2011: I met a lot of interesting people and made a lot of amazing friends along the way.

I’ve been waiting to post this entry for several weeks now. I wanted to have it up during the final weeks of 2011, however a hectic holiday weekend and an extended trip to Japan meant that it was on hold until now. I may be a few weeks late, but since we are still in the phase trying to gracefully scribble a 2 over the 1, it may mean that I’m right on time.

Where can I start? 2011 seemingly breezed by. Going through all of my images from the past year, work, personal and otherwise, I noticed a definite trend. 2011 was the year of the music. Whether that is an isolated anomaly or the beginnings of a journey, who knows? I’m hoping for the latter and I think I may be right.

When I wasn’t hard at work with my own musical endeavors, I seemed to find myself photographing indie bands (i.e.: local hero’s Wild Moccasins and Buxton), hip-hop groups and rap artists (i.e.: Trae Tha Truth, Lupe Fiasco, Mystikal, Z-Ro, The Niceguys, et al). I also found myself branching out more with my editing style. I am experimenting more and it feels good. Since my passion was in design before I even picked up a camera, the occasional creative departure was a welcomed reprieve from the usual and the work I did in 2011 lent itself to that.

2011: I pushed the boundaries of my creativity a bit further and did things my own way.

I met so many amazing and interesting people in 2011. I’m excited to continue my friendships and working relationships with many of them into 2012 and beyond.

This post should really be titled “Favorite Images of 2011″ since my 100 compiled images from the past year are not necessarily my “best” photographs, but rather 100 of my favorites. As always there are several polaroids and a nice chunk of medium format film images, from an on-going personal project on hip-hop.

2011: I discovered that the 6x6 format was made for my style. Look for more of this in 2012. Rest in Peace, Clip.

I have provided two ways to browse my favorite images from last year. Traditionally the first method is an automatic slideshow set to a musical track. This year I chose Trae’s “I’m On” single featuring Lupe Fiasco, Wiz Khalifa, Wale, MDMA, and Big Boi. The song samples “Return of the Mack” by Marc Morrison, which was a favorite jam of mine from the 90′s. The track (which may or may not contain a few objectionable lyrics) is also special to me because I worked on the official video with friend and all-star music video director, “Philly Fly Boy”. I got the opportunity to work with Philly several times this year and had a blast. The video for “I’m On”, featuring my own footage, debuted a few weeks ago while I was in Japan and is currently in regular rotation on MTV. It was the MTV Jam of the Week and was played twice an hour for a week straight, which helped me kick off 2012 with a huge grin across my face.

The second method is the usual Photoshelter slideshow. So whether you want to just hit play and jam out to my favorites or silently click-through at your own leisure, the choice is there. Remember, it’s always a better experience when you click the “full-size” control to the bottom right of each module. As always the images appear in chronological order. If you have an extra minute or two check out my “Best Of” posts from 2009 and 2010.

If you wan’t to check out the video for “I’m On” click here: Trae Tha Truth – “I’m On” FT Wiz Khalifa, Lupe Fiasco, Big Boi, Wale & MDMA

Here’s to an amazing 2012!

Stay tuned for a post with TONS of images from my Japan trip, coming soon.

BEST OF 2011 – Images by Todd Spoth

Movement of Kingz Entertainment recording artist, C-Sharp.

About a month ago I had the pleasure of working with a fun group of artists from the Movement of Kingz Entertainment group. Movement of Kingz is a fairly new outfit of R&B and hip-hop artists based out of Houston. Their main goal was to create a set of interesting portraits of 4 of their members for promotional use on their upcoming website as well as other promotional pieces.

