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116 Celebrities. IQ160.

Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
johnnygoesdigital said:
I guess it's safe to assume it will be printed as a mural as Guy pointed out, so do agree with the choice of format, but with a soundstage and a controlled environment, the hardest part of this would be wrangling the pretentious egos!
Click to expand...
Totally agree. Heck the rest is a snap. Lol

To be honest this is one of the pitfalls of being a working Pro. I got burned badly on this with a M8 shot that went from web to a 40 ft wide x8 ft high mural in a corporate cafeteria. To me it looked like **** and it made me look bad. Although great shot artistically and all but just fell completely apart. It was what finally made me move into MF and sell off the M8 which I loved but 10 mpx is just not enough when they do stuff like this to your work. Now we all know they print those things like 6 dpi anyway when that large but 10 mpx just was not enough meat to the file.
 
MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Speaking of portraits and egos - a photographer and instructor at the ICP showed his class a particularly ugly example.

He had an assignment to take portraits of some famous architects. One of them, (notorious for crumpling up a piece of paper, throwing it on a desk and yelling "There! There is my proposal!") sat down, stuck a finger up his nose for the first shot, and then left the studio. Well, it did yield a portrait that captured the soul... as well as entertaining and terrifying his class.

-Matt
 
G

gazwas

Active member
I think it's a job well done and we have no right to question the photographers equipment choice or shooting style from the comfort of our arm chairs when he was the one faced with a challenging subject/environment we know very little about.

My only gripe is considering its an image to celerbrate 100 years for Paramount, I'd have loved (as a viewer) to see more of the studio feature in this shot than the photoshop graduated background the magazine ran with.
 
F

fotografz

Well-known member
Many thanks to Doug for posting this.

The article and video was interesting to read, watch and learn from ... I love to break down the "why" behind what was done.

Why 150mm and three shots? 150mm keeps the personalities in the back tiers from receding and becoming noticeably smaller than those in the front tiers. Three shots to keep the perspective even side-to-side to avoid people distortion on the edges.

Why a 60 meg MFD? Because that is what Art's tech guy selected to assure needed resolution. Big images are also often done to facilitate retouching for commercial works. As a user of a 60 meg back, I get why, but won't get into a debate as to why 36 meg 35mm would not be my choice for this work or a lot of other applications. Suffice it to say that in my experience with a broad variety of commercial shots, bigger is better and the more bigger the better.

Why tons of light (literally)? To get enough DOF front to back at a low ISO. Magnum reflectors with grids? To maximize the output and control placement. Note: Considering he had all kinds of continuous "BIG" lighting available to him through the studio resource (including massive Fresnel's), why strobes? Familiarity? Logistics of placing big lights? Reducing the time the personalities were subjected to the lights? Using his own people to light the set rather than union studio people?

The reason the background was eliminated for the magazine article was explained in the text ... to get the personalities big enough to recognize at the publication size including bleed and safety crop. Plus, the text in the Vanity Fair spread was reversed out in the background, so it had to be a relatively smooth transition to assure readability = airbrush technique.

As to the subjects being "pretentious" and "egotistical" ... that's seems harsh given that none of us probably know any of these people personally. I can say that I've worked with movie stars in past, either as voice overs or on-camera talents ... none were pretentious, over-bearing or particularly full of themselves ... in fact, in my experience quite the opposite ... professional, accommodating, and gracious ... Jeff Goldbloom even sat with me after a session and discussed art and painting which he was passionate about.

Thanks again Doug. Love to learn ... keep it coming, because we all benefit.

-Marc
 
B

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
fotografz said:
Many thanks to Doug for posting this.

The article and video was interesting to read, watch and learn from ... I love to break down the "why" behind what was done.

Why 150mm and three shots? 150mm keeps the personalities in the back tiers from receding and becoming noticeably smaller than those in the front tiers. Three shots to keep the perspective even side-to-side to avoid people distortion on the edges.

Why a 60 meg MFD? Because that is what Art's tech guy selected to assure needed resolution. Big images are also often done to facilitate retouching for commercial works. As a user of a 60 meg back, I get why, but won't get into a debate as to why 36 meg 35mm would not be my choice for this work or a lot of other applications. Suffice it to say that in my experience with a broad variety of commercial shots, bigger is better and the more bigger the better.

Why tons of light (literally)? To get enough DOF front to back at a low ISO. Magnum reflectors with grids? To maximize the output and control placement. Note: Considering he had all kinds of continuous "BIG" lighting available to him through the studio resource (including massive Fresnel's), why strobes? Familiarity? Logistics of placing big lights? Reducing the time the personalities were subjected to the lights? Using his own people to light the set rather than union studio people?

The reason the background was eliminated for the magazine article was explained in the text ... to get the personalities big enough to recognize at the publication size including bleed and safety crop. Plus, the text in the Vanity Fair spread was reversed out in the background, so it had to be a relatively smooth transition to assure readability = airbrush technique.

