Been a While

I have been extremely busy with classes and Spring Break, so I haven't posted in a while. In that time, I have been working on a website (final design pending) and doing more shooting. This past Saturday, I spent the whole day doing portrait photos. In the morning, Geoff and I shot a couple. Then, in the afternoon, the Kansas City Flickr group met in the West Bottoms to do some major shooting until the rain shut us down around 7:30PM. The West Bottoms is a part of Kansas City that is pretty industrial and full of graffiti. Needless to say, my CF cards were full of images, including many good ones. I have posted a few here now, but some have yet to be edited. I can't post all of them here, so visit my Flickr set from the weekend to see more!

The first model posted here is Whitney. Miko is next.

Thanks for stopping by!

Oh NO!

Yesterday, I was cleaning up some of the redundancy in my workflow and trying to streamline it. Unfortunately, I deleted the catalogue for Lightroom! Because JPEGs are compressed image files, they lose quality every time they are rewritten. In order to avoid degrading the files with edits, Lightroom stores all of the changes to files in the catalogue. In other words, I have the JPEG or CR2 (Canon RAW) files that come out of my camera and get copied to my computer. Then Lightroom indexes those files, and stores any changes to those files in the catalogue. Those changes aren't in a single image file until I choose to export the file from Lightroom and make a brand new file, usually JPEG. When I deleted the catalogue, I lost every adjustment I have made within Lightroom. Fortunately I was able to retrieve an older catalogue. I still lost all of the changes to the photoshoot with Sarah.

More of Sarah

I got a few more photos edited! I think i might have one or two more coming. It also looks like I will be doing a lot more portrait shooting very soon, which I am very excited about. Perhaps someday this expensive hobby will pay for itself. Don't forget to add my site to your RSS reader!

KC Model Shoot

The Kansas City Flickr group was in a discussion a few weeks ago about how the winter had affected our shooting. One member, Jim, mentioned that he had rented some space in a building in the city and invited the group to do some shooting in his makeshift studio. By the time Saturday rolled around, we had 4 subjects lined up, each with unique needs. A musician needed pictures of himself performing, 2 high-schoolers needed senior pictures, and a model needed to increase her portfolio. These subjects showed up, along with about 20 photographers and Jim's studio became a bustling hub of portrait photography. I was fortunate enough to borrow a sweet Canon lens from Jim, and it certainly made a difference in my photos. I met some other photographers, and we started shooting when the subjects arrived. Most of the day, I shot Sarah, the model in need of portfolio pictures. Sarah was very accommodating to the 10 photographers that were setting off the strobes and clicking away madly. The whole experience turned out to be a wonderful day full of hands-on learning and socializing with other photogs (with more knowledge and equipment). Here are some of the results. I will post more as I am able to get them processed.

Cinder

During High School, I was a frequent visitor of the St. Louis Zoo. My favorite family was the chimpanzees. Like humans, different chimpanzees have different personalities. Cinder was an active and motherly chimp to Tammy, her niece. Most visitors knew and favored Cinder because she looked different than the other chimps. Cinder had a genetic condition known as Alopecia universalis which caused her to be unable to grow hair. This gained Cinder the nickname "The Naked Chimp." On February 15, 2009, Cinder passed away unexpectedly. It was recently determined that Cinder had an enlarged heart, though she seemed to have good appetite and attitude that morning.

DOTS and Gobstoppers!

I updated my lightbox with extra lights and a hole in the top. The hole in the top is actually a flap that I can open and close. When open, the hole can be used to add a light source, or I can take photos through it. I have been intrigued by the colorful candies, but will soon venture into candies with a bit of emphasis on texture. It is hard to keep this much candy in my apartment; my friends keep wanting to eat the candy before I photograph it! I hope you enjoy these!

For more of my photos, head over to my Flickr photostream.

Looking forward, I will be meeting up with other photogs in the Kansas City area to take some portrait photos. I'm pretty new to portrait photography and portrait lighting, so I am excited to learn as much as possible this weekend. Check back next week for the results!

