Karaoke

David and Cammila: Karaoke, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

Saturday we celebrated Cammila's birth by singing karaoke all night long. I kicked some ass, by the way, but I also took some photos. Above are Cammila and David, my previously un-pictured roommate, and below is Charlie Slick, the people's synthesist, singing someone else's tunes for once.

Charlie Slick: Karaoke, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

Poser Superstar

Poser Superstar, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

Cammila really is the best at posing. When I'm working with her, all I have to do is worry about my lights and my camera. She takes care of everything else.

This was a shot taken the other night. Judy and Cammila both modeled for me that night, so I have a few "rainy day" photos in my back pocket for when I'm too busy to take a new shot the night before a posting day :P Conveniently, it's actually raining outside.

This is just one of many awesome shots from this set. To see more, go check out Cammila's site.

Cross Over

If you liked the stuff I shot on Monday, go take a gander at Cammila's blog. She posted a ton more from that shoot and had a story of her own for them!

The Prom Nightmare

The Prom Nightmare, pt.1, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

The prom was going so well, until the drive home. Without any warning, Cammila's date pulled off into a parking lot and pushed her out of the car. She was shocked and infuriated. What sort of joke was this? And where in god's name was she, anyway?

The Prom Nightmare, pt.2, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

It didn't take long for her to notice that something was very wrong with her surroundings. There were noises like people whispering coming from the shadows, but she couldn't make out the words. There were scraping and clanking noises. She was too afraid to call for help, too terrified to move.

The Prom Nightmare, pt.3, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

The lights went off. All that could be heard, if indeed there were anyone to hear, were a flurry of raking and slicing noises, and then nothing.

Dish of Beauty

Dish of Beauty, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

I've been big into building my own fancy light augmentation tools lately. I could be spending many hundreds of dollars on professional tools, or I could just put together stuff for free or nearly free. Such is the case with this photo.

There are these things called "beauty dishes", which, as you might imagine, are meant to make girls look radiant and beautiful, or rather more so than usual. They're mostly out of my price range, and most of them are built for studio lights anyway, not little flashes like mine. So, I built one out of a turkey pan. Presto, awesome light. Took about 5 minutes to make.

Of course it helps to have people like Cammila on hand to let you experiment with all your new photo equipment, but hey, at least the hardware is easy to come by.

God Gave Rock 'n Roll to You

Tribute, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

Remember Cammila? Of course you do. Well, we're at it again, doing shots for her fashion blog, and this time she wanted to pay homage to her car and, thusly, to the bands she loves the most. It's hard to tell in these two shots due to the paleness of the shirt, but it does say "Queen", which is easily her favorite band. View it large and on black to get a better view.

During this shoot, the wind blew over both of my umbrella stands a couple of times, and my silver reflective umbrella is ruined. I've already ordered replacements for both (shoot-thru is now a little wonky as well). I need to find a better way to anchor my stands.

On a completely different note, I noticed that the link to my Picasa web album was broken. I understand that some people find Picasa's web albums easier to navigate, so I've fixed the link (hover over the "Photo Streams" tab above and click on Picasa). There's a lot of stuff in "web albums" in there, but it's in reverse chronological order.

Distinctive, originally uploaded by RLHyde [breatheindigital].

Dubious

Dubious, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

This is my first attempt at a serious self portrait. Made some lighting mistakes, so this is the only photo of the night that I think really works. Looks pretty good on black.

The phenomenal Cammila helped me out with posing and with hitting the remote shutter trigger for me, and without her I don't think I would have gotten a good one for the night. Thanks!

If you haven't noticed, for the last two weeks I've had shots up on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I'm going to try hard to keep to this routine throughout the summer (don't know about when the semester starts), so put it in your calendars boys and girls, and keep checking back!

This is what happens when you get it right the first time!

A gentle obscurity, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

View this on a black background

It feels exceedingly good to be figuring more out about my lights. This photo required virtually no editing whatsoever, just a few minor tweaks for the sake of it, but no hours of post production like my dance shots.

