Astonishing and captivating photographs (all photographs by Alfred Eisenstaed) of Marilyn Monroe at home. Loving the set of her lounging on her sofa with a book scribbling away.

K Found on Retronaut

Just felt obliged to share this photograph I took of my dog Dylan. Sitting in the car down the beach, waiting for the rain to stop so I could take him out for his morning walk. After about 30 minutes of waiting, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Dylan just resting his head on the rear seat, looking out of the rain splashed window.

Grabbed my iPhone 4 and swiveled round best I could in the drivers seat and took this shot. Slightly out of focus but other than that, I just love how Dylan seems to be just sadly looking out, longing for the rain to stop. Bless him, looks so forlorn.

Passed the photo through a filter in the Camera + iPhone application, and then a little unsharpmask in Photoshop when I got back home.

View original Dylan on Flickr.

Not often I just post one photo, but this is beautiful. See the original on Flickr.

This selection really has made me want to go their really quite soon and take my own photos. Enjoy.

Typography in New York City

Sneek Peek – Illumina

This is just a sneek peek of  a logo and identity design I recently completed for a wedding photography studio, ‘Illumina’.  The Sneek Peek is to provide an initial view of the logo images and is linked to my portfolio. An in-depth ‘logo design process’ post will be done in time brief and to the point information on that design. It will be linked to the images currently existing in my portfolio.

The main idea was to avoid the usual cliché associations with photography logos as well as wedding photography in general. There were several key elements to this project. Incorporating the visual association of photography, weddings, and also playing on the Illumina name.

The challenge was to create a logomark that summed up all these associations in one clean mark without looking tacky or cliche.

The breakdown thus consists of the main black circle which hints at a camera lens, the white eclipse shape hints at both a lens reflection and also a moon/eclipse which is the association with ‘illumination/illumina’. Finally the wedding clue is the diamond positioned so as to look like its part of a wedding ring, also part of the eclipse.

I didn’t want to make any one element too obvious, more a combination of subtle cues, but when in context work nicely.

Typography

Gotham Black was used for the main wording and Trajan Bold was used for the tag line.

This is Part Two (Part One) of a collection of recent faces on MonoExpression. A fun photographic based creative side project that I set up last year. It’s goal: to collect as many black & white portraits of creative souls. For no other reason than, because I can, I love photography and I especially love black & white portraits. Here are ten portraits I picked to show you what is going on over there.

Some faces you may know – Part 2

Here are ten portraits I picked to show you what is going on over there.

Arnt Edvin Eriksen – Public Portrait – @arnteriksen

Elizabeth (Firggy) – Public Portrait – @firgs

Hernan Valencia – Public Portrait – @theconstruct

Emil Wisch – Public Portrait – @emilwisch

Lydia J Koranda – Public Portrait – @lydiajae

Scott Wyden – Public Portrait – @scottwyden

Mariusz Cieśla – Public Portrait – @dotmariusz

Daniel E. Agee – Public Portrait – @danieleagee

Brian K. McDaniel – Public Portrait – @bkmacdaddy

Louis Gubitosi – Public Portrait – @iBlend

Want to be part of it?

If you are a creative in any field, and would like to be included, then head on over to MonoExpression for details on how to submit a photo.

Snow in the UK, a week before Christmas is a treat. I don’t know many dogs that don’t enjoy the snow, Dylan for one goes pretty berserk. So with a fresh fall of snow over night, we both wrapped up warm and headed out into the white early morning. Ready for nice long walk along the cliffs, and some photography with my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7.

Dylan being super thin haired and very thin skinned really does feel the cold, so I have a number of jackets for him. Today, he can be seen in a all over dog vest that covers his stomach, a thick over sized fleecy jacket and then a standard greyhound fur lined nylon outer jacket. One snug lurcher.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7

This photo I love to bits. Given my hands were numb, my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 did a great job of auto focusing on the speeding Dylan. He was running towards me at full speed, he had just appeared behind a bank, but the zoom which was on the maximum 18x on sports mode, did a great job. Given the poor lighting and problematic exposure in general for snow scenes, this is a great photo.

