Personal Projects | Michael J Huxley Photography

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.

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February 1, 2010 by Michael

And the Topic of Discussion is…

I was thinking a lot today about what it is I want to spend my time posting about on this blog. I could post reviews, but how often to I actually buy camera equipment? Not often (other than my recent acquisition of a Nikon D300s, a 50mm and 24mm lens and an SB-600), being more of a DIY kinda guy, I tend to build rather than buy, when I can. I could teach, but I don’t feel I have enough knowledge and experience to really build a blog around (come back in 5 years…).

I do like the idea, however, of keeping this blog about my Personal Projects™ and the long and painful road to proficiency at lighting with speedlights. I think it’s really odd, this transformation in my shooting. In the past, I’ve always been firmly rooted in natural light and now I can’t get enough of studio work. I still believe natural light is better, and I’m becoming quite a fan of mixed light, but I’m really enjoying learning all the in’s and out’s of studio lighting. When you actually get down to doing it, it’s amazing how complicated even a one-light setup can be. Mostly though, I think my current love of studio lighting has a strong geographical element to it. Living in Watertown, NY makes for a very short window for outdoor, natural light shots. Regardless, I’m looking forward to the journey, I feel like I’ve learned a lot so far (mostly along the lines of, “I don’t know anything.”). I hope you get some entertaining stories out of my failures and successes. We’ll see…

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January 20, 2010 by Michael

Further Tattoo Adventures

I had what turned out to be an amazing photo session today up in Ogdensburg. It was one of those shoots where you spend the entire time sweating bullets because that LCD screen ain’t showing you anything pretty. In fact, it’s down-right scary. And you start thinking to yourself, “Self, start coming up with excuses ’cause this ain’t gonna be pretty.” Grammar in my head goes right out the window. I knew I had one or two good shots after about the half-way point in the shoot, but I was really starting to think my session success rate was improving. This Tattoo personal project is challenging that assumption in a big way. I was in danger of going to my “moody-artist” place and scrapping the whole thing, coming home and sulking. Luckily, the model(WARNING: link ok, but site can be NSFW) I was shooting had a personality that made it impossible to sulk. My personality and photographing models is the subject of an upcoming post, but suffice it to say, with anyone else, this shoot could have been a disaster. She kept me laughing, she kept the shoot fun, even if all I was getting was going to be hidden deep, deep down in the bowels of my hard drive.

We got to talking and she mentioned a previous shoot that didn’t go so well wherein she was trying to get the photographer to shoot really intense colors (realizing as she said this that that’s the shoot I wanted to be doing at that moment. So I mentioned that I’d enjoy doing that shoot and we starting batting ideas around. One I’ve had kicking around my brain for a while is one with this gigantic deep freezer we inherited in our basement when we bought our house. I’ve just always had this image in my head of a person creeping out from inside that freezer, deep blue lights flashing from inside and below with this stark, almost on-camera flash blast of light as fill. I mentioned this to her and she seemed to dig the idea and we both seem pretty psyched to work together again. I’m really looking to make a big production out of this one. Oooh, maybe even get a stylist and/or make-up artist to hop on the band wagon. Point is, it’s time for me to create something. To do more than just slap a kid in front of the lens tell him to “be cute” and click the shutter a few times. I want to make an image. I want to get in there and get my hands dirty with an image. Sweat, bleed, cry, pull my hair out, over every little detail in order to make the best damn image I can come up with. So that for once, what I see in my head gets translated onto the image.

That’s the best thing starting this business has led to: it’s put a real fire in my belly to do more than make money (odd how that worked, really), but to put my stamp on the world, to show people my visions, my dreams. I feel a real passion right now, and I’m excited to harness that and just…produce.

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December 11, 2009 by Michael

Skin Art

I have to admit to having a fascination from afar with skin art – specifically Tattoos and Henna. Henna I have tried; Tattoos I have not. I went with a friend of mine and his wife, who decided that they wanted to get inked for their 1st year anniversary. While they were asking questions, I looked through the artists portfolios. Great Tats, crappy pics. Half the time I couldn’t even tell where the Tattoo was on the persons body – no context. That was when I decided I was going to set out to create a Tattoo portfolio and take it around to local shops and see if I could gather some jobs increasing the quality of their portfolios. This is only the first set of shots I’ve done – my model here has been unavailable for some time, but I’m hoping to get him back soon for a re-shoot. I’m quite happy with how these test shots came out.

These were all shot at ISO 100 with a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens at f/10. My lighting is two Vivitar 285hv’s, the key light up high with a homemade grid spot attached and I believe a 1/4 or 1/2 CTO filter. The rim light is down low, opposite the main light, no diffusion, with again, either a 1/4 or 1/2 CTO.