"Key To The Unseen Kingdom" Featuring Brooke Shaden
Being the self-appointed-official-fancy-pants-Photoshop-wizard that I am means one of my favorite pastimes is to take a mostly simple image and add a bunch of elements to make it SPECTACULAR. (Well, hopefully spectacular anyway.) Here, my friends, is basically how that all went down in ten steps ...
Read More"The SpellBinder" Featuring Kara Markley
I'm the first person to say that I totally LOVE studio lighting. I crave a few hours spent in a dark studio tinkering around with big-expensive-flash-photography-toys as much as the next guy. Probably more than half of my portfolio was shot in the studio with multiple huge flash banks and other fancy lighting tools and modifiers. I wonder if (slash secretly hope) some photographers out there see this image and think something like, "This is so cool, but I can't afford all of that snazzy flash lighting stuff." Or that some photographer who's stuck in their old ways, thinking you can only get good images with expensive lights, will see the image and say, "See look what a stunning image you can create with some good lighting equipment ..." Well, this image is a testament that with a little creativity, a good group of friends, a bag of candles, and .... some cell phone flashlights ... you can accomplish something truly magical!
Read More"The Oracle" featuring Rowan Elaine
I know there are a lot people out there who want to be better at Photoshop - heck, I've been doing this for almost half of my life and I want to be better! Well, I was really thinking about it and it dawned on me that more often than any other tip, I'm telling people they really should master the pen tool. It is hands down the most advanced and precise selection tool and if you boil Photoshop down to its simplest form, it's a SELECTIVE photo editing software. So I thought to myself, "Hey self, why not really dive deep into selection tools - how to do them, when to use which one, and why they are so dang important?"
Read More"Fallen Star" featuring Aleah Michele
Hey guys it's me! ME ROBERT, remember me? Maybe not ... because this crazy thing happened where I haven't posted a new image in about three months. (I know eww WTF!) Well anyway, I'm here to tell you that I still exist (yay) and I'm still going to be churning out art and blogging about the process! (Extra yay!)
Read More"The Mistress of Mystery"
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Marisa! (Unless you already know her, in which case ... here she is again!) She is one of my many amazing photography friends. (Humble brag?) Marisa is so talented and just a wonderful person to know and be around. You can see her being super fun and awesome in a gif in this post. I've shot with her many a time before, but by "with" I mean "near/next to." I realized during the meet up I hosted in Watkins Glen that I'd never actually shot an image of Marisa. That just wouldn't do. It was nearing sunset on the first full day of the meet up and a small group of us wandered over to this location and Marisa just so happened to have this dress on hand, so I had her throw it on and we did some shooting!
Read More"Swimming Moonlight" featuring Aleah Michele
Ok, can we just agree that our beds are the most wonderfully magical places that we can call our own? Sleeping in, all snuggled beneath a sea of comforters and pillows, being warm and nestled in your happy place is just perfection. I'm now going to ask you to leave that happy place at the butthole of dawn. EWW WHAT!? Yes my friends, get your comfy little butts out of bed and go out in the cold for the sake of art!! (Unless you live somewhere with a more gentle climate year-round, in which case, get your butt out of bed and go out in the warm...)
Read More"The Spell Book" featuring the incredibly talented Marsha Denlinger
You know how you can spend years trying to find your photography style? Testing out different techniques and effects hoping that something will eventually evolve into your perfect aesthetic? For a while I was sort of in denial of "my thing." People started taking notice of my studio work and saying things like, "Hey friend, I like your style! You're a great composite photographer." To which my brain went, "No I'm not! Wait what? Am I? ... I have a style?" I was shooting in the studio because it was convenient (I live upstairs ... ), but I hadn't ever really thought of myself as a studio photographer. My photography upbringing had taken place in the woods and on aimless adventures with my mom's camera, so I just assumed my style was going to be found somewhere out in the wilderness. I guess I did take baby step towards "studio work" when I started to steal every light fixture in my parents' house (that wasn't attached to a wall) up to my room to shoot portraits of my friends.
