Alison Jo Makeup Artistry Video

The final cut just finished, stars Abby Stahlschmidt and Madeleine Heppermann, with makeup by Alison Jo, clothing stylist Omar Samy, photography and video by Ray Meibaum and Preston Page, photo styling by Susan Page and music by Alex Clare.

Editing
I had been using Avid Studio, but it crashes under Windows 8.  There is now no mention of Avid Studio on the Avid.com support site, so I scrambled for alternatives.  The workflow for this video turned out to:

1. Organize, trim and color correct clips in Lightroom 4, then export to a working folder.
2. Assemble the music and clips in Photoshop CS6 and exported to a full HD file.  This approach is actually effective and straightforward, delivering a fairly polished rough cut.
3. End titles added with Cyberlink PowerDirector Ultimate 11. The interface is similar to Avid, but it is stable and much faster.  
4. Cyberlink uploaded the web optimized video to Vimeo and YouTube.  

Technical
Cameras: Nikon D4 and Nikon D800
Lighting: Lowell Tungsten and Broncolor modeling lights
Support: Acratech Video Adapter, Opteka Shoulder Stock, Miller Fluid head.

Moon Rise with Poplars

It is great to have the time to grab a few shots again.  This a view from our bedroom, March 27, 2013.  This picture is the result of three hand held 1-stop bracketed shots processed in Nik HDR Efex 2, with minor touch up and cropping in Photoshop CS6.

New to OnOne Perfect Suite 7 is Perfect B&W.  This picture was made the Albumen Print preset, after which I applied a sepia/blue split tone in Photoshop CS6.  I'm fascinated by the look of early photographic processes and it is nice to have tools that support exploring them easily.

Technical
Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: AF Nikkor 180mm f/2.8D IF-ED
Exposure: Three 1-stop brackets around f/2.8 @ 1/15s @ ISO 1600
Support: Handheld
Software: DxO Optics Pro, Lightroom 4, Photoshop CS6, Nik HDR Efex, Perfect B&W

Tree of Influences Redux

Irving Penn, 1949

In his wonderful book, "A Notebook At Random, Irving Penn shared his "tree of influence" sketch.  The exercise is remarkable, showing painters as the roots, photographers as the canopy and art directors as the trunk linking the two.  

Irving Penn's Tree of Influence
A Notebook At Random, 

Finding myself at something of an artistic crossroad, I decided to attempt something similar.  The task seemed easy; just list my favorite painters and photographers.  When my list grew to about 48 photographers, it was clear that, while I really love all forms of photography and appreciate a wide variety of styles, if I was to figure out which artists had been nagging at my subconscious for the past 50 years, I really had some painful sorting and ranking work to do.

The result of this effort so for is this single web page, Ten Photographer's Influence, which ranks in order the photographers who most influence my thinking, and example photographs and quotes by the photographer.  Irving Penn is, and always has been, at the top of my list.  I credit one of his pictures, an ad for Oreo cookies, as triggering my interest in photography.  

Mimi With Gold Walther PPK, 2012

It looks like the entire content of this blog was lost I changed the title, so I guess this is reboot for 2013. What better way to start fresh that with an image from the "Femme Fatale" project?  Thank you to my collaborators, the marvelous model Mimi Graczyk, hair by Kris Theohar, makeup by Christoper McKinney and photo styling by Susan Page.  I hope to pick up the pace on this and other art projects this year.

Workflow
This workflow has become pretty much my standard for fashion and beauty work:

• Capture tethered to a laptop using Nikon Camera Control Pro 2 and ViewNX 2
• At the end of the day, import pictures to a new Lightroom catalog for tagging and sorting
• Process the RAW picks in DxO Optics Pro 8, output as DNG files and import to Lightroom
• From Lightroom, run through basic beauty and fashion retouching in Photoshop CS6
• Apply a standard "look" using a custom recipe in Nik Color Efex Pro 4, which for me usually involves application of tone and contrast filters. 
• Finish in Lightroom with a develop preset to complete the look.  For this series, I'm using a split tone with a sepia wash and blue shadows.

Technical
camera: Nikon D800
lens: AF Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8D
exposure: ISO 800 @ f/25 @ 1/80s
lighting: vintage Broncolor beauty dish

Links
Preston Page Studio
PrestonPage.com