Oh man oh man… I’ve really dropped the ball on this lately. What’s been going on?
It’s not that I haven’t had any content, I just haven’t had time (and maybe motivation) to post much on here. A lot of my time in the last several months has been spent really just working on JTooned stuff. I’ve been slammed with toons and I just can’t seem to keep up. It’s not a bad problem to have at all and I’m not complaining, but it’s just one of those things that eat away hours that prevent me from doing much of anything else.
I’ve shut down the store for a little bit – think of it as a hiatus – because of the same problem I mentioned above… I haven’t really had time to work on new merchandise or art for the store so I’d rather not have it sit stagnant. It could be a few months or even forever that it’s on hiatus LOL! One day when I think of something new, it’ll come back again!
Other than that, we’ve been busy getting ready for the new crib – perhaps I’ll make a separate post on that one day. Since we sold last year in August, we’ve been staying with my parents in the basement for the last 9ish months and we’ve got just a little over a month left until the house is completed and we are STOKED. Living at home is great and all – home cooked meals, the nice company and the kids love being spoiled, but at some point – you gotta get back into your own groove and live on your own again.
Now onto a little mini photoshoot! Sam had posted on his story on Friday asking if anyone wanted to shoot and I thought why not! I’ve been inspired by Sam and his shoots lately so I thought that maybe this was an opportunity for me to come out and give the ol’ college try again. I haven’t really shot anything seriously for a looooong time. The most I had done in the last year or so was go out and shoot my own car when the Mugen kit was on but it was just meh and mainly to show off the kit. I never put much thought into the location and it was always just close to home because that was as far as I was willing to travel to do a mini shoot LOL.
We met up and he found this really cool corner that gave off this Japanese/industrial vibe with the way the trees, wood and old tires were piled up. Looked pretty dope. The only challenge was that it was literally mid day with the harsh sun beaming down on us – the car is white, the wheels are dark bronze, it’s like everything that made it difficult to shoot that day was present.
One of the things that I’m all for lately is colour grading – you’ve seen it in my recent posts too and I’m still really digging it. Colour manipulation is a really cool thing but it’s also a really fine line – it’s easy to overdo it but really cool if you can get it right. I might be a little bit of both because I’m still the noob trying to find my way.
Just starting off here. No colour grading here – just gives you a sense of what the colours looked like that day.
Here is kind of where I started. I find when you’re in conditions that don’t really work out, colour grading helps to bring everything together again. In this case, the harsh light can make it tough to get your colours right. Colour grading and enhancing (or removing) certain elements can help. Lately, I’m really digging hue changing the greens and desaturating them giving them a little softer look versus the bright greens/yellows that are normally on display.
I like sharpness but sometimes softness is a good ally as well. Bright harsh sun can be combatted with the softness colours and bokeh can bring.
Here’s one where I left a little more saturation in the green and you can tell it’s a little more in your face but also a little more harsh. Just a tint more and it can change the picture pretty dramatically.
One of the things that I really love is some strong prime lens bokeh. This was one of the main reasons I chose to shoot with a 35mm f1.4. This is my only lens – it works perfect for shooting kids, family, cars, detail shots, etc. When you can get it right, the creamy 1.4 bokeh can really create a softness that you can’t achieve otherwise without artificially adding it. The back is soft and mellow, the desaturated green is calm and light and it really helps the car just be bold and stand out.
I particularly liked the shadows on the green being cast by the tree above.
Might have overdid this one LOL!
Lots of cool reflections here. Another thing that I’ve been playing around with is adding grain/noise to my photos. Not a whole bunch but just enough to kind of give it a retro look. Easy to see here if you look closely enough. Noise is one of those things that I tried to avoid in my early days – it felt like you were a bad photographer if you had noise either because your ISO was way up and you didn’t post process it out or cause it was just a shitty shot. It’s taken me a long time to just barely understand how to use noise to my advantage.
Here’s some with a little bit of a warmer edit.
Still love those FK8 lines…
Now if only we had cherry blossoms, this would’ve been perfect…
Here are two edits with different colour grades that I couldn’t decide on. This one was heavy on the blues and teals…
This one I removed a lot of the heavy blues/teals and brought in the oranges and yellows to make it warmer. The warmer shot really makes it feel like a champ white car basking in the sun while the cooler one is just kind of artificial looking.
Oh I also brought Aria with me because she wanted to tag along lol. She hasn’t been on a “photoshoot” before so she was really curious as to what was going on or what we were going to be doing. Asking if we were going to Sam’s house or where are we going to play. She ended up just playing with the stick and dirt most of the time LOL
God, I can’t get enough of that bokeh.
Harsh lighting…
She also chooses to wear socks with shoes that don’t need socks…
Last one to finish it off. The slope of the wall compliments the cars angle perfectly. I didn’t even notice it until I was editing hahaha
lifewithjson 