Read More"An Offering" featuring Simon McCheung
So obviously almost every Photoshop novice has "transformed" something in Photoshop. As in, "I just dragged this image onto my canvas and it's way too flippin' huge. Let me make it smaller with the transform function." But how many of you have really taken it much further than that? (Yes, I know there are exceptions; we are all at different levels of expertise.) Transforming seems like a pretty simple/straightforward thing to do in Photoshop - you're just re-sizing something, right? Well with a little creativity, not only can you transform the size of something, you can completely transform a handful of random images of, say, lizards into a freakin baby dragon! WHAT!?!?
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"The Secret Doorway" featuring Kara Markley
One of my ABSOLUTE favorite things to do in Photoshop is to play with lighting effects. Whether that be to make something glow, create a spotlight sort of effect, or set my hands on fire, I'm always so impressed with the many ways Photoshop allows you to alter lighting. Because of the skills I've gathered for bending light to my will, I no longer look at an image I've taken and think, "Oh man, I wish I would have brought some flash equipment with me so there could be light spilling through the archway from behind her." I now just think, "Wouldn't it be simply fantastic to have some magical light coming from behind her? Yes, yes it would ... I think I'll add some." Don't get me wrong it's always going to look better if there was actually some real light falling on your subject from the get-go, but that's not going to stop me from adding a bit of illustrative oomf to my images whenever I see fit!
Read More"Petals Yet To Fall" featuring Steph Pez
It doesn't take long to create something spectacular ... well at least it doesn't take too long to shoot it. This image took about 4 minutes to photograph - meanwhile I've been editing it for what feels like forever. It was taken during the Watkins Glen Flickr Gathering on the second day, about an hour before sundown. We had just arrived at Clute Park on Seneca Lake, and I knew I wanted to make use of the lake via a panoramic shot with someone on the rocks in the center of the frame. That's about as much planning as I did. I decided to let this be one of those, "I'll take a few photos and figure it out later," sorta pictures.
Read More"The Immortal Coil"
The. Internet. Is. The. Best .... I can't even begin to figure out how to put into words how I feel about the weekend I spent with a bunch of crazies from the internet. (Ok that's not true; apparently I begin by talking about how I don't know how to begin ... that's how I begin .... ok but seriously let's begin.) Last month I had the absolute pleasure of hosting a photography meet up/gathering/photo-adventure-camp-for-adults with about a zillion unbelievably talented photographers, all of which I met on the internet. (Excluding my brother Daniel who also attended ... I met him in a hospital this one time before the internet was really a big thing.)
Read More"Her Majesty Waits"
Odds are if you shoot a subject for an image (as in not just a landscape or abstract or something), you want them to stand out. I know I do. As is with all of my work, I try to tell the story of whatever character I've dreamt up. So obviously I want them to be the main focus, the thing you notice first. JUST LOOK AT THEM, WOULD YOU!
Read MoreOk let's be honest - your work is awesome, right? Right. You want every piece of your new artwork to top the last and be even more beautiful and well renowned, but they can't all be the best. It's just not possible (because ... science). All of your work can definitely be good or even great; you can love each and every one of your art-babies equally, but no matter what you do you're going to create a real winner every now and then. Sometimes you accidentally create a unicorn (ok not an actual unicorn ... well maybe you're making a picture of a unicorn ... but just stay with me.) - an image that just shines a bit brighter and sticks its head a bit higher out of the ever-filling pool of images flooding the internet these days.
Read More"Liftoff"
Ok let's just be honest for a second here, everyone and everything in the world looks marginally cooler with wings. Period. It's just the way it is. In middle school when I was heavily into my "drawing magical fantasy creatures" phase (it never ended by the way just ask my sketchbook), I used to check out this "how to draw animals" book from the library all the time. Really they should have just given it to me I had it checkout out so often. I loved to pick several animals and mix them together. I'd make all kinds of crazy critters like bears with lion tails and pig feet, you know, the usual. One common theme seemed to run through every one of these creations was...wings. I'm pretty sure about 95% of them had wings of some sort, (because as we've already been over, everything is more awesome with wings). Well internet I've decided to put my many years of bestowing flight to good use and share some do's and don'ts of adding wings to your images
Read More"The Arrival"
I attended yet another photography meet-up, and as per usual at such an event I felt the need to make some art. For whatever reason though, I was just not feeling super inspired that day. Usually I'm swimming with ideas and can't decide which I want to shoot first, but every concept I was tossing around seemed to fall flat. Yes, I was coming up with ideas here and there but I felt like they were really lacking in story. There I was surrounded by some of my wonderful photography friends and a zillion props and costumes, yet I wasn't creating anything...
