Well, it's been a while since I posted anything. Over a month, but there are reasons for that. Posts will be pretty sporadic for a little while. June 17th, a day after my previous post, I hit the road and left San Diego, my home for the past 15 years more or less, most likely for good except for the occasional visits. I loaded a mini cooper with everything I would need to get me through two and a half months in Norfolk, Va (believe me, loading everything you don't trust the government to move for you into a mini cooper is a whole adventure in and of itself) and left my family, friends and life behind and hit the road. At the end of August, the movers will pack my family and the rest of our stuff up, I will finish my training stop here, and hit the road again to meet them in our new hometown of San Antonio, Texas. If we wind up with tickets in time, there may be an intermediate trip to Burning Man in there, which will be awesome but will create a whole new level of logistical nightmares. But more on that as it happens.
The last weekend before I left SD, I did one final shoot at Aerial Revolution, the aerial gym where I trained and taught for years. Four people came to get shot, Meghan Meridith, another awesome photographer and aerialist, set up the shoot, did styling for the fliers, and most important also brought the beer. I also mailed her a thumb drive with the raw images before I left so she could get a few to the artists, since I figured it would take me a while to get them all worked up myself. I was right. I got here and had to re-build my workstation from scratch, including adding a UPS, because Norfolk, as I almost learned the hard way, has lots of thunderstorms and frequent power outages. Luckily, I only last a redundant backup drive before I figured it out. Over all, it took roughly a month and a half, but I finally got the last images edited and to the aerialists this past week.
It was a really fun shoot and we got some great images. I love shoots where the atmosphere is more like a party but art is still getting done despite the fun, and I even got to shoot some more hot guys in tights to keep the ratio going ( my wife says I have to shoot #x guys per #y women I shoot just to keep me honest )
As it went on the clothes started falling off...
My hair flip guru wasn't there, but we definitely tried to get some hair flips in so she could be there in spirit..
And then it was time to edit. I learned a valuable new trick in my workflow about halfway through editing these. We shot on a black background, and I tried to keep it as dark as possible, but I still had to edit to really get a clean background. Normally I do all of that in photoshop, and I still did the bulk of it in PS, but I found an interesting dichotomy. Using lightroom brushes to blacken the background as a whole wasn't easy, large areas were much easier to do in PS. But the finishing touches were way easier and faster to do in LR. The LR brushes seem to have an amazing edge detection feature that is way more effective and easier to use than any of the PS selection options I could find. So I would do the big area in PS, and leave a buffer around the aerialist, then go back to LR and just trace the outline of the subject and let the magic brush worry about the edges. Worked great and saved lots of time, I probably still would be working on the first set if I hadn't accidentally stumbled across that workflow.
As it was, some of them took longer than others, the B&W conversions I am really loving doing with muscular subjects took a while for each one, but what really took forever were the ones I decided to really get in on and try to learn the art of dodging and burning. If I want to do a lot of fitness photography (and I do) I need to get good at it. Apparently I also need a faster computer to make it an easier process. But I feel like I am starting to get the hang of it...
Overall, I am really happy with the images, and I had a blast on the shoot. If I had to leave, this isn't a bad set of images to end with. Now comes the fun part, I get to try and establish myself from ground zero in a whole new market and community. Time to start editing the portfolio and getting my web site up to snuff. (feel free to make any suggestions). Until I am up and operating from my new home in SA, expect posts to be few and far between, sorry about that, but lots going on and not a lot of time to just sit at the computer. But I'm still around, and will be posting again regularly later this fall. Stay tuned.
