Dec
09
A question I posed to Facebook users back in October – How many lights were used in the photograph above? Extra bonus points for taking a stab at light modifiers used on said number of lights.
I created this photo strictly as a visual aid for an article I wrote back in October as well (click here for that post). Taking the little side project further, I was curious to see if anyone following me on Facebook would get close to the light setup used to make the photo. I would have to say Justin was the closest guess, as he went into some pretty good detail on lighting position.
Reproduction of the “real” world is a funny thing in the photo and video field. I guess we have commercial photography and the movie industry to thank for our completely unrealistic view on reality nowadays. What I mean by that, is that artificially lighting most setups as if it were 100% replicating a natural occurrence flat-out looks bad in a final photograph. Walking around in real life, we see things, accept them as beautiful, and we appreciate them and go on with life. However… when it comes to looking at a photograph that was done well, in respect to holding true to artificially re-creating only natural forms of light found in the world, we get REALLY picky. “Oh, I don’t like how that person’s head isn’t edged-out by backlighting and cannot be made-out from the background, ” or “the shadows are not filled-in enough for me.” We don’t know what “natural” even looks like anymore. It’s true, and a comment on the Facebook photo proves it, with a user guessing that only light from the computer screen is lighting this entire photo (not their fault, this is the general public’s view of light and what they are exposed to with every photo and video professional produced). And with today’s overstimulating, commercialized, uber marketing online world, we demand to see the “real world” in a not-so-real situation with perfect beauty lighting on faces, proper rim lighting, and fans blowing a models hair back… now that’s REAL life (I kid)! Every once in a while, we photographers can get away with a “natural” lighting approach, and get away with a people pleasing photo, but not often. We usually have to cleverly light it to ensure all of the visuals in a composition are well-lit for proper attention and detail.
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Oct
24
Wow… today the blog turns three years old. Im not going to lie, keeping up a blog that averages over two lengthy posts per week for three straight years, while in the midst of everything else going on is a lot of work, but its been a blast. The only thing I hate about blogging is the word blog. Its retarded. People couldnt have come up with a more ugly, meaningless sounding word to represent such a gigantic avenue on the web today. Every one from large businesses to grandmothers blog, most of the content we read everyday are blogs or powered by blog development platforms. Do you think that if they knew blogging was going to be such a staple of the interwebz that they would have better a better name? Ya gotta think so. I digress…
A lot of time spent on here, publishing my stories, thoughts, and images. Its like my public journal. Heck, even Ill dig into the blog archives and look back at the trail of information. Its a fun little refresher, sometimes even forgetting some of the shoots Ive done, and it all comes back after a cruise through the three years of content. Im really glad Ive taken the time to do the blog. Of course as a photographer, I am already actively documenting people, places, and events in time with photos, but the blog brings a whole extra dimension to that documentation process.
Im surprised Ive stuck with it, and so consistently, to be honest. Im sure we all know too many of our friends and family who have started a blog only for it to fizzle out after the third post. Of course their first post is full of all of the enthusiasm, talking about all the things they are going to talk about and do on their blog. Then after that third post, things get short, dates skip months at a time (usually a post talking about how they are going to start blogging again), then a year passes and they vow the same thing. Its quite entertaining really. After seeing so many blogs end up like that, I had the fear of mine doing the same thing when I started it. Ok, here we go, lets see how long this lasts. I have my photography to thank for it chuggin along, as Im excited to share my work with you guys. My work, the stories I hear from my followers about how they loved a certain post or the photos they saw, hearing an old friend has been following the blog for a long time and love my work… these things keep me inspired to continue to do it, and do it with gusto (and not lazily posting a couple pictures with a sentence or two). I try to make the blog entertaining and informational, tying my visual work to the thought process behind the photos.
Hopefully those of you who do follow me have found it a fun/interesting place to visit. I dont see any end in-sight, I think the Matty Photography blog will be here for good. I will continue to share my photos and thoughts, a frustration or two with the photographic field I work in, raise questions, try to provide some helpful insight for fresher photographer minds reading the posts, and have a blast while doing it.
Photo above of a third grade classroom. I came in and photographed all of the third graders at an elementary school so they could all surprise their Mom’s with a Mother’s Day portrait. That’s my own mom in the middle of the pack (their teacher). It was a fun day, kids are funny, they ask the most out-of-left-field questions.
Sep
26
You hear it all the time, people “viewing” the world in a perspective that is unique to only those in the same career field. With each life experience we gain as we live each day, we wake up and see the world a little differently, whether we like it or not. This perspective greatly skews itself in the direction of topics and ideas where your mind spends a lot of it’s time thinking, observing, acting-on, and discussing. We become hypersensitive to these things we specialize our lives around. The “perspective” I am specifically referring to in this post is that of a visual sense, however, the varying perspectives of the world span from the other senses our bodies have (like hearing or smell) to just thoughts. Of course, all of these perspectives are manifested from thought, but they work in-tandem with our sensory organs.
