Yesterday I was buying 10 bottles of HEET (100% methanol) and distilled water for my car (who can guess why? ) at Walmart and accidentally noticed something very familiar while walking near kitchenware shells… It was like: did I shoot these? Yep!
It is still a little unusual feeling to see my own work in such places: it is like browsing incognito your own exhibition:-). I was smiling when shooting them on Droid X (BTW, surprisingly nice 8Mpx camera):
Rival toaster
This is about 10% of what we actually did for Walmart, the rest is still (my guess) in a creative packaging department. Continue reading »
Last week I had a great opportunity to work on a very interesting project: a food photoshoot for Jante Glen and his Wing City2City Take-Out Restaurant.
Jante has this great idea of very simple and inexpensive Take-Out restaurant with more money spent on the quality of the food instead of workers, the building and silverware. Therefore the photography should be the same: simple, but showing the best of the product for each menu item.
We were lucky to find a great food stylist, Nan McCulloch (www.nanmcculloch.com), she helped us a lot with the whole concept of the shoot, along with the styling for each dish.
Some time ago we met online Alla Koval, an amazing knitwear and crochet designer. My wife was thrilled by the models she has seen on Alla’s blog and quickly become a big fan of her work (check out her blog: www.mylittlecitygirl.com). After they found each other, very soon we got this idea to do a collaborate project: Alla’s knitwear and our little cuties as models, styled and photographed by us. Photography will be used on her future pattern book.
Now I am glad to show you, my friends, the result.
We did two photo-sets, one in our studio and the second one on the lake: ideally it should be a ocean or a sea, as the whole designer’s line called “Ocean friends”, but having a lake near the studio made our choice.
Atlanta photographer: in studio children fashion photography
Here I would like to show you a studio photo-shoot, as a most interesting for me and (I hope) for you. Continue reading »
This is a half a year old photo-shoot, but I would like to share the outcome here, the post is following this ONE. I was not able to release the details of the shot due to a restriction from a client, and now they seems to be OK with it
Shirley Corriher the one of our most enjoyable customers. This time she showed us how to cook. The previous 4 days photoshot was only about the food, and now we did few portraits in the kitchen as well.
Recently I have a very interesting experience working for Janis Wilson Hughes, shooting her sculptures for an exhibition. It was interesting because I did not shoot art pieces before, most of my photography was commercial products.
There is the same requirements in both art and product photography : to show the best of the subject, its texture and shape at the best angle.
When I’ve received and opened the boxes with the art, I’ve already knew how I was going to shoot them: soft light (stripe boxes) from left, right and top with a nice gray gradient (spot from a 30° honeycomb grid to a charcoal gray paper). Below the outcome, enjoy:
Art reproduction photography: Janise Hughes masterpiece
Having 3 lights hitting the subject with the sharp angle gives me flexibility to choose from more textured or more brighter and shadowless look.
The spot on a background was necessary for the first art piece, wire mesh without a frame. I left it on for the rest two pieces, as it added one more dimension to them. It would be easy to crop the frame, when needed, but Janis agreed with me: background spot was a good thing to do:-) Continue reading »
After we have successfully done a boots catalog photography for Refrigiwear, they decided to go with us on the rest of their 2010 catalog. This time we had a uniform 7+ hours photo-shoot with 4 models, about 30-40 outfits and four people (not counting photographer helping in a studio.
It was fun: Four ladies from Refrigiwear was helping Elite models to get dressed on heavy fireproof jackets, Mylène Farmer with her sexy music videos on a TV, humor, laugh and funny model’s faces at the end of each set.
The uniform we were shooting are made for work in a refrigerators and freezers, with temperature down to zero Fahrenheit. I was trying to keep studio cold, but guys still had a tough time wearing them. Modeling light was off for the most of the flashes, helping to minimize a heat in a studio. Several thousand watt-seconds of strobe flash every second or two did not help to stay models cool either:-)
At the and of the day we’ve got over 1100 images for a proofs gallery, I was tired and happy: I love this feeling after tough, but well done job.
Ok, now the studio lighting setup:
I was using excessive amount of strobes, this is what I always like to do: more lights gives me better control over the whole scene.
For example, I prefer to have a shoot-through light instead of only reflector, when possible: it works like a reflector on low power, but easily can go beyond that, when needed.
Working on our latest assignment, a catalog shoot for Refrigiwear, I decided to show how proper lighting can make a big difference by using one of the boots from the catalog as an example.
