MX

Did a shot for the Deftones song "MX" with Kristen tonight.

Lyrics:

You're so sweet
Your smile Your *****, and your bones
You're on fire
You move, like music, with your style

Let me think (let you think about what)
About girls (and what else)
And Money... and new clothes (and what do I get?)
Thirty nights (uh huh)
Of violence (yeah)
And sugar, to love

Closer to the lung
Shove her over railing

You're sweet
But I'm tired of proving this love
See you're a bore
But you move me, like a movie, that you love

Let me think (let you think about what)
About girls (and what else?)
And money... and new clothes (and what do I get?)
Thirty nights (uh huh)
Of Violence (yeah)
And sugar to love

Closer to the lung
Shove her over railing

Let me think (let you think about what)
About girls (and what else)
And money... and new clothes (and what do I get?)
Thirty nights (huh huh)
Of Violence (yeah) And sugar to love (******* rock star)

Closer to the lung
Closer to the lung
Shove her over railing

MX:

Rivière - Final Shot

Total shoot time including set up and tear down was about 30 minutes, which is good since it was lightly raining outside. I'm pretty sure one of my flashes got wet at one point but luckily it seems to be working fine still!

Here is the shot:

I will probably do a bit more editing to it by adding a texture or something like that. All in all I am very happy with it! Thanks a lot Natalie.

10/15/09

Doing a photoshoot with Natalie Diveley for part of my Deftones project.

Photo will be for the song "Riviere" from their album "Saturday Night Wrist."

Lyrics:

She haunts the roads
She waits for a new face
Her arms red and injured
She wants to rest but she can't till we have faced
I've cut your armies down and torn your heart
You wait
I wait
Outside, awake
I've cut your armies down and torn your heart
You wait
I wait
Outside, awake
She haunts the roads
She waits for a new face

I'll post my interpretation with the photo hopefully later tonight. Stay tuned!

Oh my God, another update!

Wow I thought I had been bad before the last post, I've been way worse since!

This summer has kept me pretty busy... have done a number of photoshoots and have gone on a number of trips amounting to some pretty awesome pictures taken!

I got to go to the beach:



I have also done a few shoots with Heather Dively for art for her CD. Right now I'm still waiting for her to choose a cover image in order to edit that, but there were lots of other cool photos taken:

I had a really awesome Photoshoot with Andrea Coe back at the end of July for part of my Deftones project, where I am taking pictures based on song names. It is probably one of my most interesting portraits, and I am pretty proud of it:

Here's hoping the next few months are full of cool stuff too! I will keep this updated a bit better from now, promise!

Getting Back

Sorry for the lack of updates lately!

So about a week ago I got my white backdrop put together finally. It's pretty fun, but I need to buy another flash to help light it evenly. Doh! >.<

It takes some pretty cool pictures still.. even if I have to load them all into photoshop and paint out a few non-white parts here and there. Soon that will be fixed though! I was messing around with it trying to get a new facebook picture... busted out the horse mask but was told that I've already done that gimmick once and have to retire it now. :-(

Horse Mask, I hardly knew ya.

In memory of Horse Mask: Sept 08-May 09

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/3546974397/sizes/l/in/set-72157612459496897/)

So instead I just stuck my head inside of a plastic bag and waited until I was seconds away from blacking out -for realism purposes- and was happy with the results... I guess!http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/3547785984/sizes/l/in/set-72157612459496897/)

Favorites Part Twenty Nine

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2940078958/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)

This was taken along 150 / MLK drive heading west out of Danville. It is an old abandoned train car. I saw it and figured I should check it out, and the inside was way cooler than I expected. I definitely want to do a photoshoot in here someday.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2940079876/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)

Favorites Party Twenty Eight

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2940078398/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)

This was taken the weekend I was at my Aunt & Uncle's farm for my Grandfather's funeral. They didn't have very good luck with their shipment of cows that arrived that weekend. One was dead 24hrs after receiving them due to a sickness it got during transport. Another had its leg snapped when it was being unloaded. It later died. All in all I think they had 6-7 of their cows die from this shipment, which is pretty disastrous.

I took some kind of fun pictures of living cows that weekend, but this one was probably my favorite from the weekend. It was fitting.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2940077064/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)

This was one that was a little less morbid. I still thought it was scary as hell. For some cows at least.

