If anyone knows me they know that I take a lot of portraits. They are actually my main form of photography. Now the other day I was reading about how boring and popular portraiture. From doing different kinds of web surfing I noticed that he was completely right, everyone’s portraits look the exact same.  It made me kind of said but it got me thinking on ways that I can get better. If you would like to read the article please take the 5 mins out of your day to… The Portaitist

On that note though, I took some portraits recently that I feel the need to show. No they aren’t amazing but they are getting better… I have room to grow and I know this so I am excited.

So my middle sister recently got married, a week ago, and for her wedding she had me take bridal portraits of her in her wedding dress. I took her to N.C. State’s Arboretum and the rose garden at Raleigh Little Theater. I haven’t been able to show any of these portraits because of the possibility of the groom seeing them.  I printed a nice 16″x20″ for her/the wedding which is where it was shown for the first time.

My sister in her dress at the rose garden

Smelling roses before they died for the winter.

As I have talked about in previous post, I have started (not yet finished) a 7 deadly sins theme. To take a new picture for one of the sins, I did a shoot with one of my friends. Once we finished, we just kind of fooled around taking a variety of different shots. The followed shot is a product of us just messing around.

Kathleen being light by a stray incandescent light

The following meet I met up with a new friend to just kind of mess around and shoot. I was still getting use to my new 35mm f/1.8 lens so I used it to pull off different feels. While I was in Washington D.C. in the portrait gallery at the Smithsonian, I saw a variety of head shots with this low depth of field, grungy feel. I kind of liked it so this one of Christian kind of mimics that sort of photography.

Christian studio shot

With Christmas in between now and my post, I took some pictures of my family.  I took some fun ones of my sister on Christmas eve.

Cheryl having fun on Christmas eve

For Christmas I got a set of pocket wizards and my friend from Maine came down to NC and I got a chance to visit with her. We went over to Duke Gardens and I got a chance to try out my new toy. After some frustration (from wind and the pocket wizards) I got everything set up. While I on one of the bridges I got to take the following photo.

Nyssa at Duke Gardens

I feel like my portraits aren’t great but I’ll soon get to where I want to be. Look for my next post on sporting and other events I’ve shot in the past 2 months.

]]> http://www.kutsuphoto.com/blog/archives/319/feed 0 http://www.kutsuphoto.com/blog/archives/224 http://www.kutsuphoto.com/blog/archives/224#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:15:58 +0000 Luis http://www.kutsuphoto.com/blog/?p=224 I want to first say, I officially have a new website! Kutsuphoto is up and working. It has my gallery of images and soon to be my design portfolio as well. My friend Ian decided to design/code it. Check it out, tell me what ya think.

So, I feel a little sad because I wish I was updating more regularly but I guess since it’s the summer, I get tied up doing other things – not photography. On a brighter side, I ended going on a MUCH needed photo adventure with 2 of my friends, we basically ended up just trying around Raleigh. We went over to the train tracks off Boylan, by where the infamous “youliveandyouburn” artist put an angry face on the water tower.Sadly enough Raleigh police arrested the NCSU student this past week and is charging him for Larceny. He wasn’t as secret as Banksy I guess. I Just don’t understand how people can be prosecuted sometimes for such fabulous. (*Thinks back to Medival times*)-Yeah..uh..nevermind, we haven’t changed.
Anyways, point of this post..
So we went to the train tracks,
Downtown Raleigh
And a lake over off of Penny Road.

Apart from that, I would also like to say that it really sucks to be a photographer really entering into the “world of photography” right now. I’m not exactly entering, but I’m still trying to make how versatile my gear collection grow. So I use a D300, and over course Nikon upped all of their price on lenses this year. DARN YOU RECESSION. I’m kind of hoping when I go to Japan, I might be able to find some cheaper gear *crosses fingers*. I know some people who are thinking about updating their camera bodies soon, i.e. my fellow photographer Jonathan; or people who are thinking about starting to buy a camera, i.e. my friend Sam. I just wish things would get better sooner than later.

Anyways, I’m going to try to be more regular, but until then enjoy the summer.

The first 2 posters are from my Ideation class. We were asked to reverse design a product. My product was the Philips Norelco G480 Beard trimmer. The main person was to look at a layout for a finished product.

Now Starts my Studio Projects. As they go through the projects and posters get less and less together/well designed. Now I loved each of my 3 projects this year. Just my last 2 need a little bit more developing, and by all means, these 3 projects aren’t done by my book and I will finish them. Like I’m going to actually create my chair (the first project) this summer, an d hopefully build my flashlight (last project) and I might 3-D print my watch (2nd project).
I, however, feel like I must give some sort of introduction for the 3 projects:
-Muji: This was a branding project were we were giving the brand Muji and were asked to design something that will fit/feel Muji. I decided to do a chair that dual performed as a chair, I have renders in previous posts.
-Environmental Awareness Project: We were giving a choice between personal medical discrete product, green fueling station, or identification object. I chose the ID and decided to design a watch that would use a chip to display and send your personal information, like at the airport or w/e. This would be to help create less of a need for a wallet. I think my problem with this one is I spent too much time on the vessel (The watch) and not enough time on personal use/the object itself. I still think it’s a cool watch though. The 3 pages show ideation, product, and then views.

-Elements: Our 3rd and final project was to take the element that we pulled from a hat (fire, water, air, earth) and create something that would be based or drawn from that. I designed a multipurpose light. Unfortunately I didn’t get to finish modeling it before critique so I will be finishing up that model with in the next few weeks.

My friend rescued a bird from a women who protected the fallen bird from a cat. She put it up on Craiglist and so my friend drove 30 mins out of her way to rescue it. She was doing her physics work when people got annoyed hearing the bird chirp in the box, so she called me up and ask me to babysit the little creature. I asked my friend Sam help me set up lights to photograph him. I didn’t want to use  a flash mainly because I didn’t want to harm his eye at all, I did some reading before about how flashes of light could cause the bird to go blind for 30 mins or so. This is mainly at night but I just wasn’t in the mood to take a chance.

Bird in a Box

On that Thursday (same as the pictures from the fashion show below) I went to the ACC Tennis Tournament that was held at Cary Tennis Center. It was actually a very nice place. My main reason for posting this picture is that it amuses me like most reasons why I post sports pictures. Our women’s team lost on the first day. Men’s lost during the second.

Jaime Purglar at the ACC Tennis Tournament

While I was there, my friend Jonathan was trying to take a picture of the flowers that were at the Center, so since his camera died he was trying to use mine. So this is basically what I took for him to try and pop some color.

Flowers at Cary Tennis Center.

So a few days after that (April 16th) the seniors of the College of Textiles had a fashion show, Threads. Being a good NCSU Photo Club Meetings Coordinator that I am, I helped get this together (somewhat) and went myself to shoot some fashion photography. Now I know fashion photography isn’t exactly my thing (mainly the fact that’s a runway) I still had some fun and got some interesting shots out of it.

Girl fixing up her dress she designed before the show.The model posing with the dress.The model posing with the dress.

model posing on the run way

different designer

Please look at the really nice yellow/gold dress.

Was looking at Photoshop as a way of accenting colors and detail of the dresses.

Enjoy: