"Some are Born to Endless Night" featuring Lopti of Some Like it Blue
Color plays such an important role in my work. As you all know (well some of you might at least), I adore black and white photography but have such a hard time creating anything without color. There is just so much that color can add to an image, so I find it nearly impossible to deny myself that extra layer to my editing process. Below you'll find five tips for achieving fantastic color in your images!
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"Charged"
Too many times I've seen people upload pictures and say something like, "Uhhgg I don't even really like this ... the blah blah blah looks a little weird and I just can't seem to get the blah blah to look quite right. Oh well here it is ..." It's as if some photographers think that by pointing out the flaws before the viewer spots them, it makes them okay. Negativity doesn't cancel out flaws, it accentuates them. More than half the time, you're going to be the only person to notice whatever it is that's bothering you anyway. Why tarnish your own hard work by pre-forming your audience's view of the pieces as not being that great? Putting something up and asking for constructive criticism in a Facebook group or something is one thing, but throwing a "finished" piece up in your portfolio and bashing on it just makes me want dole out face slaps.
Read More"Bow Ties and Alibis"
I recently had the absolute pleasure of meeting and shooting with Mackenzie Johnson! If you haven't heard of this lovely young lady, kindly press play on the video below .... I'll wait. So as I'm hoping you've gathered, she is an INCREDIBLY talented singer songwriter/sensational Youtube STAR! You can expect me to gush all about her and how phenomenal she is in future posts, but for today let's get down to business and learn how I made her portrait into a painting!! Not everyone is a painter, but with a little time and patience I believe anyone can achieve this effect.
Read More"The Ground We Left Behind"
Go. With. Your. Gut. I know these "brain" things we have are supposed to be the almighty powerhouses of thought - in charge when it comes to decisions and figuring things out. However, I find time and time again that my gut is smarter than my brain. It just knows things. I've given up on fighting it, because my instincts have yet to steer me wrong. There have been many occasions when my brain is really encouraging me to do something, but my gut keeps saying, "Listen Robert, I know your brain is the thinker but I'm the artist, so ignore Mr. Logic and go with what feels right."
Read MoreToday I present to you,"The Pyromancer" featuring Lopti of Some Like it Blue. In the wise words of Alicia Keys, "This girl is on FIIIIIIRRRRRREEEEEEEE! She's just a girl, and she's on fire."
I didn't actually set a girl's hand on fire, although I'm told it's a thing that can be done without hurting someone - I'm just not ready to mess around with that quite yet. I mean, why temp fate (aka a giant expensive softbox up in flames) when you can digitally add the hot stuff to your composited masterpiece from the safety of your desk? Please enjoy these five tips to consider when adding fire to one of your images...
Read MoreIn the fall of 2013 I was doing a lot of listening to the podcast "The Candid Frame." It's one of my all-time favorite photography podcasts to listen to while I'm editing photos all day. If you haven't tuned in before, definitely give it a try. The host, Ibarionex, is a fantastic interviewer and always asks precisely the kinds of questions I really want to know. I'm not a big "gear-head" like some photographers, so the equipment used to create an image is less exciting to me. This is why I just love how Ibarionex really digs deep into the creative and emotional side of his guests' works - it's more about the story and why they made the image rather than how many mega pixels wide the picture is. (Not that there is even the slightest problem with being in the gear and techy side of photography, it's just not for me.)
Read MoreIf I were to always do everything by myself, well that would be rather lonely ... but also I'd miss out on a lot of opportunities to learn and grow as an artist. I absolutely LOVE to collaborate. Whether it be with a makeup artist, hair stylist, costume designer, cosplay badass, graphic artist, model, or other photographer, I always feel such a creative charge when I can throw an idea at another human and have that idea bounce back at me with even more imagination.
