Commercial

Commercial / Gage / Hallmark / In Studio / On Location / Photography / Portriats — No Comments
22
May 09

Hallmark Final Portfolio

Here are my 28 final images for my final Hallmark portfolio. They are all printed out at 11×14 and look fantastic! We were able to use older work from the beginning of the year if it was strong enough so you might recognize a couple of them. I’ll just write a little bit about each one under them.

This shot of Hribar I was stoked on. I ended up flipping his right shoulder over onto his left so it was the same and he was centered in the frame. After doing that it made his head look bigger and I liked how that looked so I kept it.

This was my non-family related group. They are a band out of Amherst, CT. This photoshoot was a blast to say the least. The bowling alley was more than helpful. The only thing they said to us was don’t walk on the lanes haha. I’ll post the other images from this shoot once I finish editing them.


This fine athlete Igor I found at the local stop and shop. I shot a couple of environmental shots of him on the field then we ended up doing some action shots and they turned out pretty sick. Lucky for me he could kick that soccer ball in the same spot every time and not kick it into me haha.

This little girl was adorable. I photographed her and her sister in the studio. Just before the shoot I ran out and grabbed some flowers and this dress that magically fit her! So lucky haha.

This was a shot from phase three that I really liked and I thought was good enough for the portfolio. Just a swiss watch in metal shavings. Came out awesome.

Here is my fine mechanic from Turners Falls. This is also a phase three portrait. I thought it went well with the rest of my work so I rolled with it.

This is Lori this shoot was pretty fun. We did the standard PR shot that we were required to do and she did a great job modeling for me. Then we did the fun alternative photo that you see below.

Lori’s alternative photo. The fan made all the difference.

I actually got lucky with these guys. I showed up to photograph my action shot of Igor the soccer player you saw before and these kids were just finishing up practice so I snagged them for a couple photos and they came out pretty good. Whats funny is they are standing in the exact same location as were I photographed Igor kicking.

This glass shot I was very happy with. I did a bunch of different shots of it. But I really like the simplicity of this one.

This photo I took after helping Mark photograph his model on this estate. We were going to photograph on the beach and when we got there we saw this kicking estate and it just happened to be open house that fine Sunday afternoon.

www.gagethompson.com_Thompson_Gage_P4_E-5_CT-3

For this shot I was trying to tie in the fact that the company was Fossil. So I tried to photograph them as if you just dug them up and they were fossils. Turned out pretty cool I like the final angle I went with.

Droppops

These are my very exciting drop and pop consumer products. They are what they are there isn’t much to say about them haha.

I just had to through my goofy self-portrait in there somewhere.

Profile of Hribar was also a must have!

www.gagethompson.com_Thompson_Gage_P4_M-2

Here is my family portrait. I got this idea for this photoshoot when I was up till 5 in the morning playing this game with some fellow students. As you can see the game is pretty much over he has all the property and money. To top that off the little dude on the right just landed on boardwalk.

This is Eric I found him on Model Mayhem we did a bunch of different shot in the studio. Out of all of them I thought this was the most dynamic of a shot.

This is the oldest photo of them all from phase one of Hallmark. I think its still sick. Can’t beat a fisheye lens.

Here is my interior from Williamstown, MA. It was right after a concert and the guy working let me jump up on stage for a few quick shots before he locked up. I really love the colors in this one!

Here is Andrew also from Model Mayhem. We went out and did a bunch of different photos. I actually had this stool in the trunk of my car for another shoot that I never did end up doing. So a lesson to be learned have a bunch of random crap with you at all times it could come in handy.

This is a student I found at the closest mall. I ended up going with this shot because I thought it fit my portfolio more then any of the other photos.

Here is my “couple” photo and no there not a couple haha. I choose this one because I liked the moodyness of it all. It was the most edgy of them all and my work seems to look more edgy, I think.

www.gagethompson.com_Thompson_Gage_P4_M-11

Ahhhh the leatherman on metal from phase three. Just looked good so I through it in. Figured I always had it with me so I should document it being around.

I was out driving and buying props and I came across this old factory in Turners Falls, MA and I had my Nikon D3 with me so I figured what the heck the sky works with the look of the building. So I photographed it not even thinking of using it in my portfolio but it ended up in there so that was awesome! Also if you notice this sky is the same sky as the one in the exterior of the estate in Ipswitch, MA. I just borrowed a section from this shot and droped it into the white blank sky above the estate. (scroll up and check it out).

