Check out this video from Corridor Digital! I love graffiti and street art, and it’s a great lesson to all of us on how mixing and matching media can make an addictive, fun video. The fake door shot reminds me of so many shows and cartoons I saw growing up. If you think about it, they mixed graffiti, acting, and stills for an awesome end product. I want to see one of our readers do something similar with photo stills! I can’t help but think Corridor Digital’s style in this video has incredible, untapped power in the advertising world. What do you think? And which one of you is going to top this?
Weetabix Food Company recently produced a new commercial to advertise their Weetabix Chocolate Spoonsize Cereal. The young hiphop dancer in the video is talented, Arizona Snow, and the Teddy Bears – well, they’re actually giant life-size costumes. Weetabix brought in professional hiphop dancers to dance inside of the costumes in front of a green screen. The concept behind the commercial is the cereal sparks kids imaginations. Regardless, it’s pretty awesome to watch this little girl tear it up. Click the full post to see the behind the scenes footage.
Who needs a clunky camera these days when you’ve got a 12 megapixel camera in your pocket. Shot using a Nokia N8, the guys over at Aardman (producers of Wallace & Gromit) broke the world record when they produced this short animation. The final video is only 1 minute and 31 seconds but it took them 5 days on the beach to shoot all the images. I think it goes without saying that the amount of time and effort it takes to produce a video like this is tremendous. Click the full post to see the final video.
Now this is an interesting story. Lately there has been a ton of controversy and debate about the role of photoshop in today’s advertising market. FHM (For Him Magazine) just published their December issue with Pakistani cover model Veena Malik wearing what appears to be nothing. But that’s not the full story; also pictured on the cover is Veena baring the tattoo “ISI” which refers to the rather polarizing Pakistani intelligence group. Pakistani’s are outraged both because of the ISI reference and also because of Venna’s lack of modesty displayed on the US men’s magazine. It is quite common for photographers to shoot “implied nude” images with models actually wearing clothing (and the visible piece photoshopped out), but Veena claims the magazine maliciously manipulated her cover shoot without her permission. As for the ISI reference, well apparently both FHM and Veena were in agreement on the controversial art work with Veena making recommendations on how it should be drawn on her arm. Stories like this happen all the time but it’s rare to see such a story with world wide appeal. What do you guys think? Read more about the full story on the BBC News page.
There are a ton of car photographers out there but very few of them are this good. Lee Howell just sent me his newest portfolio shoot that involved shooting a new Audi R8 GT in a soon to be opened tunnel. Lee got his hands on one of the craziest car rigs I have ever seen and walks us through the basics of his production. With a little bit of post work, the images become world class shots. Head over to Lee’s website to get more info and pictures.
Gry Garness is a makeup artist turned retoucher/photoshop consultant from Norway. I wasn’t familiar with her photoshop tutorials until I came across this video the other day, and I must say I’m pretty impressed with her articulate approach to complicated techniques. In this video, Gry teaches some interesting liquify techniques on an image by Derek Cooper. Instead of simply using the lossy liquify tool, Gry shows you how you can use warp and puppet warp selections which give you the ability to go back and change any transforms down the road. The results are pretty amazing and it’s always good to know a few different ways to accomplish the same overall outcome.
Jaren Wilkey is the manager of Brigham Young University’s photography department (perhaps he helped on this shoot?). His Behind The Scenes Contest submission idea was to create a photoshoot that played off a news story there at the university. Jaren and his students set out to produce an editorial type image featuring computer hackers. These hackers weren’t the malicious type you typically think of but rather the winners of a large computer science hacking competition. Check out what Jaren and his students came up with and they even used the Eye-fi to ipad tethering tip we exposed here. Congrats guys and good luck with the contest!
A few months back I posted a video created by the team at The Underwater Realm showing how they created waterproof hotlights to be used on their feature film that is currently under production. Their entire movie is planned to take place underwater and the shots will be a combination of real underwater footage and studio work. Anyone who has ever shot anything underwater knows that the deeper you go, the bluer the image becomes. With a little bit of color work you can create a much more pleasing looking image. Fast forward to 4:00 for the goods.
