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This is how I have celebrated my weekend, when I wasn’t working! Haha. Hope you had a great one.
The Blog Of Photographer Douglas Sonders
This is how I have celebrated my weekend, when I wasn’t working! Haha. Hope you had a great one.
A few weeks ago I did a live webinar for Nik Software, showcasing how I do some of my Photoshop post-production and how I apply my favorite Nik Software plugins. They have the video posted up on their site to view at your leisure. Let me know what you think.
Want to save up to 15% on your Nik Software purchase? Just use my promo code: dsonders
Our process trailer with police escort
The past week or so, I have been in New York City shooting a couple of projects. One of my projects was a doozie… I was hired by the ad agency Tier 10 Marketing, under the creative direction of Scott Rodgers, to produce and film a new tv ad for Acura via the New York Acura Dealers Association. As some of you may know, I co-founded a video production company, 8112 Studios, a few years back and we have been very busy with a variety of projects.
The ad starred the amazing Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees driving around the new Acura MDX. The underlying themes were strength, dependability, perseverance, and dedication. This was my first time using a process trailer and police escort, which was pretty wild to arrange and setup, as you can see. You use a trailer so you can film driving shots, but be able to mount the lighting and camera anywhere. Obviously it would be a hazard having a driver or actor driving the car around New York City with 12k watts of lighting and diffusion and camera mounted to it. The tow truck has a generator on board so we can power the gear on the fly. Thankfully New York City provides a free police escort with your film permit. You technically need to have a police escort if you are filming any production on the streets of New York and have anything video-related mounted to a moving vehicle.
As a producer on my own shoots, I’ve learned that painstaking planning and pre-production is crucial on big video shoots like this. In fact, the shoot happens 80% in the planning and actual filming is merely following through the motions. That’s a lot different than with photo shoots, I have found. When we started out with video production, I put emphasis on the shoot day, not realizing that if I planned everything out beforehand, I would have a lot less to worry about since video productions have so many moving parts.
On a side note, Mariano Rivera is an incredible guy. Aside from being a baseball legend with incredible talent, he is really one of the most genuine and kind public figures I have ever met. Just being around him, you are inspired by his gentle warm nature. Seriously, could not say enough things about that guy. Despite blowing out his ACL a couple of weeks back, he powered through and helped us shoot a great ad.
I’ll post the ad when it airs!
Filming with the Red mounted to the back of the process truck with the trailer removed for chase shots
Setting up the car for filming on the trailer
Mariano getting his close-up
Mounting the red to the side of the car for interior driving shots
Filming the car stationary with a bunch of little league extras
(left to right) Nicholas Cambata (director) & myself (co-founders of 8112), Mariano Rivera, and our Creative Director at Tier 10 Marketing Scott Rodgers
Our two stunt vehicles from Paragon Acura in NY being delivered
A behind the scenes photo from a new awesome project I am working on with my friends over at Nik Software. I think you guys will really like this when it unleashes. Keep an eye out!
These dogs are bad, but they would never chew on your furniture. They were just having a rough weekend.
And this week, a doggie bonus with a second odd dog video clip. You can’t beat the comedy gold of dogs dressed as humans.
Living Social has asked me to come back and teach another few intermediate DSLR photography classes at their 918F Street location in Washington DC. The class went on sale today and seats are going fast if you want to join us! Will be on the weekends. Starts late May and goes into June.
Last time I taught for Living Social, I had a great time. Was given the opportunity to teach over 600 folks over the course of 4 weekends. I think my students walked away feeling like much more confident and improved photographers. For those of you that don’t know I have also done a variety of webinars, and workshops for conferences like Photoshop World, where I had the opportunity to speak in front of hundreds of inspired shooters. I love to shoot, but when I don’t do that, I love to teach. It’s great to have a chance to reach out and share with the photo community.
Bring your dreams into focus with today’s frame-worthy deal: Shoot over $99 and receive a three-hour outdoor DSLR photography course and walking tour with famed photographer/filmmaker Douglas Sonders at LivingSocial’s new 918 F Street location. Named one ofWashington Life magazine’s most-influential people under 40 and one of the city’s Top 25 Creatives, Sonders will take students on a tour through some of the District’s most beautiful spots, explaining the basics of shooting outdoors — from lighting to composition — to help intermediate photographers learn tricks to take their craft to the next level. Classes are offered on select Saturdays and Sundays starting on May 26 and students should bring their own DSLR camera. (In case of rain, Sonders will take students through a range of shooting techniques indoors, so there’s no need to be wary of water damage to your camera.) If you want to master this art form, step one is snapping up this deal. – Living Social Site
You can purchase the class HERE. Hope to see you there!