Read MoreThe Unobtainable Kiss
I find that I'm never not subconsciously looking for my next photo idea or at least something to be used in editing. Even when I don't think that I'm thinking abut photography, the creative side of my noggin is always waiting right at the edge of my brain to strike when it sees something of interest. One of the things that I'm ALWAYS on the lookout for are great textures. They can definitely be overdone but when used correctly can add a lot of interest to an image. Plus, it's just fun to bring bits and pieces from all of my adventures harmoniously together into one image. For example, in "The Unobtainable Kiss" I used pictures of steam leaking out of a clothing steamer here in the studio, a picture of a baking sheets from my kitchen, a photo of the side of a shelf at an Anthropology store in Baltimore, a pic of a sidewalk in Philadelphia, clouds taken from a plane somewhere over the middle of America, and of course a picture of a frog on a face from Silver Lake New York.
Read More"Releasing The Messengers"
I don't know if you've noticed yet, but expanding a dress in Photoshop has kind of become a must-have portfolio piece for fine art photographers. Well, not so much a "must-have," but definitely an "everyone seems to have." I'm totally cool with this. Robert Cornelius is the biggest sucker for any gloriously rippling, larger than life gown; he just can't help himself. Come on, who doesn't love a GIANT flowing dress!? When you can take a 4 dollar thrift store find and make it look like a huge, impressive, expensive, high fashion ensemble, why wouldn't you? Not to mention it adds lots of interest and production value for no extra cost...unless you have to buy the dress, but you know what I mean.
Read More"The River Ran Scarlet"
As an artist there's bound to be times when I'm faced with challenges that I'm not quite used to. For me one of those challenges was shooting outside. It's definitely a lot of fun, and I've been SO pleased with my first several attempts, but for me I guess I'm just spoiled by the studio. The fact that normally I'm shooting tethered, meaning after I snap a picture I can immediately see it on a big computer screen, really makes shooting outdoors quite nerve-racking. When I take a picture in the studio I never have to play the nail-biting guessing game of, "Is this tiny image on the back of my camera actually in focus?" Or the ever present worry of, "Did I get all the pieces I'll need to pull this edit off?" Usually if I miss something or think of a detail to add later, I can go back to the studio and shoot it. However, when photographing on location I kind of have to get what I get, hope for the best, and deal with it in post.
Read MoreSpring Will Come Again
Dear internet, meet Alex Currie. Ok so MANY of you have already heard of this young man because he is a flippin genius photography protégé who's been making us all look bad since he was old enough to push the shutter button. Seriously people, this Alex character has some mad skills and he's been creating a truly whimsical, gorgeous, story-full, and fantastically artsy portfolio for years now and he's still only 17. In the world of art I don't think age make a difference; talent is talent no matter what.
Read More"Fluttering Luminance"
I was having some major internal struggles with this image, and by internal I mean in my brain space. I've been thinking lately about how a lot of the "fine art photography world" is starting to sludge together. At a glance, the work being churned out is seeming to look rather repetitive. Obviously there are some wild cards, but so many artist are doing the same exact thing. It's like every picture I've seen lately seems to be of a pretty girl flinging her hair in the woods. No pointing fingers here, because um, hello, I'm right there with you...Off in the woods, with a beautiful girl, a flowing dress, and flying hair. Crap. Don't get me wrong I LOVE a good hair flip, and how can you not drool over a beautifully "windblown" dress? It's just that I want to be ever changing, growing and learning. Yet, there I was, sitting at my computer looking at the raw files from this shoot and feeling that it was exactly the same image that's been created a thousand times.
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