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.
Read MoreAs you fine people might have noticed, I sorta kinda mostly tend to produce color images. According to my math, it's about 100% of the time. (But who are we kidding, I'm terrible at math...) Well my friends, there has been this vile thing lurking around the interwebs in which a photographer "challenges" another photographer to create a black and white image. Then that photographer challenges someone else and so on and so forth. It's like an evil monochromatic chain letter monster stampeding the color out of everything. Ok, so in all honesty it isn't really evil per-say, but challenge is definitely a good word for it (at least when it comes to me and my work). I just love color. I love how different tones can evoke emotions and moods and visually make the viewer look at the image in a different way. Color can aid in composition and help to highlight key attributes of the image. Carefully crafted color can drive the viewer's eye around an image like a road map. When that extra creative tool is left out of the creative process, it's a whole new ball game (but no balls are involved....)
Read MoreToday I'm going to be delightedly babbling on about one of my very favorite Photoshop techniques. I use it on every single image in one way or another. First though, I'd like to do some babbling about two really fantastic humans. As you may have discovered by now, earlier this month (October 2014 for you future people), I attended a Flickr gathering. At this meet up I met several of my new favorite people, aka everyone there. Two of these artists in particular happened to be Sarah Ann Loreth and Joel Robison. For those of you that don't know of these fine people, first of all I'm sorry, and secondly GET ON IT! Not only are they both incredibly talented creative image makers, but they, along with Shane Black, are wonderful enough to dedicate their time to spreading art, learning, and love to artists all across the nation through their traveling non-profit photography workshops called The Wild Ones. Basically what I'm trying to say is that they are super rad people to be around. I was lucky enough to have had some Flickr-meet-up-bonding-time with these crazy kids and can now officially call them my friends. (Life goal achieved.)
Read MoreI was invited by the glorious human Valerie Kasinski (pictured above for those of you that skipped over the caption), to a Flickr gathering at her family's cottage in the small town (village?....area?) of Silver Lake, in upstate New York. What is a Flickr gathering you ask? Well friends, it's this odd phenomenon in which you meet a bunch of strangers on Flickr.com and decide that it's a good idea to gather together and take pictures of each other. It is a good idea. It's actually the best idea ever. Period. The End. (Not the end of the blog post, please keep reading.)
Read MoreIt happens to us all at one point or another (usually at many points), when you have a desire to create some artsy art, but no fantastical ideas. It's quite frustrating. You could just start shooting like a crazy person with no plan, but who would do that? One of my favorite things to do when I'm ready to shoot, but not sure where to begin, is to find an object to inspire me and then plan around it before I start shooting. For me, the very best place to do this is in the prop warehouse at work. (Yes I know, it's not fair. I have access to zillions of props. How the heck did I get so lucky!?) During the more than 30 years that the studio has been open, they have been acquiring props. Mainly these trinkets are from doing shoots for clients and them just leaving items here with us to use for future shoots. We have seriously anything you can think of. (Please don't actually test me on that. It's probably not totally true, but we have A LOT.)
Read MoreOk so here's how this goes down: Thanks to my amazing friend Sarah, I was asked by the website InMyBag.net if I would like to be featured and write an article. (Umm duh yeah, your website is awesome.) Sarah wrote this article for them and then graciously told the people at In My Bag that I existed, so major points for her. Anyway, this isn't really an actual blog post, it's more of a, "HEY! GO READ THE ARTICLE I WROTE FOR IN MY BAG AND THEN TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT IT," sorta post.
Read MoreNow don't let me lead you astray with the title of this post. It's an absolutely EXCELLENT idea to plan things. Whenever possible I do plan out as much as I can before a photo shoot. If anything changes on the spot, splendid, but if there's a plan to set in motion it really helps things go smoothly. HOWEVER, this does not mean that it's wrong to just shoot something off the cuff, with no idea what sort of an outcome is intended. Sometimes I need to shoot. Once in a while the gravitational pull of the studio is too powerful; I can't fight it just because I don't have anything planned! So I roll with it. That is precisely what happened with "Temptress of the Tides."
Read MoreI can't tell you the number of times I've been asked how I take so many wonderful, amazing, perfect pictures on a vacation and yet still seem to be present and enjoy the experience with my own eyes. Just kidding I can tell you... none, no one has ever asked me that. However it is a thing I often struggle with (by "often" I mean whenever I'm on vacation). I'm sure at some point we have all had a conversation that went something like, "Man it's so hard to take lots of photos to document my trip, (for when my brain is old and wrinkly and can't remember all the details), but then I get home and realize I was barely even on the trip because I spent the whole time playing documentarian. I was constantly spying on the world through a view finder or fiddling with settings to get everything looking just right, and I hardly remember what it was actually like to be there."
