PORTRAIT SESSION | Areej
By Paul | July 13, 2008
As promised, I’m adding some more pictures from the photo session I had last week with Ania. This time her friend Areej was brave enough to jump on the set and model for me. Big thank you to Justina, who helped me a lot with this session. After we finished shooting JJ served a home-made organic-vegetarian-strait-from-the-grill PIZZA. Yummmy!
Thank you everybody for a fun evening.
Topics: personal and misc, portraits | 2 Comments »
PORTRAIT SESSION | Anna
By Paul | July 12, 2008
This session was a last minute project. We were going to meet with Anna earlier today, but I had another photo shoot and I was worried that I would never make it to her place in time. After I finished photographing an event in Chicago, I realized it was still not too late for an outdoor photo shoot. I gave her a call and we decided to do it. When I got to her place and set up everything, suddenly the sky went dark, the wind picked up and it started raining… very hard. All it 10 minutes. We got a saying in Chicago: If you don’t like the weather here, wait 5 minutes and it will change. My wife was able to capture some interesting images after the storm. You can check it here.
I was ready to pack my gear and cancel the session, but then I thought, why don’t we use what we have and improvise. The garage seemed to be an interesting place. We rolled out the car and I set up a mini photo studio with just two lights. I decided to keep it simple.
Thank you Ania for being so patient and letting me experiment in place as ordinary as your garage. Next time we’ll think about more interesting place to shoot. On the other hand, often an ordinary place makes a great location for a photo session. In the end it’s all about the person in front of the camera, right?
Check back soon for some more images I took of Ania’s friend who happened to stop by and model for me.
Topics: personal and misc, portraits | No Comments »
Chicago Hot Glass Studio | glassblowing
By Paul | June 30, 2008
When I first met JJ and found out that he was an artist specializing in hot glass, I always wanted to visit the glass blowing studio and see the whole process of working with this amazing medium. Of course I wanted to photograph it as well. JJ called me couple days ago to let me know that he was going to work on a new project and asked me if I was interested in documenting it. Finally I had a chance to see the magic of working with hot glass.
The studio is called Chicago Hot Glass and is located a few miles west of downtown Chicago. This place is absolutely great for both beginners and advanced artists who are willing to learn and expand their skills and knowledge of the glass arts. Be prepared for some high temperature though ;-). I don’t know all instructors at Chicago Hot Glass, but I can tell you that both JJ and Pearl are very knowledgeable and experienced teachers who you can learn a lot from.
The whole process of working with hot glass is very complex and each step has to be done certain way. The temperature is a big issue when you work with glass. I’m not going to go into details here. If you need to find all technical data about it, ask JJ or Pearl :-). I’ll let the pictures to tell you the whole story.
Little details I found after I arrived at the studio.
This is a magic whole where the party begins. If you want to get an idea how hot it is in hell, this is a great place to start ;-).
After finishing the first project, I was able to steal JJ for an environmental portrait.
And if you think artists are always serious and poker-faced, take a look at this picture.
OK. It’s time for some glassblowing.
JJ and Pearl calling it a day. It was amazing to see them in action. They know so much about the glass that I don’t recall if I heard them talking to each other during the whole session. They both knew what had to be done, when and for how long. Amazing! I guess it takes years to develop this kind of skills.
Here are a few more images that I really liked.
This image is absolutely my favorite from that day!!!
Topics: commercial, personal and misc | 1 Comment »
2008 Diamond Lake Hyper Tour
By Paul | June 25, 2008
I was going to write about this event a while ago, but I was busy with other little projects and I had to put this one aside. I was covering 2008 Diamond Lake Hyper Tour sponsored by Chicago Sea Ray and Ultimate Wake Watersports. BTW, if you’re a big fan of watersports and you’re looking for a boat or gear, stop by their store in Round Lake to check their latest inventory. Ask for Thad or Chris, who are both hardcore riders and great salesmen. These guys will really take care of you. From my own experience (we bought 2 boats there), everybody at the store was very helpful and knowledgeable.
For this event Chicago Sea Ray provided a loaded Supra 24SSV boat. Judged divisions included Outlaw, Wakeskate, Beginner and Intermediate. The weather was nice, but we had a very strong wind, which is something that wakeboarders don’t like… at all. Riding in a choppy water with 20-30mph gusts of wind was not fun. Despite hard riding conditions all wakeboarders and wakeskaters did their best to surprise the judges with interesting tricks. It was a fun day and everybody had a great time. I was able to get on the boat and take couple shots. Here’s a series of my favorite images:
A super loaded Supra 24SSV Gravity Game Edition. This boat is sweeeeeeet!
Last minutes before the competition. Neil explaining the “rules of the game” and Mel in deep stage of meditation ;-).
Nick throwing a Backroll in a really rough water. Good job!
Justin with his huge Air Railey.
Sarah and Nick “feelin’ the rhythm”. We had some serious hardcore rap music in the boat :-).
Tom doing his crazy “anti-gravity david copperfield thing”. I wonder if this trick has a name?
Here’s Pancho rocking!!! Who said you can not blend fashion with watersports.
Joe and his Pop Shuvin’ It on wakeskate.
I like this trick a lot. It’s called “Shootin’ the Duck” by Nick.
These two pictures below are probably my favorite shots from that day:
James shooting off the top of the wake for a beautiful 360 Off Axis.
And regular 360 by Love Potato.
The judges counting points and working hard to find a champion in each division.
Here’s the winner of the Outlaw group: James Feid. Great performance James. Keep it up!
Topics: events, sports | No Comments »
It’s all about the light
By Paul | June 21, 2008
Photography is all about the light. If there’s no light, you can not take a picture. I mean you can press the shutter, but nothing will record. Your frame will fill with black. As a photographer, I try to understand the light, explore it and learn as much about it as I can.
Today I was playing with my new home made grid spots for the flash. When I was trying to come up with some interesting lighting setup, I noticed that the battery in my wireless transmitter died and I couldn’t trigger the flash. When I looked on the LCD screen on the back of the camera I saw this interesting color that the camera registered with available light only.
I decided to take couple shots just with this light. It was our night table lamp which Ania held behind her back. These images haven’t been altered in any way except for some cropping. My 5D’s white balance was set up for daylight and that’s how the camera registered these colors.
The picture below is the result of the lighting setup with my flash triggered.
Topics: personal and misc, photographers, portraits | 3 Comments »