Have you ever taken inspiration from something outside of photography?

When using projectors in your photography, the options for creativity are seemingly limitless. In fact, because you can technically integrate any visual medium you can imagine into your shot, it can be a little overwhelming as to what images you project with them.

Some months ago, I went to a Tim Walker exhibition here in London and in there he had some incredible shots on display that played with the viewers sense of perspective. (I'll post an example below in the comments)
In this image here of Aly, I took a couple of shots with that same very basic principle of perspective to test it.
As it turns out, I wasn't a fan of it and I ended up preferring a projection with more coverage. I took a few shots of this, realised it wasn't for me and moved on to an alternative.

The point here is being open to inspiration and acting upon it. Sure, this converging lines idea didn't work for me here, but it may lead to something else years down the road as it certainly needs more work.
That is what the creative process is all about. Cognitively recognising what you like and then redistributing it within your own work. There is a very distinctive difference here between 'copying' and being 'inspired by' and sometimes this is far easier to do when we look outside of our own medium.

I love gel photography, but I haven't actively sought out any gel photographers work in years. I personally prefer to look to other mediums or disciplines outside of photography as that can sometimes be far easier to create original ideas. I've said it before, but the brash and unrealistic colours of Japanese anime is often a source of inspiration for me even though there is seemingly little to no connection to my work with it.

"It's Friday night Jake, what's your bloody point?!"

My point here is to be receptive to all mediums and disciplines when you're looking for inspiration. Don't simply go to Instagram hashtags for your next idea. Look at how light falls on the streets on your way to work. Look at how pottery glazes mix at differing temperatures and what that would look like scaled up. Look at the clean, contrasting lines of typography and see how those curves and stark contrast could be implemented in a portrait. Look at the ridiculous colours used in anime and imagine how that could translate to photography....

Have you ever taken inspiration from something outside of photography?

Anyway, that's my cathartic end-of-week rant out of the way😅 Thanks for listening and I hope you have an amazing weekend 😊

Stay creative.

Model: Alicia Conder

Film shooters...

Long time followers on here will know that I still dabble in film photography. I don't share much of it though as the shots rarely sit with the rest of my work.... but I'd like to try and change that.

These 'Polaroids' on display here were all shot with the Mamiya Universal Press camera. It has interchangeable film backs, but I really bought the Universal Press for that Polaroid back originally.

As many of you know, Polaroid stopped making film a long time ago and all you could buy to replace it was the Fujifilm FP100c instant film (which is what I'm using here). I LOVE that film, but sadly they stopped making that a couple of years ago too 😔

To get that pack film now costs an outrageous amount, so I decided that it might be time to get back into film shooting a bit more seriously.

If you missed my post earlier today, I asked people to shout out if they still shoot film and what cameras they use. The response was HUGE!!!
I was genuinely very surprised to see so many film shooters in here so I'm certainly looking forward to digging into this a little deeper with you guys. Should be a lot of fun for sure.

I'll keep you posted on what direction I go, but I'm looking to get that very distinctive medium format look back. I think if I do that, I better go all in on that so I'm looking at the monstrous 6x7's.

If you guys have any questions about any or all of this, let me know. I'll do my best to answer what I can, but even if I can't answer it, we clearly have a veracious sleeper-crew of film fanatics in here to help instead 😅

Mixing ambient and flash....on the background.

I spoke about this idea in an email I sent out to my subscribers earlier today, but mixing ambient and flash in portraiture is one of the hardest disciplines we can master.
There's a few reasons for this, but first and foremost, getting a blurry subject is something we're trying to avoid and whenever you have long shutter speeds of several seconds, blurry subjects is often what you get.

One of the easiest ways of achieving both a crisp subject as well as that long exposure look is to use ambient light on the background like we have on display here.

I know I've said it many times before, but I'll say it again; I simply love how unique some of these long exposure shots turn out and here our model has moved during the exposure resulting in this really cool effect across parts of her.

This setup, as well as many others will be fully explained at my 'Colour and Exposure Workshop' I have scheduled for this January 25th.
If you'd like to learn more about these long exposure techniques, including light painting and more, follow the link below for more details 😊

https://jakehicksphotography.com/colour-exposure-workshop

But for now though, congrats to us for making it to the weekend 😃 This week has simply flown by and I hope your first full week of 2020 has gotten off to a good start.

Have a fantastic weekend guys and if you have any questions about the long exposure workshop, let me know.
Speak to you on Monday 😎

Model: Alicia Conder
Assist: Jaye Hicks

Enhancing shadow detail...

Yesterday I shared my article on using Low Contrast lens filters in your portrait shots. It's always good to see an article you've worked on for so long be popular, so thank you to those of you that checked it out.
The premise of the article was around the idea that using lens filters in front of your lens like the low contrast one, is hugely beneficial in the right situations and certainly far more so than using a post-pro solution instead.

Don't get wrong, you shouldn't be using them for every shot you take, but for the right shot, it can take an image in a completely different direction.

In this shot for example I'm using my Definitive gel pack colours that are very saturated. To soften the overall look I'm using a low contrast filter on the lens to try and balance out some of the tones. Look at the very dark shadow area under the chin. See how little light we have in there? Couple that with very shiny jet-black styling and you have a recipe for a complete black-out in terms of shadow detail.

Sure this wouldn't be a problem if I was using a lot more light or even soft box light, but with gels, we need a harder more directional light source to achieve the colours we want.
In this instance the low contrast filter gives us some extra options and certainly a lot more detail in the shadows for us to work with in post.

As it happens, we ended up taking this set in a different direction, so I only shot a couple of this particular setup and colour combo. I still thought it was valuable to share this though as yet another example of the low contrast filter in action.

If you missed the article, be sure to scroll back on my page to yesterday to check it out for more examples and solutions. Did you guys have any questions that came from that article? Or in fact this image or the low contrast filters in general?
Let me know.

Model: Alicia Conder
Assist : Jaye Hicks