McaryPhotoArt

Moving

2009-06-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

I will be closing this Blog in the next few weeks. But you can following me on my new blog at http://figuremodels.org/insomniacure/.

A couple of farewell images from the past weekend.

Going Green

2009-05-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

Going Green

After hearing so much over the past few years about “Going Green” I decide to give it a try earlier this week You know what I really like it :) For color work it gives a wonderful glow to the images while for black & white it allows for the use of wide range of pleasing tones in post process. So remember the the next time you're about order that roll of white or black seamless paper, go green or pink or purple,,,

Still here!

2009-05-03T07:21:00.000-07:00

Yes despite not posting anything for over a month I'm still around, you didn't really think that you'd get rid of me that easily “Evil Laugh” . If anyone is wondering or cares; come on now there's over six billion people in the world so at least one or two of them must care, maybe just a little. No I haven't been spending the last five week in a cave, though that could make for an interesting project “Nudes in the Cavern” I have in fact been working on putting together some fresh material for possible use in a national publication this fall. Of course since I only do a very limited amount of shooting I'm pretty much keeping the new material under wraps until I find out what if any of it will get published.
So no new work to share this time around just some old stuff I've dusted off.

A Beautiful Time

2009-03-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

Every day I realize just how important photography is to me not only an art but as a way of communicating. Through photography I'm able to capture and share something as beautiful and special as the pregnancy of a very close friend.
To Christina, I can only hope that these photographs capture in some small way how beautiful you are at this very special time in your life.

The Window Part III

2009-03-24T04:50:00.000-07:00

The Window cont

2009-03-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

On one hand I wish I'd removed the screen from the window prior to taking these, on the other hand I kind of like the look/feel that it adds to the shots.

New Feature Weekly Series “The Window”

2009-03-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

Today's post features the first image from this month's shoot with Sarah Ellis, additional images will be post through the following week. This series will then be followed but other weekly series over the next few months. Each series will be based on a common shoot, model or theme. Not completely sure on this format will work but what the hell lets give it a try.
Mike

On Strike !

2009-03-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

I regret to inform everyone that due to a break down at the negotiating table, the left side of my brain decided to go on strike a few days ago. This sadly means this week's post won't include the usual incoherent ramblings that I'm sure you've all come to expect from this blog.

O700 Sunday Morning

2009-03-01T04:43:00.000-08:00

Setting here with my second cup of coffee of the morning as I browse Google looking for call for submissions for artistic and art nude photography. I wonder what the person who came up with the term “A needle in a haystack” would think of internet search engines. Come on someone please tell me what search phrase you use so that at least ten percent of the results actually have something to do with what your searching for.
Well I have a shoot in DC scheduled this afternoon which means I need to take the dogs out for their daily walk this morning, that is if I want to get out the house this afternoon in one piece.

From my shoot my recent shoot with Angelique

Setting here with my second cup of coffee of the morning as I browse Google looking for call for submissions for artistic and art nude photography. I wonder what the person who came up with the term “A needle in a haystack” would think of internet search engines. Come on someone please tell me what search phrase you use so that at least ten percent of the results actually have something to do with what your searching for.
Well I have a shoot in DC scheduled this afternoon which means I need to take the dogs out for their daily walk this morning, that is if I want to get out the house this afternoon in one piece LOL

From my shoot my recent shoot with Angelique

Working on weak areas

2009-02-25T07:53:00.000-08:00

The original plan for this past Friday's shoot with Angelique was to work outside but after a 10 minute walk to the shooting area then another 10 minutes of trying to find a spot with good lighting, in spite of the clear sky and noon day sun. Where are the freaking clouds when you need them LOL I decided the lighting and conditions just didn't warrant have her freeze in the windy 40 degree weather. So I decided to go with Plan B That would of course be to work on one of my major weak areas, traditional studio artistic nudes, where I need lots of improvement. So we headed back to the cars and drove over to the back up “in door location”. Once there we spent the next approximately two hours shooting very basic artistic nudes. All in all I feel the shoot produced some quality images but more importantly it allowed or rather forced me to work on an area that I really need work on if I ever want to improve my work to the level of photographers whose work I admire greatly

A Walk in the Park Part II

2009-02-18T18:09:00.001-08:00

Additional images from last week shoot with Amber.