Since I have been shooting a lot of portraits of hip-hop and rap artists lately, I decided to turn to my favorite source of inspiration for this type of work, RESPECT magazine. I was fortunate to pick up the premiere issue of RESPECT, the quarterly “photo journal of hip-hop culture”, about 2 years ago and have been glued to its pages ever since. The premiere issue itself, which features the works of photographers like Ben Watts, Barron Claiborne, and Clay Patrick McBride, is something that is constantly pulled out prior to shoots like these. You don’t even have to listen, like, or shoot music or musicians to appreciate the work within its pages. Check it out here: http://respect-mag.com

Snapshot of my desk featuring 2 issues of RESPECT magazine taken with the new iPhone 4s.

The shoot was booked at Houston Skyline Studio in the warehouse district of Houston. It’s a decently sized and moderately priced rental studio with a small cyc corner and a few other setups available for use. There was plenty of cold A/C, a sound system for playing music (a definite plus for working with portrait subjects) and a nice ramp that allowed us to pull the car right into the studio to unload.

The client wanted basic portraits on white of each member in a few different looks. After that, he gave me the artistic license to be creative and go from there. We started with the basic setup on white, and although the cyc corner was a bit small, we made it work and knocked out several looks for each artist.

After those were out of the way, we switched up the lighting and went for a more harsh look with one simple gridded light that created some deep shadows. With two looks accomplished, we were done with the white cyc corner and moved on to the black background. We were able to knock out several different looks on the simple black background including one where we utilized simply the modeling lights of the flash systems to be able to maintain a shallow depth of field. One of my favorite of the artists, C-Sharp, decided to smoke several times during the shoot which added another layer of interest and complexity to the images.

For the final setups we took advantage of two different textures that the studio space provided, the first being a corrugated steal wall and the second being the bare wood of the structure of the studio itself.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to studio photography is space and the lack thereof in most cases. Having a space large enough to accompany several different backgrounds and/or sets that are all accessible without breaking down one to get to the other saves tons of time for the photographer and the client. In this case the entire team was fortunate to be working in a space that provided a multitude of different sets without having to do much work, which resulted in me being able to provide the client with the images they were expecting and then some within a limited amount of studio time.

I am very fortunate to be working with clients that hire me because they trust my creative vision and ultimately give me a lot of creative license to do what I feel represents the artists best. With that in mind, after I provided the simple looks on white that the client originally had in mind, I allowed myself to be a little more creative in the editing process of the remaining images and I am pleased with the results.

On the day of the shoot, my good (and very talented) friend, Anthony Oyedeji, of Vicious Films, was on hand producing a behind the scenes spot for the Movement of Kingz camp. The result of his efforts is below. Check it out to see me and the rest of the Movement of Kingz crew in action! Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page to check out a few edited selects from the shoot.

And now the edited selects from the shoot.

MOVEMENT OF KINGZ (SEPT 2011) – Images by Todd Spoth

Quick portrait of Heather at a rest stop somewhere in New Mexico.

The first two weeks of August were a couple of the most hectic work weeks of the year for me. I had several commercial jobs that required a lot of intense office time, editing, and outputting images as well as several other editorial jobs inter-weaved. I’m always grateful of having work, but as the second week in August came to a close I was feeling like I needed a little break from the office and from life in general.

Heather had been stressed with work and school herself, so over a casual Tex-Mex dinner we looked at each other and decided to just drive. We needed to get out of town, be spontaneous, and just go. We both agreed to drive somewhere each of us had never been to before, so my first thought was The Grand Canyon. I have driven pretty much everywhere in the US, but have never managed to visit Northern Arizona or The Grand Canyon. Neither had she, so we left…straight from there…no plan, just the open road.

Even though both of our smart phones had GPS’, I knew that eventually we would be somewhere with sketchy cell reception, so our first purchase was a copy of the 2012 Rand McNally atlas.

This is the circuitous route, encompassing about 2800 miles, we ended up taking, highlighted in our atlas. Ignore the route up to Oklahoma, that was a mistake!