The object I’ve selected is a simple to photograph. Really simple.
Why?
Because it has well visible texture, and does not have highly reflective or transparent surfaces. Nothing similar to this, right?
However, having an easy to shoot object does not mean you should not worry about the lighting. It is so easy to do a crappy image just because it looks “nice” as is, with one light source, for example. Believe me, I am not against simple lighting schema, but more lights gives me more control over the look of the subject, just need to narrow them down.
Here I am going to show you how each additional light source will change the look of the boot and explain why I need it.
Let’s start from this well textured boot and only one light in front-top of it (White Lightning BD in my case), see the lighting setup:
I do not understand modern black and white photography, did you know this? It is like cutting off one dimension from the photography world, and I always wanted to have more… more dynamic range, more sensitivity, more colors! That day we tried to expand our usual color palette 5 times more: 5 different colored lights were used in one portrait photo-session.
Yes, I am talking about color gels. In most cases I use them to change a background color or add color accents to a scene, but this time we went wild: about 6 sharp, directional light sources was used to paint a model’s portrait. No softboxes, umbrellas or other softeners were used, pure light from 7” reflectors covered by honeycomb grids.
The idea was hanging in the air for a quite some time, and now Kevi Redding, beautiful young singer I was working before, asked me to do portrait for her using colored lighting.
Kevi:
Kevi Redding portrait by Atlanta photographer Alex koloskov
I’ve enjoyed working with her (I find much easier to work with artistic person) and after we were done and she left, I continued to play with setup and made several shots of my lovely wife: Continue reading »
Do you know what surgical forcep is? According to Wikipedia: “Forceps are used when fingers are too large to grasp small objects or when many objects need to be held at one time while the hands are used to perform a task.” In case if the object is a tiny piece of human body needed for biopsy, something very internal, surgeons pin a hole in human’s body and use 1.5 mm in diameter micro jaws to bite a piece of the liver, for example…
macro photography in your hand
Scary enough? Do not worry, I won’t go further:-)
I was lucky to feel these things in my hands, not inside of me. One of our good long-term customers, medical supplier EndoChoice sells such devices and my duty is to produce outstanding images of these little gremlins.
Last week I had this nice assignment: on-location shoot for Vieler International LP (www.vieler.com). The company was established in 1913, now 3rd generation 100% family-owned business, specializing in architectural hardware out of stainless steel and aluminum: high quality door and window hardware, shop fitting systems and much more. When I’ve checked the company website (after a brief conversation with the Andre Vieler, the owner of the business), I was surprised by the beauty and style of the products they manufacture. The current product look:
The challenge was to match the company colors and style of the images withing quoted 3 hours of work in the warehouse, having the shooting date in 4 days from the first contact with the customer. After I’ve received a company’s brochure, I started to look for a right-color background paper: best color match was absolutely necessary for the project. I was lucky to found right color (that was ultramarine) 107” paper roll for a background in Showcase Atlanta.
Packed with half of the studio ( full list of equipment), I drove just inside the warehouse through a loading dock (saved us about 10 minutes). Aluminum frame with the glass inside was mounted on a wooden board about 6 feet wide, painted black. After a little consideration I’ve decided to use a big chunk of the background paper to cover the board, so we disassembled the frame, covered board with the paper and screwed frame back to it. Andre Vieler, the owner, was helping us, working like an undercover boss
I was done with setup withing 30 minutes: 2 large softboxes on front and side ( main and fill light), small narrow box on behind, two 20 degree spot honeycomb for a background and laptop connected to a camera, ready for a remote capture. Four strobes was connected to a remote controller, camera was mounted on a Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod and 405 geared head.
I do not use (never did) a flash meter (why?), but this time I measured light once at the middle of a frame: f13. That was only the time I needed a meter, the rest exposure evaluation was done on a laptop’s screen.
Also, Andre and 2 other guys were looking at setup preparation and now was looking at laptop’s screen, ready to see the first image, so I wanted to impress them: even the first test image came exactly as I wanted. As usual, I’ve got correct ratio between all light sources without using this “necessary if you a pro” tool :
Industrial photographer Atlanta, GA for Vieler International by Alex Kolsokov
July 29th, 2010 | 
) at Walmart and accidentally noticed something very familiar while walking near kitchenware shells… It was like: did I shoot these? Yep!
