Richmond Alternative Photography

These are images that I shot on my visit home to Hammond, LA during Christmas. I took an afternoon and walked around the downtown area and shot some of the well-known landmarks. These photos are High Dynamic Range images that have been created using Photomatix Pro and are made from 10-15 bracketed images. I’ve been experimenting a lot with HDR lately for my digital work and I really enjoy the effects that I get with the process.

See the other images here.  

Andy :: Jan.03.2009 :: Digital Photography, Photoshop :: Comments Off

It’s been awhile since I posted any photos and these are a set that I have been working on over the past 5 weeks. Recently, I have had the opportunity to roam around the old Missouri State Penitentiary  for about half an hour each evening. These are images I shot during that time. The last inmates were moved out of the facility in 2004, and it is incredible how quickly the buildings have deteriorated. There is a lot of history in these buildings and it has been a real privilege  to roam them unattended.

To see the rest of the images I have collected, click here. 

Andy :: Oct.10.2008 :: General :: Comments Off

I had a great week in Kansas City, and enjoyed all the new people I met. I definitely need to live in a place like KC if I plan on being serious about photography and art. Friday night, I actually slept in my car in the Crossroads District. I woke up when the sun came up, walked down the street to YJ’s coffee, enjoyed a plate of spicy biscuits and gravy, and met a few of the regulars at the place. It was great!  

My shoot with Sarah was probably the most prolific that I’ve had since I’ve been pursuing wet-plate photography, and more specifically moving toward an emphasis in photographing fashion.

Sarah is great! Very multi-talented. She made all of the clothing seen in the photos, and that was only a small portion of the things she had in her closet. She’s also a graphic designer, working with the largest ad agency in Kansas City. I have no doubt in my mind that she will be a successful clothing designer one day. I’m no expert, but I know talent when I see it. She’s got it. These photos are in my opinion, the best work I’ve done yet, and I owe everyone who has helped me along the way (you know who you are).

I learned a lot of things about myself on this trip, and I feel closer to being able to set some real goals for myself very soon. I have always been the kind of person who obsessed about making plans for everything, and always knowing in advance what I would be doing from one minute to the next. I have found out through traveling and going on little excursions like the one this past week, that I am most successful when I set no expectations and throw myself to the whims of chance. 

Andy :: Aug.31.2008 :: Wet-Plate :: Comments Off

It was brought to my attention that my gallery wasn’t working for some reason. I have corrected the problem and I apologize to anyone who tried to view images and couldn’t access them.  

Andy :: Aug.28.2008 :: General :: Comments Off

I had a shoot yesterday with probably the coolest model I’ve worked with so far. I found Sarah on ModelMayhem, and I’m not really sure why I didn’t ask to shoot with her sooner. Wow! She’s gorgeous! Sweetest person on the planet too! We were very efficient working together as well. I think out of a total of three hours of actual shooting, we did 14 plates, 10 of which were “keepers”. Things work well when all involved are good at what they do.

It was a great day….we shot a little before lunch in the West Bottoms area of Kansas City, had some lunch at a Mexican restaurant by the river, walked around a little, and then almost got arrested for trespassing on Union Pacific railroad property. 

I should have scans posted sometime next week, but until then, I’ll leave you with this teaser snap from my webcam. I can’t wait to shoot with her again!

I’m in Kansas City the rest of the week for work…staying at the Westin (niiice). There’s lots I could be doing, in a big city like this…somehow I convinced myself that sitting in the hotel lobby for 5 hours using the free wi-fi was better than going out on the town. I’m a retard (no offense to any retards who might be reading).

