Digging through photography archives: where I was 8 years ago.

I was doing a blu-ray backup for our HDD arrays and found several interesting photos, dated between 6 and 9 years ago. I would like to share few of them here.

Quite often I read comments like “what camera should I have to get photos like this, what lighting, etc”. My answer is always the same: stop thinking what you do not have, just get camera and start shooting. Look what can be done with almost no lighting ($30 strobe is what you call lighting?), the cameras was far from modern DSLR too.

I’ll be going from the oldest ones, trying to recall how I did each of them…

2002, film & light brush:

light brush technique photography

This is a composite shoot, captured on a film (Fuji Velvia?) with Canon Elan 7E camera: 2 exposures combined, two different colors on LED flashlight were used to highlight each object. Blue color for a knife, about 10 seconds exposure, white on the orange, 10 seconds more, exposed on the same frame. There is blue casting spot on the orange, must accidentally hit it with the blue one.

No Photoshop, no instant preview (next day is the fastest preview time I was able to achieve), no external light meter… The image itself is nothing special, but that time, for 100% amateur photographer it was a good result.

2003, first digital, first strobe lighting:

still life photography: nuts and honey

simple portrait

This is my first work with strobe lighting. The lighting with first, screw-in strobe and construction reflector, everything was about $35 for each monolight. Here it is: Medalight Master Slave Flash (120V AC) or any of these, with reflector like this one from Home Depot.

I had 1 master and 2 slave units, and used them for a good amount of portraits and still life photography, they were amazingly good and inexpensive tools to learn the light. This is all about the light, light knowledge is what makes photographer a photographer, not an expensive gear or great communicative skills (I call it ability to do a good bla-bla-bla with the client, never will learn how to do it right:-)

2005, first high-speed photography:

orange splash water high speed photography

Hight speed photography example: orange splash

This is my first experience with hi-speed liquid photography: One Canon Speedlight 420EX and two reflectors, 4 gallon aquarium and old 6 Mpx Canon 10D.
Everything was synchronized by eye and hand, about 20 shoots were made to get the one I like. Orange was dropped into a water, image was flipped upside down.
The key is to have sharp angle to a water surface, so if will act as a mirror.

BTW, this is type of photography I really like, and soon I’ll do something really interesting on this field, just need to find a few days in my schedule. It will be the best I ever done tutorial, believe me!

2006, professional studio strobe kit:

Vegetarian nightmare art photography example: sandwich crab

2006 was my first year of being vegetarian, I got a live crab from Korean farmers market for my aquarium (was stupid even to hope it will live there), and the idea of the shoot came up after crab died. This time I already had a more serious strobes, Novatron 440 DX (or similar model, do not remember now), almost identical to this one: , bought used for about $300 on ebay with 3 heads included. Hanged crab legs with fishing lines, shoot on a painted acrylic sheet.

the eyes of woman portrait photography dramatic lighting

Her eyes

This is (above) still one of my favorite portraits, most controversial and unusual I have made. One light source from the bottom, through the glass table. Same Novatron strobe lighting kit. One more image (below) with the same strobes, I start using a soft boxes that time..

First glamour shots

three head man funny photography example

One of the first heavy digitally altered photography (above), wondering why we do not do anything like this now?

2006 we entered a commercial photography world, registered AKELstudio, inc and started making more serious money from the photography. I still can see the start line behind my shoulder, but future became more and more visible as we accelerate. We have big plans, enormous ambitions and infinitive filed of things to be learned, but I always will remember where we have started:-)

Hope this post will help beginners to understand that equipment is the last part you should care about in your photography carrier. Unique vision, style and ability to get desired result regardless of obstacles is what you’ll need to have or learn. If you love what you are doing, there is no way for a failure. Just do it!

As always, I like to know what do you think, please hit me hard with your comments:-)

Alex

P.S This is who I was in 2002, I barely can recognize this guy: