Hi everyone-

After a few months of thinking about it, working on it, and thinking about it some more and then a little more working on it. I have finally started the process of creating a whole new web presence for Brian Bastinelli Photography.

The process has been started but of course is being held up by domain transfer, who would have thought that would be a problem (again)... Anyway as soon that fiasco is taken care of I'll really get moving on this and hopefully within a week or so we'll be ready for the big reveal.

In the mean time I'll continue to post and then this site will remain to redirect traffic to the new location.

Today I wanted to tell you all about a great photography workshop that my friend Bryan Allen is offering. The workshop is called Location People and it is one of the best learning and shooting experiences available for your photography dollar.

I took both Location People I and Location People II but the new class is being streamlined into a longer more intense offering called Location People.

All of the links you need to find out more are listed below as well as a few videos that will give you a feel for this great experience. Jameson Abart and Jerit Abart shot these great videos during the last Location People II workshop in Knoxville, TN.

Check them out and feel free to contact me with any questions you might have. As I said it's a great experience and Bryan is a fantastic instructor and person. If you enjoy shooting people and you like both location and lighting concepts this is for you.

Here is the info on where to register for the Location People workshop:

LOCATION PEOPLE 2010

BRYAN ALLEN PHOTOGRAPHY

THE MINDFUL EYE

Here are the videos:

Workshop Teaser Video


Workshop Feature Video


Interview with Bryan Allen Lead Instructor


Interview with Brian Bastinelli


Interview with Usha Vedula


Click on IMAGES FROM THE WORKSHOP in the lower right corner of the linked page to see some of the great images that participants created during the week.

Hi everyone-

So one of the things I hoped to accomplish in last weeks Location People II workshop was to push the limits of my photography. And the workshop did not disappoint on opportunities to do so. Bryan Allen and his crew delivered each and every day.

On Friday night we shot at two different locations, the Time Warp Tea Room and the Body Graffix Tattoo shop. I'll post some images from the Tea Room in the future.

So going into shooting at the shop I excited about what we might be able to do. When we got there we found we were limited in where we could shoot and in how long we could shoot. Because this was a working shop there were areas that were cleaned that we were not allowed to touch. This created a bit of difficulty in how to shoot in the small tattooing booth.

Also there were a lot of people in the area we were shooting making it tough to move around.

When we first started shooting I was using a 10-20mm lens but quickly found that it was not accomplishing what I had hoped and switched to the only other lens I had available the 50mm 1.4.

This limited me to tighter shots at closer range but I think in the end it really worked out pretty well. In these images are Ryann and Cesar as well as the tattoo artist.

Initially we used a beauty dish as the key light but because of the limitations on where we could use it we abandoned it for the ambient fluorescent light. This too was a good reason to switch to the 50 1.4 as I picked up a few stops of light.

We shot for about 15 min and wrapped up. The last 5 min of the shoot were the most productive after everyone dialed into what they should be doing and shooting. It went fast but was very cool.

Have a great weekend!

Hi everyone-

Last night I arrived back from Knoxville or Knox Vegas as they like to call it. The trip was amazing! started out in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with my family and then traveled to Knoxville to attend the Bryan Allen Location People II workshop.

It was fantastic. Hands down THE best workshop experience I have ever had. Bryan worked his tail off to make sure that we not only had everything we needed, but got the most out of the week possible. As well you couldn't help but be effected by his kind nature and giving spirit.

If you ever get the opportunity to attend one of Bryan's workshops you have to do it. They are fantastic! More about them in coming posts.

Today's image was shot on our first night while we were doing some single light studio work. The image is of Vincent a fantastic model and super nice guy.

I am trying to figure out how to present the images from the work shop over the next few days but check back as there will definitely be lots more to come!

Have a great day!



Oh, here's a diagram of how the lighting was set up....

Hi everyone-

Sorry about the delay in today's post. I didn't get the chance to work up an image for today until this morning. I had an idea for how I wanted to treat the image but after a few attempts it just wasn't working out.

So it ended up taking most of the morning to figure that out. After abandoning that attempt I decided to try and give the image a bit more of a whimsical or fairy take look to it.

I thought that might work for this image as the girls were kind of looking up in wonder at the rain that was beginning to fall.

I also would like to take the opportunity to thank Bryan Allen for promoting both my work and my blog in his post today. I also would like to add that these images would not have been possible without him working with me to create them in the first place.

Thanks Bryan!

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I hope everyone is doing well this morning. If your in our neck of the woods...stay inside! it is hazy, hot and humid here and when I say hot were talking 90's...no time to be outside...lol I'm taking advantage of the weather to try and get a bit caught up on editing and posting today.

So on to today's image...

I am continuing with the shoot we did with Savanah and Shay along the Rocky Mountain Front west of Choteau, MT. As I said yesterday we rushed to get to this spot in time to get some shots before the sunset went away and we got clobbered with a thunderstorm.