Read MoreMy delightfully hilarious friend from down under, Handy Andy Pandy, has bestowed upon me the honor of being a part of this crazy blog hop thinger. Here's how it's gonna go down - I'm going to gab on for a bit about how truly wonderful Andy is, then I'm going to answer 4 questions about myself, and finally I'm going to force upon you three other glorious artists to check out. THEN, those artists will do this very same thing a week from now, where each of them ask three MORE people to join in, and the ever growing web of creative blog hop posts will branch out on and on until it explodes the internet. Sound good? Ok great, let's get started...
Read MoreWHY HELLOOO, and welcome back to my crazy corner of the internet. Today I'm going to talk about my "Dust to Dust" series. The original picture lands the most questions in my lap, like, "how the heck did you achieve that effect?" Well, my fine feathered friends (I imagine you don't actually have feathers, but if you did...they'd be fine), the time has finally come to release unto the vastness of the interwebs all that is the majesty of my process for creating an image in this series. Really it's not all that difficult, but it does take a lot of time and a keen (obsessive) eye for detail. Here are some tricks I used to make this image happen.
Read MoreWhoa dang, look! This guy is covered in barbed wire, crazy right!? It must all be Photoshop magic you're thinking, because by now I know you've all discovered that I'm a big fat photo-manipulating cheater and nothing is real. But shoot, this looks like it's really on that poor guy... Must be some fake barbed wire that isn't sharp, right? Nope. That's as real and sharp as they make it. Also, yes we really did put it all over him. Sorta. ALL of this wasn't on at one time, but we did actually put a fair amount of this gnarly stuff on him. Then I used some sneaky shooting and editing techniques to get lots more wire on while still totally selling it as real...at least I hope I did.
Read MoreTake a good look at this picture. (Cool thanks!) Believe it or not, this image began as a picture of a girl (my delightful friend Molly), sitting in the studio against a black background. No lake, no sky, no seaweed, no need for an underwater camera housing and certainly no fish. To some people, including my past self (let's call him Past-Bert just for fun), would look at this picture and think, "How the heck did they do that!? I could never take a picture like this!" Past-Bert saw all kinds of crazy composited images back in the day (somewhere around 2008-ish) that just blew his poor little mind to pieces (small ones). He was thoroughly enjoying photography, but Past-Bert hadn't even dipped his toe into the compositing pool yet. Now I like to think I often scuba dive in the deep end. Allow me to let you in on a few of my dirty little tricks that help bring my composites to life!
Read MoreHello internet friends. Allow me to paint a little picture for you. Let's say that you want to create an image of yourself all tangled up in a ton of ropes, floating in a dark, dusty, endless abyss. (Well then you must be a crazy person ... or me). "How," you might ask, "did you take that picture while all tangled in ropes?" Well I'm glad you asked ... I didn't. Yes that's right, I did not actually push the button on the camera that caused this picture to exist. So, am I still the photographer?
Read MoreBeing mainly a composite photographer, I tend to snap about 42,000 shots during one of my photo shoots. I know that AT LEAST once during editing I'll think to myself (or curse the heavens out loud), "Why didn't I take one like fill-in-the-blank-here!?" So naturally I've developed a habit of taking more pictures than I could possibly need. This is good for me and my brain, but might make you crazy. I'm by no means saying in order to be a good photographer you must take TONS of photos. Some photographers get everything they want in just a couple of shots (and I majorly respect that), but I'm not one of those people. I want options for days. Once I have an obnoxious library of images to work from, I must then embark on the daunting task of deciding which one is going to be my final image. WHICH ONE!?
Read MoreI, Robert Cornelius, have decided it's about time I become a blogger, but where do I start?
Here's where I believe it all began ... For most of my early childhood (somewhere below the ripe old age of 10), my parents owned and operated a pizza restaurant called "Corny's Cozy Corners," centrally located in the middle of nowhere in the rolling Amish countryside of Ohio. This was a very interesting and wonderful place to grow up. There was no cable or anything at the restaurant to keep my older sister Katelyn and me occupied all day, so a lot of imagination was required to keep us entertained for hours on end. Subsequently I also did A LOT of drawing.
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