Personal Projects | Michael J Huxley Photography

Recently took a trip to Geneseo for a shoot with my favorite makeup artist A Mandaline’s Makeup who sadly will be leaving the area in a few short months. So I contacted her about setting up a shoot – one last hurrah, as it were. And what a hurrah. We had no real concept other than “Let’s shoot, I’ll bring a bunch of stuff!” We brought Emaleigh, the model, on board and she helped us solidify a direction, asking to do something earthy and connected to nature. She also had a pretty amazing location. There are sometimes when going into a project with no concept is scary as all hell, and sometimes when it’s exciting and invigorating. This time was one of the latter. It’s exciting because since there’s no concept, everyone is envisioning something different – which has the potential to go very very wrong – but with personal work, that’s ok. Leaving the images room to breath and grow organically can be very rewarding in the end when all of these disparate elements coalesce into something tangible that wows everyone involved. The key to making something like that work and not devolve into a chaotic mess, is to work with people who know their job and whom you can trust. I’ve worked with Amanda, the makeup artist several times and so I knew I could trust her. And although this was the first time I had shot with Emaleigh, it took all of two seconds before I knew she was someone who could handle herself.

So the final concept came together as the makeup was being done and on a whim Emaleigh suggests adding white dots to her cheekbones. After doing so, Amanda proclaims: “You’re a f*cking deer!” (She has a mouth – but she earns it). I had also just happened to have bought the deer skull the day before and thought it’d be cool, so I brought it with me. Ended up being a great prop and tied in with the theme really well.

Me and Emaleigh got to the location first and spent about an hour testing and exploring the location.

And one final experiment, catching the last few rays of sunlight left.

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September 30, 2011 by Michael

Sara – Nudes in the Studio

Shoot I did with Sara just before she left for the other side of the continent. Very glad I got to work with her before she left since she’s pretty much awesome. Her idea, my execution. Shot this alongside Laura Marino who helped out with makeup/hair and lent us use of her studio.

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February 28, 2011 by Michael

Dark Pin-Ups with April McClintock

Back in January I met with April McClintock, another local photographer here in Watertown, for lunch to talk shop. I enjoy getting out and chatting with other photographers as often as I can; I can talk shop all day and Liam’s conversational skills don’t generally extend beyond Superheros and Dinosaurs. So it behooves everyone involved for me to get out of the house and get my “photo-fix” every once in a while. At some point the conversation turned to a collaboration between myself and her. After some brainstorming, we decided on a “Dark Pin-up” theme. Basically, the models would be dressed up in classic pin-up outfits, classic makeup and hair. But the environment, the lighting, and even the models themselves would have a “dark” look to them. We had a great time with this shoot, both setting it up and actually shooting it. Though, I think we learned a lot from it and there’s a few things we’d do differently if we ever do this again (I hope we do!). To start us off, here’s a few Behind the Scenes snaps I grabbed with my phone at various times during the shoot:

And below is a couple of the final results:

And just a quick plug for a fellow photographer: April has some AMAZING work that you can see on her site. If you’re near the Watertown/Fort Drum area she is the “go-to” lady to get some serious Pin-up shots done. You can see by the quality of her work that she’s worth every penny.

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September 29, 2010 by Michael

New Conceptual Work

I had a chance this week to work on some personal, conceptual work that’s been rattling around in my brain over the past few weeks. The first, a shoot in an abandoned warehouse of a model with a violin is a test shot for a future shoot with a cellist/photographer friend of mine. This image represents a real turning point in my career. It’s an image that I saw completely in my head before I shot it. It involved sketching out the shot. It involved problem-solving before, during and after the shoot. I thoroughly enjoyed working on this image and afterwards my brain let loose a big sigh of relief, both for finally getting the image out and also for all the creative energy that went into the image. I’m hoping in the future, shoots don’t take quite so much out of me, mentally.

You can read more about the creative steps involved in this image on the Lighting Essentials blog.