Just love the expression on his face, he always tends to be smiling, especially when he runs at you full speed, with his eyes locked onto you. You just need to be light footed enough to move out of the way.

Here are just a few of my favourite landscape photos.

MonoExpression is a fun photography based creative side project that I set up last year. It’s goal: to collect as many black & white portraits of creative souls. For no other reason than, because I can, I love photography and I especially love black & white portraits. Here are ten portraits I picked to show you what is going on over there.

For the people I rubbed shoulders with online, I set about asking them if they would mind parting with a portrait for me to display on MonoExpression.

Some faces you may know – Part 1

Here are ten portraits I picked to show you what is going on over there. There will be another ten in a week or so. The links below will take you to the appropriate page for the person show on MonoExpression.

10 Portraits at Monoexpression

Leigh Caraccioli – Public Portrait – @fleurdeleigh

Rajesh Pancholi – Public Portrait – @r27

Misty Belardo – Public Portrait – @mistygirlph

Aaron Michael Irizarry – Public Portrait – @aaroni268

Kenroy George – Public Portrait – @kengeo

Elizabeth (Firggy) – Public Portrait – @firgs

Jeff Fisher – Public Portrait – @logomotives

Kyle Steed – Public Portrait – @kylesteed

EarthXplorer – Public Portrait – @earthxplorer

Rob Barrett – Public Portrait – @robbarrett

Graham Smith – Public Portrait – @imjustcreative

Want to be part of it?

If you are a creative in any field, and would like to be included, then head on over to MonoExpression for details on how to submit a photo.

Location

During a 3 month trek across Egypt, I spent some time in Cairo, visiting my friend Simon who moved over to Egypt from England several years back. Cairo was actually my first port of call before my planned trek, to take in as much of Egypt as possible. Spending a week, with a friend who knew the city was so helpful in ‘bedding’ me in to the culture and culture shock before heading off on my own.

Taken in the beautiful grounds of the Cairo Museum, under the shade of tree’s. If you have been there then you will know the garden as round walls around trees and various statues. So this is where I was seated. Initially just taking in the sights and sounds, a mother and child sat down about 5ft away from me.

My Thinking

Every so often, the kid would peer round the protective cover of his mum and look at me with these huge eyes. Now being the considerate photographer I am, and mostly being aware of how rude just taking my camera out with its big telephoto lens and pointing it at them both would look, I considered my options. I knew this could be a awesome series of shots if I could pull it off.

One needs to be cautious and respectful of people’s privacy, especially in a foreign country, so I was comforted knowing I had been polite so far.

The next step was to keep my camera down by my waist, where it was hanging, but angle it up and hope for a decent frame. Trying to keep it as ‘covert’ as possible, without raising any suspicion. Very sneeky and not at all how I wanted to handle it, but I couldn’t just point and shoot. Too rude. And to ask would have destroyed the moment.

Every time the kid peered round, I snapped off a few shots whilst I kept eye contact with the kid and tried to grin myself. In my thoughts hoping that I had got the framing right, and all the other details. SO it was just press and hope for the best. Story of my life really.

The child was very cautious at first, only peering around a tiny bit, before darting back behind protective cover of mum. But each time, he became a little more confident, and his eyes got wider and the smile got more trusting. And each time I snapped a few frames.

I was caught tho. The mother happend to just look round, and I took a gulp. But all was OK, she looked at me, then the camera and smiled. So I took the initiative and held up the camera and pointed and gestured a sign ‘would you like to look?’. So I carefull edged over showing her the LCD on the back of the camera and she had a huge smile on her face after seeing the photos.

My only regret was not being able to communicate with her to get an address, as I would have loved to have been able to send her the shots. 

This photo was one of many, but was pretty much one of the last taken. The rest were either wonky or too blurry. I think I took about 20, of which only several came out sharp and pretty much perfect.

Photoshop

The photos taken with my trusted Canon D300 and a 200mm zoom. Enough natural light to be able to have a nice shutter speed and ‘duff’ out the background.