We had a car, I had a bag of cameras, and we each had a bag of clothes. It was Sunday evening, about 5pm, the sun was looking to set. We were full of Tex-Mex and trying to push the food coma away. Neither of us had gotten much sleep the night before, and my morning was spent on a hectic shoot with Deion Sanders and Mike Tirico of NFL/ESPN fame. We were both more prepared for a lengthy nap, than a 10 hour drive.

Our first stop was Amarillo, Texas up in the Texas panhandle. We drove well into the night, through Fort Worth and spent a few hours catching up on sleep in Amarillo. The next stop was Flagstaff, Arizona which we pulled into the next evening. Flagstaff was one of our favorite little cities and definitely a place I would move in a heartbeat. We had a great meal at a small brewery where I got to watch The Texans win their second pre-season game. After exploring a bit, we got some sleep.

We woke up as the sun was breaking, and made the 1.5 hour drive up to Grand Canyon National Park. It was in the mid 50′s and we were not prepared for the cold, but the drive was beautiful, the light was amazing. We didn’t seem to care that we were in clothing more suited for our daily 100-degree-plus weather. I forgot what its like to see the sunrise. I need to do this more often.

Everything I had read on The Grand Canyon lead me to believe it was a huge tourist trap with wall-to-wall people from all over the world and we would be visiting in the peak time of the year, Summer. I was prepared for the worst, but surprised to find that it was all but deserted. We had the entire park to ourselves.

We drove from outlook to outlook, taking in the incredible views along the way. We climbed out on remote rocks, scared ourselves and had a great time.

I brought my entourage of cameras with me including my Polaroid Spectra, a digital body with a few lenses and a few other toy cameras that Heather had fun with. After getting home and editing the images from the trip. I was re-inspired by the square format. I also realized that I really need a Hasselblad.

After we exited the park, we headed south towards Sedona. We explored the red rock area, dipped into a freezing creek of crystal clear water and then headed further south to Phoenix. We decided to take the southern route via Interstate 10 home, instead of backtracking the way we came. We wanted to see different landscapes and that we did, as the forest and red rock of Northern Arizona quickly gave way to cacti and other drier landmarks through Phoenix and Tuscon. It seemed like we saw pretty much every geophysical area on the trip; mountains, canyons, plains, boulders, deserts, forest. You name it, we saw it. Even when we were exhausted from 9 hour shifts behind the wheel, having interesting scenery to wonder at, made everything ok.

Even, in the dark of night we had fun.

A road-side long exposure somewhere in New Mexico.

After the sun had set on our adventurous day that began with a sunrise over The Grand Canyon, we decided to push forward through El Paso, into the desolate West Texas town of Van Horn where we spent a few hours getting some sleep.

In the morning we detoured down highway 90 towards Valentine and Marfa, Texas. We visited the famed Prada Marfa installation, and explored Marfa and a few other small Texas towns along the route back up to the interstate. I tried to channel my inner Allison V Smith along the way. I mounted one of my GoPro HD cameras from the rear view mirror and had the camera capture 1 still frame every second until I had about 10,000 images. I compiled them into a time-lapse video seen below. I added the appropriately-named instrumental track, “To West Texas”, by Austin-natives, Explosions in the Sky from the Friday Night Lights soundtrack to add some drama to the piece. I kept it simple, with no editing to the piece itself. It’s entirely straight from the camera. Throughout the journey I mounted the GoPro to various parts of the car and captured lots of different video clips that I’m sure I will eventually add here, but for now, check out the time-lapse of us driving through West Texas.

GoPro HD in-car Time Lapse traveling through West Texas from Todd Spoth on Vimeo.

After getting back onto I-10, we made good time getting back home. We had driven almost 2800 miles in only 4 days. No accidents, no tickets, nothing stolen and nothing lost. We had seen more in 4 days that many have seen in years and had an absolutely unforgettable time. I am someone who loves to be in control, loves to plan, loves to make sure I have everything in place well before a trip to ensure nothing goes wrong, but sometimes not planning and just going with the flow and sheer spontaneity of the moment is really whats right and I learned that in those 4 days.

