Glamour, Beauty, Portraits and my class: Before and After

A lot of people think if you can point a camera at someone and expose it decently that you will create an awesome image and that may be the case some of the time but not in Beauty, Fashion and Portrait photography (in my humble little opinion). To me, shooting is half the equation and the post processing of the image is the second half. 

Some photographers believe you should do most of the work in camera so the image that comes straight out after your shoot should be almost sellable. I agree and I disagree. I do agree you should do all you can to expose properly, light properly and pose properly to most flatter your subject, but I do think to take your photography to the next level you have to be able to post process and retouch at the same high level as your shooting. To me, if you are a great shooter but you do not have the ability to fix a blemish, do a head swap, color correct, fix teeth, or alter some physicality of the image (that would be slimming my expanded waist line if I ever let anyone shoot me, which won't happen), you are only fighting with one hand tied behind your back and in todays market one hand is not enough hands to fight!

If you throw a rock in any direction these days and you will hit a "Professional" photographer. With so many "Pros" how do you separate yourself from the masses? To me the way to separate from the many is to be able to shoot and post process your clients images in a way that they are blown away! One of the many goals I have in this business is to be as well rounded as I can possible and to be as proficient in all aspects of photography as possible. I really feel that it is our obligation as "Professional Photographers" to do all we can to provide our clients with the highest level of images and part of that to me is educating ourselves and continued learning. With all that in mind this week I took a retouching class to be able to enhance my post processing abilities. I took the class from Julia Kuzmenko from Omaha Image Productions. It was awesome. I've been looking for a class for awhile now to help me get my editing to what I consider to be another level and I really feel Julia did that for me! So, Thanks Julia!!!

Here are some before and after images. 

Here is Julia's Facebook to see her awesome work!

https://www.facebook.com/OmahaImageProductions?ref=ts

Stuck in 1988!!!!

One of the things I never get used to as a High School Senior photographer is shooting a Senior kid and realizing I went to High School with their parents! In all honesty it shocks me cause I always think when I find out, "How can ______ have a kid that old, they are my age!" Then I remember just how old I really am and sobering reality that I'm getting closer and closer to being half a century old hits me like a ton of bricks. I have to say that moment really is one of the only times I ever feel my age! One of the cool things about being extremely immature and having the worst case of Peter Pan syndrome in the world is that you really do live in a place that has long since gone away. For me, the place I live and where my reality resides is somewhere between 1983 to 1991.

The late 80's and early 90's take a beating sometimes for the fashion and the music of the times. To me the 80's rocked for music and fashion. The 80's gave us Van Halen, The Cure, W.A.S.P., Depeche Mode, AC/DC, Ice-T, NWA, White Snake, Public Enemy, Michael Jackson, Pat Benatar, Rush, Judas Priest, Run DMC, Metallica and Prince name just a few! In all honesty, when Purple Rain the movie came out I thought Prince was the coolest Mother F'er on the planet! Cool motor bike, sweet jackets with giant built-in shoulder pads, cool man heel boots, he was the lead singer in a bad ass band and the best part, he got Appollona as a girlfriend! Prince you were the man!! I digress.....

So, for today's post I am posting some images of some High School kids who parents were just High School kids themselves, at least in my mind, just the other day!

Fashion with Becca

Last week Becca came over to the studio from Logan Utah to help me with my fashion lighting. I wanted to work on lighting with a single light on a white surface to create very clean images. A few cool things about Becca. She is a huge outdoors person and told me last year she hunted and got her first mountain lion and this year she is going to give bow hunting a try! Sad but true, it seems that Becca is more manly than me! If anyone is looking for a great blonde and very very very tall model I would highly recommend Becca as she is very easy going and cool to work with. Here are some of the images from our shoot. Thanks again Becca for making the trip over! 

Teaching My First Lighting Class!

A month or so ago I got a call from one of my friends Tiffany Hix who is an amazing child photographer in Boise. She asked me if I would participate in a benefit for one of our other photography friends Jayme Montoya who is an awesome Boudoir photographer from Boise. I said I would love to and what would you like me to do. Tiffany asked if I would help put on a lighting class. My first thought was,"They want me to help with a lighting class? Oh, yeah Craig Lamere/Moz Studios resident bad ass!"  My chest got big, my head started to swell, I could feel the ego rapidly inflating! Oh yeah it was on! Then, about a second after my first thought, my second thought overtook it like a shark eating one of those little seals you see on wild kingdom, "Dummy you have never taught a lighting class, what the hell are you thinking!" Quickly my ego trip was burst by reality; pride turned to fear, confidence turned to fright and then I did what anyone with less brains than a monkey would do and said, "Yes, no problem. What day is it." I talk to Tiffany about the details, hung up the phone and immediately had to poop.

Tomorrow is the big day and I'm really pretty excited and to be very honest I'm mega ultra scarred! I'll let you all know how the event goes; good or bad! No matter what happens the event and it's purpose is awesome. I've been so blessed in my life to have been helped every step of the way by incredible people! Time to do some pay back!  Everyone have a sweet weekend!

Fashion Lighting with Leticia

Even though I would defiantly consider myself a portrait photographer I have a mega passion for fashion photography, fashion lighting and editing.  I really enjoy looking and studying the images in Vogue, Elle and Vanity Fair. When I look at an image I'm always trying to figure out how the photographer created it. I'm always thinking, "What modifiers did they use? How did they expose it? What kind of light did they use? How much of the image is post? What was their retouching process?" ect....ect... I have to say I LOVE images that are way better than mine. I get so excited to see an image that is beyond my skill set in either creativity or technical ability or BOTH!  When I see an image that smokes me it makes me want to get to the level of the artist who created that image. There's a scene in the movie Seabiscuit where Toby Maguire brings Seabiscuit along side of this other horse to get a good look at the other horse to make Seabiscuit run harder, that's pretty much the same way I feel when I see incredible work! When I see great work I always think, "You better run harder if you want to catch them!" 

For this shoot I wanted it to be very clean, simple and really focus on Leticia. The goal of the shoot was to create some images you might find on the pages of Elle, Vanity Fair or Vogue. We shot in my white room at the studio. Hope you enjoy the images!