This is my environmental still life. I’m super happy with how it came out. I was trying to make it look like a work bench just for skateboarding. I think it looks pretty good for being shot all in studio.

Conceptual still-life. I had no clue what to photograph for a conceptual still-life so I did this shot. Does it make sence…no does it have to..no.

Ahh the Iphone 3G a masterpice of technology. I am super stoked on how this ad came out I think apple would be proud. I was also excited to be able to incorperate my girl friend in my portfolio (She is the far right phone calling me).

Once again I got lucky with this one. We showed up to this spot I wanted to photograph at and there was a train just sitting there so we climed all over it and luckly it didn’t start moving or anything. I really like the enviroment and lines in this one.

Thats all of them! Thanks for taking a look at them hope you enjoyed them all with the little storys. I should be updating my website with a lot of new images like these ones in the next month. So be sure and check that out. Hallmark is over! Now on to real world work.

Bookmark and Share
Commercial / Hallmark / In Studio / Photography — No Comments
27
Apr 09

Fossil Watches

Here are the results from going shopping at Macy’s. Here are the Fossil watches I bought to photography. I was going for a just dug up look as if they were actual Fossils, what do you think?

www.gagethompson.com_Thompson_Gage_P4_E-5_CT-3

Bookmark and Share
Commercial / Hallmark / In Studio / Photography — No Comments
19
Apr 09

Skateboard Environmental Still-Life

This is my environmental still-life shot for school. I was going for a skateboard work bench look. I really liked how this one turned out. I think my favorite part of the image is the tool mounted on the wall. I did two different versions of this. One organized the other all messy.

As you can see I chose this image above for my final portfolio. That is why it is much more retouched then the one below.

Bookmark and Share
Commercial / Hallmark / In Studio / Photography — No Comments
10
Apr 09

Shooting Glassware Teathered

Well now I’m getting some phase 4 momentum and I’m not stopping till graduation! (Booya!) I have been getting models and I’m scheduling them. Getting organized! I even spent six hours shooting glassware in commercial. I had fun shooting, it was the first time I shot to my laptop in the commercial. I had the shots coming in to Lightroom automatically then I was exporting them to Facebook on the fly. It was pretty cool to see my shots go from being taken to going into lightroom and having a quick edit applied then uploaded to the web all in under three mins! You can see my shoots from the six hour shoot below. As you can see with the twirling shots I was trying to mimic the spiral in the stem of the glass.


Bookmark and Share
Commercial / Hallmark / In Studio / On Location / Photography / Portriats — 1 Comment
14
Mar 09

Phase Three Additional Personal Submissions

Here are my personal submissions for phase three of the Hallmark Program. I also decided that from now on I would write about how I shot them and what not so here we go.

I ended up shooting my self-portrait about three times before I actually came up with an idea of how I really wanted it to look. The shot came out exactly if not better than I hoped. I got the glasses and pens at a dollar store and I already had the shoes from salvation army from another shoot. Then I rented out a 35mm lens for my Mimiya MF Camera.

The light set-up is all with Profoto CP600’s. For the background we had two 3×4 soft boxes on either side at the same power to turn that white. Then we had two 1×4 soft boxes on either side of me pointing down on the foreground around my feet to turn that white. Then we threw a beauty dish above me and we ended up using a white umbrella for a fill on my torso and pants. So in all we used six lights and pretty much all full power…needless to say we blew the fuse twice. But we got some good shots. I’ll have to post the actually images later so you can take a look at them. Then even with all those lights the background wasn’t as white as I wanted it which is white without detail. So in post I pretty much painted it white then added a drop shadow by my feet to give it some base. Then standard dodging, burning and cloning.

Also in my post work I wanted a more cartoony feeling because it was already goofy so I did a little fill light and recover in LR for a more cartoonish look. Doing that caused a halo effect around a few edges which I painted with white when I did the background. But I’m really happy with this shot it came out fun.

In note: It took me a whole week to grow that mustach out! I tought that was a funny fact and I would throw that in there. I also burned that down later to make it look even better.

I really like this shot of Hribar this kid is a awesome guy to photograph and also an awesome photographer him self (LINK).
The lighting set up consisted of 3 ProFoto CP600’s. For our key light we had two 1×4 softboxes on either side of my 80mm Mamiya lens right in front of him. Then we also added a hair light from directly above him with a snoot attached to that, and I cropped it out of this image but it worked really well with the other shots.
So I had a few ideas of how I wanted to shoot him the one above was actually not one of them. We were just going threw expressions and all then I had him turn profile and I got this image above.
In post I work it all pretty much in LR by fixing the white and black points and greyscaling it. Then I took it into PS for a little more processing by burning and dodgeing to give the shadows a little more depth and to bring out his steps in his hair which I love.

