Prints that Win: Bombshell

Bombshell by Rod OmanSometimes the key to award-winning photography is not to shoot with a competition in mind. In the case of this Sunset Print Award winner at the recent Twin Cities Professional Photographers Association competition, this image evolved into an award-winner.

Rod Oman, who owns The Imagery Photography Gallery with his wife, Stephanie, was working at the Commemorative Air Force Minnesota Wing as part of a fundraiser for the organization. Oman was joined by other photographers, makeup artists and models as they created scenes focusing on vintage WWII aircraft.

“We were shooting the exterior of one of the airplanes, and someone suggested we shoot inside the plane. I shot away with the model, Elizabeth Noir, looked at the images in the camera back and thought it might be cool to work up,” recalls Oman. “It was really a simple shot with natural light, but the post-processing is what makes it different.”

Bombshell by Rod Oman
Here’s Oman’s original capture before he applied some magic in post-processing.

Oman used Topaz and Nik Color Efex Pro to add more depth and dimension to the image, as well as to evoke the time period. It certainly caught the judges’ attention at the competition as they were drawn in by the storytelling appeal of the image.

“The tricky part was keeping the detail in the background. I didn’t want to lose anything, like the rivets, because all those details are essential to the story,” says Oman.

Oman adds that the title of the image, Bombshell, contributes to the image as a storytelling period piece, and that he was aiming for something in keeping with the period that was eye-catching without being overly provocative.

Rod Oman, who owns The Imagery with his wife, Stephanie, in Burnsville, Minn., has been the Twin Cities PPA’s Photographer of the Year for several years running. In addition to the studio’s high-school senior, families and children portrait photography, Oman also volunteers his services to local animal shelters and the Boy Scouts.

Prints that Win: He Has Arrived

He Has Arrived by Julia Kelleher

Julia Kelleher, owner of Jewel Images in Bend, Ore., says she initially struggled with this composition, entitled He Has Arrived, but decided not to worry so much about the end result and plow ahead with her concept.

The result was a 100 score and a LexJet Sunset Award in the Master Artist category at the PPA Western District print competition held in late August.

“We get so stifled during the creative process because we’re scared the outcome won’t be what we want it to be. Instead, we should be going back to our childhood way of thinking and just have fun with it. Obviously I care what the final product it is, but I finally said to myself, ‘Let’s try it and see what happens,’ which allowed me to be more creative and produce the end result I was looking for,” says Kelleher. “For the longest time I was scared to enter that category because I didn’t think I was technically sound enough to do it. When the pieces started coming together, however, it was technically sound and it looks like everything belongs, rather than just Photoshopped together.”

The composition was created in Photoshop and finished in Corel Painter. Kelleher had to match the lighting from the studio capture of the mother and son featured in the image with the forest and woodland creature scene she created around them.

She used Corel Painter to paint additions to the forest and better blend all the elements into a seamless whole. The time-consuming part was matching the lighting from the original studio shot and adding the correct color tones for each element in the composition, she says.

“It was a matter of layering the animals in, using a lot of blending modes and layer masking to get it just right,” says Kelleher. “Where it really comes together is when you take it out of Photoshop and bring it into Corel Painter: you can make things more seamless and blended, so that really helps give the image its final touch.”

Home Improvement with a Canvas Gallery Wrap Collage

Canvas Wrap CollageOne of the most important things you can do from a sales and marketing standpoint, particularly in our obviously visual market, is to show potential clients how they can display their images.

You can say “canvas,” for instance, and people generally like the thought of images printed on canvas, but they don’t necessarily know how to translate it to their particular space, whether it’s a home, office or retail space.

That’s why Andy Wredberg at AW Artworks is constantly showcasing new and unique ways of displaying prints at his studio, and most recently at his home. Besides, Wredberg’s wife recently asked him why he was doing all this cool stuff for clients, but nothing for their home.

So, Wredberg did a family portrait photo shoot at Wisconsin’s state capitol in Madison. Wredberg’s also a talented photographer who was able to sneak into some of the photos with a remote shutter release.

Wredberg then took the images and created an approximately 6′ x 6′ canvas gallery wrap collage from the photo shoot printed on LexJet Sunset Select Matte Canvas. It consists of nine pieces: three 8x13s, two 10x20s, a 14×20, a 14×29, and two 20x30s.

“I’ve seen some collages online, but never tried doing one that extensively. People love canvas, but they have a hard time picturing how it would work for them and incorporate it. Seeing a collage on a wall gives them a better vision of something they could do with it,” says Wredberg, who posted the project on his Facebook page.

Making the Forest and the Trees Shine at a Fine Art Photography Exhibition

POETRe Exhibit by Visio Photography
The POETRe Exhibit by Visio Photography at The School in Valdese, N.C., feature’s Visio’s fine art landscape photography printed on Sunset Photo Metallic Paper, Sunset Select Matte Canvas (the Coming Storm image on the left side of the centerpiece) and acrylic prints by Artisan Colour (right side of the centerpiece).

VISIO Photography is best known for the exceptional wedding and portrait photography crafted by the husband-and-wife team of James and Jenny Tarpley. Located in Marion, N.C., just outside of Asheville, the couple is also making its mark with high-end fine art landscape photography.

Exhibition by Visio PhotographyA recent exhibition at The Rock School in Valdese, N.C., brought VISIO Photography’s nature photography to light with a focus on trees. Called POETRe, the exhibition ran from June 3 to July 26. Thanks to a combination of immaculate capture, printing detail, print material selection and photo finishing, the exhibition literally glowed.

