A. Bonham-Carter

U Pull It

2010-03-08T16:55:00.004-06:00

In Omaha, there is this place called "U Pull It." Its essentially a scrap yard for old cars. The cars are carefully mounted on their wheels and left with the hood and trunk open. As you can imagine, all walks of life come to this auto-wonderland looking for parts. Nothing newer than 99', open 7 days a week. Incredible photo opportunities. So I went to this place on a gray morning, which was unfortunate but since I go home for such short times, I cant really pick and choose. Anyway, here is the new Nebraska landscape.

FLIER, FLIER!

2010-02-19T17:10:00.003-06:00

Return of Rufio the Jedi

2010-02-17T15:18:00.002-06:00

I went over to the Sunflower House on Monday to shoot some promotional photos of my buddy and local rap artist, Jamaal aka Rufio the Jedi. It was a sweet good time and we listened to Lil Wayne to help put us in the motion. That is probably key to a successful shoot.

The house, for all my non-local readers, is a student cooperative with about 30 rooms for rent (utilities included) and other perks (there's even a bike room. Wow.) So to sum it up, the place is huge. Size a side, I did not want to shoot Jamaal in a section where he doesn't hang out nor has any personal attachment to. Sure there are hidden rooms with pianos and a collection of random chairs, but that just turns into clutter when it cannot be related directly to the person being shot. There are always exceptions to everything I say but in this case, I thought his bedroom would suit us better than a dusty piano.

Well when I walked into the room, I took note of all the belongings. Personally, I think personal items are ideal for a photo provided that they are not white. A huge window with both the Greek flag and that of the Black Liberation being used as curtains struck me first. I had already planned to do a Annie Leibovitz-style bed photo (alot of her early work centers around the bed in some fashion) and the flags convinced me completely.

Lighting was simple. One Alienbee B800 into a large softbox at about 45 degrees camera left and pretty high prevented any weird and irritating window reflection and also prevented his nose from shadowing his left eye, which sometimes happens if the light is not high enough or too far to one side.

I insisted that we rearrange the room quite a bit to avoid bright colors and whites, but Jamaal was a really good sport about it. We put the blanket in because it had pandas on it. And hearts. You would too, believe me.

I'll put up more later. Thanks for looking!

Kansas City / hey-hey-hey-hey

2010-02-01T09:20:00.001-06:00

So last week I went to Kansas City for a different scene. I wanted to look around for some sweet spots for portraits and stuff like that down the line.

Quickly, I decided to look exclusively for graffiti, something that Lawrence just doesnt seem to have a whole lot of. These are some photos of what I found. Most of them are taken within a few blocks of the Art District and Grinders. Hope you like!

Hip-Hop Noise part 2

2010-01-28T09:02:00.003-06:00

Ok everyone, I make a mistake when I confidently told you that my noise reduction was "conservative." It wasn't. The sliders that I adjusted only told the program to affect less noise, not affect noise less. Essentially, it was still set to full 100% noise reduction so I apologize because the photos looked pretty awful on my monitor.

Keep in mind that I edit colors with my monitor calibrated to adobe 1998, for super great color (if only it was that easy, hehe). Anyway, I'm learning more and more about this program which has a huge amount of options. In photoshop, the photos I uploaded originally looked really nice and noise free, but whatever compression happens when a jpg is uploaded to blogspot, it turned them a little more noise-reduced than I wanted.

Lets try them again. Also, in the crowd photo, I know many of you probably thought that fuzzy shape on the bottom was distracting right? Me too. Also, if you wanted me to crop out the visible computer on the left of Greg, I didn't. I just don't like to get too tight if I can avoid it.

Stay tune for photos of Graffiti in Kansas City!

A Hip Hop Scene and a Noise Issue

2010-01-26T14:29:00.007-06:00

A question comes to my mind fairly regularly: Should I work concert photos up in black and white? My answer varies from venue to venue and to be honest, I usually prefer black and white if the stars of the show are well lit.

