I don't usually define my life by a calendar year. I set goals but I feel like if I want to do something I'll do it. I'm not more likely to do something in January that I wasn't doing in December. As such, I don't usually make new year resolutions, but this year I've decided to try one.
Over the last year I tried to shoot at least one self assignment every week. I wasn't very strict with myself but I still managed to do a little more than 30. My skill level and portfolio have taken a huge jump forward because of those efforts and I'm hoping to continue the trend.
For 2016 my resolution is to shoot one self-assignment every week. Although it will not be strictly limited to this, I want to work on my product photographs and architecture photographs. I will write a short blog about each self-assignment that will include set up pictures and any specific goals I was working on during the shoot.
There are a few specific areas I want to work on. In general I want to make my product photographs more interesting by adding elements such as products in groupings, sets and backgrounds, splashes, and composites. With my architecture photography I feel like my knowledge of lighting and compositing has surpassed my current portfolio images. Most of my architecture images are from real estate jobs and I have not given myself enough time to create the quality images I think best represent my current skill.
So, for week one of my fifty two week odyssey I took a photo of Fossil sunglasses. My original idea was to use color gels to make the reflection in the lenses look like a sunset. I quickly abandoned this idea because the images were too “campy” and with the blue already in the sunglasses lenses there was already a nice spot of color.
The final image had four lights with an added silver reflector card to light the logo. I took a break for lunch once everything was set, but after coming back I had decided to spray water to add a dynamic element. I immediately liked where it was going!
One problem I ran in to was some of the droplets streaking. I have three lights that have an “Action” mode that allows for freezing motion. One of my four lights is older and does not have that feature. I thought I could lower the power from this one flash and thereby shorten its flash duration enough to freeze the action better. It didn't work as well as I had hoped. Because of this many of the droplets had a slight streak to them. I was able to correct this to a great extent in Photoshop, but learned a good lesson.
I am really happy with the final image which has a neat space feel. A fantastic start to my 2016 photo projects.