UoI Student Board Photoshoot

So I was riding a train into NYC last Tuesday night and I get this message from this dude, he was like "Sup, take some pics at UoI Sunday?" I was like "Cool."

Set up and shot from 1pm-6pm Sunday April 12. Had a lot of fun and got some cool pictures! What will they be used for? Only time will tell...

Break

Ok I reached the end of my favorites heading back in time, I am going to be going over some more current ones now. Thank god, I was getting tired of the old stuff.

I have been keeping pretty busy with photography related stuff lately, I am working on building a white seamless studio background, as well as slowly working on photos for a music-related project I have.

I put an ad in the DHS yearbook, and got a webpage designed... that was pretty fun.

The website is www.tomolsonphotography.com and was designed by a fellow up in Canada, he does great work.

I'll post some new stuff here soon!

Favorites Part Twenty Seven

Too many photos from Hawaii! Oh well, it's something I am glad to be able to complain about.

This is from the lava fields of the Volcano National Park. It was a pretty cool place, kind of sucked that it was permanently stuck in a rain cloud while we were there, but still an amazingly unique place.

I was most fascinated with the seemingly endless lava fields at the park. They weren't really endless, and I probably only saw something like 5-10 square miles of them (which is still pretty huge) but the visuals they provided of a seemingly endless field of sharp black rock were just awesome. If I lived in Hawaii I would spend a ton of time there, especially for photoshoots.

This is an HDR shot that I edited pretty heavily. I should go back and re-edit it, maybe this will inspire me to get around to doing that. I'm not too happy about the sky at this point, it's a bit too grey but the ground is still really amazing.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2619617443/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)

Favorites Part Twenty Six

Here is another one from Hawaii.. but looking back this is probably my favorite from the trip at this point in time. This is actually a re-edit, as my first was waaaaay over-saturated, and that's just not my style now.

The story goes like this:

It was Monday, our first full day in Hawaii and Nick, David, Mandy and I are heading to Hapuna Beach, setting out around 10am. We are taking the scenic coast route I guess, and on the way out of Hilo we drive past this crazy hillside graveyard. In the middle of it is this gigantic gorgeous tree.

I had watched "The Fountain" less than a month before and the "Tree of Life" vibe this thing was giving off was ridiculous... despite the fact that it was surrounded by a bunch of tombstones. I think as soon as I saw it my jaw dropped and I said to Nick "Ok Nick you gotta take me here later." I think it was Thursday when Nick and I took a drive to find some flower specimen for him and he said he would take me by this spot.


We get there and I'm walking all around this place trying to get the angle I had pictured in my head, but unfortunately the graveyard wasn't as steep on the hill as I thought it was, and since I was limited to a wide angle lens I had to settle for something different (Sometimes I really wish I could fly purely for a photo taking aspect).


I still really liked the photo, the sky and the clouds and the tree all just look so perfect in my eyes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2620441602/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/

Favorites Part Twenty Five

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2620459576/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/

Here is another one from the Hawaii trip, near the location of the last photo, but taken about 45 minutes later and facing West instead of East. This was my first sunset I had ever photographed... I got a little spoiled, what can I say. I really like this because of the range of colors I got from it right out of the camera. I don't think there is much post work done on this.

Hawaii is really beautiful... I want to go back. :-(

Favorites Part Twenty Four

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2619636923/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/

Another shot from Hawaii, this is from Mauna Loa, at about 9300 feet. We drove up there with Nick and parked at the observatory. I noticed the hill I was standing on as I took this while we were standing around and I walked about a quarter mile to the hill then climbed about 300 feet to get to the top of it. I got kinda winded in the process haha.

It was a pretty cool view most people rarely see except when in an airplane. I had a great time up on that mountain, especially taking sunset/star pictures. It was incredible!

Favorites Part Twenty Two

This was taken in Hawaii at Hapuna beach or something like that. I really like the composition in it. It's maybe a bit too blue and the vignetting is a little extreme. I might have to go back and edit it. I did like how you can barely see the polka dots in Mandy's bikini though.

Favorites Part Twenty One

This is titled Brosef. It is my brother.I actually took this the first day I got my camera. It is just some on-camera flash with contrast boosted. Not a technically stunning portrait by any means, but I think it has an interesting expression in it.