It should be no surprise to those reading this that my perspective has been warped by my obsession with photography. Like the blind gain an uncanny ability to heighten their sense of hearing, I’ve come to modify my sight and how I view the world in photography. My quest in making new and different photography (and in as great of a quantity as I can), puts me in a mode that hunts for anything that can be utilized to inspire, create, or evolve a photography concept. I’ve become fascinated and an observer of what I’ve already experienced my whole life, which is light and how it reacts in an unimaginable number of environmental variations. For example, I understand that candle light is faint, very orange in color, where fluorescent bulb is much bright and different in color temperature. I understand that glass, metal, and other like-objects hold reflective properties. All of these things you learn as a kid, but you never really have to consciously think about them in every day life and how they effect your life, because quite simply, they don’t real matter that much. Not until you pick up a light capturing device, like a camera, do you start to find an appreciation of everything you already “know.” Turns out you really don’t know much about it after all. Further more, you don’t understand how important the smallest variations in time of day, light variations, surface properties of simple objects sitting in a room, etc. really are until it comes time for you to replicate it accurately with a camera. Essentially, you are observing non-stop, taking mental notes, testing, failing, and learning all over again in a new world hidden inside of the same one you’ve known since birth. It’s a rewiring of the brain, and sometimes it’s a fricken battle to accomplish, because you are fighting your whole life’s idea of how things are. For me, it’s taking what I know about life, shoving that knowledge in to a camera, and looking at it via the lens. This rewiring process can’t even begin until you understand the camera and what it is capable of. Further more, with flash photography, the camera and only the camera is capable of seeing what flash photography can produce. After years of observing flash photography produced by cameras and the lighting tools which helped manipulate light, you can start to predictively visualize the world that your camera sees. It’s very much a trial and error process, a LOT of observing.
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Aug
10
So a few months ago, I was struck by an idea that quite honestly upset me because I hadn’t thought of it sooner. That idea? Shirts. Shirts with my logos on it. A vain idea? Maybe a little, but I work some pretty large events sometimes. It’s not like I sport my own shirt, strut up to a random person and go, “Yep, (sigh) I don’t know if you know this… but I’m kind of a big deal” (looking off into distance and thumb pointing to my own logo on chest). Sometimes I’m up working my lighting magic in front of crowds prior to said events starting, where I literally have 750 – 1,000 sets of eyes on me as they anxiously await the start of the event. Why would I be up in the lime light, doing lighting photography? My clients will be working/promoting themselves at events, they hire me to cover them working the events, and sometimes we get to have a bit of fun on the venue’s “stage.” This means me, lightings, lots of gear, and staged photo shoots upfront. I’m sure most of the people who are there are wondering what the hell is going on, maybe curious what and why I’m taking photos, and I bet some are wondering what these photos are turning out like. How would they ever get that chance when they don’t have a clue of who I am or where to look? It’s not like I grab I mic, turn the to crowd, “I’m Matty, that was my show, checkout my site, goodnight!” Shirts are a far classier approach, don’t cha think? Those whose interests are perked, can look closer and read my logo.
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Jul
04
First day here in Phoenix, spending most of the day relaxing by the pool and trying to stay cool in the 100+ temps. How do you people handle these extreme temps for extended periods of time?! Did you get lost in the desert and just give up trying to find a way out? Anywho, it’s nice for like… a week, max, and after that I’m done. So it’s the fourth of July. If you could pick a couple locations where you can count on a nice, dry evening for a fireworks show, I bet Arizona would probably be on that list. Well, just so happens I’m in Arizona, Phoenix of all places, and we had an amazing lightning storm roll through. I couldn’t imagine a fireworks show took place tonight, cause it was raining hardcore (think that’s why they call it a monsoon). Restricted to the hotel room, all I could do was watch and listen as nature put on it’s own fourth show. I tossed a camera on a tripod and attempted to capture some bolts of lightning off the back porch. It was a small window of the sky to capture, but I did get a couple captures. Nothing special, just something fun.
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Jul
03
A few days into my stay here in Arizona. Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to photograph the Grand Canyon. Talk about a giant hole in the ground. Really makes you appreciate time and how little humans have spent on this planet, looking at the gapping hole in the earth, a product of 17 million years of erosion by the Colorado River. Talk about perspective…
Photo above of yours truly, snapping some photos from one of the viewpoints along the route. Little warm on the journey out, indicating 103 degrees during a pitstop.
Completed a family portrait shoot the other day in Sedona. The background looks fake, in fact, I bet some people might just automatically assume the photos are photoshopped. It was scenic to say the least. Those photos are coming soon to the blog.
I hoping to squeeze in some other portraits while I’m here if the opportunity arises. Stay tuned for more from Arizona.
