Pam is a fashion designer with a very distinct style, so we provided some green marble from the old hospital stairwell and a dark studio to offset pink, black & white. We shot Pam’s fashion show a while back, and while this is the same modeling crew, the look and location are new. Kept some high saturation on the colors with a bit of added contrast, and synced a spot removal to fix an annoying speck on the D3′s sensor. Thanks to the random voulenteer from the drawing studio who was able to throw some feathers on the scene. Pam – as always – great work!

mary in the green stairway

old chapel and some feathers

monolight in the studio with reflector

In a dance studio basement in the Keweenaw Peninsula, there has been a steady stream of musicians, dancers, instructors, and equipment moving in and out of the doors. Through the walls there are sounds of guitars, drums, harmonized vocals, and the occasional yell when a circuit breaker blows from the load of amps, stage lights, and the industrial smoke machine. What’s going on here? It is PJ Olsson’s Rock Camp 2009. Check out the running blog for the whole story, but in short – its a very cool, hands-on session with some stellar instructors, headed by rock star PJ Olsson. A live performance is planned for this year’s Spring Art & Music Festival in downtown Houghton on June Saturday June 13th.

Brockit’s involvement comes in the form of a full blow, rock-star photoshoot. Interns Emily and Rebecca helped load in all the gear and worked quickly with Todd & Jessie Brassard  of Brassard Media – both who seem to be involved in every aspect of the camp – to setup the scenes and get the shoot rolling. Having returned just the night before from a large weekend shoot in West Virginia, I needed all the help I could get. We shot performance style with a live performance complete with lights and smoke, then moved to the studio setup for the group shots. Each performer, dancer, singer, etc. gave two quick poses – inspired by TopModel, MTV, RollingStone, or the variety of examples that Jessie brought with her. Got some great shots out of this for sure. Nice job everyone!

Some sneaks below, and the full sets will be available by the weekend.

— UPDATED —

Full galleries are up. Check it out.

— UPDATED —

Photos are available! Just over 400 in all from two photographers. Images are posted in chronological order. Some highlights below. Congratulations again!
Check out the gallery here!

Many congratulations to the 2009 graduates from Finlandia University! Emily and I were pleased to capture the event this past weekend and watch the transition from student to graduate. A little shout-out to Peter VanPelt who received an honorary degree and made a number of eyes tear with his powerful speech. Thanks, Peter.

We’re processing the photos which include candid shots as well as the stage shots and will be uploading as quickly as possible from the road this week. Keep an eye on the blog here for updates. I’d suggest adding the RSS feed or subscribing to the blog so you’ll know the second they’re up! Thanks and congratulations again!

A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS

An Acknowledgment of Life, Death, Grief, and Rebirth

A collaboration by photographer, Adam Johnson, and artist / model, Heidi Wiitanen

………..

A series of eleven 20” by 30” black and white nude photographs to be shown at the Rhythm Skate Shop from April 15th through May 15th.

Reception: April 17th, 2009, 8 – 10 pm

Purpose:

Although these local visionaries have worked together for several years on various photography shoots, this is a first-time collaboration for photographer, Adam Johnson, and artist / model, Heidi Wiitanen, presenting the public with a very special project.

The project consists of 11 black and white nude photographs and a mask, conveying the emotions involved in the process of life, death, grief, and rebirth. The model, Heidi Wiitanen, shares her portrayal of the different selves in each of these emotional processes through photographs taken by Adam Johnson. Powerful and relatable, these photographs display an embrace of trials and hardships, the ability to overcome them and the beauty of rebuilding oneself with a sense of empowerment.

Postcards and an artist statement from both will be available at the reception.

I’ve been adding old content to Adobe Lighroom which I’ve been using dedicatedly since it was in Beta mode. I’m a fan of this package versus Aperature or similar workflow products for no other reason than it follows Adobe’s long history of solid software and workflow tools. With that, I’m amazed at how little actual Photoshop work I do. I used to take my top selects from a shoot and load them right into Photoshop and run the gamut of curves, crop, spot, etc. I even had plugins for monotone control, noise reduction / enhancment, blah, blah, blah… I was using Photoshop last night and I took me a half an hour to figure out how to move a layer selection! I just don’t use it and have gone to the less-is-more and being very careful about what is in the lens as I hit the shutter release. Oh, that and I have NO time to be dinking with ‘fixing’ shots. If they are no good – delete!

So – adding old shots into the database I pulled the two shots that were used to create ‘room 603′ a while back. The quick story here is one of catharsis. Instead of dreaming about falling, being chased, my teeth falling out, being unknowingly naked or being totally unprepared for an exam, I tend to dream about dark industrial buildings and the wandering apparitions they contain. I had one of these dreams and wanted to recreate it. The shots below were done in an old hospital on a Saturday morning with the key to the building and permission from the city. We brought the sheets, gown, and even the IV bag for props. The model is standing on a Pelican gear box, a single hotlight with doors is assisting the sun through the window, and the rest was already there in the slightly decaying (and cold) critical care ward. The sequence is below, minus the baseline shot with no light in the window (making the transparency possible which was actually my wife’s suggestion) 1/30 at 3.5, ISO 200 shot with my old D100 on a tripod (another thing I never use anymore.) After I worked the layers, I immediately printed this at 30″ and fulfilled the full-circle catharsis, making this one of my personal favorites, though not my mom’s…

shot #1

shot #2

final composite

So after a number of requests, we’re trying out Brockit on Facebook. I’m a firm believer of keeping self-promotion out of personal pages on Facebook as groups seem nicely setup for this, so there you go. While we thought of having a ‘I was a Brockit Model’ or ‘I am a Brockit gear sherpa,’ the group is simply Brockit Inc. Fun, fun. Look for images to be uploaded here soon. I have to wait to connect to the fileserver to watermark the images though. Chad needs to get remote desktop working up so I can do this from in front of the fireplace at the KBC…