Read More"Keeper of The Crystals" features the extremely wonderful Lopti of "Some Like it Blue." She is a cosplay superstar/ rather splendid person to know and work with! Expect to see and hear more about this lovely girl in future posts!! :D
Sometimes as an artist I'll see an idea and go "CRAP! WHY DIDN'T I MAKE THIS!?!?!" There are so many brilliant images popping up on the internet everyday and there's no way I'm going to come up with all of them myself, no matter how much I want to. Oftentimes though, I'll see an image that I just can't get out of my head and I'll simply have to make it on my own. Now, I don't want you to think this is me saying, "It's fine to copy other artists." In fact, it drives me crazy when I see an image that someone has clearly copied from another artist and is passing it off as their own sheer brilliance.
Read MoreSo last year I created an image called "The Thread of Life" inspired by Greek mythology for which I did some research on "The Fate Sisters" (by research of course I mean I Googled it). Thanks to my intensive knowledge-gaining process I obtained the following information: "The Sisters of Fate" aka "The Fate Sisters" aka "the Fates" were originally known by the Greeks as the "Moirai." In all of the different versions of the myth there are always three entities.
Read More"Atop The City of Light"
(Yes the background images were taken from the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris; you can see more of our honeymoon pics here!!)
Oh geez where to even start ... how best to put into words what this other human means to me? Well it went a little something like this: I met the most beautiful, intelligent, kind, hilarious, obnoxiously talented, funny, and perfectly strange girl I could have ever dreamt up. Then, I somehow tricked this once-in-a-lifetime-lady into committing the rest of her lifetime to my crazy ass. (Insert evil cackle here.) Last August I married Sara and I can't say I'll ever do a smarter thing for the rest of my days. Sorry to get all mushy-gushy, but she is absolutely the greatest and I'm so very lucky to have her...... forever (evil laughter ensues). Here are some things I learned about getting married...
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 Reader"
It's a sunny Saturday afternoon in beautiful Philadelphia. My wife Sara is off having a "girly day with her ladies," and I'm left to wander the streets with my camera. Works for me. I find myself aimlessly meandering through Rittenhouse Square Park and noticing that, like in any city, there are so many interesting individuals gathered here. I spot this one elderly woman sitting alone on a park bench, seemingly deep in thoughts about the meaning of life. The warm sunlight is kissing her back and making the top of her ivory locks glow. Her face is fixed in a sad pensive expression. I know that I have to take her picture, and I start snapping images from a short-ish distance away. After a few frames she ever so slightly turns her head and looks straight down the barrel of my camera and into my soul. I was caught. It was in that moment as I pressed the shutter button, while this stranger looked into my lens, that a series was born. (I've ever so cleverly dubbed it, "Strangers In The Park.")
Read More"Beggar’s Dog and Widow’s Cat"
Over the last several months, as I've been releasing new pictures, I've been noticing a trend. Now I'm not going to name names or point fingers (because it could happen to anyone), but I have been thinking a lot about this and figured it was time to share my thoughts. (Cuz sharing is caring...or so they say..whoever they are.) It's time to put an end to this.....
Read More"Lady Solstice"
Yes yes I know, "Robert, you just did a post about expanding a dress" (thanks for remembering), but this is totally different...kinda...mostly...it is, you guys. You see that post was about taking what is already a dress and showing how to make it larger and more glorious. The knowledge I'm going to attack you with today is about creating a dress from scratch out of something that was not a dress...at all.
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 More"Man Was Made For Joy and Woe"
365 days ago, like most humans during the cosmic clean slate of the new year, I was deep in some New Year's resolution pondering. I'd been really enjoying creating photo manipulations from stock photos, seeing what sorts of critters and creations I could dream up, but something wasn't quite there yet. I finally started shooting a few of my own photos to edit at the end of 2013 and I could tell I'd found my calling. So there I was, staring the unknown-ness of 2014 right in the face and it hit me - there was no reason why I shouldn't be shooting photos all the time, and making a name for myself in the photography world. I had all the tools at my fingertips; I just needed to start using them!!
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.
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