Although the original photo is actually very good, I have made several versions of it using various subtle color washes.

I have also ‘dodged’ and ‘burned’ aspects of the photo, the child etc to really try and emphasis the white eyes against the dark skin and the mothers black attire. The look is not totally natural, but it’s what I wanted to achieve and I love it.

Overall

It proves that being in the right place at the right time with the right subject can ensure a ‘one off’ image. I keep looking at it time and time again and it brings back such vivid memories of Egypt and the initial innocence of a child, who slowly over time gets more confident and almost playful with the unknown. The unknown being me. 

See other selected photographs from my Portfolio

Although not new to photography, taken continuous shots of surfaces for the sole purpose of creating a texture pack is. This is my first foray into Textures.

More of a iPhone Experiment

Coming from a  commercial Pre-Press background, with the well worn in knowledge of high resolution pixels, what makes a image good and poor, these iPhone images are certainly not ‘epic’ in quality when compared to the usual high resolution textures you may be used to.

Saying all that, the subject matter is pretty cool, and there are some beautiful images there that I am sure you can manipulate to create something useful. Even if not, it was fun for me and cool to put the iPhone thought it’s pace. But there is enough resolution there for you to mess around, and even use as is for web backgrounds etc. So I am hopeful, even with the limited resolution of the iPhone, these textures will be of use.

Technical Information

Width : 1800 pixels

Height : 1200 pixels

Resolution : 300 pixels

Camera : iPhone

Editing : Some Photoshop contrast and cropping.

Texture Information

These rusty textures are taken from Seaford beach, specifically the iron sea defences at the bottom of Seaford Head. The colour and variety of textures and colours is really quite extraordinary. Bright oranges, reds and even hues of dark blue against the many layers of rust and flakes. So many variations, so many patterns. 

Taken around midday with a full sun and clear blue sky. 

I have certainly enjoyed this little project and don’t understand why I have not taken to it earlier. So expect a number of other Texture Packs from me over the coming months.

Feedback

I would greatly appreciate any feedback. Speficially if you like the subject matter and feel that it would be worth me taking the same shots with my proper digital SLR.

Download

DOWNLOAD You can download the entire pack as a ZIP.

iPhone Texture Pack #1 – Rusted Sea Iron

See other selected photographs from my Portfolio

Location

Taken, as a lot of my photos are, locally. This is on Seaford Beach, just down from Seaford Head, a collection of small fishing boats that reside on the pebbles until time to go out and catch fish.

These are always the focus of many photographs, they are somewhat of a Seaford icon. 

This will be part of my new Photography Portfolio, a new website dedicated to my photos.

My Thinking

Due to the popularity of these boats being used as the focus of photos, I wanted to try a more creative angle. I had in mind the desire to do some work in Photoshop for this shoot, so I took photos with this in mind.

I wanted to try and make them look like they could of been taken pretty much anywhere, except possible to those of us that live in Seaford and can see the personality of these boats from a mile away. After all, I for one walk past these every day whilst walking my dog Dylan.

Photoshop

The photos taken with my trusted Canon D300 and a 12mm wide angle, which has proven to be the most reliable camera I have ever had, not to mention it surviving 3 months circumnavigating Egypt, one whole week of which was in the Black and White desert.

The Photoshop process was actually pretty involved as I spent a lot of time tweaking the brightness and contrast of individual pebbles and also creating a much more dramatic sky,. You will also noticed the sun hitting the hanging rope from the blue boat, this thin line of white was enhanced with the ‘dodge’ tool.

Clearly I had to cut-out the boat in order to colourise it as I have. This was simple, but creating the right depth of blue to set against the grey took some trial and error. It involved a lot of retouching of the blue hull to create this soft almost plastic type look, and to scrub out any imperfections. I wanted it to look like it was just painted, which in fact it just had been, but was showing signs of wear and tear.

Overall

This is one of my favourite retouched photographs, one that I feel really works and goes to make the picture a joy to look at.

See other selected photographs from my Portfolio