From my last series of Living Social classes
Teaching at Photoshop World earlier this year
One of my classes at Photoshop World
Leading a photo walk in DC
Click to see full-sized
Above is an image from another personal shoot I did just for my portfolio. It is merely a single shot image. No drop-ins or composite here! My subject is a Parkour athlete that essentially did a backflip off the wall. Not an easy feat in dress shoes!!
The lighting was simple as you well see in the diagram below. I had a single large softbox for a fill light and a second White Lighting x3200 flash with 7″ silver reflector that I used as an edge light on the subject and also to create the shadow on the brick wall. By using a more directional un-diffused light (meaning no softbox) you can create a harder-edged shadow, which I really wanted. I also used 2 Paul C Buff Vagabond mini battery packs to power the strobes on location.
Shutter speed maxed out at 1/200. Anything faster and you would definitely notice dark bands from exceeding the camera’s flash sync speed too much. This shoot would have really succeeded if it was shot with a medium format digital, which has a much higher flash sync speed based on its shutter design. For now, though, it seemed to work out, but I want to do this again with the medium format.
The image was converted from color to black and white using Nik Software’s Photoshop plug-ins Viveza and Silver Efex Pro. I used the burn tool in photoshop CS6 to darken the shadow and give it a more moody appearance.
Behind the scenes photo by Jackie Garcia
CLICK IMAGE TO SEE LARGER
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Thank you to the folks over at Adobe, makers of the famous photography software, Photoshop! They showcased me as one of their “Customer Successes”. You can click the image below to see the posting on their page. It is always surreal to me when anyone feels the need to write about my work, let alone the makers of the biggest photography editing program in the world! I just view myself as a monkey holding a camera. This is a fantastic piece and a great opportunity. Thanks for everyone’s support! I’m sure this happened in large part to my involvement with KelbyTraining.com and starting to teach at Photoshop World this year. Big thanks to Scott Kelby and everyone over at Kelby Media!
On a side note, I have really enjoyed Adobe Photoshop CS6, and feel that it is a pretty big leap forward from the previous generation, CS5. I list some of the major improvements and upgrades in a previous blog post.
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Click to see larger version of the image.
It feels good to get back to my old shooting style. It’s like coming back home. I realized after hearing Erik Almas speak last week, that I have not been shooting the type of photos that I have been known to do earlier in my career…photos with lots of poppy contrast, motion, and energy (few examples below).
I decided that I needed to “go back” and build on the type of work that I used to love to shoot. I pulled out my trusty ol’ Canon 16-35mm 2.8L and loads of powerpacks and softboxes (gear I used to use a lot more) and set up a shoot with a parkour group out of the DC area, Primal Fitness.
Behind the scenes iPhone photo by Jackie Garcia. I was using my trusty Canon 16-35mm 2.8L
The shoot at the top of the post is a combination of 3 images. I show my steps below. All I used for this shoot was two White Lightning x3200 strobes (one with a 7″ silver reflector in the back and the other with an x-large softbox as a main light), 2 vagabond mini battery packs, a tripod, a Canon 5D Mk2, 16-35 2.8L, and a tripod. Overall, not a very complicated or expensive (gear-wise) shoot to create. It was just a manner of planning the shot out, coaching the subjects, and getting the lighting nice and dynamic. I normally keep my main x-large diffused softbox turned up high and placed very close to my subjects to create a dynamic light on them. I used the other light as an edge light, which I later removed in post-production, as you will see below.
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Below is a series of screen caps of my compositing process. As you can see it is pretty straightforward. It was just a simple matter of keeping a constant focus, f-stop setting, and maintaining overall consistent exposure.
The establishing shot with the first subject and background.
I took an image with the background light removed so I could later drop in the top of the stairs without the light. I used that light to create controlled edge light on my subjects.
I took multiple exposures with both subjects. I decided to shoot them both separately so that I may better direct their poses and expressions as they jumped. Hard to coordinate 2 perfect jumps at once. Obviously the tripod was crucial and very helpful in these shots. I just used simple layer masking to blend him in.
3 images put together before color treatment.
For final color effect, I used Nik Software’s Viveza 2 Photoshop Plugin as well as Color Efex 4: Bleach Bypass + Cross Processing filters
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