If there are obvious and clear separations in the light levels, black and white can smooth out the out of focus faces, extension cords, and other problems and still leave a punchy shot with plenty of contrast while keeping the main act well lit and defined.

The Jackpot Saloon is not one of these venues. The light sucks horribly. Flash photography doesn't do it for me because don't have a hotshoe flash that would keep up with the show. Until I get one, I must use color. Why? I use color because the stage lights have gels over the front of them that essentially convert the color temperatures of regular yellowish lights to greens, blues, and plenty of red. With black and white, these separations come up for me to be very murky. The image looks like a shadow surrounded by shadow. If I, on the other hand, keep the color, I can use the different colored lights to define the scene and give it more punch.

With this color, comes noise. Unlike film grain, my camera gives me horrid banding (when noise appears in lines through the image) and not the nice spotty appearance of grain. What can be done?! Well, a little. For "Jockin' My Fresh," a hip-hop show at the Jackpot Saloon, I used Noiseware, a plugin for photoshop with some success. To keep the detail, I left mid-tone and highlights pretty much untouched but removed roughly half of the noise in the shadow. With this I lose some detail but I tried to keep that minimized and after some conservative unsharp masking, they look vastly improved.

To demonstrate, I'll post a photo that is untouched by Noiseware or Unsharp mask

And now, the same photo with corrections:

Stik Figa

Ok, and because you've read this much, I'll show you a few more edits. Just click the "read more" button below!

Greg Enemy

Dutch Newman

Everyone relaxes before the show

Everyone seems to be having a good time!

Portfolio (Working)

2010-01-15T16:07:00.005-06:00

Ok folks, I've spend more than a few hours trying to prepare my portfolio. This is where I stand right now, though a lot could be cut. Thanks for looking, comment if you want to! Keep in mind that this is not a general work portfolio, but a photojournalism portfolio. What's missing? Well, a bunch of landscapes and event photos.

Holiday 2009

2010-01-06T16:53:00.006-06:00

Well its been a quiet couple of weeks here at HQ. There have been a couple of assignments that I'll try to put up. I also have a couple of new lenses, a fixed 50mm f1.4 and a 200mm f2.8L, so I'll try to do some photos that are lens specific. I know I didn't set out to make this a tech blog but most photographers are gearheads underneath and I definitely have tendencies. For now, I want to show a few frames that I took while I was in Omaha for Christmas. Its always nice to see the family and there is really never enough time to see all my friends so, alas, I saw only the family. There was a huge amount of snow that I wish I had photographed on the highway driving up through Topeka on US-77, but that did not compare to amount of snow in Omaha when I arrived. I also included a couple photos of my parents. My mother looking out the window and my father sleeping. I just thought they were nice frames.

This last photo is actually one I took with the 50mm lens of my brother firing a capgun. I cant exactly remember the layout of the lights but essentially, he is sitting in front of a sliding door as a way to focus the light on his left shoulder only with a softbox behind him and camera right. This box also works to illuminate the capgun and part of his hand. I then snooted a speedlight sb-24 to illuminate his face and gelled it with a CTO 1/2 or 1/4 to color the light to look like his face is only illuminated by the white-orange sparks. It was pretty successful but next time I'll use something that gives off more spark as thats what I really wanted anyway. Shutter speed was 1/15th of a second to capture the smoke.

Asexuality: An Illustration.

2009-11-16T12:38:00.010-06:00

a·sex·u·al (-sksh-l)
adj.
1. Having no evident sex or sex organs; sexless.
2. Relating to, produced by, or involving reproduction that occurs without the union of male and female gametes, as in binary fission or budding.
3. Lacking interest in or desire for sex.

Good. Now photograph it. no sources? No problem. Illustrate it.

This was my most recent assignment and ultimately, I think I succeeded from a very technical standpoint. Now, whether or not I succeeded in illustrating asexuality in only one of its many definitions, I could have done some things differently.