Sometimes we all just need to get away.

THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST (AUGUST 2011) – Images by Todd Spoth

Alex Vickery / Class of 2011

It’s been way too long! I know, I know, I know. You don’t have to tell me! My work/life over these first few months of 2011 have been nothing if not hectic, but believe me, I have a dry-erase board hanging in my (new) office with more than a few ideas for upcoming blog posts, so expect that this is the first in a hopefully lengthy barrage of images and information to come.

The girl above is my little sister. She just turned 18 last month and is graduating from high school in a couple of months. They grow up so fast! *tear*

My parents and sister had been living in Rio de Janeiro for the past several years and I think everyone expected them to stay at least until my sister graduated high school, however much to their surprise, they moved back home to Houston last year.

Within a few months my sister was thrust (back) into the culture of “senior year” in the good ‘ole US of A and that means prom, that means applying to colleges and that also means senior portraits.

I have never really done any senior portraits before, I am not a senior portrait photographer and frankly if you allowed me, I would tell you that 99% of the work generated by self-proclaimed senior portrait photographers is usually regurgitated, manufactured and boring, at least from where I’m standing.

CASE IN POINT: My own (computery/terrible) senior portrait from 10 year's ago featuring a favorite band tee and some sneakers.

Yes the above image is real. Yes it’s cheesy. Yes my mom paid good money for those. It was taken in the garage of one of the “prominent” senior portrait photographers that shot most of the senior class’ photos. They all turned out like this. No creativity at all. It’s like they collected checks from every one in the graduating class and pumped these thoughtless, sweatshop images out like an assembly line. This IS however one of my favorite images of myself simply for the fact that the photographer told me to bring something “formal” and I came in what you see above, so who am I to judge what’s good and what’s not? If you ask me they should have gone the extra mile and make me pose in front of a few over sized crayons.

Regardless of all of this, when my sister approached me to shoot her senior photos, I said, “of course!” almost instantly. Anything for my little sis. So after months of procrastination we finally made it happen.

In late February we decided to get together and make some images in the studio. We really didn’t have any big concept or idea to portray so we just dove right in. I just wanted to give her something different, something edgy, and more importantly something that she would be happy with.

When I saw her leather jacket that she was wearing, I instantly wanted to shoot with it, so I plopped her against the wall and used some simple direct light for an edgy look. Afterwards, I went for the other end of the spectrum and used modeling lights with my 35mm 1.4 lens and a few abandoned strings of lights from Ikea to create a softer look. After a few setups we called it a day.

We were both happy with the several looks we created on a whim, in the studio, but we both wanted to get outside and do more.

The outdoor session coincidentally took place on my sister’s 18th birthday. We had a great time, driving around looking for interesting things to shoot, but it was a challenge. Since I live a ways away, I was rather unfamiliar with the area and had no time to location scout prior to the shoot date so trying to nail locations while maximizing the limited time frame the sun provided was especially difficult, but we worked with what we had.

We found a nice field with some tall(er) grass and waited until the sun was just right. We created several different looks and then called it quits.

After I got home and edited the images I realized that the images would be one of my presents to my sister. Since I tried to make the actual images stand out, I wanted the presentation of the images to stand out as well, so instead of just sending her a DVD in a plastic sleeve, I created 2 DVD’s, one for the studio images and one for the outdoor session. I created a cover to slip into each DVD case as well. The idea was to use an image from each shoot across both the front and back like a magazine double-truck, with some simple and obvious text across the front.

The design for the custom DVD covers. Both images shot during their respective sessions.

After all was said and done, my sister was happy with the images and has since told me several tales of her classmates complimenting them and asking about them, so mission accomplished. I fully realize that my images aren’t the most creative or off the wall portraits ever, but I think they are a bit more thoughtful and different than the images of the majority of her classmates not to mention my own, taken about a decade ago.

I have included several selects in the usual gallery below and added a few fun iPhone images as well.