Hello Fstoppers! My name is Sean Armenta, and this is my little spot on Fstoppers called The Post Production Tutorial. If you enjoy these videos, feel free to subscribe to my new Fstoppers PPT Youtube Channel for the latest updates. Feel free to connect with me on the right side bar and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have about retouching.
This time around we have a new post production project to work on – and that is how to create that popular retro/vintage/hipster look using Photoshop. Now we are all familiar with mobile apps such as Hipstamatic and Vignette that easily create cool-looking snapshots, and I’m sure there are tons of actions and plugins that can achieve this look. However, you can create a totally unique look to your photographs with some curves adjustment layers, custom brushes, and a little elbow grease. Let’s start with the first in this mini-series – how to add a faux cross-processed, vintagey color palette to your photograph.
My mother always told me that I was a talented painter and I at one point I believed her. After seeing this video of a guy using Photoshop to digitally paint a photograph of a girl I know she was just trying to be nice. Can anyone tell me if this is fake? It went from looking really bad to really good quite quickly. Whatever you do, make sure you mute this video before you start watching it.
Joel Grimes is a commercial advertising photographer who is most known for his composite portraits. In his recent interview with [Framed], Joel discusses how he got started with his career, how he uses 16bit HDR images in his workflow, does a full photoshoot, and even shows off his musical talents. The video is long so take your time watching it because he gives a lot of useful tips. I’m trying to persuade Sean Armenta to create an Fstoppers Post Production Tutorial on this type of composite editing so if you have questions leave them in the comments below. [more]
Jay P Morgan is a commercial photographer out of California who has a history of creating some of the best most educational behind the scenes videos out on the internet (click here to watch tons of them). In this video Jay explains how you can shoot athletes in a studio environment and composite them into any scene easily and effectively. I want you guys to take note of how Jay breaks down his photography approach and offers concise and detailed information about his shoot. If you are interested in winning our Behind The Scenes Contest (and instantly having a studio of your own), you are going to need to explain your process thoroughly and in an interesting manner. Also be sure to check out the full retouching video on Facebook to see how everything was pieced together in post.
The amount of effort that went into Sony’s 3D commercial Two Worlds is pretty unbelievable. I’ve watched this video twice now and still don’t know if I know what I’m seeing. The creative team filmed the actors at 2500 FPS which required more than half a million watts of lighting and some of the largest fabric grids I’ve ever seen. Then using green screen, they filmed tons of slow motion projectiles to help their CGI team in the rendering of the background and moving elements. Because super slow motion video often looks fake even if it’s real, making sense of what is real and what isn’t real in this video is what makes it so interesting to me. Check out the video below and click the full post to see how they created this commercial inspired by the legendary Leonard Cohen.
A new photoshop algorithm featured at the Adobe Max 2011 is almost too good to believe. Somehow engineers have figured out a way to take extremely blurry images (by photographers’ standards at least) and render them sharp and usable with the click of a few buttons. The goal behind this software is not to fix improperly focused images but rather to fix motion blur caused by a shaky camera or a slower shutter. The crowd’s reaction at 1:18 is worth watching this video alone but if this technology ever makes it to future copies of Photoshop then this will no doubt rock the digital world in a way we’ve not seen before.
Eric Curry is a photographer who specializes in painting with light. Unlike using strobes to exposure your photos, painting with light requires you to use long exposures and constant light sources to effectively “paint” over your subject and capture it on your sensor. The newest image in Eric’s American Pride and Passion series is one of the most complex light painting images I’ve ever seen and the behind the scenes video shows just how much work goes into such a big project. Click the full post to see the final image and be sure to click on Eric’s website to see many more examples of his layered light painting photographs.
There are a ton of car photographers out there but very few of them are this good. 
