Your website gets no traffic and looks like it was designed in 1994. (if you still use frames and rotating gifs, I’m talking to you!) You still think “social media” means watching the news with friends. You think you need to reach out to the whole world to make your business successful but feel overwhelmed no matter how you try and market. You need to stop what you are doing right now and check out Rhea Brown’s website.

Rhea is an expert in social media marketing, branding, and getting you seen by the people that matter most, Converting Clients. No that doesn’t mean they change their religion to follow your business. It means you get people that come to your website and actually follow through with something. They become your client. They purchase your service or your product.

Social media is here to stay. The web has changed. Our interaction with clients has changed. If you want your business to be successful, you need to be aware of what you have to gain by embracing new ways to reach your market. Rhea can help you do just that.

Rhea has a fresh new website and some new photos to go with it! We had a blast making these. Make sure you check out her new website and give her services a thought. She is here to make your business visible!

I also want to throw a plug in here for OnOne Software’s Mask Pro. When using images for twitter backgrounds, headers, and other uses, I often need to knock the background out of an image. MaskPro makes removing backgrounds a breeze. You can remove backgrounds between leaves, hair, eyelashes, etc… with precision! It just works and makes this kind of work so easy. In fact I don’t know how it can be done so well with out this program.

I had so much fun making this image. Actually, I have to admit it is one of my favorite images I’ve made.

I have known Heather and her family for a while through friends. She & her husband are wonderful people. One evening at an event that we were both present for, some how through conversation I caught wind that there was a little “rock & roll” side to Heather. I immediately start thinking that there could be something awesome here. I had a special portrait event coming up and extended the invitation for her family to attend. We discussed the idea of doing a little “transformation” and letting the “rock” out for a bit! On the day of the shoot we made some fun “before” shots… then cranked up some Van Halen & Bon Jovi and got to work!

The look, the expression, the hands, the jewelry, it all just screams, “Ready To Rock!” I am totally ready to see her pick up that guitar and shred Yngwie-style!

Here are some specs of the shoot.

My stylist Helen took care of hair & makeup. I love it! The look came out exactly as we planned!

Guitar Specs:
Classic Early 80s BC Rich Ironbird
Single humbucker is a Dimarzio Super Distortion for that seriously 80s rock/metal tone!

Light Specs:
I used a mix of 5 White Lightning and AlienBee lights for this shot

There are 2 rim lights coming from behind panned left and right. They had barn doors closed down tight. The right rim is gelled pink.
The key light is a large beauty dish above and to the left.
There is a large soft bank used for fill from the right to lift shadows and hold detail.
There is finally a light gelled and dialed down to give the background color and hotspot since this was against white seamless.

Rock / Metal portraits are one of my favorite things to shoot! If you need one, call me and let’s get rockin’ !!!!

I want to give a HUGE congratulations to Kris & Seema! They just had their wedding recently and it was a blast. Kris & I go way back in our musical histories! It was an honor to be part of their awesome event.

I was also quite honored to create some engagement portraits for them. The one up top was their favorite. My favorite from the shoot ended up being this next shot.

I shot this with a set of Pocket Wizard TT5s (that actually did what they were supposed to!) and a speedlight in a medium soft box. I must have been several hundred feet away. We ended up communicating by cell phone to ensure proper placement, etc…

Congrats you two!

I wanted to share an image I made with Orit recently. We had a lot of fun making the shots in this series. Really relaxed feel that totally captured Orit’s style. The whole time I was thinking how I could pull off rolling shots! Maybe if I was on skates it would have worked! Maybe it was just too early in the morning for my panning skills to kick in. I’ll blame it on the IS system…or that my lighting was too stationary! I wonder if assistants come with their own skates too? Oh well!

We later switched up the outfit to knock out a few business photos as well.

This shot was done with a single speedlight through a large shoot-through umbrella a couple feet away. I think it replicated the soft window light pretty well.

So this is where I started. A little edgier than my typical style.

From there I went to this portrait. I lowered my fill light heavily and went to a more broader lighting style.

