Border Blogs: Expressing our Border Culture

Promoção de Ensaio Sensual ou de Moda para o Dia Internacional da Mulher

O estúdio Ricardo Carreon Fotografia em homenagem ao Dia Internacional da Mulher 2010 está sorteando um ensaio sensual durante o mês de Março.  Para participar desta promoção as interessadas devem cadastrar corretamente seus dados e incluir o comentário "Desejo participar no Sorteio do Ensaio" no site site www.ricardocarreon.com clickando no Link "Contact".

 Você pode cadastrar você, suas amigas ou pessoas especiais. O cadastro pode ser feito no Mês Internacional da Mulher até o dia 31 de Março de 2010.  A data do sorteio é 1º de Abril de 2010.
 

Características do Ensaio:

- O ensaio vai ser marcado no mês de Abril de 2010 com a ganhadora.

- O ensaio será realizado na Grande São Paulo.  Participantes de fora da Grande São Paulo têm a opção de fazer a viagem a São Paulo cobrindo as suas despesas ou cobrir as despesas de viagem do fotógrafo, juntamente com o equipamento fotográfico e de iluminação.

- O processo consiste em uma reunião prévia de aproximadamente uma hora com a equipe de produção para estabelecer a temática do ensaio, figurino e locação.  A sessão fotográfica pode ser um ensaio sensual ou um ensaio de moda.

- Para o ensaio está incluso maquiagem, cabelo e seleção de figurino. A duração da sessão é de aproximadamente 5 horas.

- Depois da sessão a ganhadora fará a seleção final das fotos junto com a equipe de produção. As fotos selecionadas serão tratadas profissionalmente com Photoshop e impressas em um foto book de alta qualidade.  O foto book é o produto final do ensaio.

Cadastre-se e ganhe um ensaio sensual ou de moda para você ou para alguma mulher especial.  Link para o formulario de cadastro.

A few days ago I ran into a tweet from one of the persons in my network saying "Twitter killed my blog".  This probably seems like an obvious observation judging by the huge sucess twitter has as a service.  However, I must say that my experience has been a completely different one.  I think that tweets or tweeter posts by themselves are as ephemeral as they can get.  Of course, there are tweets that go a long way, especially those that become a meme, a trending topic, or get a large number of RTs (the twitter term for re-tweet, what happens when somebody's tweet is re-published by somebody else).  However, for most tweeter users, even those with relatively large networks, the tweets attract a relatively low number of clicks.

Take for instance this blog.  This blog had lots of activity between 2006-2008 and then it became pretty much dormant in 2009, as a reflection of my other professional activity changes.  I have started to retake it again in 2010, together with my activity on twitter, Facebook and flickr. Well, despite the blog neglect in 2009, many of its posts still attract an audience.  This is mostly because those posts are positioned well in Google and other search engines.  Those posts attract dozens of visits every day.  In contrast a popular tweet might attract a good number of hits in one or two days, maximum.  After that it simply gets lots in the long stream of tweets.  Even people who visit my personal tweeter page directly hardly click past the last 4-5 tweets. 

In another words, I do not buy into the argument that twitter is killing blogs.  Twitter is a great service and has allowed me to stay in touch with my network in a very efficient way.  However, as a way to publish information it still has its challenges.  I have had dome of my articles RT'd by many good friends and still the traffic ouf of those RTs is pretty low.  All of this might change as tweets get incorporated into search engines more preeminently, but for now the tweets are cool, but short lived. 

I just launched this week a new web site for my new studio.  My new studio is focused on fine art sensual photography for common persons and models.  The website presents my portfolio of my best fashion and sensual photography.  The new studio is being built in a partnership with photographer Eder Bruscagin.  The studio is located in the Moema neigborhood (Zona Sul) of São Paulo.  Contact information for the studio can be found in the web site.  We are participating in several events with our partners and I will be writing the stories about those events here on this blog.

Here is the link for ricardocarreon.com.

There are of course a lot of blogs, websites and articles online about how to light a subject properly for stunning portraits. This small article talks about a very simple technique you can use to achieve rich portrait lighting that makes the facial features of your model come to life beautifully.  The technique uses only natural light, of the type that comes through your window.

First of all, in most portraits you will want to achieve different levels of light on the face of your photographic subject.  This creates some shadows which make the picture look tri-dimensional.  If you make your light very even on the face you will make the face of your subject look flat.  There is some movement towards even lighting nowadays, especially in fashion and editorial portraits, but you will see that in that case, the volume on the facial features might be achieved with make up or any other means. 

If you are shooting with studio lighting, the way you achieve different levels of light is by placing one lamp at a higher power or closer to the subject (this is called the main light) and a second light at lower power or far from the subject (this is called fill light).

If you are new to photography a simpler way to achive this for practicing is to place your subject close to a large window that lets natural light in.  Position your subject in a way that the light coming from the window lights part of the face (it can be most of the face actually) and part of the face and body have shadows.  Experiment with different angles on your model (relative to the window) and different camera positions.  You should expose to the light on the brighter side of your model (that is, expose to the main light).  Be careful that the light differential between the illuminated side and the dark side is not too big, because that can create problems.  A light differential of 1.5 points is very good between the main light and the fill light, because that creates a 3:1 contrast ratio that looks very good in the resulting image.

Here is an example of this.  The Model on the shot is Finnish Top Model Olivia Kortelainen.  We shot this entirely with natural light coming out of the window.

Any photography questions please leave a comment or contact me in twitter at ricardocarreon.

I am starting to build a new alternative model album on flickr.  This album is for model Kodoq, also know as Katie.  Kodoq is a very sucessful alternative Polish performer and model that lives in Finland.  Kodok is also a member of Model Mayhem, where you can find her portfolio under the number 70561.

Here are two photos from Kodoq Katie, you can see all photos published on my Kodoq flickr set.

Kodoq black later dress

 

Kodoq Katie black latex dress floor shot

 

Ricardo Carreon posted a photo:

Model: Jéssica Miranda
Lighting: André Gardenberg VI Sao Paulo Workshop
Make up: Fabiana Domingues Lima