Let me know what you think. What are your thoughts on senior portrait photography? Hit me up @toddspoth via Twitter and on my Facebook page and let me know!

Impromptu HDR iPhone images can oftentimes create happy accidents.

My incognito kit: Canon 5D mark II and the Lubitel TLR.

ALEX VICKERY (MAR 2011) – Images by Todd Spoth

The cover of the Photoshop User magazine Jan/Feb 2011 issue featuring an image by Todd Spoth.

About a month and a half ago I got an email from Mike Mackenzie, Associate Publisher of Photoshop User and Layers magazines, letting me know that they wanted me to be featured in Photoshop User magazine. I was thrilled to be featured in a magazine that I receive and read every month, especially after getting a personal tour of the NAPP/Kelby group headquarters just a few months ago. (see that post here)

I have been a NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) member for years now and have enjoyed the benefits greatly. The guys over @ NAPP work hard at creating the most thorough training content for creative professionals using Adobe software. If you need to know how to do something in Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Bridge, et al, they know how to get it done. Like many of the professional organizations I belong to, I probably only use a fraction of the member benefits, but my favorite is the free 3-day shipping on every order from B&H photo. If you’re anything like me, you are frequently placing orders for this or that with B&H (one of the largest and best photo/video/audio retailers in the country). Being a NAPP member not only gives you complimentary shipping on every order, but upgrades it to 3-day rather than UPS ground. This benefit alone has made my membership worthwhile. Check out the NAPP website at http://photoshopuser.com.

I have been an Adobe Lightroom user since its beta release in 2006. Back then I was trying out Apple’s counterpart, Aperture, as well as Lightroom and ultimately decided on Lightroom. It was just a lot easier to use. The most recent release, Lightroom 3, has made my life a whole lot easier. The things you can do with the software is amazing.

Mike interviewed me about my usage of Lightroom and some of my basic theories concerning my approach to photography. The resulting interview, bio, and image gallery can be seen in a multi-page feature in the January/February issue of Photoshop User magazine. The issue should arrive to NAPP members this week, and hitting the shelves around January 4th according to the NAPP team. I always see the magazine front and center at places like Barnes & Noble, Borders and other places magazines are sold, so pick one up if you can! To read the actual bio and interview text simply click on the image of the spread below or click here.

The cover to the special Lightroom section featuring images by Todd Spoth.

Photoshop User magazine has a special Lightroom section, which is where my feature can be found. A selection of my images are on the Lightroom section’s title page (seen above) and the actual feature is comprised of a two page spread which includes a short bio, the short interview, another batch of images, as well as an additional page featuring a few more images (seen below) The actual design of the spread is meant to look like the layout of Lightroom itself, complete with basic camera settings for each of the highlighted images.

The main, two-page spread featuring a bio, interview and photos by Todd Spoth.

An additional page featuring more photos by Todd Spoth.

In addition to being featured in the issue, I was surprised when just a few days ago, when I received my own physical copy in the mail, that they had chosen one of my images for the cover as well. The interesting part is that the cover image was actually not taken with one of my expensive SLR bodies, but my point-and-shoot Canon G9, which has since been sold. Oh the irony! Regardless of the tools that captured the moment, I think the image looks great.

I initially sent Mike and the guys over at NAPP about 30 or so images to choose from, so the final selection of images was ultimately left up to their team. Below is a short digest of the images they chose for the issue and links to their respective blog posts. There were several other, smaller, images the guys chose to fill out the thumbnail bar towards the bottom of each page, but the main images are all detailed below.

COVER

1. Portrait of Libby Johnston taken with the Canon G9. See “THE RED CURTAIN”.

LIGHTROOM TITLE PAGE

1. Portrait of Kingwood High School swimmer, Matt Barber. See “FUTURE OLYMPIAN?”.

2. Portrait of MLB pitching prospect, Jameson Taillon. See “JAMESON TAILLON”.

3. “Summer Solstice” image created to illustrate the hot Houston Summers. (no blog)

MAIN SPREAD

1. Portrait of my buddy Rob, who is a teacher. (no blog)

2. Matt Barber again. (see above)

3. “Favela Boys” from my 2008/2009 essay on Rio de Janeiro. See “BRAZIL”.