I was going back and fourth between a Leica and a Canon at this point. (shots 1 & 3 are Leica, 2 & 4 are Canon) As usual I felt the Leica shots had a different character to them. This shot started making me think vintage look a bit. A little lower in contrast, a little softer…I like this one.

Then I felt I might as well take it a step further. Lets add some film grain, some toning, some IR glow in the highlights, maybe some room for a caption on the right side, and see where we end up.

Overall I like each of these for different reasons. If I had to pick one that really defined the shoot for me it would be the third shot. Then again, I might just be a sucker for that “Leica look!”

DC in the morning is just awesome and relaxing…right before all the traffic and crowds begin that is! I recently had a portrait shoot with Jennifer downtown. REALLY early. Jennifer is not only an awesome person to photograph, but she knows her thing when it comes to property! If you are looking to buy or sell your house, check Jennifer out! These were my two favorites from that shoot. I’ve been doing more and more shoots inside the city lately. Hit me up if you want shoot down there! It’s great fun in the morning.

I shot with Jason downtown recently. Fun shoot! Mosquitoes were strangely EVERYWHERE. I didn’t know mosquitoes dominated concrete covered areas too!

Here are a couple more from that shoot! If you are looking to have some portraits made, drop me a line. A nice image for your blog or profile is always cooler than a compact camera in the mirror shot!

Sun flare can be good or bad in a photo. Sometimes it ruins the perfect shot. Some lenses lose contrast heavily with too much flare. Sometimes it adds that awesome starburst on highlights. Like anything else, i’m sure it can get overdone quickly. I’ve always been a big fan of heavy back-lit portraits. They remind me of the end of summer. Lately I have been shooting a lot of these sun flare lit portraits. I must not want to let go of summer for another year. ::sigh:: I love summer.

So whats the scoop on these. Basically I shoot telephoto into the sun, or with the sun angled a bit to my subject’s back. I then just light them from the front as I would normally. Then you just move your lens around until you start seeing contrast take a major hit in the viewfinder! Different angles will give different results. Try it out and let me see some awesome flared shots!

So this is a breakdown of how we set up:

Hauling a giant drum kit up and down two flights of narrow stairs is lots of fun. (Can you hear the sarcasm over the music!?) After some technical difficulties we opted to shoot the kit as a single kick. I discovered that a giant drum kit truly prefers a stage over a studio. I also couldn’t get the side lights exactly where I wanted them due to walls, but everything worked out fine.

We had a lot of fun on this shoot and the shots came out pretty cool. I am partial to the fisheye shot myself.

Enjoy the shots!
-Tony

This image has the same lighting setup but I shot from almost overhead with a fisheye. I had to crop a little so my legs wouldn’t be in the final shot!

I toned this image slightly brown in processing.

I processed this one as well. I dug the toning at first…but its growing on me less as time goes on. We may see a different version of this one soon.

At the SDA event I spoke about in my last post, A Dios Sea La Gloria, I had an interesting task handed to me. “You’re a photographer…we need you to photograph…a lot of people…quickly!” Yeah yeah, sounds normal and routine, I know! So, we need a studio look, in the middle of a giant hall filled with people. The walls just weren’t doing it for me. A quick look backstage revealed a bunch of curtains. Perfect! Pull out a 60″ softlighter, small shoot through umbrella, 5 minutes and we have a key and fill against curtains….BORING!

I did some testings and rim lights just weren’t doing it for me either. Then again, I could have done that and cut everyone out and pasted them into some beautiful island backdrop! …or maybe not… I threw a 430ex onto the background and viola! It turned a boring black background into a cool gradient with patterns and lines! It actually looked pretty cool against the red robes to be photographed! Up top is a photo of Felix. He was working with sound and video crews. Very cool dude, especially for letting me take a shot of him here! I don’t think he was nearly as excited as he looks when I called him over for this quick portrait!

Here is an unedited picture of the three lights.

You can see the lighting setup in this photo. The painters tape is only so people would see where the tripod legs were. There wasn’t too much light to begin width and people were moving fast! 1/4 on key and fill, 1/2 power on the background.