Cammila, as always, is gorgeous and a great model to work with (okay, the only model I've worked with). It helps that she's one of my best friends ever and lives in the same apartment complex as me, of course, but still, the fact that she runs an awesome fashion blog and I run this little photo blog makes our friendship suddenly even more mutually beneficial than it already was. Thanks, Cammila, for being awesome!

Here's one more to tide you over. See the full set at my Flickr (Cammila has her own album on my site, now).

A Celebration, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

Before and After

I've done a couple of new shoots recently, but one was my first attempt at a self portrait shoot (which was kind of boring, but one became my new profile pick) and the other was a shoot for my super pregnant friend and colleague, Amber. Eventually I'll post one or two from that shoot, but I've only just begun to start selecting the best shots and start the touch up process (they're meant to be keepsakes, so the touchup process will be a little more meticulous and detail oriented).

In the meantime, I'll post up this quick before and after series that I had talked about before. I know, I know, enough of Cammila, right? Hah, yeah right, even if it's the same series over and over, she's still gorgeous, so enjoy this while it lasts!

So this was the original, unedited shot. Notice the credit card stickers and the like in the window on the right, and also take note of the car in the reflection in the window on the left. I wanted all that stuff gone to give it more of an old timey look. Most of the work was done with teh clone stamp tool, but I have a nice pen tablet, so really it felt more like painting.

This is the punched up version. Obviously the color is much more vibrant, the skin tone has been smoothed to give it that hint of pinup quality, and the window stuff has been eliminated. Take special note of the hanging lamp below Cammila's elbow in the window on the right. That part was a bit tricky.

Thanks for reading. I'll try to have entirely new stuff up next week at some point.

You're Getting Warmer

This is from the same shoot as my previous post, but Cammila (as made famous by her style blog, Dressed Up Like a Lady) decided to post up two different entries on this shoot, with coat and sans coat. Now I'm treating to you to the "with coat" portion.

Many of the same effects are in employ in these shoots, but I left my blur filter on a little bit higher because I love how it made the coat look.

I love the post and the facial expression in this one, though I wish I had positioned her in the fram a little better. I suppose I could crop this a little bit for a "best of" reel someday.

So innocent.

And for some reason, this reminds me of The Joker. Love it.

I've had a few friends tell me I should do a couple of before and after shots to display how much I took out of the background and what the particular blur effect I used really does. I'll get around to that one of these days, but I just want you to enjoy these shots for now. Remember to click on each one for a larger, more detailed version.

To Be a (very modest) Pinup Star

In my first crossover post with my good friend Cammila, I decided to put a lot more effort into Photoshop than usual. I want to make it clear that my time there was largely spent on eliminating background elements, upping saturation and applying a certain satin-like quality to the whole image to give it an old pinup look. Cammila herself requires no work at all. If anyone I know was made to be a pinup girl, it's her. However, it was far too cold out for anything truly risque, so the photos are more "inspired by" than "representation of" the genre.

Cammila is a very close friend of mine, and we go way, way back. Once upon a time, she was the singer in my band, but more recently we've each been exploring our artistic side in new ways (see: The Bakist). One of Cammila's most striking creative outlets these days is her style blog, Dressed Up Like a Lady. You should check it out immediately. And I mean, come on, she runs a style blog, I run a photo blog . . . I'm personally amazed that it's taken this long to use each other's particular skill sets!

The lighting during this shoot was perfect. We literally caught the last few usable minutes of light, and Cammila knew how to get herself into that spotlight and work it.

The majority of the radiant quality of these photos comes entirely from that light. This one required very little work (except for the reflection, I wanted to get a car out of it).

This is easily my favorite photo from the shoot. Again, Cammila didn't need any work, but the credit card labels on the door needed to go to give it more of an old timey quality. I came very close to replacing the Coca-Cola add to something more period.

