Glyphs of Time :: a blog by jarvis grant

March 30, 2010

A Couple of New Portraits

Filed under: Digital Tech,Photography,Photoshop — Jarvo @ 3:04 pm

For the last week I’ve been working on a project sponsored by the DC Commission of the Arts & Humanities and FotoWeek DC. It is the, DC Counts Census 2010 Photography Contest. I’d been thinking about this for awhile. Coming up with a couple of ideas I thought would work just great. Well, I should have followed my own council when it come to preparing for a competition. That’s , “Read the prospectus carefully!” Ha! I was putting my package together, and now  decided to give the prospectus a thorough once over to insure all would be well. I guess I should have read the thing thoroughly last month! On the second page on the second line it stated that only headshots would be accepted. Headshots!?  What the hell is that all about? It’s about leveling the playing field AND having a consistent exhibition presentation, you jerk. Oh…, i see. OK man, move on to the next project.

I was experimenting with using my Gigapan as a “Large Format” camera, not just a panoramic camera. The resulting images,based on the scene, are creating 50 megapixel or higher images. Shooting portraits with this thing is a challenge, because the subject must remain still during the exposure. So with this high tech imaging equipment, I’m going back to the 19th century. But more on that later. So, all the best laid plans of mice & men were cast to the wind with that headshot deal. Oh well.

But… these shots look pretty good. One pano portrait and one standard approach done portrait.

Portrait of Martha Jackson Jarviis and her dog Ming Martha Jackson Jarvis and her dog Ming

I had originally shot Martha in her studio with the Gigapan. Earlier that afternoon I had shot some of her new works on paper and some shots for Panasonic’s Digital Photo Academy using the Lensbaby system. When I got around to doing the Pano Portrait we were spent., and it looked like it. So a few days later I shot the photograph above at her home office. No fuss,  just a bounced flash as a kicker. Her buddy Ming  jumped into the scene, not wanting to be left out.

For this pano portrait, I was able to find a very cooperative subject, who really didn’t mind several takes and a battery change, to help me get the photograph I wanted.

 A self Portrait of photographer, Jarvis GrantLaundry Room Blues: Pano Self-Portrait of photographer, Jarvis Grant

I’ve been thinking about this self portrait for awhile, and I’m fairly pleased with it. I learned a lot from the session I did with Martha in her studio. This image was made by stitching twelve images. The actual image is 9341 x 5798 pixels. Still some bugs to work out. But all in all, I pleased with the results. The visual effect was made using the Highlight & Shadow command in Photoshop CS4..

 
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