Initially we were looking to shoot the girls with a nice sunset in the background, but as the weather rapidly developed we realized it wouldn't be the case. As a matter of fact if we didn't do something quickly we wouldn't get any more images that night period.

So initially we set out with a beauty dish as our light source and me shooting a 70-200mm 2.8 on my D700. We used pocket wizards to trigger the light.

My initial intention was to get the girls walking along a prairie road with a dramatic sunset behind them. But several factors just weren't working out. The skies were rapidly changing, the distance was to great and made the girls look way to small in the image and the light wasn't really believable.

Since I had initially been shooting from on top of a vehicle We moved the vehicle closer to keep the leading lines of the two tracks that made up the 'road'. But it just wasn't working.

After abandoning the vehicle I was shooting down at the level of the girls and things were looking a bit better. The shot was still just not looking right.

At that point Bryan suggested switching to his camera. He was shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105 lens. I switched over, set the lens to 24mm, got the exposure dialed in and we suddenly had a much better image.

We now had the girls as the main subject and not the sky, which was the case the original set up.

We finished out the shoot this way and I am really happy we did. Tomorrow I'll talk more about the actual set up and lighting set up.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

As some of you know my friend Bryan Allen joined me in Montana for a few days to do a little recreational shooting. We photographed the area, the town, the mountains, Glacier National Park and the North American Indian Days.

All of the places we shot were pretty much void of people with the exception of the Indian Days Pow Wow. Well for those of you who know Bryan, you know that he is hands down one the of the best people shooters out there. So to come to Montana and not have any people for Bryan to shoot would just not be right.

So I asked my cousins if they would be our models for the day. The happily agreed. So we went down to their house got everything ready, came up with some loose concepts and headed out to see what we could come up with.

The girls were great sports and really put up with almost everything we threw at them. We shot at two different locations and ended up shooting almost till dark ending the shoot with a rather hair raising few moments. But more on that later...

I have a ton of images to go through and process from these shoots but I wanted to share one of the images right away. So here are the girls at our first location. It is the old grain mill that you saw in yesterdays image.

I hope you enjoy this series as much as we enjoyed shooting it.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I hope everyone had a pleasant April Fools Day. I was able to pull of a pretty good one involving me getting someone (very close to me) to call the Philadelphia Zoo and ask for Mr. Randy Rosteridge and Mrs Beabea Behr. And that being followed up by someone calling and asking her if a Mrs. Fant was there, first name Ellie, bigger woman, mostly gray.

We laughed until we cried...I haven't laughed that good and that long for some time. All I have to say before I get myself into further trouble is Hook, Line and Sinker....

So after all of that calmed down I decided to go looking through some images from earlier this year to see what I might be able to do with some new techniques I have been wanting to try. I found this image of Bryan Allen from our workshop back in the fall.

Before I go any further I want to give a shout out to Bryan Allen who is a great friend, fantastic photographer and super, super instructor. He along with the gang at The Mindful Eye have really changed me as a person and photographer. (all for the better) And I owe them a lot for it.

So on to the image, it was mostly a test shot while firing a single flash on camera head on. There's a bit too much light but in all reality there is still detail pretty much every where. So here is the original SOOC:



I wanted to create a smooth kind of look, one that looks like what you might see in advertising recently. Kinda looks like it might be drawn or painted, but still looks like a photograph. You can kind of achieve this with a variety of plugins on the market but they just don't quite get to the look I am talking about. And honestly neither did I.

That being said I am a heck of a lot closer than I was before. So there isn't really a tutorial coming down the pike just yet but maybe in the future. Maybe something that starts with lighting and moves through capture and processing. We'll see.

So I went on to create the second image which brought back a lot of the color and contrast. To me a whole lot better than the first.



After looking at that I decided it needed a little more warmth, some more life to it. So I warmed it up through adding a texture layer that was pretty warm and adjusting the opacity of that. Then I masked it and took it away in a few spots.



So I'm thinking this looks a whole lot better. But of course I can't just leave it alone so I go looking through my files and find a texture with a color that I like. It's concrete but it has a more brownish green coloration to it, kinda like it has been treated or sealed. So I bring that over in a new layer and then play with the blending modes. So here is a toned version of the same image.



This was my favorite of the images. I liked the color tone and the contrast. BUT, still wanted to do more. At this point I decided to try something very different and completely new to me. I wanted to try and create a much different look to the image as if I was creating an add for a magazine or campaign.

So I decided to use the scar that Bryan has by his eye to create some other injuries on his face. I also used the liquify tool to create some swelling and then added some bruising. Now it looks like we just got up from a great night on River Street.

Oh but there was also one other thing that I did and it was a MAJOR part of the process. I'm not going to tell you just yet what it was. Let's see if you can figure out what step or steps I didn't tell you about.



Have a great day!!