Editorial Test Shoot – Sibu
by on Apr.20, 2010, under Fashion/People
Sibu is going over to UK I’m told & needed some strong editorial work in his book. The team really pulled together & worked at getting some awesome results!
We worked both studio & location to bring together a nice rounded set. From my point of view, working with Sibu was amazing. A guy who knows how to move, what looks good, he watches my lighting – all the combinations for a very successful model!
Model: Sibu @ LC Models
Makeup by Cindy Horton (www.cindyhorton.co.za)
Styling by Danine Naidoo
Photography & Retouching by Seagram Pearce (me)
(Click for larger images)
Whole Cows – Yep, the whole thing
by on Apr.20, 2010, under Random
It’s been much to the amusement of everyone I’ve told recently, that I got commissioned to shoot dead cow carcass’. Probably one of the strangest job requests I’ve ever received! Certainly far from a glamorous fashion shoots everyone thinks photographers do day in & day out! 
The shoots been done, but added to the long list of retouching which I’m wading through. The shoot also allowed for the first opportunity for me to use a certain retouching technique that I’ve yet found a use for! I’ll post more about that with the final images.
Window Cleaner & Goldfish
by on Mar.30, 2010, under Advertising, Image Buildup
Sometimes it’s great to have a concept that doesn’t take a lot of production to do. Just a couple props & a bit of time. Even though I’m pretty busy almost all the time, I do try & shoot some of the things I want to in the evenings once the major rush has passed through the studio.
I had been carrying this idea around in my head for some time (along with a million others too). Seeing as this took very little production, it’s one of the ones I’ve managed to get around to first. All I needed was a goldfish in a bowl… and a goldfish hat. Thankfully with a couple calls I was able to track down a pet shop in the Cape Town CBD (one would be surprised how scarce they are!) that had a ‘goldfish starter kit’. Excellent. Not only did I have what I wanted, I now also had a complete kit for maintaining my new studio friend. The lady at the pet store was somewhat horrified at me when I asked if I could bring him back after the shoot. I guess this is the price this little guy has to pay for a minute of fame… living with me.
So other than the actual helmet on the goldfish, there was little PS that went into the final shot. Here’s the buildup to the final image:
The RAW shot of the bowl. Mr Goldfish was actually IN the bowl here, but he was swimming around at the back – so thats why you can’t see him.
I knew for the final layout I didn’t want a complete bowl showing. It wasn’t neccessary to convey the final message. So I moved it over in the frame, giving me some nice negative spacing for text & product placement.
I now added Mr Goldfish into the bowl from a seperate shot (at the exact same placement). This took a bit longer than I imagined. Goldfish don’t exactly swim in the direction you always want them to… and then also in a nice relaxed, non-threatened oh-gosh-somethings-chasing-me kind of fashion.
Next I popped over to Stock.Xchng to see what they had as far as helmets went. They’re a great royalty-free stock library! I eventually found this helmet, which I hoped would work out well. I had about another 8 options, but none of them had the straps & they all had the wrong perspective angle on the helmet for my Mr Goldfish.
A bit of photoshop-love later, we had our helmet on our fish. Took a fair amount of warp-tool to get it looking right. Added a shadow-cast that helped make it look real & a colour tinge to make it look convincing too. Other than this, the final image got a bit of colour correction & product added on right.
Clearly Not A Forte
by on Mar.23, 2010, under Random
So I seem to have the worst time when it comes to blogs. Even at the point where I decided that I was going to now consistently keep a blog going, I changed hosting from a very stable, yet insecure option. My site got hacked a couple too many times for my liking. Every time it was a major setback as regards safety for my visitors & also it hurt my long hard time spent massaging google to like me.
Well, we’re now on fresh new servers (yay) which promise to be a much better option (albeit more expensive) for all. I’m also searching furiously for a new website for my main portfolio which I’m happy with. It’s hard, as I’m terribly picky about almost every aspect. The current one I designed & created myself by hand. It tooks days. Updating it takes a bit too much effort these days compared with how much time I actually have. So the logical step is to find a more streamlined option: flash content management system. So stay tuned for that one once I find something I’m happy with.
And this brings to a conclusion the first post on my new (haha, I don’t even want to tell you how many times I’ve said that line) blog. With better safer hosting, this blog shouldn’t go anywhere hopefully. I know not many people read my blog (yet), but I’ll try pump some traffic through here soon.
Till later
