Gerard Vong's photostream

We were walking around Central Park during the twilight after sunset, hunting for a good place to take a portrait. In the distance, we saw a beautiful bridge and underpass, lit by the classic lamps that dot the Park. Despite its beauty, I was a little lost as to how to use it to craft an effective portrait. I had just walked away from another spot with a lovely yellow autumn tree where I'd failed to get a good picture there. With that failure in mind, I did the opposite of an environmental portrait - I eliminated most of the context and produced a portrait more about light and form than location (though the textured path helps!). The lens flare is in camera (not Photoshop!) and caused by the back light...

Things have been busy since coming to NYC, so I haven't shot as many portraits as I'd like. But better to make up for quantity with quality rather than the other way around! Press L to view the image in full glory...!

Backlight is courtesy of a VAL'd SB-900 (on pretty low power... 1/16th?) and another VAL'd 20" square softbox coming in from the top right. Simple but beautiful! The photo reminds me a little of Michael Jackson with the hat and backlighting - but that wasn't intentional at the time!

Behold, some of the finest zombies from this year's New York City Halloween Parade...! Press L to behold it in it's full glory!

Lighting info: I knew that it was going to be dark on the streets of NYC, and that they'd be plenty of movement as the participants shuffled, danced, and zombie-d along 6th Avenue, so I brought along a flash. Not content with your average on camera direct flash, I also packed a ringflash & got up close and personal with a fisheye to get photos like this...enjoy!

Here's a portrait of one of my former apartment mates, Georges. He went through a I-like-to-sleep-in-the-bathroom-sink-phase. Here's proof! It was kind of amusing to find him there some mornings, as I rubbed the sleep dust out of my eyes...

I recently moved to New York City, and I was a catsitter for a few weeks in a luxurious apartment in Chelsea. While I found that I was a little allergic to the cats, it was fun having them around and miss them a little now I've moved to a new apartment and their owners are back from holiday. Still, I'm glad that I was able to capture good portraits of the two cats - and you might see a photo of the shy-er of the two cats, Chatchka, in my photostream in the not too distant future!

I've been on a gate kick lately. I mean that I've been using gates as compositional elements recently. They've already got symmetry and beauty built into them (at least, many Oxford gates do), so why not take advantage of that? This is especially the case as I'm moving from Oxford soon and so will no longer have access to the beautiful locations Oxford provides. That said, with the right eye, you can find photographically beautiful places just about anywhere. Somewhat surprisingly, sometimes really rather ugly places can be really rather photogenic.

But in this case, I've got a good looking subject in a good looking environment, which makes things easier. My friend Tom Douglas in the Balliol College fellows' garden. Looking back at my camera's metadata, it shows me that I shot a whole of 22 seconds here as I had to go elsewhere (22 seconds from my first to the last photo). Still, despite only shooting for a few seconds, I think I got a pretty decent portrait of him in his doctoral graduation gown here. He submitted his DPhil thesis some time ago, but only got around to graduating recently.

A few notes about the photo... the out of focus green branch in the foreground is like that on purpose. It breaks up the big sleeves of the gown and adds more depth to the photo. In a departure from many of the portraits in my past Flickr stream, this is taken with just ambient natural light. While it's near impossible to have the same level of control and softness over ambient light as you do with strobes, I've come to appreciate it more lately. It restricts where you can shoot, as some otherwise nice locations have bad light, but natural light has it's own charm. I especially like the natural variation in the eye catchlights you get with natural light and am always struck when animators and artists put umbrella or softbox-like catchlights into drawn characters' eyes. Anyway, I hope you like the portrait, which is best viewed by pressing 'L' on your keyboard!

Incidentally, I ran into a fellow Oxford Flickr user, Darrell Godliman, nearby. He was photographing a wedding at Balliol College that day. Here's a link to one of his lovely photos from the day (and do check out his Flickr photostream to find great photos from around the world!)

www.flickr.com/photos/darrellg/6047496838/in/photostream

This is a candid photo of Finnish street photographer, Lauri Saksa. He's brandishing his Leica M3, I'm brandishing his Leica M9. Both beautiful cameras, but I prefer the viewfinder and the ergonomics of the older M3. I love the texture in the window and the hair.

Press L on your keyboard to appreciate properly.

You can find him on Flickr -
www.flickr.com/photos/lauri_saksa/
As well as on his Photoblog -
laurisaksa.wordpress.com/