March 2009 Erotic show MOCA Gallery

2009-02-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

Just finished putting together the mats for the photos that I'm planning on showing at next month's annual Erotic show at the MOCA Gallery in Georgetown http://www.mocadc.org/. For people who don't know about it MOCA is a small user supported gallery near Washington DC that gives new and upcoming artists a place to display and sell their work. Which is something that is greatly needed as very few galleries in the Washington DC area show erotic or in that fact any kind of nude work.
If you're in the area please stop by on March 6th between 6 and 10 pm for the opening of the show and an exhibition photo shoot of Playboy model Angelina Leigh by Jerry Harke.
If you're also in the show I look forward to meeting you and seeing you're work.
Please also stop by the other galleries in the area which will also be holding openings and other first Friday events on March 6th
Mike

A Walk in the Park

2009-02-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

For the longest time I've felt a bit of jealousy when ever I saw a nude shot in a beautiful location. I now realize how foolish this was as there are beautiful locations all around, some of which just require seeing beyond one's preconceived notions of what makes a good location and instead seeing each location for its own unique beauty. I'm not sure what is was that made me decide to open my eyes and start looking around instead of wasting time being jealous, but that's what I did and you know what I found a beautiful location less then two miles from my house. Which I was able to take advantage of for the first time this past Tuesday afternoon, and was it ever a perfect day for shooting.
The sky was filled with those thin soft clouds that act like giant soft boxes, providing beautiful lighting from almost every angle. Now when I go there each day for my afternoon walk it with eyes open instead of closed.

A quite moment

2009-02-04T11:58:00.000-08:00

Note to self, always keep an eye on the weather!

2009-02-01T12:46:00.000-08:00

Beautiful day in the low 60s today but of course I didn't bother to check the weather forecast yesterday or Friday so I wasn't able to take advantage of it, physiologically kicking myself in the backside as I write this. That being said the day wasn't a complete loss as I was able to check out what looks to be a very promising location for future shoots. Plus the dogs and I got to enjoyed a nice long walk in the woods which believe me, we all needed.

Beauty and Ice

2009-01-29T11:03:00.000-08:00

Late last year I decided to spend as much of 2009 outside with that in mind I started exploring the local area for sites that might make for interesting locations for shoots once the temperatures start getting warmer. So last week I load my two dogs in the car and drove over to check out another possible location, Now mind you I had no intention of shooting at this location anytime in the immediate future but when I saw how this pier looked with the icicles hang off it all I could think of was where can I find a model who'd be up for this. Now mind you when I emailed Amber I wasn't really expecting her to say yes, but knowing how cool Amber is I should have known she'd be up for it :)

Girl Talk

2009-01-27T19:20:00.001-08:00

Melissa and Christina from this past Sunday's shoot.

Melissa on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta

2009-01-23T13:49:00.001-08:00

I have a shoot scheduled with Melissa for this coming Sunday so I thought what would be a better way to try out my first order of Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper then printing a few of my favorite images of Melissa. As I've said in previous post I'm definitely what you'd call a beginner as far printing goes so when I give an opinion about how I like or what I think about a paper its from that point of view.
So what do I think about Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta? I think it delivers incredible beautiful prints that feature excellent detail in all areas of an image from highlights to shadows as well as a beautifully range of tones.
As part of a comment he made to last week's post Vernon Trent was kind enough to recommend that I give a program called Quad Tone Rip and try, So I went ahead and downloaded the program and installed it as a printer driver in Lightroom 2.0. I've only been using the program for a few days so it will be a while until I can give even a beginner's level opinion of the software.
Mike

The Big Brown Truck :)

