Final set of photos from Shamim photo shoot

I posted some of the edited photos from my photo shoot with Shamim in late July. What I did mention was that in the last 30 minutes of the shoot, I accidentally formatted my memory card on my Nikon D-SLR whereas I wanted to delete some of the photos I had just taken. I spent the last 30 minutes taking as many photos as I could in the remaining time. While those photos turned out well, I was really annoyed at myself for losing the earlier ones. Fast forward to a conversation I had with my friend Ian about the accidental formatting of my memory card. As luck would have it, Ian's girlfriend has a really effective recovery software for accidental formatting of memory card. With nothing to lose, I gave that memory card to Ian last week. Fortunately he was able to salvage some but not all the formatted photos. Here's the results of those recovered photo images. I think Shamim will be happy I'm able to give her more photos for her model portfolio.

Cheers,
JP

unusual dream the other night

This isn't my usual post but I had an interesting dream that I wanted to save before I forgot it all. The other night my alarm on my smartphone went off at 5:55am which I normally wake up around that time to make it to work at 7am. However that morning I let the alarm snooze [indefinitely] because I was more tired than usual. I lapsed back into sleep and shortly thereafter a dream. In my dream, I was at work trying to fix my Nexus 7 tablet. There was a problem with one of the apps that kept on making the same game noise over and over. Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep...! At first, I tried uninstalling the app. That didn't work. Next I checked all my audio settings on my tablet. Nope, no dice. After several more tries including a reset, that damn app noise kept on playing over and over. Finally, in my dream, in a moment frustration I threw my tablet on the floor. Of course, it broken into many pieces but that damn noise was still playing! In utter desperation, I found the wired cable to the speakers. A-ha, I thought, now I can get rid of this noise completely. LOL. It was not to be. Despite being disconnected from the power supply and the speaker, that noise was still there.

In a moment of pure clarity in my dream and juxtaposing into reality, I realized it was my snooze alarm still going off in the real world. It's funny how the brain will take a noise and turn it into a completely different context in a dream state. I wonder how Freudian would have interpreted my dream. 8)

JP

Latest Portraits Photos

Hi fans,

This is my latest batch of Headshot portraits from my photo shoot this week. For this shoot, I was using a male model by the cool name of Alhom. These shots kind of remind of the portfolio headshots that professional models and entertainers use for casting calls. Fortunately Alhom has that boy band look which at 19 years old is probably the reason!

For shooting information, I used my Nikon D300 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens shooting at Aperture Priority 1.8. This allowed me to take advantage of the blurring and bokeh effect you see in the photos.

Hopefully y'all will enjoy them...!

Cheers,
JP

New model for this week - Shamim

I was fortunate in finding a new model this week. Her name is Shamim. She's originally from Tehran studying at my almater mater, SJSU. During the shoot, I noticed she had an uncanny resemblance to Angelie Jolie. When I mentioned it to her, she told me that she gets that all the time. While I was able to get over 20 finished, edited photos there would have been more except for when I accidentally formatted the memory card when I meant to just delete 5 photos that I didn't like on the LCD screen. In 15 years of shooting digital photography, this has never happened until now!

Fortunately I got some rather nice photos in the last 30 minutes left of our session. I shot with my D200 and my nifty-fifty 50mm f/1.8 lens.

I also just got my Nikon D300 back from the repair shop. They did an awesome job of fixing the navigation button. If I can find a Nikon 85mm f/1.8 lens, I plan on doing more shooting in the near future.

P.S. I'm hoping one of the next sets will be some sample guy photos. I have a couple candidates that I'm trying to schedule a shoot in the next week or so. Once I have a good number of samples photos, I'm going to update my photo website and start an AdWords display campaign for Senior and other portraits.

JP

Final Batch of Senior Portrait Samples (Charlotte)

Exactly one week ago, I did a photo shoot with Charlotte as part of my update and focus of [Senior] portraits for my photography website: www.johnpaulphotography.com

I see real progress taking these most recent photos versus one month ago, a year ago and when I first started doing portraits going as far back as the mid 2000's. I  took a cue from my fellow photographer buddy, Ian Young. I've fully embraced getting the exposure, sharpness and color balance in the camera. This allows me to do less "correcting" of the photos during the post processing stage. Using one of the newer versions of Adobe Lightroom, I can concentrate and batch my photos so that they come out more consistent with my "photography" style. I now use Adobe Photoshop for the final editing which is mostly correcting blemishes, composition and levels adjustment. The last part is adding my custom frames and logo to the photo. Presto! The result is what you see with this last and latest batch of photos on my blog.

Hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking and editing the photos.

Cheers,
JP

Second Batch of Senior Photos

Ok I'm on a roll. This is the second night I've spent about 2-3 hours editing the photos from Sunday's Senior Portraits photo shoot with Charlotte. The finished photos will end up not just on my blog but also on my photography website as well as some AdWords Display Ads.

Without further ado, here's the latest edited photos.

JP