TSADesign

Shooting People on Dark Background

I’m putting together project right now with a personal brand, website, and headshot for Ricarido Gimena, Vancouver based Opera singer with the Vancouver Opera Company. I’ll be following up this post with the remainder of project elements. This one will focus on the shoot.   The goal was to get some good studio shots for the site and for the head shot to give out at auditions. We worked on a dark background and experimented with the lighting. Since it’s for Opera, the more dramatic the better! Read more for deatails on the lighting setup.

A great lighting scheme for a professional, dramatic image

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Product Photography on White Background

Product is king, and to make your product shots stand out, sometimes you need to get a little creative. I did a series of product photography recently for Janna Hurtzig, a local designer who’s astro satchels are taking Vancouver by storm. Since the shoot was for publishing in a book next year, I decided to break away from a flat white background and spruce it up with a bit of shadow.  Click through to see the lighting scheme and to read a bit more about the shoot.

Janna Hurtzig Astro Satchel's shot on white background

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Remembering Burma 1988

A couple years ago I had the opportunity to spend a month in Burma, now officially the Union of Myanmar. The wonderful people of this nation touched my heart. Since the 1960’s the country has been ruled by military dictatorship and the people have been largely oppressed. Recent events involve the shooting of protesting monks in the streets and the continual imprisonment of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who’s attempt to create a democracy following the violent 1988 uprising has left her locked away under house arrest for the past 30 years. The following is an interview with three men who were actively involved in these events. They met with me secretly and their names have been changed for their own protection.

Pro government propaganda in Mandalay

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Tips for Better SEO

As a developer it should be your goal to get the site you’re working on as much chance as possible to be noticed and making sure that it’s optimized to be found by search engines is a sites best chance. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of optimizing keywords, links and content to get you as much attention as possible. The following gives a few examples of good SEO practice.

search engine logos

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High Key Lighting – a fun alternative

High key lighting isn’t too complicated but is a fun alternative to a standard portrait. Check out the photos from a recent shoot and find a lighting schematic after the jump.

My favorite opera star is the king of posing

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Tips on Building a Landing Page That Converts

Building a landing page that converts takes more than just a flashy design. This post is dedicated to the do’s and don’ts when building a landing page and how to get the best conversion rate possible.

a simple yet effective example of a landing page design

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Vancouver Urban Colors

Downtown Vancouvers East side may be a sketchy neighborhood but there’s still some urban beauty to be found.

Downtown on Hastings near Carol St.

Stained Concrete

Fall leaves stain the concrete rusty shades on a rainy Vancouver day.

Shooting Film… Going back to the roots of traditional film photography

A Cross processed transparency of a girl jumping off of a waterfall in Laos

When I was traveling through Laos 2 years ago the unthinkable happened.  My digital camera sputtered and died! I couldn’t believe my misfortune! I mean, how often does one travel to Laos anyways and I was fortunate enough to be there during the biggest festival of the year, the rocket festival where home made rockets were shot into the sky to signal the beginning of the rainy season.  Fortunately I had been lugging my Canon Ellan 7 35 mm film camera and a bag full of film since I left home 6 months ago.  Being forced to go back to traditional photography was both a thrill and a joy. It inspired me to be more creative, make film choices that I hadn’t had to make in years, choose between color and black and white… It really brought something back to the art that died with digital photography.  So, here’s a story I wrote for a  travel website  about returning to traditional photography. There are also some tried and tested  techniques on getting better digital shots too.

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