4. Portrait of “The Dog Whisperer”, Cesar Millan. See “THE DOG WHISPERER”.

ADDITIONAL PAGE

1. Portrait of Shawn Welling, filmmaker, dancer, choreographer and painter. See “MORE PORTRAITS”.

2. Portrait from the deserts of Qatar. See “DESTINATION: QATAR”.

3. Jameson Taillon again. (see above)

4. Portrait of friend and fellow photographer, Adrienne Byard. See “ADRIENNE & ELIZABETH”.

The images of the spread above were from PDF’s, I did manage to scan a few more of the pages of the issue, where my images are shown. Since the images below are direct scans as opposed to the PDF’s seen above, I used Photoshop to clean the scans up and make them look presentable for the blog! Go Photoshop! Ha.

Table of contents page featuring photos from Todd Spoth.

About page featuring photos from Todd Spoth.

Masthead page where I am listed as a contributing writer.

Sarah posing in front a wall of paper flowers.

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. Things have been hectic, but there is much to blog about starting here.

A few months ago we spent the better part of a weekend in a nearby studio working with a score of different models in several different conceptual scenarios. The portraits were created for an upcoming project. During our set up day we visited Party Boy, a local Houston costume shop, for some inspiration and wardrobe, as well as created mock-ups of several looks we were going to aim for.

I will most likely create a different blog for some of the other models we worked with over the long weekend, however this one is dedicated to our good friend and model, Sarah Jade, who you may remember from a previous blog entry.

Sarah is a gorgeous girl and a great subject. It doesn’t hurt that she is a close personal friend and doesn’t mind spending the extra time to get the right image. We worked Sarah through several concepts including a few cute looks on basic white using a 5 light setup. We encouraged Sarah to have fun with the cute headband and glasses. At first she didn’t like the accessories and thought she didn’t look good with them, but we beg to differ. What do you think?

After several looks on white we tried a few of Sarah in our marching band jacket and then moved on.

The next look we went for was a imitated natural light look. Since we were shooting at night, we did not have the luxury of natural sunlight. There was however an area of the location with French doors leading to an outdoor patio. We placed a single light with a CTO gel, outside on the patio pointing into the studio and used the plantation blinds on the closed French doors to regulate the intensity of the light and the shadows created by the slats. With a little finesse, we had instant golden light to play with and the best part was, it wasn’t fleeting like the sun.

We then tried a few simple frames with a single ring light while the final set was being prepared.

The final set featured a textured background made out of loads of flowers created from yellow construction paper. We worked tirelessly to cut, fold, cut, fold, tape, place, and fine-tune before we decided that the background was ready for action. Sarah worked with the background elements wonderfully and we created a set of images that really allowed both Sarah and the textured background to shine. I really like what we came away with for the project. The portraits are simple, but the yellow flowers give them another level of texture and playfulness that we were aiming for. For this series, our ring-light acted as a fill light in conjunction with another main light source.

Below are a few of our favorite images from the time we spent with Sarah. I tried to edit them each a bit differently for a diverse set of looks and moods.

More about the project and the other models/images involved to come, but for now, tell me what you think about these!

SARAH JADE ROBBINS (JUL 10) – Images by Todd Spoth

Four images by Todd Spoth as they appeared in the 2010 show, "Convergences"

Back in June I was invited to participate in a group gallery show put on by my good friend, Alfonso Cantarero. The show, entitled, “Convergences” featured a lot of amazing work by several local artists from different backgrounds and disciplines. Once I saw that most of the participants were amazing illustrators, painters and street artists, I was humbled to be chosen as one of the few photographers to show. The show held a great opening night at War’Hous Studios Gallery on June 26th and featured some awesome music and good food.