As to the subjects being "pretentious" and "egotistical" ... that's seems harsh given that none of us probably know any of these people personally. I can say that I've worked with movie stars in past, either as voice overs or on-camera talents ... none were pretentious, over-bearing or particularly full of themselves ... in fact, in my experience quite the opposite ... professional, accommodating, and gracious ... Jeff Goldbloom even sat with me after a session and discussed art and painting which he was passionate about.

Thanks again Doug. Love to learn ... keep it coming, because we all benefit.

-Marc
Click to expand...
Enjoyed the tear down Marc.
 
P

proenca

Member
gazwas said:
** MORAL DILEMMA WARNING **

Is it a bit weird to like Kens comment??????? :confused:
Click to expand...
bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha



dougpeterson said:
Even the inclusion of someone who doesn't have 100 movies under his belt, like Bieber, could prove to have huge historic context. Think of Michael Jackson in the Jackson 5 - in that context but could have been easily written off as a passing fad, a performer of trite crowd-pleasing songs largely orchestrated by the adults around him, a singer appealing to a specific demographic (from which it would be easy to assume he would only ever appeal to his demographic). Fast forward to Thriller and Jackson became a cultural icon, a musician/performer of incredible influence, an innovator, and a deeply complicated man (in both music and life). The photos, footage, and music of Jackson at that early age provides an amazing context to the man he would become later.

I can't say whether this transformation will be true of Bieber, or whether he will be shown as a momentary wave. Only time can tell that.
Click to expand...

going OT, I'm sorry, I find bieber inclusing completly ridiculous and a bit insulting.

I'm not an old fart ( lol ), Im mid 30's and I find that a picture like this ( OnTopic: the photographer did a tremendous job ! again, I'm one of the ones that would have slept zip the night before.. 160 divas .. oh lord.. ) is downright insulting.

Half of the people here are celebrities for years or simply LEGENDS.

Bieber is a kid that makes songs and entered one movie. ONE.

Yeap, he has a cult following, teens love him, all nice. It this was a shot for a Music Label, he had all the right of the world to be there.

Now, was a shot for a movie studio and he is sharing the stage ( well ladder :) ) with movie icons and legends and hes hanging like a monkey. *sigh*

fotografz said:
Many thanks to Doug for posting this.

The article and video was interesting to read, watch and learn from ... I love to break down the "why" behind what was done.

Why 150mm and three shots? 150mm keeps the personalities in the back tiers from receding and becoming noticeably smaller than those in the front tiers. Three shots to keep the perspective even side-to-side to avoid people distortion on the edges.

Why a 60 meg MFD? Because that is what Art's tech guy selected to assure needed resolution. Big images are also often done to facilitate retouching for commercial works. As a user of a 60 meg back, I get why, but won't get into a debate as to why 36 meg 35mm would not be my choice for this work or a lot of other applications. Suffice it to say that in my experience with a broad variety of commercial shots, bigger is better and the more bigger the better.

Why tons of light (literally)? To get enough DOF front to back at a low ISO. Magnum reflectors with grids? To maximize the output and control placement. Note: Considering he had all kinds of continuous "BIG" lighting available to him through the studio resource (including massive Fresnel's), why strobes? Familiarity? Logistics of placing big lights? Reducing the time the personalities were subjected to the lights? Using his own people to light the set rather than union studio people?

The reason the background was eliminated for the magazine article was explained in the text ... to get the personalities big enough to recognize at the publication size including bleed and safety crop. Plus, the text in the Vanity Fair spread was reversed out in the background, so it had to be a relatively smooth transition to assure readability = airbrush technique.

As to the subjects being "pretentious" and "egotistical" ... that's seems harsh given that none of us probably know any of these people personally. I can say that I've worked with movie stars in past, either as voice overs or on-camera talents ... none were pretentious, over-bearing or particularly full of themselves ... in fact, in my experience quite the opposite ... professional, accommodating, and gracious ... Jeff Goldbloom even sat with me after a session and discussed art and painting which he was passionate about.

Thanks again Doug. Love to learn ... keep it coming, because we all benefit.

-Marc
Click to expand...
fantastic to read ! thanks Marc
 
D

dick

New member
Guy Mancuso said:
Used a long lens so he was pretty far back so just panning camera to either side is very minimal. Easy cheat that way
Click to expand...
I think that the ideal way to do this shot is to use three technical cameras... "shift-and-stitch" using three cameras instead of moving the camera and shooting three times... this could be done so that it looked very much as if all three pictures were taken form the same point (virtual viewpoint photography).

The problem with that is that you might be short of image circle... ¿SK Apo-Digitar 47XL or 60XL?

...but you can "cheat" by arranging the subjects on an arc or polygon, so that you can stitch without having to use a technical camera or lose res by distorting the images with pan-and-stitch software... but this would be difficult using straight staging as in this picture.

Even if you take the whole picture in one with three cameras, you can still "cheat" by cutting and pasting individuals from one image to another.

I hope this post will not start another Darr'n flamewar... I have taken a "virtual viewpoint" picture which I hope to post soon, but perhaps not before my wife's show next Sunday, or before my 2nd cardioversion (heart reset) a week today, or while I have bronchitis, and am producing red expectoration (which is not a good indication when you are on warfarin)
 
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