Making a New Promo

I have been having a lot of fun with photography and will continue to. I am also having fun with video, and part of that is learning Adobe Premiere and After Effects. Between my camera and iPhone, I have been learning a alot. One of the projects i wanted to do for a long time was a promo of my business. Finally got at it and had a great time learning Adobe After Effect. Here is what I came up with, and it is now my main page as you enter my website.

I have other ideas, and I continue playing and learning videos. Stay tuned for more videos. Today, they say video is hotter but hanging a video on your family room wall is not possible, at least not today. Being a Freelance photographer is fun you can do just about anything.

Practise Time

The weekends in Ohio have been just about raining all the time. With that, it was time for practice time in my make-shift studio in the family room. This time I wanted to have the perfect photo for cutouts to be used in composites using a white background. I wanted the fly-away hairs and no blowout. So with that, I set up my seamless white paper. To keep it white, I used two 200-watt flashes to light it. I set up a chair about 8-10 feet from the white paper. For my key light, I used another flash with a soft box on it and had it about 5 ft away from the chair.

While crowded, the studio was set. Next was a subject. Yep, I could not convince my wife for this assignment, so I used myself. Messing up my hair so that I would have fly-away hair, it was time to practice. Then, it was time to practice using my phone to trigger the camera. I use a light meter when I am in the studio and begin practicing. I did overexpose background, underexpose, and wrote down what happened. I did the same thing with the key light. (main light). In the end, I came up with what I wanted and time for photoshop and tried different backgrounds and see if the cutout worked. It did. Next time, I need to buy a wig and use it on my mannequin head.

Video

It looks like things are getting back to somewhat normal versus last year. Covid gave me time to study. I love photography and wanted to take it further. Videography sounds like fun. While they are similar when it comes to light and using the best of light. Composition to make it interesting similar. But the is for me where the similarity ends. Learning to use constant light, learning new things like frame rate and why. (like raw and jpg) then when you learned something about video. How can I put it together? I learned how to use not only Premiere by Adobe but also After Effects. Trust me, I am still learning and having fun learning. Next was practice, and then do some more practice. After all, while I have not advertised myself as a videographer, I got my first job doing a quick 2-minute video every week. Setup with 2 constant lights, I set up 3 cameras but only used 2 for the video. Below is a sample of that take. Enjoy and don’t be afraid of learning.