The second image came out of a Challenge put up by the East Coast Artists: models would be randomly assigned with photographers, and then a theme would be assigned, again, randomly. I was paired with Keria (who I really enjoy working with, she’s an incredibly creative person and telling a story with an image) and we were given the theme “Circle”. I knew I didn’t want to interpret that word literally, so I just let my mind wander over all the different meanings and usages of circle. I kept coming back to “Circle of Life”, which made me think of an egg, which led me to think of making a giant nest out of twigs and sticking Keria in it, wrapped around the egg. Honestly, the most time consuming and frustrating part of the whole process was the egg. I have a -3 to my Pottery Skill and it pretty much shows in the final product – trust me, lots of Photoshop went into the egg in the final image. I built the nest in a ditch near my parents house (it was darker there, and there was an availability of sticks), which took an hour, then another hour to get the light just right. Snapped off maybe 15 frames and called it a day.

I’m quite proud of both of these images. And, as a bonus, I finally have some of my art that my wife actually WANTS on the wall. Score.

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July 19, 2010 by Michael

Private Shoot – Frenchman’s Island

I was recently invited to join a private photo shoot with Kelly of East Coast Artists, which involved a boat trip to an island – Frenchman’s Island out on Oneida Lake – for the day this past Saturday. Kelly and myself were the only two photographers, along with 3 models – Morgan, Taylor and Megan; as well as Kelly’s husband (our “OMG there is no way he can fit that boat in that tiny space!” boat pilot), their daughter (the group survivalist – if we had been stranded we would not have lacked for food – that girl can fish.) and Morgan’s mom (all-around helper and extra hand). The first thing I did when I got up was check the weather – it didn’t look good at first, but by the end of the day, you couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. Lots of storm clouds, on and off rain and very windy. “Perfect day?!” you say? Sounds like a photographers nightmare. That’s why I’m hardcore

Kidding aside, dark, stormy weather just fits my style. Grungy, dark and moody. We did get plenty of sunshine during the early parts of the day, which posed a bit of a challenge as we chased cloud cover for the perfect diffused sunlight, but towards the end of the day we were getting some very rockin’ clouds. The wind threatened to blow my Beauty Dish – flash and all – into the water at one point, but the risk was worth it for the shots we got. After make-up (provided by Megan, the model/photographer/make-up artist Renaissance Woman), we walked for a bit to this old abandoned lighthouse. Big cement building. Lots of graffiti. Great place to start the day. Morgan was our first victim model. Had to get through the typical 30 minutes of nerves as I’m running “Whatamigonnado? whatamigonnado?” through my head over and over all while trying to maintain an outward appearance of calm, serenity and confidence. I’m getting better at this part, but still – for future reference: if you’re working with me, don’t tell me anything you expect me to remember for the first 30 minutes or so. I’m too busy fighting the inner demons. So we got some shots of Morgan in and around the lighthouse, before we went back to get Megan and Taylor who were finishing make-up. Got some decent shots of all three ladies up at the very top of the lighthouse. Huge props to all 3 for making the climb up a rusted ladder in a building full of cobwebs – that’s some dedication.

Next up, we headed down to the water nearby. The first biggest challenge was ahead of us: Killing the glaring afternoon sun. Me and Kelly had two different approaches to the problem: she rolled with it and filled in the shadows with a light touch of on camera flash with great success. I decided to arm-wrestle the sun by rigging two flashes, bare, onto a stand and nuke my model. Was so-so until I realized that one of my flashes wasn’t working thanks to a busted hotshoe bracket – which eventually decided that, while hanging out over a foot of water, was a GREAT time to finally snap completely. My flash gave one final goodbye “pop” before taking the big dunk. Which was nice of it – kind of a “So long, and thanks for all the fish.” While, I do think the sun won in our wrestling match, I did pull this image before I walked away, defeated:

Took a break for some food and a dunk in the lake before getting back to shooting. Pretty much stuck to the pier at this point before heading over to 3 Mile Island and getting a few last shots. I’ll shut up for now and just make good with the…er…goods:

Oh and for some behind the scenes action, take a look at Kelly’s Facebook page

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June 1, 2010 by Michael

Self-portrait: Outstanding in His Field

Now tell me…did you all groan from the very poor pun in the title? I hope so. First let me tell you the reason behind this image. I had another image of myself for my About page, but I felt that it was a very “aggressive” and kind of scary or intimidating shot of myself. The background was deep red, my shirt was bright red, I was looking slightly down at the camera, and I was very close to the camera, only showing half my face. We were having a bonfire the other night, and ended up having a very nice sunset to shoot against, so I decided I would try to get a new shot for the website.