This shot is also Hribar.
With this shot I we once again used Profoto CP 600’s. For the rim lights we had two parabolics on the left and right side behind him at about a 45 degree angle. But we found that threw some light into my lens causing lens flare. So we threw the 1×4 softboxes on either side of him so we could block that light (they were not on). So now that we have some rim light hiting his shoulders we needed to put a nother parabolic right behind him on low power to seperate him from the background.
Now that we had our lights all set up we started shooting and the smoke was showing up great with the rim lights lighting it up but not any of his face. But I wanted the tip of his cigarette to light up so we ended up dragging the shutter for about 8 or so seconds to burn that in.
In post I ended up compositing the best of the best. So I took the shot where he had his head down a little more than the others and started there. Then I took a shot where we really dragged the shutter and got a good glowing tip of the cigarette and threw that in there. After that I took another shot of some smoke and added that to the original photo. Then I took the white smoke on the left side of his mouth and flipped it to the right because to me it looked kind of light eyes and it was creepy so I did it. and yea thats that I really love this shot.

The following three images below I shot at Hallmarks open house. I actually got really lucky and ended up working in the portrait studio so I was able to get these shots for my assignment. (lucky lucky me) so I shot a little bit in the beginning but I wasn’t getting anything I liked. I didn’t like the set up we had it just wasn’t working for me.
Towards the end of open house we ended up setting these shots up with some more Profoto CP600’s. We had two 3×4 softboxes on the background and one silver umbrella above and to my camera’s left. And I pretty much started grabbing people to shoot that were also there working. Once again lucky me because we were all required to dress nice.

Here is Maria I shot this with a 80mm.

Here is Richard even tho he ended up modeling for other students 37 times he was kind enough to jump in for a few shots. Also shot with a 80mm lens.

Here is Sara another student that was shot quite a bit. Shot this one with a 120mm Macro. Very nice lens the only problem with it and the MF Mamiya is you end up having to retouch the blood vessles in the models eye.

Here is a shot of Macy’s watch. I went into this shot knowing pretty much how I wanted it to come out which makes my life much easyer on the shoot.
The lighting set up was one 3×4 softbox directly above Macy’s watch and that light up the circular metal around the watch face. But the angle of reflectivity was just not working on the corner metal pices of the watch so I painstakingly had to set up 3 more lights one 2×3 from behind my table and two 2×2’s on either side of my Toyo view camera to light those corners up. And I just want to say thank you to pressured air in a can it saved my life on this shoot and is my new best friend.
In lighting: For the face of the watch I tried many many ways of exposing for it. I couldn’t use the 3×4 softbox above my set up because it lit the metal great but caused the glass to fog up. So I ended up leaving on the other 3 lights and cranking them up about half a stop and that gave me a good exposure with detail on the face.

In post: I did the usual exposure fixes and all that. Then i took the two images I shot and composited the good looking face of the watch onto the good looking metal and background of the watch. Making it look pretty darn sexy don’t you think?

In note: That metal was pretty sketchy I don’t know who put that in the prop room but I’m just glad I didn’t cut my self.


Macy was also kind enough to let me shoot some Acqua Di Gio and I picked that bottle because thats how I got my girlfriend and I just thought I would pay a tribute to the company. No I’m playin but she does love the smell. So I’m thinking about keeping this in the long run.

The set up: was a 3×4 softbox from behind shooting threw a scrim for a little more defusion. Then I had my bottle set up on some apple boxes witha sheet of glass below it. Then I had a parabolic on a boom stand directly above my camera aming at the cap of the bottle and the text as well. I took a couple shots like that then I ended up adding two more lights. I added two 2×2 softboxes on the right and left of the bottle to give those highlights on the cap. So as you can see there are three good looking strips of light on that cap and its looks pretty darn good huh? So I shot a few frames of that and it was just too boring looking so I grabed a spray bottle and just started out light then ended up dumping the water all over it.

In post: I picked out the heavyer beaded water on the bottle but I composited a shot of littler beads on the glass and front of the bottle. and I found this mixture of images to look the best.

Bookmark and Share
← Older Entries