The Re-Edit (May), Stephanie

Yeah I know… “What happened to April?”

I have no idea… but its May, and it would be silly to do a re-edit and title it April now wouldn’t it?

This time around I am fortunate to have some old school stuff I thought was lost forever!
You know how hard drive crashes go…
But recently a buddy of mine hooked me up and got one of my trashed HDD’s working again, so I chose an old New York shoot for this months Re-Edit Project.

Stephanie

Stephanie was awesome! She was one cool chick, laid back, and up for virtually anything.
Unfortunately she hadn’t done a whole lot of “Testing”, for all tense and purposes she was a new model. You see she was on a TV show called Make Me a Supermodel and hadn’t done much modeling before the show (they had just wrapped the last show a week before this shoot). She didn’t win, but ended up signing with New York Models anyway.
So she comes out to our test with nothing really. No “model bag” of clothes, makeup, nothing, just strolls in with her purse. It was funny because I remember saying to her…”well, I don’t think I would change what you are wearing anyway!”. In her defense tho, she did have a paid gig scheduled after our test, which didn’t require her to bring anything.

We shot for an hour or so in the stairwell of a friend’s apartment building. We got some amazing stuff…simple…yet amazing.
Original Edit

Once again I recommend clicking the “Vimeo” button and viewing the full screen HD version.

Looking back at these images, I once again found more that I liked the second time around. Obviously my tastes are changing somewhat, but one thing stands out to me. I was consciously or unconsciously composing my images in these weird ways, and throwing the focus off here and there (ok.. the focus thing is bullshit), but what I found was images I had marked as throwaways are now grabbing my attention as visually pleasing pieces.

I think of all the little projects I do, the Re-Edits are the most fun, because I am able to simultaneously see my past “vision” and also see what I captured…but didn’t SEE the first time!

Mixin’ it Up.

I know, I know… its been a while since I’ve posted something…but the bright side is… I have tons of things to talk about since taking a break, like this:

MIxin’ It Up.

In the 5 years that I have been a “Fashion and Beauty” photographer, I have only been to 2 “fashion” events. You know, social gatherings where people schmooze and meet new people. I’ve always avoided these events for one…I’m an introvert by nature, and two…I just never cared to be a part of the “socialite” scene. The first event I went to was a rooftop fashion show put on by one of the agencies I was shooting for roughly 4 years ago. The second was last night.

DeeLite’s Fashion Mixer is a social event that started from a gathering of photographers, models, makeup-artists, etc, from Model Mayhem, and has grown to be a highly anticipated event here in the fashion community.

Dee has always been kind enough to send me an invite to each and every one of his mixers, but until last night, I either blew them off, or was just to0 chicken shit to go. So when this one came up…I decided to take that first step out of my hermit hole and see what happened.

I had a blast! At first it was a little uncomfortable…for one I was early (you tell me a start time, I’ll be there on time…none of this “fashionably late” bullshit) and there wasn’t that many people there. Around 8 or so, it started getting crowded, and I still was standing in the corner by myself or wandering aimlessly, so I decided to have a beer. Well lo and behold! Alcohol lowers your inhibitions! I rarely drink, so after 2 beers I was feeling pretty good, and found myself getting reacquainted with old friends, and walking up to complete strangers to strike up a conversation. On a funny note, after around beer 3 I actually told a model that I thought she was more attractive in person. Now I’m an upfront an honest person, but usually can hold back 90% of the time until asked for my opinion. But last night proved that you give me a couple of drinks and I become honest to a fault.

I wasn’t the life of the party, but I definitely enjoyed myself, and it was productive as well! I met this gorgeous male model (expanding into shooting men), the infamous Kat Flynt whom I have never worked with (but made me promise to call her ASAP), and probably most importantly. I reconnected with some of my old agency ties. Which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

So my efforts to get involved in the fashion community here in Atlanta are going quite well. I’m moving up from just being a name whispered in makeup artist’s chairs. That’s good, the more visible I am the better, the more I can experience…the better.

The Re-Edit, March.

Time for another “Re-Edit”.
This month I chose a shoot I did back in June ’07, just before my graduation from AIA. At the time I was interning for Liz Von Hoene. Being the sweet person Liz is, she offered to let me use her studio (BIG Studio) for a day of shooting.

I took full advantage!

