New book: The Great Life Photographers

I went to a bookstore last saturday and I headed to the photography section. I always do the same. I always visit bookstores because I love to be there, surrounded by books. Just stay there. I don’t even have to buy anything to be happy and I wasn’t planning on buying a thing the other day.

But then, then I saw this small but thick book called The Great Life Photographers (Life Los Grandes Fotógrafos, in Spanish) and I grabbed it. It wasn’t really expensive, 25 euros. Photography books tend to be a bit expensive, you know it. So it took me about 3 second to decide whether I was buying the book or not.

To tell you the truth, I still don’t know whether the book is good or a piece of crap. I’m sure it’s awesome, but I will not know until I unwrap it. Sounds crazy, I know, but I never unwrap a new book until I’m 100% sure that I will have enough time to read it or watch carefully. The thing is that I enjoy watching and reading photography books very much and I never unwrap a book just to take a look and leave it on the shelf for weeks or months until I pick it up again.

That translates into having lots of unwrapped photography books on the shelf but also lots of brand new great books like William Klein’s Retrospective, a couple of Robert Capa’s books, War is Personal by Eugene Richards and The Americans by Robert Frank, among many others. I’m sure I will soon find the right time to read all these wonderful books.

Images used on this post are copyright of Calvin Dexter. Ask me first if you want to use them in any way.

Hot and cold, water and ice

Some months ago I did a shooting with a model from Belgium in this lovely place that is just 10 minutes from my house. There is a wonderful waterfall and a small lake and it is a really nice scenario to do a fashion shooting.

So, we did indeed a fashion shooting there. It was an editorial for a swimsuit magazine from Belgium. It was great, even though we had some rain at the end of the shooting. Here’s a sample photo of that day.

Anyway, these last days it’s been pretty cold in my town so we went to this waterfall place again, my girlfriend and I, just to see how were things. And everything was absolutely frozen. To be sincere, I prefer to shoot in the summer…

Images on this post are copyright of Calvin Dexter. Use them without asking me first and I will kick your ass.

 

Testing lenses: Canon EF 24-70mm

I only use prime lenses because I actually own only prime lenses. But yesterday a friend of mine let me play with his Canon EF 24-70mm and I used it with my 5D Mark II. It was a lot of fun and I also realized how much I miss working at 24mm. The widest lens I have right now is a 35mm.

We went into the woods and to a lake and we spent the whole morning visiting, taking pictures and filming (my friend brought his 60D and recorded some video) on different locations. We even visited and old dam that I will use in my next shooting ’cause the place was stunning.

I took some analog pictures also but until I develop them…

Blending 3D objects with real pictures

A few weeks ago I decided that Saturdays would be the day to learn something new. I don’t have much free time during the week, but I try to have a couple or more hours on Saturdays available to learn from others and follow some tutorials that I find on the Internet.

Today I learned how to integrate a 3D render of a cute and small robot into a macro photography using Photoshop. It was a lot of fun. The tutorial teaches you how to blend the two main pieces together using displacement filters, layer masks, custom brushes and lots, lots, lots of layers.

When I finished with the tutorial (about 2-3 hours of work) I couldn’t stop tweaking the image so I added some film, grain and color leaks that I think give even a more realistic and great look to the image.

Here’s the picture I got today. Hope you like it.

The tutorial I followed is from the PSDTuts site. If you want to take a look at it, here’s the link. You will find this tutorial and lots others along with great articles and all kinds of cool tips about Photoshop. Great place to learn.

Digital gone analog

I love digital photography. It is essential in my work. But I love analog photography too. For months, I’ve been looking for tutorials and photoshop plug-ins that would allow me to turn a digital image into a convincing analog picture.

I know there are plenty of Photoshop actions (both free and paid) that turn modern images into retro/vintage pics. And they do and incredible job. Products like the ones from Nik Software and onOne Software do a stunning work and let you edit your pictures in a myriad of ways. I know. But I still haven’t found that one simple action or plug-in that will turn my images into really, really convincing fake analog pictures.

So I decided I would create my own actions so I could go back in time. And I’m almost there. I have been working on a couple of actions for weeks, maybe even months. And I almost got it. Once I do have that action, oh boy, that will be a great day. And I will probably post that action here so anybody can download it and use it. Still not sure about this, I can’t promise anything.

In the meantime, I will show you an original image (no processing at all) straight from my Canon EOS 5D Mark II (I just converted the RAW file to JPEG using Adobe Camera Raw) and then, you can see the same image after applying more than 30 layers of works and countless hours. How am I going to turn that into a working action? I still have no clue, but I will not stop until I get it.

¿Is it convincing or does it still look like a crappy digital shot?

Original Image 

After some hard work…

All images on this post are copyright of Calvin Dexter. Do not use them without asking first.

Website recommendation: Burn My Eye

I was reading today this article from the website about all things photography and digital gadgets QUESABESDE. They publish these kind of articles every thursday and it consists of a picture and a text from the photographer who took the picture explaining everything about the image.

They are usually pretty interesting. The images feature in today’s article really caught my attention. It is from photographer Justin Sainsbury and it was taken with a Canon 5D.

Justin Sainsbury is part of an international collective named “Burn My Eye” that aims to show the extraordinary within the ordinary using candid photography. And they do it, for sure.

If you like street photography, do not miss what the people at Burn My Eye are doing. Be sure to check their “Developments” section. It’s really interesting and they have a cool article about why gasoline stations allure so many photographers.

Burn My Eye Official Site.

People I’d love to photograph: Benedict Cumberbatch

Have you seen this new TV series Sherlock? Well, you should. It is a modern update of the famous character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and it’s just plain brilliant.

There are two seasons and each season has only three episodes. It’s a pity, but every episode has a running time of about an hour and a half and believe me, they are absolutely out of this world. And hopefully, we will have more episodes and season in the following months.

This is with no doubt one of the best written series I’ve seen in a long time. Its perfectly paced, witty, it has a great story in every single episode and it’s just a joy to watch. Pure smart entertainment.

And one of the reasons that makes this show work so well are the guys playing Sherlock and Watson, that is, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman respectively.

I knew Martin Freeman from movies like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I liked him. He’s starring in the new Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, so I guess he’ll became a little more famous pretty soon.

But Benedict Cumberbatch. Oh boy, I didn’t know about this actor and what an actor. He’s just perfect playing Sherlock and he has everything for the role. When you see him playing the famous character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you really can’t imagine anybody else playing the role. He nails it.

Having said that, he is that kind of person I would like to have in front of my camera, even if it was just for half an hour. Man, those would be 30 minutes to remember.

Benedict Cumberbatch is definitely a person I would love to photograph.

The image used to illustrate this post is (c) Hartswood Films/BBC for MASTERPIECE. I wish it was mine, but it is not.