blog | photography by David Kennedy » portraits

Cutting Room Floor

David — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:06:24 +0000

I have finally had a chance to go over all of my images from the Tour de Missouri, as well as my other shoots from the week, and found three images that I thought were particularly interesting but were unpublished–they did not find their way into the Columbia Missourian, or my Blog, for that matter–until now!

Old Courthouse reflection, St. Louis, Mo. Canon 5D II and 24-70mm f/2.8 L @ 70mm; exposed 1/500 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 100

I saw this composition with the imperfect reflections of office buildings and the Old Court House as I was walking to the downtown Hilton to pick up my press credentials for the first stage of the Tour of Missouri. This is cropped fairly heavily, so I do wish that I had switched lenses to the 70-200mm f/4 I L IS, but I was in a rush to get to the race before it started without me!

More after the jump!

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Some inspiration in slideshow format

David — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:18:54 +0000

I was watching some audio slideshows for a class assignment and found a few that might be of interest to viewers of this site.

Martin Schoeller and Steve Pyke are staff photographers for The New Yorker and have an interesting discussion about some of their portraits that are being exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. through this fall: http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2009/01/12/090112_audioslideshow_portraiturenow.

I recognized some of Schoeller’s portraits from a different slideshow that was originally published on Media Storm. He certainly has a distinct style. Makes me want to go and make some strip lights………

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Studio Lighting: Portrait of Jarrad Henderson

David — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:50:07 +0000

This past weekend I photographed Jarrad Henderson, a fellow photojournalism masters student at MU. It was a class assignment to make a portrait first with a single strobe, and then with multiple lights. That’s where the fun really began. The only problem is that I have two images that I like, so it’s hard to choose!
Ultimately, I believe this first image is the more successful of the two:

Canon 5D Mark II and 24-70mm f/2.8L Lens @ 70mm. Exposed 1/125 sec. @ f/16, ISO 100

More after the jump.
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Lighting with a Beauty Dish

David — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:44:55 +0000

The concept of the “beauty dish” came up today in my Advanced Techniques class at MU. Two examples that immediately jumped to mind, both linked from David Hobby’s Strobist blog.

The first was a People magazine photo spread from 2007 that featured ten celebrities without the use of retouching–digital or otherwise. Instead, studio techniques were employed to ensure that these celebrities would not look like mere mortals. Just the same, I’d rather see clever studio work to get the result “in camera” than to see a photograph in a magazine that features only a few “original” pixels. Strobist points to a PopPhoto blog that (roughly) explains how the images were created.

Secondly, I thought of a portrait of a Navy SEAL by photographer Morgan Silk. The setup for the photograph was a beauty dish, a reflector, and two smaller lights for some rim lighting in back. It’s explained at F Stop, with some really nice diagrams. Ironically, and unfortunately, I think just as much post-production retouching went into the photo as would normally have happened with the photos of the ten celebs. Funny old world. The addition of the sky is just overkill, but the lighting on the face, especially, is interesting (and simple).

Finally, if you want to make your own beauty dish, there is a tutorial at Light and Pixels.

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