Desere Evoquer

Top 5-ish Photos of 2019 – A Year in Review.

Spoiler alert - In true UNEXPhotography fashion this post contains WAY more than 5 photos. Hope you don’t mind.

Here we are once again at the end of another year. The end of another decade. It’s still strange to me that this adventure started 12 years ago and here I am still keeping going. Yet, I’m still not surprised.

Stubborn maybe, but not surprised.

This year has been far from an easy one ( think I talked about that in the last blog) but that wasn’t enough to stop me. But enough of being a downer, this post is about accomplishments. So lets dig in so we can catch up shall we?

I know when I get a message from The FanDOM crew that something fun is about to happen. This year they have tasked me with two very ambitious projects that we were able to work together with.

The first was in January when they asked me to create a series of portraits that were in the same style as what Marvel has been doing with its MCU marketing. This was one of the first major projects that I played with compositing images into artificial backgrounds, and while some worked better than others I think that the end result was pretty good.

2019 was also the first year I branched out and hired a professional traveling model. Abby Div is wonderful, and if you have the chance to catch her in your city I totally recommend you do so!

Because of my work with The FanDOM I have received several inquiries for more work within the Atlanta burlesque community, and it was a pleasure getting to meet and work with Ruby Marx this year. I have been watching behind the scenes as she is rising through the ranks to become a powerful performer, and can’t wait to shoot with her again in the future!

Of course, who could forget Sunday O’Dare? She jumped at the chance to help get me out of my mid-year slump and we were able to create something simple yet elegant as always.

Another FanDOM project was creating a set of cards for the Pokémon themed show. I partnered with resident media expert Red Kyber to make a unique physical set of marketing cards (That I still need to get my hands on there Red) that fans, performers, and audience members couldn’t wait to collect.

Honorable Mentions

Working in the photographic industry for a day job allowed me to have some fun takin portraits that were used on company websites and other internal media.

I even had the chance to play around with some unique techniques and equipment to create a different look while playing with depth of field.

Ultimately the job never materialized, and only now are some of the test images getting to see the light of day.

Writer, Actor, and Performer Gideon Hodge asked me to shoot some new headshots for him, and during the session I was able to shoot the image above. Sometimes the best work comes when you are just “playing around” after the original job is done.

This was an outtake from my last shoot of the year with Benjamin Unbutton (see more in the previous blog post). This particular photo didn’t make the cut for the original blog…but I couldn’t let it go to waste.

Earlier in the year I lead a tour of photographers through The Netherlands, and took a short break from portrait photography to capture some wonderful images of bikes and graffiti (My usual when traveling abroad for some reason).

And finally an image I completely forgot I captured. During some camera tests, I had the perfect feline model hop into frame and sat really still and pretty for just a few seconds.

Accomplishments:

I was asked to be a part of two podcasts this year. So if you want to listen to me ramble on…I have provided the two links below.

I actually enjoyed the experience both times, and can’t wait to see about talking more in 2020.

 

So that’s about it. We’ve come so far, and as always have so far to go. Thanks for sticking it out with me.

Have a wonderful New Year everyone. See you in 2020!

The Fandom Nerdlesque: Infinitease Promo Photos - 2019

The time is finally here! For anyone who has been following me on Social Media the last few weeks you have probably heard me teasing these series of images. For you and those who may not have known alike you are all in for a treat.

I was contacted by my friends over at The Fandom Nerdlesque (who if you don’t know are an Atlanta based collective of nerd-themed burlesque performers from all across the country) asking if I wanted to be a part of the marketing push for their upcoming Marvel Themed Show (being performed at the time of this blog post on Friday and Saturday THIS WEEK..HINT HINT…TICKET LINK AT THE END OF THE POST…HINT HINT).

After some very brief talk of concept, we decided that the end goal was to emulate the famous Marvel MCU posters that have been coming out regularly. It wasn’t until we were on set going through photos that I thought about using some various forms of compositing to create artificial backdrops for each character.

Jet Spiegl - Matt “Daredevil” Murdock

Risky Sour - Domino

Jessica Nova - Hela

Red Kyber - Thor

Silver Kitsune - Hawkeye

Batsy Sinclair - Rogue

Sig Sawyer - Deadpool

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Final poster design by Evin from Apologue Media. He did a FANTASTIC job of throwing everything together into an amazing final product. Be sure to throw him some love as well!

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Additional poster design by Kali Fornication (You can see her link above under her Thanos photo).

Get your tickets here!

For a peek behind the curtain as to how the sausage was actually made, keep reading below.

I’ve done some experimenting with various forms of compositing over the last few years. For more of an expert’s view I would make sure to check out the work of Renee Robyn or Clinton Lofthouse. Anything I have learned was very much learned by watching both of these amazing artists at work.

The first part of the recipe was making sure that the subject of the photo was lit properly. In the case of these Marvel photos I needed 4 lights. A Key in a 3’ Octabox, a fill in the form of a 12” beauty dish, and two 3x5 softboxes as rear kickers.

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That setup lent itself to a photo like the below.

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by using content aware fill you get one of the following photos below.
One worked better than another:

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Spoiler alert, it was this one that worked much better.

Spoiler alert, it was this one that worked much better.

Afterwards I roughly followed this tutorial from DIY Photography to mask the image

Click the photo above to read an in depth article that I assure you is WAY less scary that it looks.

Click the photo above to read an in depth article that I assure you is WAY less scary that it looks.

After masking its then just a matter of sourcing an appropriate background, and then adding any needed tweaks to it to fit the image at hand, and then several hours of refinements…the process of which I don’t have photos of because I didn’t think to take them.

If you would like to see a more in-depth step by step, let me know. I’d be happy to work something together!

The FanDom Nerdlesque - 120FPS Video B-Roll Test

This is a bit of a departure from the regular content normally found in my Blog posts. Many who have talked with me about my background know that I started in video before finding my "calling" in photo. 

I just so happened to be at a birthday party for one of my regular clients, and heard that The FanDom was going to be shooting some promo photos and video for their upcoming show. After finding out that my day was open they invited me to come by and hang out for the day. I expected to maybe do some consulting work and a fair bit of networking. Little did I know I would end up running sound, and then in a stroke of genius decided to pull out my camera and record a little super-slow-mo video B-roll for their project.

Its not perfect by any means, but it was a nice little sizzle reel to remind myself that I still know a thing or two about video. 

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