In preparing for the show I struggled a bit with what I wanted to show. My anxiety only increased when I saw that most of the other artists were street artists. After a bit of thinking I came up with an idea. I had been sitting on some nice medium format scans from a few months ago (see this older blog post about the medium format images here) and thought that this was a great opportunity to showcase those. Since those images were square I decided to create a 2×2 grid of square prints. Ideally, I would have loved to have added additional images to make the grid larger, to possibly a 3×3 or even 4×4, but given the time and space constraints I went with 4 simple images.

I consciously chose images that were fairly recent (all but 1 was captured in the last couple of months) as well as images from my archive that were fairly unseen (besides being posted on the blog that is). If it isn’t obvious already, I love vibrant colors, so I wanted the prints to be displayed in color versus black and white.

As for the theme of the images, it came to me while struggling between wanting to showcase my portrait work and showcasing more of my abstract work that is not usually seen by many. I ultimately decided on a compromise and found 4 images that were centered around 1 person, but were still semi-abstract. Since the eyes are one of the most important component in a portrait I decided to choose 4 images where the eyes of the subject were obscured or hidden, giving the subjects a level of animosity and imposing a sense of mystery on the viewer.

Given the feedback of a few visitors to the gallery, I believe my theme was a success. Two of the images are digital captures, the other two are film scans. Each are 20″x20″ print was chemically produced onto Kodak E-surface paper and professionally mounted onto 1/4 inch foam core.

Now that the show is over I will be selling each of these prints for just $75. The proceeds from the sale(s) will help fund an exciting upcoming project. The prints can be shipped anywhere and I can accept any form of payment so please contact me if you are at all interested!

More detailed info on each image is below.

This image is from a playful underwater shoot we did back in May at a very upscale condominium complex here in downtown Houston, Texas. The high-rise had a roof-top lounge pool that offered nice vistas to shoot against. We had access to a very nice (and expensive) underwater housing for our digital camera rig during the shoot and took advantage of that resource. The rig itself was VERY challenging to say the least, but it was a blast getting to try something new. I have underwater housing for my smaller digital rigs, but this was a whole new animal. This particular image was something I had captured in between sessions. Most of the portraits were shot with the models half in and out of the water and this image, shot as the model playfully jumped into the pool after her session was wrapped, was one of my favorite outtakes from the day.

This image, which is one of the two medium format film scans, is actually of my brother, Zach. We had just acquired the Lubitel twin lens camera and had taken it to a family gathering. I took my brother outside and had him pose in front of some foliage in the backyard. Being of that age, he feigned interest and I captured this image of him wiping his face between takes. I’ve loved this image and moment from the first time I scanned it in.

This image is the other medium format film scan of the 4. It was actually taken on the same roll as the above photo, only minutes after that image was captured. It was my first double exposure with the Lubitel twin lens camera. I really liked the brush that was growing in my father’s backyard so I captured an image of that and double exposed a portrait on top. I believe she was touching her face for some reason. This was another in-between moment that I loved. You can barely make out her right eye. We haven’t put many rolls through the Lubitel, but to this day, this frame is still my favorite.

This final image was the only image captured more than a few months ago. It was taken on July 19th, 2009 in the Limpopo province of South Africa. I believe we were in a van headed towards a game ranch in Alldays when I captured this. There was beautiful scenery all around us and I was stuck in the dead middle of a van stuffed with people and gear. I was annoyed at the fact that I did not have a window seat to capture drive by images so after a little thought, I made it work in my favor.

Finally, after a long weekend, the last post in the 4-part series is here, but for posterity, let’s recap the previous 3 posts.

