A Post About Colours and Cosplay

Hi there folks! I'm just posting to let people heading to Anime North in Toronto this weekend that I will be on sight and I will have a photo booth in Photo Alley. What I'm mainly posting for is to showcase some colour selections for my background for those interested in having me do shots for them. So, as follows based on testing are the best and brightest colours you can pick from.

Now keep in mind these might not be exact, I'll have to run some tests in the TCC when I get there, I sure the lighting will differ slighting in that building. That being said, it will be pretty close, so if your going for a certain look in your photo, colour makes a big difference. I'll be more then happy to select for you, and I do have other colours on me, these ones just stand out the best. I'm really looking forward to meeting everyone there and having a great time myself. Also, I should mention that this colour is a smaller highlight in the background compared to my studio work, but still really adds something. In fact, here are few "regular" photos I did outdoors using this setup and post process. 

It didn't much show up in the first image due to the fact that it was a blue colour and a bright sunny day, but it's still a fun and sort of interesting image.

That's all for now, see all you convention goers in a few days!

-Larry M. Holder 

Practicum At Hemmings House Pictures

Hey everyone, I know I've been a bit quiet as of late on the online front and not been around much at all for shooting as well. There is a good reason. For the last few weeks I've been putting in practicum hours, for my course, at Hemmings House Pictures in Saint John. First let me talk a little about Hemmings House. Hemmings House is an award-winning film and photography production house, they service everything from television series, documentaries, concert tours and corporate ads. Though I've had the absolute privilege to work with fine photo artists like James Wilson (http://wilsonstudio.ca/) this school year, it's been great to get some insight on the more commercially heavy side of the business. Plus, other then my short instructional videos, I have been able to record and learn valuable video shooting techniques with my DSLR working with Hemmings House. My main contact and mentor in this process has been Mark Hemmings.

He's provided with great experience building opportunities so far, from shooting B-roll for documentaries, set-up for lighting, manning the slate during filming, shooting behind-the-scenes pictures, and other small tasks all important to running a business of this type. All and all, it has been and continues to be a great experience in learning every facet of this industry I love. Please check out their website, it's great stuff.

http://site.hemmingshousepictures.com/home.php

And for an extra bonus, here is the behind-the-scenes shot we picked for their use.

Thanks for reading, and I will have more stuff up soon in preparation for my trip to Anime North next week.

-Larry M. Holder 

    

Almost Forgotten: Fashion Window Displays

I almost forgot to post these images! These were images of the Diploma Fashion students and Bronwen Robbins' window displays that were put up around the downtown in various shops. It's a very cool thing to have your piece hi-lighted for the public to see beyond your typical crowd. It's also very cool of the local Fredericton businesses to be so open to this process. That's why without even thinking I jumped on the challenge of shooting through glass windows and provide the best quality images for these fine people. Therefore, I prepped myself before hand, I shot with my macro 60mm lens because it's tac sharp and with the addition of a circular polarizer filter I was in the best position I could be to start the process. My results? Not the perfection I wanted, but still a really good effort. Some of these were impossible to shoot during the day, so I had to come back on a different day after dark. For those of you interested in ever doing this, a tripod is necessary and I also highly recommend a shutter release or trigger. That will insure you don't shake the camera in any way while taking the photo with the slow shutter speeds your going to need. Ok, enough tech talk, on to the pictures.  

One last note, I actually couldn't decide on which image of Mandy Fraser's window to include (as they both have strange reflections I couldn't do much about) so I put both of them on the same canvas.

That was incredible experience, thanks again to the Fashion studio for letting me do this.

-Larry M. Holder 

101st Post! Steampunk Outtakes

I wanted to do something special for my 101st post so I'm doing a sneak peak of my steampunk images from my series "Steamed Vision". The first part of this series "The Cantina" will be unveiled at our Graduate Studies gallery show, "Cross Processed" on June 15th, 2012 here at NBCCD. These are selected outtakes from each shoot. I had three wonderful ladies help me on this shoot.

The first is a Fashion graduate of NBCCD, Kayleigh Smith, who provided the starting point for this project. We did close to 200 shots because at this point I had little direction on the project, just an idea. Kayleigh wore some clothing which fit the ecstatic of the genre which she said she had on hand in her closet on hand. It's a good thing she was familiar with the genre because she did a really good job with what she had. I either found or constructed the props you see in the photo and the smoke machine was a great purchase for this project. In the series Kayleigh is the first image in the line, here are the selected outtakes I really like.

My second model was Bronwen Robbins, by this point you might recognize both of the ladies names from other work I've done. Bronwen is also a Fashion student in the same Graduate Studies program as me. Bronwen's speciality is of course costume design, we used pieces of her existing costumes to dress her character. We didn't do as many shots for her, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted from her character. Thus I think we had about maybe 20 shots, none the less great. She plays the third character in the piece, here are my selected outtakes.

Last but certainly not least, was Stacy James. She's a good friend of mine from back when I went to college in 2005. Stacy is also a great artist, she knows fabric arts and surface design and she actually weaves with metal wire now too! In the future I'll be documenting she of her new work. When I told her about this project she researched the heck out of it and designed her own costume and make-up with the simple direction I gave her of "your a bartender". Since her character was to be the interacting point between the other two, we shot several different poses and ideas. Once again ending up with around 200 at the end, this was definitely the hardest to pick from. This was simply because she performed well in almost every shot, and the chosen image would define the tryptic. After much debate and several opinions I did settle on one, that being said here are selected outtakes.

I can honestly say I had a blast making these, and I can't wait to make more on a larger scale (hopefully) in the future. Not to mention, these images are in no way "bad", which is exactly why I want to show them off.  So bravo ladies and thank you for your help on this. That's all for now, hope I intrigued you to come see the final selected images at the opening on June 15th!

-Larry M. Holder 

*Edit* I just realized the opening is on the 15th not the 16th so I edited the date. 

Creative Portrait - Marie-Lynne Leblanc

It's been a long time since I've had a portrait update. These are shots I did for Marie-Lynne Leblanc for her designer image on the big screen at the 2012 NBCCD fashion show. It felt really good to do one of these again in the studio, from this point on though you may be seeing more location based work in this manner.

Thank you Marie-Lynne!

-Larry M. Holder 

Patricia Maillet's 2012 Fashion Line "Silk Roses"

This is the last fashion post for a while until I do new shoots. At the same time I was making shots for Mandy Fraser; I also did some of Patricia Maillet's work from her line "Silk Roses" in the Fashion Show "Designed to the Nines". Patricia brings a sense of highly elegant design into her work which is quite a lovely sight to see. I'm lucky to have the opportunity to work with all these great designers just coming in to the industry, I wish them all the best in the future.

Thanks to Patricia and everyone els for helping me in my photographic endeavours as well!

-Larry M. Holder