I booked 2 shoots that day, the first was with Hannah. It was short notice when I was told the studio would be available, so getting a stylist didn’t happen, but I managed to book 2 makeup artists, one of which happened to have a few garments with her. I stayed late the day before to paint the prop boxes after my usual painting of the Cyc wall. Everything was as ready as it was going to get. I began shooting, trying out different things, and realizing how much a location (in this case the studio cyc), and equipment, can influence the look of the photography. I achieved a quality of light that I had never produced before. Everything seemed to just click. The makeup was fantastic, Hannah was exceptional, and I was literally jumping up and down with excitement over the images popping up on the screen!
I didn’t shoot a lot, because it seemed that EVERYTHING was awesome. See the original edit here.

So when it came to re-working this shoot, I didn’t have a lot of images to choose from, but at the same time, it was still very hard to pick favorites, they still strike me as great images. A couple times during this process, I thought about doing a different shoot, just because I kept wanting to go back to some of the original picks. But in the end, I resolved that I didn’t have to make an entirely different editorial out of this shoot. So as it stands, it’s really more of a slide show of “outtakes” rather than a full on edit. There are a couple of images that I will probably change out in the original edit after going back and doing this.  I think it will reflect a little more of my changing sensibilities.

Anyway, here it is, straight from the camera, no touchups, no nothin’, here is March’s Re-Edit, Hannah.

more about “The Re-Imagining of Rich Meade, Hanna…“, posted with vodpod

Again, the compression applied to get it on Vimeo has messed with the quality, the HD version (fullscreen) looks better. But let me know how it looks to you guys… (still learning this video mumbo jumbo)

Insight #1

I’m going for something a little more educational today… so bear with me

I get questions all the time (particularly on Model Mayhem) about how certain shots are done. The people who know me understand that I typically respond one of two ways.

1.) Get excited, and ramble endlessly about the technical aspects of a shot.
2.) Scoff and make a comment about “why don’t you learn it yourself”

My friends usually receive reaction number 1. Strangers… number 2.

But in the spirit of Create-Share-Sustain I thought I would start paying it forward.
So here it is… Insight #1

The shot is pretty straight forward. The biggest asset is the model, Alexa Johns (Factor ATL), This lighting won’t work on everyone because it accentuates bone structure. People ask me “what does a beauty dish do?”. Instead of giving a long physics explanation (complete with a ray tracing diagram), I offer this. It makes the beautiful… beautiful, and the ugly… ugly, by enhancing contours of the face and body. If you’ve got a model with a round chubby face, it’s going to look even more round and chubby with a beauty dish. Combine that with an edge light on Alexa’s jaw from the background and we’ve got a stark contrasty image that is anchored by the beauty of the model.
As far as post goes…not a lot went into this. I did darken the shadow on her face a tad, but other than taking out a pore or two what you see is what I shot.
Shot on a Canon 5d, 1/125 @f9, ISO 100.

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Looking back (since this blog is about my self-discovery and all), I’ve always been pretty open with what I do.  In school I’d always shoot with the studio doors open, and there was always an open invitation to come hang out at my shoots.  It may have been that there wasn’t anyone else (in school) shooting fashion at the time (maybe 2 others), and we were buddies that shot together anyway.  So I never really felt competitive to the point of keeping things to myself.  Out in the “real” world it seems a bit different.  There is a hesitation to share what you know because you are ultimately competing with everyone for income.

I think now, I’m to the point where if someone wants to copy what I do, or learn what I do, I hope they use it in their own unique way. I’m not so much concerned with someone doing it better than I can,  if someone does it better, that’s going to make me push harder.  But learning new techniques from someone, either via tutorial, or assisting on set, I think you owe it to yourself to use it in your own unique way.  Otherwise, you will always be starting from the disadvantage of having something to live up to, instead of breaking new ground.

Being unique is what makes an artist marketable, not technique.

Flickr

So in following many many photographers on Twitter, I have noticed quite a few utilize flickr as a place to show off work.  My archaic thinking led be to believe that you should only post the good stuff, and it should be on your website.
Suffice to say, my point of view has changed.
In my efforts to become more visible to the world, I have to take every opportunity to share what I’m doing/done as much as I can (without being annoying). So I’ve created a flickr account to post (for the time being) images that just don’t belong anywhere…yet.
I could have easily put them here, but I think this blog has enough randomness to it already, and a simple link to my “photostream” should be just fine.

My flickr photostream

There isn’t much there right now, but as I get familiar with the site, and cruise through the archives a little more, there should be plenty of random images that I think are cool, but just don’t fit.
If you are on flickr hit me up!

A conversation with a stranger…

Last night…(well early this morning) I had a wonderful experience that I dare say few have had.