2009-01-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

Thursday morning the nice person from UPS showed up with my package from Adorama, which included a box of ProJet Elite Watercolor Linen Texture 11x14 printer paper, along with a number of ink cartridges for my R1900 printer. Now I've only been doing my own printing for about year due the fact that everything I've read about printing made it sound pretty dam hard, but I finally decided to bite the bullet give it a try. Luckily for me the first paper I tried was Iford Gold Fibre Silk (FGS)which came with instructions that allow even someone as slow as myself to get high quality prints.
One the other hand the instructions for Projet Elite pretty much suck if you're using a MAC rather then a PC. In fact I'd probably still be trying to figure out how to load/use the profiles that I'd download from Adorama if I hadn't just said screw it and went ahead and used Ilford's instructions.
So far I've done seven prints with using the new paper, including the first two that came out too dark, due the fact that there's not a specific profile for the Watercolor Linen Texture oh and the profiles are actually for the older R1800 rather then the R1900. Once I figured/guessed which profile to use the resulting prints came out quit nicely. In fact just a few minutes ago I printed out the second image ,which was shot at ISO 3200, and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the print. I'm still trying to decide it I like texture of the paper and may try some more standard papers from Projet, namely Picture Rag to see what I like best.
So I'll give the paper a B+, but the person(s) who wrote the instructions gets an F-.
Next papers on my list to try are Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta 325 and Bamboo.
Mike

Timing!

2009-01-13T06:02:00.001-08:00

For some reason I keep coming back to this image from last Saturday's shoot with Christina. On one hand I feel that I missed the shot, most likely I pressed the shutter a second too late, which I have a habit of doing because of my dependancy on the camera's auto focus system. Yup even with a full frame body like the 5D and fast lens manual focus is pragmatic at best for me, so I a rule pretty much don't press the shutter unless the selected focus point is on the model's eye or other key feature. This of course results in a number of near misses here and there. On the other hand there something about this image that's communicates a feeling of sensuality with a just a hint of vulnerability.

A Little Color

2009-01-11T11:11:00.000-08:00

A little bit of color to start out the new week.

Friends

2009-01-10T20:15:00.000-08:00

I received an email last night from a friend who also just happens to be one of my favorite models wanting to know if I was interested in shooting some fashion stuff today, of course the answer was yes. So here I am setting in front of the computer editing a few images of her from Tuesday's impromptu shoot, while also trying to think of what to write for this week's blog entry.
Speaking of friends, I'm currently working with a local author to shoot some images for a novel he's written, thanks to another model, who I also call a friend, recommending me for the job. So far we're just in the initial planning stages but everything seem to be coming along very nicely.
About 14 hours later, well today's shoot went very nicely, though we only shot for about an hour we got a number of very nice fashion shots plus a few artistic ones.
Few images from last Tuesday's shoot with Christina.

Slight Disappointed

2009-01-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

Yup that pretty much describes how I feel about the results from this past Saturday not really mad but just “slightly disappointed” . This might sound strange but even during the shoot I was feeling less then enthused by what I was getting it was like the shots were right there in front of me but I just couldn't seem to capture them in the way I wanted. During the shoot I kept looking at my watch no not to see how much time I had left buy rather strangely hoping it was time to call it a day and put it all behind me.
To the question of why I didn't just end the shoot early and simply thank the model for her time. Simple fact is since I'd already spent the money to hire the model as well as for the location I figured didn't really have anything more to lose. Also in the back of my mind I kept reminding myself that some of my best work has come at the end of what were up to that point very very disappointing shoots, but it just wasn't to be this time.
No worries though as I've learn to look at shoots like this as pot holes on the road of creativity no matter how hard you try to avoid them you're bound to hit a few

First of the New Year

2009-01-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

Well to be truthfully these were shot on the 30th of December 08, but I didn't really start processing them until yesterday so I guess its Ok to call them my first work of the new year. I met RB through Craigslist and arranged for her to come in for short test or “get to know each other” shoot to see how well we worked together. For the first hour or so we worked in the studio which truthfully resulted in a few OK images but nothing beyond the mundane. As the idea's I'd come up with for the session just didn't seemed to work once we actually started shooting. The last half of the shoot I'm pleased to say was a complete 180 from the first half. We moved up stairs to one of the guest room which offered beautiful natural lighting providing a close to perfect setting for a serious of what I think are very beautiful and natural photographs.

