Ladies and Gentlemen, the great Tim Rice

Caption: Timothy Rice, a Photojournalism student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, poses for a portrait on September 22, 2009. Rice's exhuberant and eccentric personality is an extension of his approach to life. "I have a very active unfiltered persona and that is really me, but that's just me spreading some light heartedness. Why so serious? Its just life. Try to be happy. Try to ensure the happiness of others."

So here's my select for the classmate portrait assignment (anyone else upset with the way blogger interprets color profiles?). This project was very fun and extremely elucidating. I learned so much from doing this shoot and playing with the lighting. I'm fairly happy with the results, but now, looking back, I wish I had used a hair light. Ok, ready for the technical stuff?


I made the background light the strongest because I wanted a really intense pinkish red. I had originally planned to do an orange to red gradient, but I was difficult to implement. Honestly, I think that this was better considering his outfit (a Hello Kitty v-neck t-shirt, a black suit and a bow-tie) and personality. The light was a little more intense than I had hoped and it looks like it caused some over-saturation around his outline. I then made sure to have my key light the next brightest and the fill light the lowest wattage. All in all, I like it, but I wish I would have added a hair light.

Distracting colors, but great navigation

The news website that I’ve reviewed is The Guardian web site. The first thing I noticed when I opened the home page is the amount of color they used. Like many newspaper sites they’ve kept a white background; they chose a cadet blue for their headers and black for their body text, which keep it simple. However, each of the section links on the top navigation bar has a different color, which was distracting, especially since some of the words don’t necessarily sync with their color associations. Even more distracting were the color bars across the top of photo links. While the gray bars on the secondary photos were acceptable, the bright red on the main one was jarring. The home page is full of images, but none are extremely large; however, I think that this is acceptable on a splash page. The treatment of photos within an article is fairly standard for a newspaper; the photograph is featured at the top of the page and is approximately 450 pixels wide.

The guardian website is rather successful as far as navigation. The user can pick a larger section and subsections of those. All navigation is available at the top of each page. The most helpful element of their navigation is that they display links that show each step the user has made so they never have to use the back button to get to the previous page.

One aspect that disappointed me was their “interactive guides” section under Multimedia. I specifically thinking of the “How I paint” guides, which is made up of slideshows that have a start and stop button and little written explanation. I would have preferred to have audio or roll-over elements. Otherwise, the name is slightly misleading in that it doesn’t show the process.

Ultimately, the guardian website is a very successful news website. Their treatment of navigation is very intuitive for the user, and may be useful to incorporate into my website.

Up close and personal

I find I'm more attracted to studio photography that involves movement and light and form (like photographs of dancers, etc.), but, as far as one's that get more personal, I found a couple that I like:

Like this portrait called "Tanja" by Jens Fehlisch. While the freckles are, perhaps, a little over-treated, the color temperature and lighting of the photograph is very appropriate to its tone. I like that the photographer filled up the entire frame with the subject and that neither the photographer nor the model have an issue with showing so much skin texture. Also, the sharp fall-off on the left side of the subject's face adds depth and mystery. The subject calmly, innocently, and openly confronts the camera with a bit of a "Mona Lisa" smile. If it weren't for the graphical elements and the pose, I'm not sure that I would like the lighting. On the forehead and the cheeks, it's a bit flat. The pose saves it by adding contour.

Unfortunately, this portrait by Ron Brewer can't be copied to the blog as per the assignment, but it's really a beautiful job of lighting. The strongest light is the rim light from the left, followed closely by a light above the head to the right. He was able to fill the shadows enough so that they are a soft gray (though I also suspect some retouching), which really compliments the woman "Zoe"'s femininity and expression of abandon.

Copy testing

The point of copy testing is to render an existing photograph or document as close to how it looks, i.e. no glare, even lighting, sharp focus. So, you have the subject flat in the center and one soft box on either side. They have to be about an even distance from the subject and in line with it enough to not create a reflection of the light.

Copy test of Timothy Kha's "The Roomate"

It's looking a bit blue despite a profile conversion, but here's my "Stump the Chump" copy test. The point was to find a photo that had complicated artificial lighting. This one has at least two...there's one in the sink, which is a bit weird.

Copy test of Jodi Cobb's "Geishas"

The idea was to find a picture where the lighting compliments the emotions in the photo. This soft white light and all the light colors play up the peaceful and relaxed feeling of the image. Also, if I'm not mistaken, it emphasizes the nonsexual nature of the relationship within the subculture (something a perhaps warmer color would suggest).

Unfortunately, while I was adjusting it, the top right corner got some stickiness from the tape around the glass cover. I tried to remove it, but I couldn't get it all. Since it was my only copy, I had to shoot it with the stickiness. That's kind of problematic in a professional setting or if this was a historical document. I've definitely learned to be more careful with the subject.

Playing with light

Ok. So first post, first experiment. Here's the photo first and, then, the diagram of how the lighting went. I wanted to show the way the light was coming through the leaves. My first attempt was too dark because I had metered for the sky, so I opened up on both aperture and shutter speed to let in more light and allow a greater depth of field. I wanted to have just a little bit of definition in the leaves, but I wanted to keep the tree in a silhouette. I think it worked out...