I had a conversation with a complete stranger.

On Twitter the other night, a fellow I follow mentioned a website.  The concept of this website is simple…Meet strangers.  You fire up your webcam, click a button and then you are connected with some random person that has been plucked from the universe.

Before I go any further I have to say I won’t be mentioning the site by name, because quite frankly it has flaws.  It’s biggest asset, is at the same time its biggest curse.  There is no accountability…  If you don’t like what you see, you can just click a button and it flips to another person.  So with that freedom from moral responsibility, the site has become a haven for perverts.  So I am not recommending anyone go there…at least until a solution is found for the problem.

Ok, back to the story.   Here I am clicking through different people (the majority doing something obscene), making every effort to start a conversation with someone that isn’t being nasty, but I just keep getting “nexted”.  I don’t pretend to think I am an attractive man, but come on!  I’m not so repulsive as to prevent a simple “hello”!  A good hour of this and it hits me!  Lets put all this social marketing research I have been doing to good use!  I print out a small piece of paper with a list of things to watch out for on the site.  Now I have gotten peoples attention.  They stop and read instead of seeing my ugly mug and moving on.  While they read… I say hello (type hello).  Most move on, but last night at 3am someone stayed.

A beautiful young woman sits before me with a smile on her face, and a willingness to talk.

It was just a simple conversation, but yet it felt different. For one… I never took down my list (my security blanket)… so she is chatting with me having no idea what I look like.  She asks of course, but I coyly  play it off, claiming to prefer anonymity.  We both have the sound off on our computers, so I can’t hear her, she can’t hear me, but its cool.  It just goes with the territory.

She’s a Journalism major in Maryland.  Funny, outgoing, down to earth, just a genuinely beautiful person.  She asks to see some of my work…  ugh oh… there goes my identity…out the window, but I could tell there was no risk.  I mean, look at her… she’s sitting there chatting with a complete stranger, whom she hasn’t even seen,  I can go out on a limb and show her my website.  So I do.  I ask to see some of her writing… She says there is nothing on the net, but plans to start a blog in the near future.  We switch to music, we talk about bands we like, and refer each other to their songs on iTunes.  Wow if only first dates could be this easy!  We chat about all sorts of things…anything and everything you can imagine it seems, devoid of any uncomfortable silences.

The night carries on, and she is getting visibly tired.   I didn’t want the conversation to end because…

I’ll never see her again.

4:30am: We say our goodbyes… I didn’t ask to keep in touch, didn’t ask for a phone number, facebook page, or even her email… I only told her to email me when she finally starts her blog.  ”could be a while, but definitely!”  I promised her that if we were to happen upon each other on the chat site again… I would drop the charade (the list).  ”Deal!”

I clicked “Next”

…..

In this crazy mess that is my life, I feel incredibly lucky to have met such a wonderful person.  I find it hard to express in words how gratifying and amazing the experience was.  You may be thinking “come on Rich, it’s just a chat”, but to me it felt more profound than that. I feel totally enriched by this stranger letting me into her life for just a moment.

It saddens me that the reality is…I probably will never know her name, hear her voice, or see her ever again.

But this one night…it was good.

“There are no strangers, only friends we have yet to meet.”  - William Butler Yeats

The moral of the story.  We are taught as children to never talk to strangers.  At some point, that has to end…  You could miss out on the best experiences and relationships of your entire life.

February’s Re-Edit. Shaun and Sara

Cutting it close I know.  But here is the re-edit for February.

For those who don’t know… one of the goals I set out for myself in this whole “re-imagining” process was to “re-edit” one shoot every month.  Purely to see where I’ve been, and where I am now.

This shoot originally happened in my heyday of traveling to New York.  At the time I had developed quite a few relationships with agencies in the city, and would travel there about once a month to do model testing and editorial shoots.  I didn’t like to waste time while in the city… for one its expensive… and secondly…I felt like a kid in a candy store.  This was one of four shoots I had scheduled during my visit, and the first of two that day!

The models, at the time, were represented by NY Models, Sara Dawson, and Shaun (sorry Shaun forgot your last name).  The original concept was to be a super sexy interaction between lovers, a cocky and stylish socialite, and his stunning and sultry companion.  As expected, complications arose…Sara was married and wasn’t comfortable interacting with Shaun (or any male model).  So I had to shoot them separately and finagle my narrative a bit to get something with a little story since I couldn’t get any literal interaction between the two.

