Alessio Michelini Photography

Yet another great video from Joe McNally, which shows how he shoot a great portrait at the Preservation Hall in New Orleans.

(via ISO1200)

Lighting diagrams are very handy tools when you plan to do a portrait shoot, or any kind of shoot where you need to know exactly how to set up your lights. And there are plenty of websites that does this job on the web, or psd templates if you prefert to play with photoshop, or even apps for your phone / tablet.
And while I was searching for one of these sites around the web, I found this interesting website: Sylights. On this site you can create on the fly lighting diagrams, like many others does, but I have to say that unlike the others, with this tool you have much more control in the space you can use, a much more complete list of items to put in the diagram, and a lot of options that most of the other sites don't have. Plus it has a gallery of other users photos with related diagrams, which is really helpful for whoever is learning how to use studio lights. Plus if you register on the site you can share your diagram, you can save it an image and more.
So it's definetly a site to bookmark on browser, and I hope I will be able to use it myself soon!

I've been featuring Jay P. Morgan's videos several times in my previous blog, and here we are with another lesson from this photographer, which brings us at the Bonneville Slat Flats in Utah, and he will show how different camera angles, shoot at 24 and 50mm, affect body shape.

(via FStoppers)

This is one of the bands that reminds me that I'm old. His song "Novocaine For The Soul" is one the songs that brings me back to the '90s, when I use to have no big problems, or just the problems that a teenager can have, which at that time sound big, but you realize that in fact they were happy times only when they are gone. But to be fair I didn't hear anything else from him since them, and I cannot really say that I'm a big fan of this band, but when I saw that Eels was coming to Dublin, I thought it could be just freaking cool to photograph this guy. But leaving the music on a side, how is to photograph his show? Not that easy I have to say.
I can define this show as a tricky one, because when you are there it looks awesome, loads of different lights, and at first glance on the screen of your camera it looks good, but then when you go back home, after you have downloaded all the pictures and imported into Lightroom, you discovered that many of that lights, especially my little friends called LED lights (yes, again them, I fucking hate them), all the reds and blues are oversaturated, and at the ends the mix of lights look awful. Well maybe it wasn't that bad, but I was honestly to expect some better shots at the end.
Plus I have to say that The guy didn't really move that much from his spot, so plenty of similar photos of him.
Conclusion: Good show, Eels and his band are good performers, maybe they don't move that much on the stage but still good, decent enough to photograph as well, plus no bleeding photo releases to sign, which is always nice.
The full set is available here.

As I mentioned in a previous post, last weekend myself, my girlfriend, and a couple of good friends, we decided to go to the only part of Ireland I've never been before, the wild Donegal! I've been looking to go to this place from years now, but never got a chance, even because it's a place that it takes at least 3 days to visit, you cannot really do it in less time than that. In this post I'll publish only the pictures we take on the first place we visited, which is the amazing Slieve League, which are, according to Wikipedia, the highest sea cliffs in Ireland.
That place is so stunning that it's really hard to describe with words or even pictures, and about this last point, I have to say that it was really hard for me to represent that part of Ireland. I took plenty of pictures, but those pictures look daft and very bland compared to reality, to what the best camera ever made, mortally called "the eyes", can see. And at the end despite the quite big number of shots, I didn't pick that many. Plus when you travel in a group of people, you cannot really spend the hours I would like to take to try to catch the white fly of the (almost) perfect shot, or at least to something that can shows to you the majesty of the nature. But I did my best, and here I hope to show you what I've seen this weekend.
As usual you can find the complete set on my flickr account.

Last week directors Ian & Cooper published a music video for the song "Back to Me" by Joel Compass, which used a really interesting technique, which it essentially mix video footage with still photos, something similar to the animated gifs where only a small portion of a photo moves while the rest is completely still.

(via PetaPixel via John Nack)

We talked about this technique yesterday, and today I want to publish a video made by Elena Jasic that shows you a more in-depth tutorial about the Frequency Separation Technique, which I repeat, is not only handy for fashion photography but can be used in different scenarios.

I have to admit that, back in the day, I liked their album Performance & Cocktails. And I'm not ashamed to admit it, even if now they are quite pop, way too much for my standards. So they were in the list of the bands that "I would like to see them but if I missed them I certainly don't cry". Plus, as I said for The Script, pop bands always prefer to have lots of lights on stage, and I would be really surprised if I get a dark gig for such kind of music.
Then add the fact that they played in one of the best venues in Ireland, which is the Olympia Theatre, and again the statistics says that it's going to be an easy gig. For this kind of gigs my main concern is:

• a) if there is any photo release to sign;
• b) if they will put the photographer not in the pit but far away from the stage (Tori Amos forced the photographers to shoot from the mixer, 50 metres away);

But at the end none of my nightmares came true, so no contract and in the pit, and as expected great lights from great performers, and you can translate this in great photos (at least for me).
Conclusion: is a great band to photograph and see, some good songs, but I wouldn't stay for the whole gig, unless you really like them!
Down here there are some of the best photos I took that night, but you can also see the full set on my flickr account by clicking here.

This is the last video I posted on my old blog, and I want to repost it here as it is really handy, not only because the good Benjamin Von Wong shows how he made one of his great pictures, but also 'cause he quickly introduce a very interesting technique which it saved my ass a few times, which is called the Frequency Separation Technique, and even if it's made for fashion photography, especially when it comes to retouch skin, but it can be also used for various situations. For example I just used to clean the sky on one of my pictures I took this weekend in county Donegal.

I would lie if I say that I love this band, or even if I say I like on single song about them, and the fact that I have to see their song with Will.I.Am every fuckin time I go to the gym, it doesn't really help. At all.
But months ago I said to myself that I would go only to gigs of bands that I really like, or bands that I think they are worth to photograph. And this is the second case. They are popular, their audience are pretty young, and they play Pop music, so 99,9% of the probabilities that there will be loads of lights. And statistics don't lie.
The O2 is a good venue, even if as a big venue you lose the kind of intimacy you get with smaller venues such as the Olympia Theatre, but on the other hand you will (almost) always get loads of lights.
So, pop band with loads of lights plus venue with generally tons of lights, what do you get? (Everybody say "A billions of lights"). Exactly!
And as you can see that gig was easy to photograph, and the band are definetely not shy on the stage.
Another good point is the fact that despite the band became a pretty big name, there were no bloody photo release to sign.
To conclude the article, I still don't like their music, but I have to say that the band do a really good job in terms of entertainment for their fan, and it's a pleasure for a photographer to go to their gig.
As usual you can see the full set by clicking here.