“There were people at the exhibition who were looking around the edges of the prints to see if they were backlit,” James says. “They were impressed with the way the images leapt out of the frames, and it was also nice to hear from peers who saw the exhibition that the colors looked really good.”

Visio Photography Fine Art Landscape ExhibitThe majority of the prints for the exhibition were printed on LexJet Sunset Photo Metallic Paper. One was printed on LexJet Sunset Select Matte Canvas, and the remainder was printed using a traditional chemical process applied to acrylic by Artisan Colour, Scottsdale, Ariz.

“The Metallic prints were framed behind museum-grade anti-reflective glass. We used black matting on the majority of them to really hone in on the image; I wanted the display to take a back seat to the image,” James explains. “We do a lot of our wedding printing on fine art papers, but we’ve been doing a lot of landscapes lately and we’ve found the Metallic paper displays really well on the wall, especially when it’s lit properly. The great color gamut and vivid reproduction makes this paper wonderful for our landscapes.”

The image printed at 20″ x 60″ on Sunset Select Matte Canvas was finished with LexJet Sunset Gloss Coating. James says the Sunset Gloss Coating increased the contrast, providing extra pop to make it more consistent with the other brilliant images in the collection, which you can see more of at jt-fineart.com.

Prints that Win: Watching and Waiting

Award Winning Print by Jeff Gulle

One of the “secrets” of a great portrait photo is bringing out the character of the subject. But what if the subject is a character? All the better, as you can see from this recent winner of the LexJet Sunset Award at the Georgia PPA print competition.

Entitled Watching and Waiting, pro photographer Jeff Gulle was commissioned to produce publicity photos for a ghost town-themed amusement park near Maggie Valley, N.C. called Ghost Town in the Sky.

With a group of students in tow from North Georgia Technical College in Clarksville, Ga., where Gulle teaches, this particular image was fittingly captured at high noon.

The problem with high noon is the lighting, so Gulle and his students waiting patiently for clouds to pass over and lit the Preacher from the right to ensure an image with depth.

“I love having the students with me. It elevates my photography since I need to explain everything that goes into the capture: picking locations, lighting, posing, and so forth,” says Gulle. “I tried lighting him from different spots and angles, but lighting from the right was the best shot.”

Gulle did some minor touch-ups with Photoshop, eliminating the sky peeking through in the top right corner by cloning and bringing the greenery up to fill the space and then adding a grainy, gritty touch with a Topaz plug-in filter.

Stories Exposed in the Field at the Rockford Art Museum

Large Format Photo Prints
Brian Hampton describes his close encounter with a silverback gorilla at the opening of Rockford Art Museum’s feature exhibition, Exposed: Akerlund, Hampton, Nordlof.

Brian Hampton can tell you some hair-raising stories from his photography travels around the world, and he did at the opening of the Rockford Art Museum’s feature exhibition called Exposed: Akerlund, Hampton, Nordlof.

Large Format Inkjet Photography
Brian Hampton’s African wildlife photography on display at the Rockford Art Museum.

The exhibition opened the weekend of April 26 highlighting the work of Nels Akerlund, Hampton and Bradley Nordlof. Each brought a distinctive style and focus to the exhibition. Akerlund is known for his unique portraits of prominent people in the Rockford area, Hampton for his wildlife photography and Nordlof for his landscape photography. Each artist gave a short lecture, fielding questions from attendees about the images brought to life with wide-format inkjet printing.

Hampton fielded a lot of questions about the shot he captured of a silverback gorilla in Rwanda. It was the largest print selected from Hampton’s collection for the exhibition at 44″ x 66″, printed on LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin Paper.

Large Format Landscape Photography
Bradley Nordlof explains his amazing landscape photography at the Rockford Art Museum.

The capture is stunning, but the story behind what happened after the capture is, in hindsight, both terrifying and humorous. Hampton relates that the group trekking up the mountain to see the gorillas was warned by their guide to look out for any nervous behavior amongst the gorillas. Hampton took the warning to heart and told his wife, Donna, to “keep the video rolling in case something happens; it might be double indemnity on the insurance,” Hampton recalls.

Sure enough, that big silverback got nervous. Hampton could hear the guide saying, “He’s nervous. He’s nervous. Move back. Move back.” Hampton was about 30 feet away at the time when the gorilla charged. The guide told Hampton to hit the ground, cover up his head and not to look at him.

Now fully engaged with the ground below him, head covered, Hampton peered out of the corner of his eye to see two hairy feet right next to him.

Printing Portraits
Nels Akerlund discusses his distinct portraiture style at the Rockford Art Museum.

“I heard something go snap, then seconds later he whacked me in the back with a sapling tree I was standing next to. It didn’t really hurt, but I wondered what he was going to do next. After 10 or 15 seconds he started walking away. It looked like he made his point and he was going to move on. I stood up, the guide came up to me laughing and gave me high fives,” recalls Hampton. “I turned to Donna and asked if she got the video. The guide laughed and said, ‘She was running so fast the other way that there’s no way she took any video.'”

And so it is when you’re in the bush, so to speak, whether it’s Africa or Alaska, two of Hampton’s favorite places to shoot.

Each of the photographers displayed around 25 images at the exhibition. Hampton’s images were loaned out from a restaurant, a jeweler and a corporate headquarters that proudly display his Africa work. The images generally ranged in size from 30″ x 40″ to 40″ x 60″, with some exceptions such as the silverback gorilla close-encounter image.

“All of the images looked very nice because the art gallery has new lighting, high ceilings and black walls; the images really popped,” says Hampton.