Day Two

Our last day working on our video was a flaming success. Didn't take too long to set up, but took forever to film. Today's was the opposite.

Not that it wasn't a flaming success, it was. Not sure why I'm using the word "flaming" to describe it. But today's was equally as good. It was opposite in the fact that today we shot the shortest scene in the video, but spent the longest time in the world setting it up. From the pictures you'd probably think it was super easy, but trust me, it wasn't.

Trying to coordinate three trucks, all of them parked in the middle of the road for long periods of time, thus pissing off the other drivers, wasn't fun. But the little kids and their moms had a good time watching us the whole time. Good for them.

Check out the pictures from today.

Prepping the take off

A frame from the video

Day One Filming Our Video

Long day today. Me, Kyle and Jesse took all of our camera equipment to the school. Which consisted of:

• My camera
• My camera bag with all the goods
• A long microphone
• A dolly track
• My camera stabilizer arm

We spent all of third period setting up our shot. Figuring out what we though were ALL the kinks in our plan to shoot.

Then after school we got together with some people who wanted to be in the video. It took forever to get the shot right, we had elevator problems, people talking, people not doing their part right (including me), and all that crap.

After two hours, we got our shot perfect. We're all really happy about how the video's coming so far. Check out some pictures from the first day.

HDR Photography

Ever since I discovered Sean Stiegmeier's Vimeo channel, I've been really interested in shooting HDR photography. (http://vimeo.com/sstieg) 

Long story short, normal HDR photography is shooting 3+ pictures at different exposures, then layering them on top of eachother, and you get a really cool, detailed effect. A lot of times, to get a different effect, you can take up to 7 exposures. But today, I started small with 3. That's HDR in a nutshell.

So today I went down to Vineyard with some friends, and after hopping the "No Trespassing" barricade, we came to this old abandoned house in the middle of the open farmland. And here's where I gave my first go at HDR photography.

Here's an example. I started out by taking these three pictures.

 

 

And I got this:

I think it's a pretty cool effect, I'm still learning though.

All the HDR's I'm putting up have very little editing done, most of them are just layered and tweaked a little to get the right look. So other than that, they're straight off the sensor. 

Check them out. 

Remember to click on the image to see it full size.

I Hate Studio Photography

It's true. Studio photography is one of my least favorite things to do. I like taking pictures in real life situations. But... when it goes on my grade I end up doing it.

I've only shot studio pictures one other time in my life, and I was horrible at it. It was chaotic.

This time around we all knew what we were doing. So we took pictures of eachother, and even got Ashton to come be in our pictures. He's the only super senior I really love.

I think most of my pictures turned out pretty cool. It kind of sucked we only had a black back drop, seeing as almost everyone was wearing dark clothes, but whatever. Check out how they turned out.

You can click on the picture to see it bigger.

Ben, trying out split lighting

Ashton (left) & Ricky (right)

Ben

Jesse

Ben, we thought this one was pretty sweet.

Ashton, so photogenic. Love him.

Ben, and Jesse's thumb. Not sure what the idea here was.

Our Own Spin..

At school, I'm in a TV Broadcasting class. Right now me, Kyle and Jesse are writing, shooting and editing our own spin on the Old Spice commercial.

Except our theme isn't body wash or deodorant, it's covering the traditions of Orem High.

We have our script and storyboard done. So we spent the evening planning out how we're gonna film this baby, tonight we focused on getting nice shirt rips, like in the commercial (or the BYU commercial, I'm not sure which one they do it in.) 

We're really taking time to make this a cool video, we're all really confident everyone's gonna like it.

Here's some pictures from our little planning sesh in the basement.

Test Shirt #1

After some mutilation, don't mind this looks pretty gay.

This is how we brainstorm

Jesse, no comment

I didn't feel like editing any of these pictures, partially because I don't have photoshop at my house anymore, so I can only edit at school.

Moving Up in the World

I've been into video and photo for a few years now, and decided that if I wanna make a name for myself with it someday, I need to have the right stuff for it.

So I went out and bought a bunch of camera equipment, way out of my price range, thus screwing myself over as far as money goes. But to me it's worth it.

I'm no pro, I admit it, and I'm new to the DLSR family. But gotta start somewhere. Here's a few pictures I took recently on the Canon Rebel T2i.

      

                          

Conforming

I've been on the audience side of blogging for years now.

Not gonna lie, it's an addicting pastime of mine, reading blogs, looking at pictures, etc.

I figure this is a pretty good way to get my stuff out there, plus now all the creeps in the world can stalk me, because I made this viewable to anyone, not sure why.

I'm mainly gonna be using this for photography and video, two of my favorite things to do, as I've discovered in the past few years.

So let me know what you think of my stuff if you feel the need, and if you're better than me, feel free to give me tips. Trying to get better here.