Mike

Long breaks

2008-12-26T10:31:00.000-08:00

Well another week of twiddling my thumbs and going back over old images looking for something I missed or something to re-edit is coming to an end. I'm sure there are other amateurs who like myself periodically find themselves with extended breaks between shoots due to budget issues. Tell the truth when you first started you thought over time you'd create more and more quality pictures or “Keepers” as they are called by some. But no that's not what happens no what happens is you become picker and picker which means fewer and fewer keepers which drives you to work harder to get more keepers which again cause you get picker and picker and the whole vicious circle begins a new :)

Hopefully the next time I post I'll have some images from the shoots I've scheduled for the upcoming week. For now here's few re-edits from April 2006 and December 2004

Remember your best photograph is the one you haven't taken yet

Another Year Almost Gone

2008-12-15T19:22:00.000-08:00

Well as we come to the end of 2008 I guess it time for some reflection on the past year. I guess growth and struggle would be the two words that best describe the past twelve months for me as a photographer and artist. Yes definitely I feel my photography especially my artistic work improved significantly over the past year, though at times its didn't seem that way as I struggled with long periods of creative block and doubt. Period of frustration when ideas come few and far between that are only aggravated by what I see as a difficulty in pre-conceiving things in my mind. Its like the photo I want is in my mind just out of reach but I don't know which door to open to let it out. Luckily for me I'm able to work with a number of wonderful models on a regular and on going basis who know when the little creative hamster in my head is struggling and needs some help.
Well the new year with all its promises and mysteries is just around the corner so here's to artistic and personal growth.

Finally I'd like to close the year by sharing my favorite 13

Mike

2008-12-15T19:18:00.000-08:00

2008-12-15T19:17:00.000-08:00

Shooting wide open or why I love primes

2008-12-12T19:56:00.000-08:00

Yup something else that I love and pretty much discovered by accident. Of course like most other photographer I've read about and know how aperture can be used to control DOF but like most I pretty much stuck to F-8 or close to it, that was until the spring of 2006 when I got my first prime lens the 85mm 1.8 from that moment on I was addicted to primes. Soon afterwards the use of controlled or limited depth of field, usually in the F2-F2.8 range, to get just that perfect mix of subject to environment soon became a key element in the composition of my work. Now days when pre composing a shot or serious of shots I try to envision which aperture will allow the perfect balance of subject to surrounding rather then just using some arbitrary aperture bases on some tests on the web.

Mixed lighting

2008-12-09T22:37:00.000-08:00

Even when shooting with strobes or flash I try to use them in such away that they add to the natural lighting rather then overwhelm or replace it. For the two photos shown here I metered and exposed for the background in order to maintain as much detail as possible in the background and then used a single strobe to help illuminate the model and foreground while at same time maintaining the patterns created by the shadows on the floor.

2008-12-09T05:44:00.000-08:00

First attempts
Though I've been shooting nudes since the fall of 2004 it wasn't until the summer/fall of 2006 that I began the process of learning how to use natural and or available light as my main source of lighting and relegating flash to a secondary role.
The following are a selection of photographs taken during this time period.

July 2006 MF Color film scanned and converted in Adobe Lightroom

October 2006 Canon 20D 50mm 1.4mm lens. processed in Photoshop CS2

2008-12-08T18:45:00.001-08:00

The following are a selection of photos from last month's shoot with Sarah Ellis. All were shot with a Canon 5D and processed/converted in Lightroom The first two were shot with available light while the other two were shot with a single studio strobe+ 7 inch reflector which I feel delivers a very unique look when compared to photographs done with typical modifier such as a soft box or umbrella.

Introduction

2008-12-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

Over the past few years I've come to realize that for me photography is a journey without a destination and I find that to be a wonderfully freeing realization. Think about it if only for a few seconds what it means to take a turn down that un-marked road of discovery or to try something new or different without having worry about arriving at a pre-determined place at the pre-determined time and the creative freedom it gives you.
What best describes the style of my Nude work? I'd have to say traveling without a map, by this I mean I don't follow any particular genre but instead barrow a little from each as well as other types of photography including high fashion.
You see I consider myself a recorder of beauty and art rather then a creator of either. In saying this I mean most of my photographs start out as either very simple or vague ideas, that really only come to fruition when I'm actually shooting. Or just as often are the results of a little spur of the moment inspiration.