Overall the original shoot came out spectacular.  The separation made for a nice back and forth, a kind of  “His side vs Her side” play.  In post I combined what was to be the opening image in the story from two shots, one of Sara in a chair, and Shaun mysterious in the foreground.  After an obvious switch to black and white, I pumped the contrast, cleaned up the bodies and skin, and gave it what I now call my “clean and concise” treatment.

You can see the original story in the “editorial” section of my website, HERE

While going through the images from that day, I noticed that I went for a more nonchalant pose and attitude with my picks.  The sexy sultry poses didn’t strike me as being as powerful or visually interesting as the lazy broken poses.  I also chose to leave the images virtually untouched, all that was done was the conversion black and white, which was done at baseline, so virtually these are straight from the camera images.  Not only did that give me (and you) some insight into what I was doing technically, but it gave a more weathered, ethereal quality to the image.  It’s a great departure from the original “Clean and Concise” processing of the first edit.

Along with breaking the shoot into two parts, His and Her’s, I’ve also set them up as video slide shows…No music, but a more structured presentation than what is available via the WordPress galleries.  You can also view them in HD by clicking on the “Vimeo” link in the bottom right corner of the video.

Without further a due… I give you February’s Re-Edit Project: Shaun and Sara

Part 1:  Shaun

Part 2:  Sara

one last…

Here is my first attempt at a video… well, its more of a glorified slide show… but hey.. gotta start somewhere…
(btw, this isn’t the aforementioned “video project” I’ve been working on)

FYI the video looks like crap because for some reason I cannot embed this directly from Animoto (the place that put the video together).
I had to export it to YouTube, which re-encodes the video…aka makes it look like dog shit.
UPDATE: Thanks to the wordpress peeps, I’ve been made aware of a new way to embed my videos…Not sure if the quality is any better, but at least the links in the original video are active “except full screen”
Here is the link to the Animoto master (which looks WAAAAY better): one last…

more about "one last…", posted with vodpod

Ya know, for a down and dirty, free, semi-automated process, I think this turned out ok.
What do you think?

The Re-Edit

One of the goals I have set for myself is to “Re-Edit” one shoot every month. In other words, go back, re-evaluate, and pick my favorites again. The idea being to see how my perception, style, and or tastes have changed over time.
The guinea pig for this experiment is a shoot I did while in grad school.
I had bought an old Olympus Pen FT on eBay, with the hopes of shooting with this unique camera (and film), it might lead to a more artistic output. If you aren’t familiar with the Pen F camera, you’ll find it’s quite unique. The camera itself is a compact 35mm film camera from the 60′s. Standard bayonet mount and manual focus lenses, along with manual film advancement. So far its just your basic compact camera right? Well wrong! The Pen F was unique in that it utilized only half of the 35mm frame! Effectively giving you 72 shots on a typical 36 exposure roll of film (give or take a couple). You can read more about it here.

My thinking was…”If I can shoot a super fast (grainy) film, of my typical subject matter, it has to come out as art!”
So I attached a cheap flash, hired a model (whom is a dear friend), and went to work.
The results…at the time, were the complete opposite of my normal style, and output. I thought I had finally produced something that would be “acceptable” to the artsy fartsy faculty and students of my school.
I was wrong.
Frustrated yet again…I archived the images, and forgot about them…that is until today.

I decided to take another look at them. Sure they are grainy as all hell, and scratched to shit (didn’t take the best care of the negatives when scanning them), but there was something I liked about them. They felt…honest, at least more honest than the usual fashion/nude work I have done in the past. It wasn’t for lack of makeup (or stylish shoes), but was the quality…rather lack thereof…that struck me as being more truthful. It was a half-assed effort, at the time of creation, which comes through even now, but that is what is endearing about the images.

A new perspective, and a little bit of editing, have made these images worth looking at…for me at least. The process of rehashing this shoot has also inspired me to break out the old Pen F, and do some more. If nothing else…that makes this exercise worth while.

share

So for today’s daily I’m doing something a little different.

I was approached by a freelance retoucher the other day, wanting some beauty/fashion images to work on for free to build up his portfolio.  So I said, what the hell.  The guy’s name is Nick Watson, he’s in London, and pretty good at what he does. Check him out.

Below are a couple images I sent to him. Before and afters available on Nick’s site.

Normally, I would just ignore a guy wanting retouch for me, but for some reason, I thought about being in this kid’s position. I’d really like to be able to go to someone and have them trust me enough to do some work for them. Regardless of the motives, be it for portfolio, self-promotion, whatever. It felt good helping this guy out, and maybe someday someone will do the same for me.