Model - Kendel Griffin
Questions and Answers
I'm finally writing this question and answer post! I know its been quite some time since I posted asking for you to give me any questions to answer but here it is!! Better late than never.
What inspires you?
There is no one answer for this question, I cant draw inspiration from most things depending on my mood and thought process. My two main sources of inspiration though would have to be past experiences and feelings which I've always found expressing my thoughts whether they are just simple ideas or more elaborate story telling series through image making to be my greatest escape.
I've always loved nature, the fact that everything is constantly changing but at the same time visiting the same location it's always familiar. I love to let my mind get lost in the beauty and texture of the forest and trees.
Who inspired you to start and who inspires you today?
There isn't really a person who inspired me to start photography. I've always loved art, painting and being creative. Photography was just another medium I tried throughout high school and ever since then I've been taking photos.
I've made plenty of friends within the photography community and they are the ones who definitely inspire me today with their amazing work.
Do you shoot in RAW and what is your post-processing routine to keep consistency among your images?
Yes, I do shoot RAW.
I have a few things I follow when I'm shooting my fine art pieces to keep everything fairly consistent. This doesn't always happen because it depends on the concept I'm shooting but 90% of the time I shoot out in nature, which I've found even in different locations gives a certain feel and mood to my images.
I always expand the frame when shooting my personal work, it allows me not to worry later on about resolution if I need to use an image for an exhibition and need to blow it up. I've also been fond of the way square images look.
How did you learn your skills? (both in photography and photoshop)
I learnt the basics of photography in high school while developing film and later on once I started shooting more and more in digital I started teaching myself what I needed to know so I was able to shoot a certain concept which allowed me to continually learn new techniques. I'm still constantly learning new ways to shoot thats one of the things I love about photography, you can never know too much!
Photoshop has majority been self taught. I've spent countless hours pulling all nighters figuring out what does what in photoshop. Trial and error was and still is my best way to learn what I need to do. I have started following certain websites which focus on teaching photoshop techniques and I have learnt a lot from the amazing people who spend their time teaching others.
I see you recently had an exhibition, how was that? Pro's and con's? How did it happen?
I did! This was earlier in the year but it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the night.
I was able to meet a lot of other creatives and help get my name out there a bit more.
It was through a company called RAW who hold a one night exhibition every few months in many different cities around the world to give emerging artists the chance to show their work and experience what it's like exhibiting their work.
Could you tell a bit about your colour correction / colour grading techniques?
I always edit my colours using curves whether I'm in Lightroom or Photoshop.
I do sometimes use other ways to colour my images but I've found I'm always heading back into a curves layer to make adjustments. I love the matte film look in photos so one of the very first things I do is to change the shadows and highlights so there are no true blacks and whites in the image. I usually have a colour palette in mind when shooting so I have a rough idea of what I want to do when I come into Photoshop. I tend to play around a lot until I'm happy with what I'm getting. I've found selecting certain areas of the image to colour individually instead of overall helps make things look a lot more interesting. I wish I could answer this question a bit better but a lot of my editing is fiddling around from a basic idea and routine.
Thank you everyone who asked me questions! I'm sorry I was so delayed in writing this. I need to catch up on my blog posts in the coming weeks :)
Pine Plantation and Q&A
The other day we went down to one of my most favourite places to visit and also a location I shoot at frequently, about an hour away from where I live in a town called Macedon.
It's just a pine plantation but the things I like most about it is being able to explore and get lost in there without the worry of coming across other people, which comes in handy when you are shooting nudes.
We took the trip down there because it had been a fair while since we had visited and thought it would be a good place to spend the afternoon relaxing and practising learning how to film and playing around with some lenses I bought recently.
I'm excited yet nervous to start having my shoots filmed, I'm looking forward to the challenges of it though and new learning processes!
Also, thanks to my friend Macey Rayburn Photography for the idea of creating a Questions and Answers post. I'll be be writing a blog post that will answer any questions anyone has to ask me about my photography, editing, myself or anything you wish. So if theres something you want to know whether it be how I got into taking photos to how I edit them, ask away in the comment section below or over at my Facebook Page. I'll be collecting all the questions over the next week or so and publishing my answers here in a new blog post so keep an eye out! :)
First blog post!
Creating a blog has been on my mind a lot lately, I thought it would be a good way to be able to document my shoots for myself to look back on, whilst sharing with others. My goals for creating a blog are being able to share behind the scenes images/videos while talking about the process of how the final image was made. From the first location scout all the way through to post processing. I've been super nervous about doing this because I've never had a good way with words and making sense but I'm hoping writing these blogs will open a new door of photography to me that's more than just taking the photo and sharing it.
Along with the photography side of these blog posts I will be posting more personal ones along the way, I think it's always good to know a little bit about the artist and why they do what they do.
I started taking photos about six years ago just as a hobby, I was always creative and enjoyed arts more than anything else but when I first started photography something drew me into more than anything else, I'm not sure what.
After studying film and darkroom processing for two years in high school I ended up teaching myself how to use digital cameras when I left school.
I began experimenting with different styles and techniques, whilst I learned a lot from this I also lost track of what I enjoyed. I got caught up in constantly changing what I enjoyed to shoot, although I believe it's great to shoot many other things rather than be restricted I could never define my work and I felt I could never define myself.
After giving up on photography for several years I've been working my hardest to narrow down and pursue what I wish to do.
I'll be writing a separate post sometime soon on my current goals and the challenges I'm having to over come to reach them.
Since this is my first post I want to share some of my very first photos I ever took, I look back at my work a lot and reflect on what's changed and what hasn't and try to see what I like in old images which can help improve my current work.
Wish me luck on continuing these posts, thank you for reading and enjoy!