The Origin of the Candy Project

This photo can also be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlucchesi/3279204342/

The EXIF data can be viewed there on the right side of the page, under "Additional Information".

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Last summer I undertook a train project, attempting to photograph many different views of the extensive train system in Kansas City. The Train Time project came to a bit of a lull during an arduous fall semester and a photo-unfriendly early winter. I decided to take my photography indoors, but couldn't afford much in the way of lights and backdrops. My solution was a DIY lightbox, made of foam core and tape. After completing the lightbox, I found myself looking around my apartment in search of anything that would fit inside. My post about the lightbox can be found here.

Finally, I settled on a picture of some M&Ms. I set out to purchase only a few M&Ms. As I stood in the candy aisle at my local Walgreens, I began to notice just how colorful candy is and how much each type of candy differes. An hour later, I found myself leaving Walgreens with about 7 pounds of candy and a new project.

Thus the Candy project was born.

M and Ms

This is the first photo from my DIY lightbox. I have decided to undergo a series of candy photos using my box, and this is also the first in that set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlucchesi/3276231760/

DIY Lightbox

Thanks for stopping by!

After a bit of a slump, I decided I wanted to take some photos. It has been

pretty darn cold out here so I thought it would be a good idea to take photos inside. My solution: a DIY lightbox. If you want to make your own, here is how I made mine.

My box ended up being about 20 cubic inches, but this project is scalable.

I used 3 sheets of foam core, a sheet of poster board, and a load of masking tape. The light sources I am using right now are 4 halogen lamps: 2 are 90 watts and 2 are 75 watts. I also used an x-acto knife and a yard stick.

Instead of cutting all the pieces and piecing them together, I decided to start from the bottom and build up, so I was sure it all fit together.

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First, cut two 20"x20" sheets of foam core. Then measure 4" in from 2 adjacent sides and make a cut between them, making a triangle with two 4" sides and an irregular shape. The two triangles can be discarded.

The two irregular shapes are the sides (left and right).

Then, cut a 20"x16" sheet of foam core to be the base. This sheet will have the longer side (20") along the front edge. One 16" side of the irregular sheet can be fitted to the 16" side of the base. The triangul

ar section missing on the sides should be at the back of the box.

Tape along the seems. It may help to turn the box upside down to tape this junction. DO NOT PUT TAPE INSIDE THE BOX. The inside of the box should be entirely white; tape is slightly yellow.

Now that you have a base and two sides, lets put the back on. But wait! First we need to fill in the irregular angle at the back, near the bottom. This piece is 20" wide and about 5.66" in length. I measured this distance, rather than relying on my calculations. Once that is attached to the base and sides, cut a 16"x20" sheet for the back of the box. It should sit flush with the 5.66" piece and the top should sit flush with the top edge of the sides of the box.

One last sheet of foam core is needed for the top of the box. Make sure the whole thing is taped, and it should stand on its own. (note: I made another angle similar to the bottom because I was running out of foam core, and it worked out fine)

To make the angle at the back of the box more like a seamless backdrop, I cut a piece of poster board to fit inside the box. It runs along the base, then along the angled section, and most of the way up the back of the box.

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Warnings:

I had a problem with junctions not sealing well, so I started using strips of white copy paper between the foam core and the tape to mask the cracks.

The x-acto knife is very sharp. Don't cut yourself!

The lights get very hot very quickly. I plugged them into a power strip and used the switch on it to turn them off whenever possible.

I will post photos very soon. Please let me know if you have any questions or leave comments!

UPDATE: Photos of the finished product are added. Sorry for the poor quality, but my apartment is very poorly lit, hence the reason I built the lightbox in the first place.

Welcome!

Hey everyone!

Welcome to my new blog! I will be updating this blog from time to time. I will post photos here, along with stories about the photos. Every once in a while, I will post how-to DIY projects. The first one is a lightbox using foam core and lots of tape. If you want to contact me, feel free to do so using any of the methods below. Thanks for stopping by!

email: lucchesiphoto@gmail.com

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlucchesi

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jlucchesi

or leave a comment!