Starving Artistry

Day 88

// March 31st, 2011 // No Comments » // Photo, Project 365

Well, as I said in the previous posts, my seamless paper backgrounds are too wide to fit in their new spot. So although I experimented with the cloth backdrop (that’s a no-go), my goal was always to cut the rolls of paper down to a size that will fit in their new spots.

So i took my roll of white paper over to Tay’s dad’s garage to use his power tools to try to cut the paper down to the correct size. While he did have a lot of tools there, he didn’t have any blades for his table saw that were thin enough to cut the paper finely. But since I had some space to work with we cut off a tiny bit of paper with this thick wood blade and it cut surprisingly clean. Tay’s dad offered to go out and pick up a thinner plywood blade to try again, so we put the project on hold for now. All I have to show for tonight is this little bit of scrap from what we tried tonight which I will promptly recycle. That’s cool because I don’t need it until April 9th so I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that everything will work out.

Day 87

// March 30th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Photo, Project 365

Taylor the Toolgirl

I just want to say two things. First of all, Taylor is not, and never will be a Toolgirl. Second, I don’t know why anyone would ever choose a cloth muslin backdrop over a paper backdrop. Man, what a pain in the butt, AND it looks like butt too!

Check out what all my hard work amounted to:

My Basement

Yep. Looks like crap. So, I’m gonna go over to Tay’s parent’s tomorrow to cut up my paper roll and hope that it cuts smoothly. Because otherwise this will be a gigantic failure. Dangit.

Day 86

// March 29th, 2011 // No Comments » // Photo, Project 365

Hanging Backdrop Mount

You may ask yourself “What am I looking at here?” And the answer would be… that PVC pipe that is attached to my ceiling. Now that I have some paying clients coming over here to take some photos, I felt that it would be important to de-clutter my basement and maximize the amount of space I can really utilize to take photos. That meant changing the orientation of my backdrops. Unfortunately, the amount of space I have to work with isn’t very much, and the width of my basement as viewed through that photo is only 99 inches (because of that stupid air duct running along the right side of the room). My photo backdrops are 103 inches…

Plus, the stands themselves take up room and whatnot, so a ceiling mount would free up some floor space. So I ordered these and took some rudimentary measurements to try to get them to fit well. I went to home depot to get some ceiling anchors, and a PVC pipe to use as the backdrop mount. I had estimated that I would have 85″ of space in between the two mounting brackets, so I had this PVC pipe cut to 85″. Welp, i was wrong. Looks like it’s more like 88 1/2″ of space, so this 85″ pipe barely fits. Oops. There’s $5 down the drain. But, at least I have almost 4 extra inches of space, which is great! I plan on taping some of my cloth back drops to the PVC pipe.

The next challenge is to take my rolls of PAPER backdrops and cut them down to size. As I said, my paper backdrops are 103″, so I have to take off about 15″ of paper. The next size down is 54″, which is next to useless unless you’re just doing a headshot. So, hopefully Tay’s dad has a reciprocal saw or something that can make a nice clean cut through paper and cardboard. Yep… I’m going to test it on my roll of white paper, which is almost out anyway. Then if that is successful, I will do it on my grey roll, and then mount everything up there. The ceiling mount can have three rolls mounted at any one time, so my plan is to have white, grey, and a green-screen.

I also used the proceeds of my engagement photo shoot to order another flash to replace this Yonguo flash which i believe has finally quit on me. No more $70 flashes from ebay. I need reliable equipment…

I’m also kind of wishing that instead of embarking on this project 365 regarding photos, that I had instead done some sort of project 365 related to being creative. Like, do something creative or productive each night. I’m extremely grateful that my photography has progressed so much since starting this project, but I find that my music has been slipping, and that is making me sad. I may wind up doing more music and video, and just taking pictures of my progress as visual evidence. Do you think that’s cheating?

Day 85

// March 28th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Photo, Project 365

The Red Door

I apologize once again for a fairly unimaginative daily photo. However, I just got these ceiling-mounts for my studio backdrops which I plan on installing tomorrow. Only caveat is that my backdrops are wider than the width of my room, so I need to figure out a way to cut the rolls to fit better. Actually, I may not have time to install them tomorrow, but I do need to make sure I get over to Home Depot to get some ceiling anchors and stuff.

If this works, it should help de-clutter my basement… which is important, since the weekend of 4/9 I have lots of photos to take! A maternity photo shoot, plus an easter Toddler photo shoot!

Day 84

// March 27th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Photo, Project 365

Sick.

I am sick. I guess staying up all night, playing for 6 hours in the freezing cold, then going to take pictures in the freezing cold got to me. My throat was sore before then anyway. Sigh.

I am going to call it an early night. I almost forgot to take a picture today, but I did a lot of photo work in editing those engagement pictures. I’m going to post those to try to redeem today’s picture (which i shot bare bulb flash… lack of effort is blamed on being sick!).

I am really trying to find the right way to present these engagement shots. I’m usually a really big contrast guy, as well as “Clarity” because it makes the photos look really dynamic and cool. But after going through about 1/2 of their engagement shots that way, I decided that maybe that wasn’t the way to go for engagement shots, so I tried a softer approach. What do you think?