Thought Process

This time I decided to back up a bit and get a waist up shot. So it was a pretty easy choice to grab my 28mm lens. I wanted to get myself, but I also wanted to include plenty of my surroundings. The time of this shot is about 8pm – there was still plenty of light and I knew I wanted to tone the background down a bit, so I knew I would need a flash in order to control the light on 2 different levels. I grabbed my DIY Beauty dish – which is pretty much my go-to light modifier these days. It softens the light up a bit, but it’s still very controlled, very directional, and creates very nice shadow areas, which I love. Like I said before, I like the look of directional light, so I only grabbed on light. It might have been nice to maybe have a bit of a reflector on the camera right side of me, just to fill in the shadows, but I was alone at the time and I don’t own a reflector stand so that pretty much nixed that idea.

Camera Settings

I think I ended up underexposing the sky by about 1 to 1.5 stops, in order to get a deeper color. The flash was camera left, about 3 feet away and a few inches above me, set at 1/4 power. Since I’m using a slightly wide-angle lens, I needed to lean in to the camera just a bit in order to compensate for a bit of distortion that made my arm closest to the camera look huge. Which I suppose could have been a flattering effect in some sense, it wasn’t really what I was going for. More “regular ol’ me”, less “Quasimodo”.

Post-Processing

In Photoshop Elements (Photoshop does way more than I need – I’m settling for Elements until I’m shooting magazine covers regularly. Elements is a GREAT program and it’s only like $70), I added touched up my face and shirt a bit, then added a layer of High Pass Filter and changed the layer blending mode to “Soft Light”, which sharpened the image a bit and gave the light a bit more punch. I also added another layer and changed the blending mode to “Overlay” then dropped the opacity down to about 25% to 50% to bump up the contrast a bit.

When all was said and down, I have to say, I really like this image. I’m looking forward to shooting some more mixed light portraits this season.

Got any questions? Drop a comment and I’ll answer it as best as I can!

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April 30, 2010 by Michael

More Images from my Tattoo project

Coming very close to finishing up a small portfolio of tattoo images and I wanted to share with you what I’ve been working on all these weeks. I have a few more models to photograph over probably the next couple of weeks, but I’m hoping this mini-portfolio will be done and ready to show within a months time. If you follow my work on Flickr (I put a lot of work on Flickr, if you’re interested in seeing my thought process in photographs, add me as a Contact. I post a lot of things there that I wouldn’t normally show in a portfolio) you’ve already seen these, but for the rest of you, I hope you’ll enjoy these.

I enjoy having this blog to share this stuff because, although I enjoy photographing subjects like this, putting these images along with children portraits on my portfolio page would just look odd. It’d be great to use the same techniques for my children portraits as I do here, but I’m not sure there’s a market for those types of children portraits. I’d just really like to make the kids I shoot look like rock stars and go a little wild with the image instead of my current work, which is pretty standard stuff. I think that’s the most important thing for me – to give parents images of their kids that they couldn’t get with anyone else. Sure, I can give you a technically correct, technically beautiful image of your children. It’s my goal to go beyond that, to get inside that child’s world and have that show up on the image.

The technical specs for these shots are as follows:

Shot with a Nikon D300s
Shutter Speed: 1/250th
Aperture: f/5.6
Lights: 1 Vivitar 285hv in a DIY Beauty Dish from above set at 1/4 power; 1 SB-600, bare, behind the model, set at 1/8th power.