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Jun
20
These photos are a result of a slow Saturday evening. My weekends are usually booked with clients, in and out of town, lots of driving, shooting, and long days. So when a weekend comes around when I don’t have to leave town or have a group of shoots, it kind of freaks me out. Hence the result of this last Saturday. Did a bit of photography studio training for a commercial client’s employees, and a bit of graphic design, but the later half of the evening left me wanting to photograph something, something new. I decided to freeze water in motion, cause… well, sometimes it’s nice to take a break from portraiture. This is one of the things I mention in my workshops when talking about advantages and disadvantages of photography and cameras in relation to the human eye and our perception. Sure, you can tell someone that they can freeze motion with a camera, and they’ll most likely think of catching someone laughing or someone jumping in mid air. That’s fun and all, but man… it gets a lot more intense and interesting than that. I’m talking about magic that can happen while playing with 1/8,000th of a second captures. At these speeds you can literally see science, the whole action/reaction sequence at play.
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May
23
Where to start with this post… Well, let’s start with the background story. Last December, I traveled to Maui to photograph a wedding over there. I made the most of out the trip and booked my stay for a week, giving me a couple days of prep for the wedding, then the wedding, and a couple days of pure relaxation on the island after the wedding craziness. These last few days left us seeking fun island activities, and being the adventurous group that we were, we decided on a jungle hike. Now… This hike was located on the eastern tip of the island, we were staying on the west end, so a road trip was in order. For an island, Maui is quite diverse due to the mountains at the center of the islands. Believe it or not, these mountains were large enough to create very extreme differences in climate and landscape on opposite sides of the mountain. It was like experiencing Washington State, but instead of having to drive hundreds of miles, you only had to drive 30 to go from luscious greenery to brown desert landscapes.
I would think there may be dryer parts of the island than others, but nothing like this…
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May
10
Over the years I’ve been to a lot of beaches, some warm, some cold. I’ve wiggled my toes in the sands of Mexico and Hawaii, but none of them will ever earn the title of ‘The Beach.’ That sole title goes to Long Beach, WA. It IS The Beach. It doesn’t just describe the actual physical vastness of where the sand meets the water, but the pace and style of life in the town. On the nicer days, this means that we are going non-stop, playing frisbee, hiking, running around on the beach, playing games in the lawn, biking around the simple streets, and late night fires in the backyard. On the yucky days, it means lots of board games in the family room, a crackling fire keeping us warm, hitting up the small theater, and getting dragged to the all the little shops with the girls. Good or bad weather, the beach is the beach, rain or shine, we are having a blast.
The town is very much a tourist-based economy, the place is a ghost town in the colder months, and packed in the warmer ones. Walking around during the off-seasons, entering restaurants and stores, you quickly realize a very consistent theme, you are the only one in them. It makes you wonder how they manage to keep the businesses open, but then it makes you realize just how busy they are in the warmer times of the year. Because of the crummy weather we are still experiencing, the town was still very much dead. This meant that we practically had the town to ourselves this last weekend.
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Apr
27
Variety, it’s a huge perk to a few lucky photographers out there. I’m happy to say that I feel like one of them. It’s really fun looking back to see where my camera has taken me. A few places my camera has seen this last year – Alaska, Maui, all over the PNW, and coming this late June, Arizona. But sometimes the fun stuff is right around the corner, or in this case, right down the tracks.
Good friend and P-51 Pictures video director, Andy Lahmann, is always helping out my photo biz when he is available and within a reasonable proximity to my photo shoots. So when he asked me if I’d take some photos for his movie poster design, I was happy to answer the call.
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Apr
07
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that deserves some attention. Seriously, like… the literal little things. 
It would be nice to always take moments everyday to stop and smell the roses, but rarely do we. We are all guilty of our priorities not being exactly in the order they should, wrapped up in the business of the day, the getting to and from work, the addictive twitch we start forming if we haven’t gotten our facebook fix in the last 15 minutes, the overall obsession to “maximize” our every day. It’s less and less I think we all observe the world around us, the one that surrounds us from all angles, yet our noses always pointed into some form of a glowing screen, regardless it’s size, has become our world. “Why go walk around in the local woods and check things out when I can just google it!?” People from the PNW bitchin’ cause it rains so much… really, as if you aren’t going to be consumed by your electronics regardless of the precipitation conditions. You’re not foolin’ anybody, so shut your yapper and get back to tweetin’ your pals about what you just had for lunch. I kid, but seriously… I think we call could use a little less networking and a little more fresh air.
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Mar
04
Ok, so have to share a funny story with you guys. Took some pics, as you know, pics are always a good idea with any fish story, right (ok, that was cheesy). I recently purchased a new betta fish, Ruby. Ruby is well… mostly red, and full of spunk. For those who don’t know, betta fish are quite smart, have amazingly varying characteristics from fish to fish, and can actually be trained to do tricks. People have trained them to jump out of the water or swim through a hoop for food (seriously, who are you people? Go do…things… just do something, you are making your fish swim through a hoop for it’s food).
From what I hear, most fish are mostly active at night and sleep during the day. The opposite is true for bettas, they tend to mirror humans when it comes to sleep schedules. So, I’ve had Ruby for 3-4 days now and I’ve been watchin’ him, seeing how he’s adapting, and he keeps me company as I work on my laptop at the desk here.
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