Morgan Moller | Photography 

Alice in Wonderland

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Hi folks!

No no, I’m not dead. Just burried. Burried under work that is. It’s been quite hectic these past few weeks, but i’ve summoned up the courage, and the time to write a new blogpost. I’ve done a ton of postprocessing lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s like riding a bike. The more you do it, the better you get at it, but if you don’t do it for a while, you’ll still know how to do it later on.

I’m a big fan of training your skills. Eversince the digital awakening, in which dSLR’s became cheaper and cheaper, more and more pictures started to appear. People are getting better and better at making pictures, and that’s where you have to stand out. I’ll never forget this quote from Charles Darwin, that I read in one of my textbooks once :

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

This is very true as well for photographers. We have to learn new skills. Some people loath the existence of photoshop,and moarn the death of analog photography but just like evolution, it’s a rite of passage, and one that is inevitable. For photographers,today, it’s just as important to know how to fix your exposure in photoshop as know how to develop film in a darkroom, 50 years ago.

Anyway, that’s it for phylosophical part of the day, onto shooting!

My latest shoot was a film-noir theme inspired shoot, with 2 models. I really wanted to catch that grungy, 60′s film noir feeling in the shoot. It turned out to be a mixture of Alice in Wonderland, if she had been a femme fatale. I’m a fan of these images, and the mood they portray.

The colors weren’t adjusted in photoshop. I placed Blue & Red colour gels on my studio strobes.

The light, coming from the lamp, is a Nikon SB-800 speedlight placed inside!

I’ve created a lighting diagram for you to study with the help Kevin Kertz’s amazing freeware.

Next, we moved onto some more fashion work.

Here we really put the focus on the model’s bracelet, which was the key thing I was going for during this shoot.

And we finished it off with a fun shot. The key idea was, ‘Hmm, my train just left but I don’t really care.’

Everything was shot with Nikon dSlr’s, Nikon & Sigma lenses, Lastolite Professional strobes, and Nikon Speedlights.

I hope you all enjoyed this, and be sure to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and to keep checking for updates!

Cheers,

Morgan

21.03.2010 How-To, Projects, Thoughts No Comments

Yet Another iPad Related Post

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Hi everyone!

On Twitter, the most used keywords are Apple iPad – Haiti – SOTU (State of The Union). The twitter shortlist is a good one-word résumé of what’s hot in the world right now. I find it quite appalling that in the aftermath of one of this century’s most devastative earthquakes, leaving millions homeless, the hottest thing on the globe is Apple’s latest brainchild.

Every social medial is buzzed around that one thing. The iPad.
The word iPad is most often followed by ‘ incredible, groundbreaking, industry-changing, world innovating, blablabla ‘

Sure, it’s nice, shiny, overpriced and not as innovating as most people think, but will it cure your cancer?

The whole media machine that Apple has developed over the years is an incredible ‘micro-atmosphere’ one could say. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Windows fanboy, in fact i prefer editing on Apple then Windows, but I’m not blinded by their marketing techniques.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Apple brought out a device that allready existed. An e-reader. They’ve upgraded it with a nice shiny screen, and other features but it’s really nothing groundbreaking.

I’m quite fed up with people all over the world claiming this is a life changing device. Unless it cures cancer, it really isn’t.

Once again, don’t get me wrong, I think the iPad is a nice device, in it’s user-category and that the users will love it, but I don’t see it as that revolutionary.

One field I think can benefit from it is Photography obviously. With a long battery life, it’s brilliant dispal, wireless connectivity etc it can be a great tool. Imagine hooking up your camera to that screen whilst shooting in the wild instead of that tiny LCD on the back of your camera? Pretty sweet huh?

All in all, sure it’s a nice device, and it’ll probably have a lot of success, but don’t be blinded by it. Let reason overcome stupidity.

On another note, if you want to try something new to beef up your photography, try dipping your toe in the gel-world. More after the jump…

(more…)

28.01.2010 Thoughts 2 Comments