The concept:

Ok, so first I was faced with a sourceless story and decided on a few basic guidelines:

1. I must use a model who is open to being photographed as an asexual or being affiliated with a piece on asexuality. This was problematic, but after much searching, I found one man who was willing, my buddy, Colin. What a good sport for it!

2. I am not asexual nor do I know anyone who is. That must be addressed here. The original writer's photo request suggested depicting someone in bed alone. Surely in bed alone conveys darkness, loneliness, and negativity. I doubt anyone who is asexual thinks that it is a negative. Surely one who is asexual finds not the "loneliness" but instead, finds a confidence in that situation. Everyone has their own reasons but it would have been single-minded and presumptuous for me to go in there and say, "look at this asexual person, isn't that depressing. So I need Colin to look confident. If you've met him, you know that is no problem.

Ok, let's get cracking.

Basically, the location is his parents house. Why? because for a fancy dinner scene, your dorm room or college apartment with the Jack Daniels and pulp fiction posters takes a lot of flagging to block and to assemble a realistic looking dinner table, you might as well buy everything and start from scratch. I don't have the budget for props or pier one imports so I decided to go to a house where civilized folk live, everyone's parents have a fancy dish set and a fancy table of some kind. Dinner scene for one is almost done. At the house there was this beautiful old collapsible wall to be used as a block for unpleasant parts of any house such as wires or outlets. We assembled it right next to the table which effectively blocks the background from view. I could have used a tight aperture and lit only the table and Colin but that would require serious lighting and with glass present, the chances of reflection are very high. To the right of the frame I positioned a nice potted plant, the corner stone of any good corner filler and a realistic restaurant/dinner setting. The an orchid, candles, plate, and utensils were added and away we go! I thought about adding food, but honestly, I don't think its necessary and I wasn't hungry enough to make and eat food at someone else's house and I don't like to waste. Food would have been nice but it wouldn't show well anyway. This isn't that big of a photo anyway.

How I did it:

The plant and behind the wall was lit with a Nikon sb-24 (in a wide snoot) at about 1/4 power. Using the snoot focused the beam of light on the plants and presenting the flash from coming through the wall slits and flaring on the lens. Not enough to blow the plant away but enough to light it and add a touch of separation on the wall behind Colin and maybe if I'm lucky, his face (I don't think that part worked, oh well.) I wanted the lit candles to stay lit and look lit so I, using John Keatley's blogged technique as an example, let the scene dictate the shutter speed. Roughly 1/30th. Ok.

Ok, the flash looks a little hot, right? Well that's because that was before I turned it down to 1/4. What you are seeing is perhaps 1/2 or full power.

As for Colin, I used one Alienbee 800, at 1/16 power through a large 32x40 softbox to light him head on and about 2 feet above his head to light without creating harsh shadows on the wall behind him or at an angle. The snooted sb-24 also prevented that by spilling on the wall behind his head. After all, it is a realistically lit restaurant without harsh shadows, or so I wanted. For the table section, I used my third light, a Alienbee 400 with a 43 inch umbrella to define the table and prevent it from being lost in the shadows. It was also positioned quiet high, maybe 7 feet at about 1/4 power.

Here are two examples of the finished product. Evenly lit without distracting away from him.

MINGLE- OCT 2009

2009-11-01T16:38:00.012-06:00

Here are just a few of the photos that I took at the 8th Street Taproom for Phil Canty and Tyler Waugh's recording company, Bear Club. Phil Canty, also known as Morris Mars, and Tyler Waugh, Suede By Perfection, performed with Dylan Hoffman, Potions. These photos were shot as a sort of promotional photo booth for the guests of the show on Thursday, October 29, 2009.

click for larger image

these photos are copyright a.bonham-carter 2009

Welcome!

2009-11-01T13:04:00.004-06:00

Welcome to my new blog. More content, including photographs I have been working on will be up shortly. On the side, there is a link to my website, which lists my personal information and resume.