon 30D.

70/200 IS.

Canon 580exII.

Canon 430ex.

2 shoot through umbrellas.

2 light weight stands.

Filed under: Beauty, Beauty, Music, Shanna, sunset | 2 Comments

I would say that my life has been based on risks, from moving and living in various countries, to being an adrenaline junkie, to simply pursuing changes in career paths.

So when I saw this post by Chase, I felt inspired by it and thought to share it with you guys.

Filed under: Inspirational | 1 Comment

I found this image in Cody Hamilton’s Blog and found it amusing, so I thought I’d share.

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I’ve recently had some time in my hands, and my wife Jennie convinced me to do a self portrait, for use in all of this social media crazed world we live in.

I’ve been wanting to do some mixing of medias for a while, but have been putting it off, so in presence of a new year, I got off to a new start, by tackling this project and setting the mood for more to come.

So here’s the scoop on the process.  I had a concept in my head, which gave me a good idea on what was to be done for lighting to achieve the desired look.

The Octabank seen below, is the main light, using an Alienbee 800, which was dialed in first, to get the results I was after .

After being comfortable with the exposure and camera settings, I moved on to adding the background light, for which I used a Canon 580EXII with a diffuser, placed between myself and the backdrop.

And lastly another Bee800 with a 20 degree grid and a warming gel pointing at my chest, to create the effect of light coming out of it.

Here’s a pic for better reference

I set the camera to timer mode, which let me press the button and move to the mark I previously stablished for focusing purposes(the black X in the ground in front of the stand with the flash).  Shooting at in between f/8 and f/10, to get enough depth of field, in case I didn’t make it exactly on top of the mark.

I also wanted to try shooting tethered, so I could figure out what’s involved in the process, and have more control over the picture.

Shooting tethered did 2 things for me, it slowed down the process, so I had a better chance to soak in what the lights were doing, giving me a chance to make adjustments, and it allowed me to see any mistakes or misreads, I would usually make by just looking at he back of the camera or my histogram. The LCD on a Canon 30D is quite small.

Next was the 3D process,for which I used various 3D applications to get the desired effects, to achieve the final elements I wanted to blend with the picture.

Here’s an image of the final renders I used to create the final image.

The funny looking red, blue, and green image, was made as a matt hold out, so I could separate specific areas for color balancing and masking, once in Photoshop.

For instance, I can use the magic wand, or selective color selection to grab the color red, which will let me make an exact mask on the picture, to reveal the inside, which will be replaced by the render shown next to it.

The green takes away the excess, of the render I don’t need, and the blue lets me create new effects and color corrections to those areas.

Once in Photoshop, I put everything together, treating the picture by itself, to achieve the right color scheme and tones, and later adding the color corrected CG elements to blend everything on to one image.

All though there seemed to be a lot more to the process, this is a a summary of what went in to it.

Feel free to ask any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them on a timely manner.

Filed under: Art, Instructive, Portrait, 3D, Art, CGI, Freddy, FreddyO, Octabank, Self portrait | 3 Comments

Hi all!
Since we’re in a new year, and I have some time on my hands, I decided to change my personal website and tie the blog (theme wise) a bit better to it.
The site can be viewed here http://www.freddyoropeza.com/

I usually go through the trouble of figuring the whole web designing process, which I forget, cause I don’t do it every day.  When I need to do it again, there’s need to relearn everything all over again.
So in this instance I decided to try something new, and stumbled across the Krop creative service, which I’m loving. I believe they are pretty new, so they don’t have a lot of templates and options. But I believe their working on new possibilities at the time, to be released in a month or so.
Updating images, and managing the portfolio is become a joy instead of a burden, check it out if you get a chance.
Since I’m more or less into a dark style of photography and art in general, I’ve chosen the template you can see above, and dictated by this, I found and modified a bit, a free WordPress template I found on the web. I hope you all like the new look.

Some more good stuff to come, next post will be something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, which is mix CGI with photography. Just to give you guys a little bit more of my background. I’d like for you guys to know that I’m a CGI artist by day, and although my new found passion is photography, I do it whenever possible.

Freddy Oropeza CGI Demo Reel from Freddy Oropeza on Vimeo.

So with all that said, I wish you all a good weekend, and come Monday I’ll have my “mug shot” and some mixed media goodness for you all.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Here’s a clip I found through another blog, but it’s great example of creativity mixed with technicality. It’s hard to believe that this was made out of still images, but it was, simply amazing.

Suddenly from Magnus Engsfors on Vimeo.

Filed under: Art, Inspirational, creativity, Inspiration, lighting, photgraphy, photography techniques, video | Post a comment

I recently had the opportunity for an assignment that I really enjoyed.  Nasri, an artist/songwriter, whose work has been showcased by various music personalities; approached me with a concept for a self promotion portrait.

Nasri had a clear concept of what he wanted, which made it easy for me to figure out an approach and deliver.  The concept he had was based on simplicity: himself on a white background, showing the work oriented person that he is, while letting his personality come through.  That’s where the red kicks come in.

For the technical approach, I decided that my 50″ soft box/Alien Bee combo would come in handy once more to provide a nice, soft, and even light. I’m a fan of edge lights; but this instance didn’t call for them, so we left them out.  The soft box was emitting enough light to light Nasri and the backdrop, and the white walls around us acted as bounce fill.  The size of the room was just right to allow for this to happen.

After getting the shot we set out to get, we had some time left.  So, we decided to play around a bit and got a couple of different looks and moves.  This got him an assortment of pictures he can work with in the future, making him a happy client and myself a happy photographer.

To hear some of Nasri’s work, you can check it out here.

Filed under: Music, Portrait, Freddy, Nasri, One light, Portrait | Post a comment

Hey All!
I’m back with a moody portrait of Josue. In this instance, I was trying to achieve a very dramatic lighting scenario, where Josue could shine as an edgy, and intriguing kind of guy.

For the set up I used a 50 inch Soft box with an Alien Bee 1600 head in it, dialed way down. I usually use the AB when there’s need of watts power to fight against the sun, or simply knock down the ambient exposure through the use of ND filters, and bring up my subject by using lights.
I used my two canon flashes, 580ex and 430ex, to create the side highlights that cause the “edgy” look, in my opinion at least.
Both heads were set to a pretty wide zoom, and moved back and forth to control the intensity and spill of the light.
Finally, I did some retouching and color treatment in PS, and the final image was born.
Here’s the schematic of the lighting set up, once again, I got caught up in the moment, while trying to keep energy high and get the most pics out of Josue, and forgot to take a picture of the set up, so here’s the 3D Graphics version of it.

Enjoy!

Filed under: Beauty, Beauty, Dramatic Lighting, Edgy, Josue, Portrait | Post a comment