Andy :: Aug.26.2008 :: Wet-Plate :: Comments Off

I finally had an opportunity to do some new images since taking a break over the winter. Yeah, I know its July now, but I had a slow start getting moving again.I received a message awhile back from a photographer on Model Mayhem who was going to be traveling thru Missouri on a photo excursion in mid-July. He and two photographer friends do this once every year or two and they bring a model with them. They wanted to stop and visit with me while they were in town, as well as shoot some photos. I was all for it, so over the weekend of July 12th I met up with these guys.Patrick Alt is a large format photographer out of Los Angeles. He is also a master of the platinum printing process. Along with him were Steve Raines of Wyoming, and Robert Finley from Oklahoma, both large format photographers and master’s of the platinum printing process as well. They brought along Ms. Erin Wilson, a model who does mostly nudes from the San Francisco bay area. Erin is also a phoographer who shoots medium format on her own projects. I set us up to shoot on Saturday morning at the old Renz Farm prison across the river from Jefferson City. Erin does mostly nude modeling, so it was a great opportunity for me to get some nudes into my portfolio. On Sunday, we went to Frankenstein, MO to shoot at an old abandoned farm house the guys found on their way into town. Below are a couple plates from the weekend.

Hanging around these guys really got me interested in trying to make prints again. Back in 2006 I gave printmaking a try with Van Dyke Brown prints and Salt prints. I really liked how easy salt prints were to make, and I think if I could get a good negative, I could make some really nice ones. I might take a weekend to try doing some landscapes and make negatives and see how I do. Salt prints are really easy, and I have all the stuff to do them (as does any wet-plate photographer), so it would be easy to give them a try over a sunny weekend. 

Andy :: Jul.22.2008 :: Wet-Plate :: Comments Off

I’ve been playing with some retouching techniques in photoshop and I have to say, I never realized how much these techniques were used in the professional world. I’ve learned a ton about photoshop that I didn’t know was possible. Layer Masks are extremely powerful! After messing around with this stuff, I must say that if there is one single skill that is the most important to learn in Photoshop, it would be working with layer masks.

I’ll keep the identity of the victim secret to protect the innocent, but it was a perfect image for me to play with. You’ll notice that I thinned the bridge of the nose, restructured the left side of her jaw, popped the eyes, removed some smile lines, and smoothed out the skin. If I spent more time on it, I’d probably do 3 or 4 more versions of the same image to see which one is better, but I think this was a pretty good first attempt. I tried to keep the corrections subtle so they stayed believeable. If you click the image above, you’ll be sent to a copy of the high resolution version.

Andy :: May.26.2008 :: Photoshop :: Comments Off

I promise, I haven’t sold out on all you “Wet-heads” out there, but I decided to pickup a nice little Canon 10D digital SLR last week so that I could experiment a little with a digital workflow. I got the camera for a steal of a deal from a very nice photographer on ModelMayhem.

You can’t beat a “pro” level (even though its a little old) digital SLR, complete with a 28-75 f/2.8 lens, battery grip and 2 batteries for $450. And when it makes pics of cute animals like the one above, how could you even think about passing it up?!?! (Pictured: Elphie the Dog)

Andy :: May.19.2008 :: Uncategorized :: Comments Off

Well, I’m happy to say that so far this month, I have well exceeded the 1000 hits mark for the month of March! This has never happened before in a single month (nowhere close actually), and I’m not really sure how/why my site has gotten so popular so quickly. Thanks for looking everone!

While trying to figure out the cause of the traffic increase, I noticed that I’ve been getting quite a few visits from people browsing on University/College “.edu” computers. Are you students? Are you teachers? If you’re  a student interested in wet-plate photography feel free to email and ask questions. I’ll also take the time for more shameless self promotion and offer myself up for teaching an overview/workshop on the process to a college level group of students in an art program. If my work interests you, or you would like someone to give a demonstration, contact me and we’ll see if I’m available!

I’m going down to visit family for Easter so I’ll be in Louisiana this weekend. I’ll be doing some maturnity photos for some friends while I’m there. I’m not sure if my friends will want me to post any of them online, but I’ll try and get permission…pregnancy is kind of personal. It’ll be great to dust off the camera and do a few plates while I’m down where its warm. I’m getting excited about shooting more as the weather improved and spring gets started.

Toodaloo!

Andy :: Mar.20.2008 :: Uncategorized :: Comments Off

Well, I’ve got the gallery back up after trying to fix the problems I was having over the course of about 4 days. I can’t get it to do what I was trying to do, and the developers who make the software are stumped. So, at least I’ve got a little spam protection now, maybe not “captcha”, but we’ll see how it goes…

Andy :: Mar.10.2008 :: General :: Comments Off