What Chuck Does

Life

Amber McNeil: Just finished a marathon shoot. 1,000 pictures, 5 sets, 11 hours.

Physical: Dipping under 12% fat. Working out regularly. Eating well lately though.

House: Just about done redecorating upstairs, time to move up.

iPhone: Getting an iPhone 3GS tomorrow!

Photoshop: Got a Wacom Intuos4 (small) for retouching.

AlienBees: I love these things. Getting 2 more AB800’s tomorrow with some barndoors.

Working out tomorrow: ‘nuff said.

Starting to shoot engagements/weddings: Update on this later with pics.

Danger - Music Video

A couple weeks ago I shot pictures for my brother’s first music video for his song “Danger”. It’s finally done and released online. Check it out! I make a cameo appearance in the out-takes towards the end of the video! LOL!

Multi-dimensional learning: Dave Hill, Jill Greenberg, photography, retouching… ART

I set out on this journey to learn more about photography. My journey quickly became an exposé on lighting back in February. The concept of light captivated me and eventually I stumbled upon strobist.com and learned all my basics from David Hobby. Quickly however I found myself drawn towards lighting people rather than still life and other inanimate objects… to me nothing compares to the depth of a good portrait.

On my path to learn good portraiture, I’ve been heavily influenced by the styles of Dave Hill and Jill Greenberg. I would say I’m a Hill/Greenberg hybrid trying to find a niche of my own. I view them both as artists. Jill Greenberg is dubbed “the manipulator” exactly for this reason; she creates art. While both photographers focus on creating a surreal look that is sometimes termed “gritty” or “hyperrealistic”, the one thing they have in common is that they both use a hell of a lot of dodge and burn!

The following are examples of their work:

Dave Hill

Jill Greenberg

Incidentally much controversy still surrounds Jill Greenberg’s “crying babies/End Times”pictures because of the methodology used to get the babies to cry.

I used to think their look was based primarily on lighting because my style originated from lighting. However the more I research, read and experiment, the more I realize that their work depends heavily on post-processing. Without the proper retouching techniques both Hill and Greenberg would be unable to create such dramatic pictures.

So lighting led me to portraiture, and portraiture led me to retouching, all of which have been parts of my “multi-dimensional learning”. As far as retouching is concerned, I used to rely exclusively on LucisArt’s Whyeth plug-in to create gritty and hyperrealistic photos, but no more. I finally delved into learning Photoshop. The following picture is a testament to my Photoshop education:

This picture utilized the following adjustments, layers, and masks:

In conclusion, this photographic journey has led me through lighting, modeling, portraiture, and post-processing (Lightroom and Photoshop). The pictures you find on this blog are snapshots of my photographic discoveries and represent progress in my education. Hell, this post was started April 13th and is finally getting published today May 16th. In this month, I’ve definitely grown and learned a lot about the various pieces that comprise the entire puzzle. With that said, I leave you with my profile picture:

Back in LA…

24 days later. I’m back in LA. Where did I go and what did I do? They can be broken up into the following categories:

• Photoshoots and scheduling photoshoots
• Family and gatherings which includes the category of eating
• Playing golf, which is actually a subcategory of Family

There you have it in a nutshell. Yes I know this post is useless without pics. But I never promised pics… I’ll elaborate on each category shortly. I promise pictures!

Nail the shot. Rob a bank.

When you nail the shot, it feels like you got away with robbing  a bank.

I went to a small pub yesterday with my brother and his friends. They were shooting a music video for the release of his newest song. I went to go check it out.

At the end of their shoot, I wanted to take a few pictures of MIchelle who was already in makeup and wardrobe for the shoot. This was about 5:50PM and they had only rented the place until 6PM. I set up a few lights and with the exception of some technical difficulties pretty much nailed the shot from frame 1. I was done in less than 20 minutes and got 3 different lighting setups and mini “sets” in that amount of time.

What were the winning factors?

• Hair, makeup, wardobe
• Scene (the pub)
• Experienced model
• Proper lighting (contrast!)
• Proper post-processing

Speaking of post-processing. Very little had to be done. That’s the mark of a winning shot. You don’t need to because it’s pretty much all there. See for yourself:

Strobist info: Strobe shooting into 42” Westcott silver umbrella camera right with warming gel. Bare strobe camera front left for rim lighting.

Strobist info: Single strobe shooting into 42” Westcott silver umbrella camera upper back with warming gel.

The significance of the shoot is much more than just the results to me. Primarily this shoot shows that I’m batting a higher average now and my understanding of lighting is improving. I wouldn’t dare say that I’m a pro now and can replicate these results every time. But I will say that I’m getting better at this stuff.

The Last Couple Days

I’ve been sick, in Taiwan.

But since coming back to Taiwan on Tuesday night, I’ve done the following:

• gone to an engagement/wedding
• post-processed 2 photoshoots
• done 1 photoshoot
• gone out to eat like everyday
• created my photo gallery at www.lucima.com
• scheduled 3 shoots in LA for late May/early June
• gone to the temple (twice)
• got a facial
• went to the gym for 1.5 hours
• KTVing at Cashbox

Lots of fun. Tired though because of the jetlag and being sick. Hopefully Monday yields higher productivity.

Connected in New York

“We are not separated so much by our differences as we are connected by our similarities.” - I’m sure someone has said this before

I used to think New York was a melting pot of strangers. Random people walking around with only one similarity, the city in which they lived. Today I realized that this is not the case.

We’re all human beings and we share more in common than we are different. That perspective of compassion allowed me to feel connected to everyone, from the beggars on the streets to the tourists riding the subways. They say that every human being on the planet is separated only by 7 degrees.

With compassion, there is no separation. We are all brothers and sisters.

I suppose it sounds strange, it’s really more of an experience rather than a perspective, thought or a philosophy. I used to think New York was the loneliest place in the world. But in contrast, it’s allowed me to see that no one is alone. We are all connected in one way or another.

Great 2nd Day in New York

Billy Madison, Times Square, Mercer’s and finally some good Strobist pictures!

New York is crazy

New York is simply another world. The crowds, the people, the tourism, the traffic, the mass transit system, it’s all different.

It’s cold. Can’t survive here unless you keep warm during the winter.

Got here this morning on a red-eye flight arriving at 7AM. It was a horrible flight on which it was impossible to get any real sleep. My energy levels died around 11AM here EST and I couldn’t function for the next 3 hours.

Incidentally I have been having a hell of a hard time figuring out my Nikon CLS TTL system. I don’t use TTL much and it’s hard for me to understand whether or not I’m achieving the proper exposure with the flash system… I must have taken 200 test shots today and I still couldn’t answer all my questions. I blame most of this on simply being too tired to perform simple logic.

Photography-wise, today was a bust. My batteries on the flash died and I learned today that I’m not a good “run-and-gun” photographer. How the hell am I supposed to shoot a wedding if I can’t get good shots on the go? Gotta practice more tomorrow.