Maybe it is because he is drunk.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2543060069/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)

Favorites Part Twenty

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3155/2705908517_e07eda6250_b.jpg)

This was one of the first pictures I had taken after being back from Hawaii back in July. I was in a bit of a funk because I wasn't finding Central Illinois to be as interesting to photograph. Mandy and I decided to go check out the West-Newell boardwalk with our dog and I figured I'd take my camera and see if it would put me back in the mood.

Good thing I did! It totally got me back into the frenzy and I ended up taking a ton around Danville during the rest of the summer. Sometimes it can be hard to appreciate what surrounds you as being unique or interesting, but you have to realize that what surrounds you is absent from people in other parts of the world... thus making it interesting for them to see. I.E. people that live on the beach dream of going to the mountains.

This was another one of the first photos where I touched the contrast slider. The wood was pretty boring to begin with, but a little extra contrast really brought out the detail in it. Looks like I went a bit crazy with the green in this, but oh well.. I was still new to editing. :-)

Favorites Part Nineteen

I took this when I was at a graveyard near Danville Gardens. This was one of the first times I achieved an effect I was surprised and happy with in post production. The glass in plain view is very grey and ordinary, but I cranked the exposure on this way up while playing around with it and was amazed at the colors that appeared.

It was kind of a stepping stone for me in that it encouraged me to try different things in post... which might be good or bad, depending on who you ask, haha.

Fun

Last night I had a photoshoot with Carly Delzell which was really fun. It took a bit longer than I figured it would (took about 4 hours from set up to tear down) but it was quite worth it since I think we took some cool pictures.

I don't know if I chose the best mix of pictures to take as far as marketing purposes go (bloody toilets probably don't encourage people to get senior portraits taken by me), but it's no fun if I can't try out a few different things once in a while. We got a couple of cute pictures inbetween the crazy ones. :-)

Favorites Part Eighteen

I took this one in the summer while at Mandy's parent's pool. She was wearing a yellow swimsuit, the ball is yellow. I think having them both be yellow is one of the main reasons I like this a lot, the colors fit.

This was also around the first time I started messing with the contrast slider in Lightroom, which over the last few months has become my best friend. The photo has a pretty decent crop on it- I cut out the lower half because there was just a cute stomach and no yellow, and I didn't really think it was relevent.

Overall, this is one of the happier looking pictures I've taken. I think it's good to have a range of styles and emotions in photography... while it is fine to focus on a certain niche, you should always try a few different things now and then.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2710651284/sizes/o/in/set-72157606668759786/)

Favorites Part Seventeen

Woohoo, done with Atlantic City! Talking about so many photos taken in the same place is so boring.

This next one was taken around Danville, IL. If you go down West Williams street, heading towards Henning Road, the street turns into Hungry Hollow Road once you go around the corner. Go another couple hundred feet and you find the Hungry Hollow Bridge! Newly built in 2007, it's a pretty nice bridge.

I originally planned to take photos of it at night, because I thought there were some spotlights on it. So I go there with Mandy one night, and there was absolutely no light! I threw in the towel for that night, and a few days later I went back around 4-5 PM, near sunset.

I parked a few hundred feet from the bridge and got a few pictures of it while walking towards it, but I decided that I didn't really like any of them that much, and I wanted to get some water in the picture. So I walked down the banks and headed West along the Vermillion river (I think). Actually I have no clue what river it is, either the Vermillion or the Middle Fork.

Anyways, I found this nice spot and took a few pictures from this angle. I was able to edit out all the power lines in photoshop, so it gives it a much cleaner picture. This is one of my favorite pictures I have taken in the Danville area. I just love the brightness of it as well as the reflection in the water.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2716197130/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)

Favorites Part Sixteen

Here is another Atlantic City photo that I took indoors. There was a miniature watershow going on, and I took a few different photos of it. I cropped this to give it a panoramic view, though it is really just one image. Later on I edited out that bit of pink in the top right corner.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2733965357/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)

Favorites Part Sixteen

Number sixteen was another picture taken in Atlantic City. This one is a bit more abstract than all the others though.

Chad and I were walking through an Addidas or Puma store, I forget which, and I saw this pink and white purse that I thought looked just amazing (I was drunk). So I snapped a picture of it. Later on, I did like the lines and the pattern on the leather, plus the texture of it all. I fired up lightroom, edited the colors to be something less girly and gave it a tighter crop. Most of my photography is not abstract, but I figure one here and there won't hurt any.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2734796816/sizes/l/in/set-72157606668759786/)