If you want to know more about the clothes, check out Cammila's blog.

The Bakist

Cammila is the most enthusiastic baker I've ever known. She whips up delicious creations with what would appear to be ease, if it weren't for all of the jumping, excited yelling, and laughing. Seriously, it's almost maniacal. It's certainly both a joy to witness the process and consume the fruits of her labor.

I can't even produce appropriate onomatopoeia to convey the types of gleeful noises that come from this woman when she's baking.

From humble beginnings, our delicious deserts are wrought.

Presentation is everything, 'eh?

P.S. The lighting in this place has taught me a lot about adjusting tint and temperature.

The Official Ryan of 2009

Late in 2008, after watching some asinine commercial claiming some product was the official "whatever" of 2008, I said, "Is that really how it works? If that's true, then as of right now, I'm the official Ryan of 2009!" Now you'll have to live with that fact all year long.

My New Year's Eve was somewhat different than I had expected it to be. Instead of getting to take shots at a show north of Detroit, I was honored to take shots (digitally and otherwise) at Rob and Cammila's apartment. It was a low key event, but it provided for a few nice pictures.

Cammila and Rob got a very pretty punch bowl for Christmas from Cammila's mother. Unfortunately, it was not filled with spiked punch.

At one point in the evening, we were visited by a ghost. He clearly just needed a snack.

Tesla was sick and tired of all these snakes photos.

And there were various sweet treats to eat.

Thanks for having me over, Rob and Cammila! I'm not sure what I would have done without you!

A New Way to Blog

I've been writing half hearted blogs for years now. For a while, back in the doldrums of college, I had a particularly emo LiveJournal blog that ended up being about girls I pined for yet did nothing about. That one was a real downer. Last year I decided to start a blog with a a more optimistic flavor to it, but I lost interest pretty quickly. See, the thing is, I don't have a ton to talk about. I'm a relatively private person, and I would rather keep most of my private life, well, private. I then thought about writing a news reaction blog, but there are a million of those around, and mine wouldn't really offer anything new.

Well, a couple of things have changed since then. For one, I realized that I love taking pictures. This was somewhat of a shock to me because I've never been attracted to taking pictures of random places and people before. I can tell you lots of stories about my college days (there are actually stories that have little to nothing to do with girls I pined for) and my high school days, but I can show you very few, if any, corollary pictures. Taking them just always seemed like a waste of time.

Over the past year, though, I've come to realize that I really do enjoy photography, just not the usual sort of "Oh look, here's a group of 10 girls smiling!" sort of photography. This realization came when my good friend Cammila had me take a few pictures of her for her fashion blog. I loved her camera. It was capable of so much more than all of the old point-and-shoot, washed out color and grainy display cameras I've dealt with in the past. Holding it, I was able to take into account all that I've learned about artistic compositions over the years and apply it to the photos I took. After that, I became the unofficial photographer at group functions that both Cammila and I attended; I would take her camera and just start taking photos from all sorts of different angels, through glass, catching all those little emotions that people never pose for. I loved it.

My girlfriend, Annie, noticed this at the last party we were at. She's a wonderful person in so many ways, and apparently in one way that I wasn't aware of: she's willing to drop big money on gifts for Christmas. So Christmas Eve, we exchanged presents, and much to my surprise I found a Nikon D40 6.1 mpxl DSLR with an included lens beneath the thin veneer of recyclable wrapping paper. My jaw dropped, quite literally.

Now, I do hope she got a great Black Friday deal on the thing, but either way, she spent far more than I did. This means only one thing: I must use this camera all the time and learn to use it well. As an added impetus (added to a bit of guilt, truth be told) I have decided to begin a photo blog. Here you can see my progress as a photographer, give me tips, and see what I see in the world.

I hope you enjoy it. And let me begin with just one photo. These are Annie's vegan cinnamon rolls that she made for Christmas morning. I hope you enjoy it.