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March 11, 2010 by Michael

Local Charity: Giving the Library a Helping Hand

Took Liam to the Library today and got one of those completely-outta-left-field brain farts that you wish would happen a lot more often than they actually do. You know the ones; they usually happen just as you’re falling asleep?

When my wife worked at the public library in Bartlesville she coordinated a project for National Library Week wherein they asked prominent figures in the community to come in with their favorite books to be photographed by a local photographer (a good friend of mine Josh Williams). I’m thinking about doing something similar here in Watertown, only making it open to the general public. It’d be an entirely charitable endeavor, all proceeds going to help out the Flower Memorial Library. Why the Library? With New York State Governor Paterson’s $5.2 Billion in budget cuts, the education system needs all the help we can give them – this includes public libraries. Being married to Carleen for 7 years, I’ve gotten a good glimpse into really how much work and effort public libraries go through to service their communities. When you really look into the programs your local library offers, it’s pretty amazing some of the things they do. For example, back in Bartlesville, they used to bring in tax experts about this time of year so that people could get free help with taxes and tax advice. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of libraries do that around the country.

The details of this are still vague in my head right now, but I’ll be contacting the children’s librarian (I’d gear it towards families with young children) soon and try to get some ideas bouncing back and forth and get this thing rolling.

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February 13, 2010 by Michael

365: Week 1

The first week of my 365 project is over and I wanted to share some of my favorite images from the week with you (I’m going to cheat and add day 8, as it’s the best example). I want to write about these images because I really like the lighting I used as well as the post-processing. Also, I think it has spawned a new personal project – although what form I want that project to take is still up in the air. Below are the images:

First, is it bad that the only images I want to talk about are self-portraits? Yeah, very narcissistic of me. The light in the images comes from a lot of experimenting with a homemade beauty dish. I had to play with the dish a lot to get the light to look the way I wanted it to. This series has been great for me personally, just in learning how to shape and control light, but also showing how great photos can be made with the creative use of just one light. It’s seductive, and easy to believe that if we surround every subject with 6 or 7 (or 8, just to be safe) lights then we’ll make great images every time. Certainly, those kinds of setups have their place. but I like the idea of slowly building light into an image. Start with one light. Not enough? Try a reflector. Need more still? Now try another light. Or maybe a different placement first. I saw first hand with this project what a difference an inch can make.

Point is, my new approach to portraits is going to be “Take it slow”. Apply light like a painter paints a canvas – one layer at a time.

As before, if you want to see more 365 images, take a peek at my Flickr set. I hope you enjoy!

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February 2, 2010 by Michael

365 Project

So it looks like I may be jumping on the bandwagon of 365 projects. Originally I didn’t plan on doing one simply because there are so many people doing them. But in light of my recent purchase of a new camera, I feel a 365 project would be a great way to quickly become familiar with the various features of my camera. Also, I just want to get back into always looking at the world through a camera. When I was in school, my camera came with me just about everywhere, and I became used to looking at my surroundings all the time. I’ve gotten out of that habit and I want to regain that again.

So, a lot of people have rules and guidelines that they follow, some are strict (such as only shooting self-portraits) and some are more loose (shoot anything but people). I’m going to be trying to keep it as loose as possible, I want to encourage myself to take pictures of …whatever. Mostly what I’d like to focus on is natural light, but I’m certainly not going to restrict myself from using the studio. And so, below are my guidelines for my 365 project:

The focus will be on natural light and how light shapes things
Studio lighting is allowed, but it should be more than a straight-up headshot.
Subject matter should center on “scenes” and still-life, but occasional portraits are allowed.
Images cannot be from paid jobs unless I specifically take a shot for the 365, “Ooh, this light over here would be great for my 365!”.
The overall arching theme should be “Experiment!”. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be different.
Heavy post-processing is allowed – this fits with the Experiment theme. Besides, I need practice with that too.
Oh yeah, must post an image everyday, unless I’m prohibited by travel, lack of internet access, etc.

I’m looking forward to this. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.