(Click on each of the following to check out the post)

1 of 4: Oktomat

2 of 4: 5D II

3 of 4: Lubitel

Since the new Apple iPhone 4 was released just a week or so prior to my leaving on this recent trip, and given the fact that I had pre ordered and received the new phone, this post is pretty much a given. I took a handful of images and video after receiving the new phone and prior to leaving, however I was excited that I would be able to travel with the phone to put it through its paces.

I upgraded my phone from the Apple iPhone 3G which was 2 years old. The advancements made in the built in camera(s) were worth the price of the upgrade alone, as it is the camera that is ALWAYS with me, even when there is nothing else. I took somewhere in the ballpark of 3000 images during the life of my 3G (click here to see my previous posts from the older iPhone 3G) and am already on pace to break that record with this new iPhone.

Whenever I see something that inspires me or just need a quick photo of something I reach in my back pocket and pull out my phone. I started snapping images as soon as we were in the airport in Houston and didn’t stop until we were home. I believe I took around 600-700 images during the week-long trip, not to mention a ton of HD video clips as well. During our short stay in Chicago I snapped a photo of this beautiful church on the corner of W. Barry and W. Seminary streets. Moments later I started toying with a few of the image editing apps I have installed on my phone. After combining a few of the effects from 2 different 3rd party apps I stumbled on an effect that I found rather appealing. Throughout the remainder of the trip I would go back and edit images taken on the trip in the same manner and came out with another little iPhone photo essay from the travel.

The original iPhone4 image, the image converted to black and white, and the final image.

The illustration above shows the progression from the initially captured image to how the image looked after the first step with the third image illustrating the completed image.

The first step was to identify which images would work best for the project. I found that high contrast images with fairly simple content worked best. Huge group photos with a ton of people would often seem muddied up, so sticking to fairly simple images worked best.

Secondly I used the Photoshop Mobile app to convert the images into black and white, boost contrast and perfect exposure. The Photoshop Mobile app is great for those basic tweaks that any real photographer would need. Sure there are a few bells and whistles to entice the casual user into purchasing, but it’s the only app I have (and that I have found) that will let me crop and straighten images with a constrained aspect ratio. After saving the edited black and white image I was ready for the final step.

I have several impulse buy image editing apps that I have been into lately such as Red Giant’s Plastic Bullet app that turns your photos into vintage wonders, but the app that worked for me here is Stephen Spring’s Pic Grunger. It’s a simple application that allows the user to select an image and apply any one of several built in textures. Some of the textures look better than others when outputted. I originally dug the “cracked” look, but since it didn’t hold up too well when I transferred them to the computer, I decided to go with the “creased” look. The app seems to output the images at 1000 pixels on the long end (about 1/3 of the original size) which is definitely a negative and I wish there were more choices of textures, but other than that, the app is awesome. The vintage, sepia tone, textured feel produced from the app gave the images a punch that I really dig.

A few of my favorites are in the slideshow below. Check back periodically as I will most likely be adding more images to this gallery from time to time.

Now that all 4 parts to this blog series is complete, please drop me a line to tell me which set of images you liked most!

JULY 2010: IPHONE OHIO – Images by Todd Spoth

Today’s blog is the 3rd in our 4-part travel series and focuses on images from our Lubitel 166, twin-lens, medium format camera.

We put a few rolls through the Lubitel during our trip, but it is fairly new to our collection. It was acquired back in March and it takes a bit of getting used to, but I have definitely made some frames I really dig. A few months ago I made a blog post highlighting a few of the first rolls through it. (<—– click over there to check out the first Lubitel blog!)

The Lubitel 166+ (the version we own) is a twin-lens medium format camera that is a reissue of the older Lubitel models, which were actually based on the old Voigtlander Brillant camera. Unlike its predecessors, our version is plastic and very lightweight, which is both a benefit and a hindrance depending on how you look at it. On one hand I love that I can hang it around my neck and almost forget it’s there, but at the same time, I get nervous when I have to stuff it in the bottom of a full camera bag for fear it might be crushed, or crack somehow. Luckily I haven’t had any issues. The controls are fairly simple, but anyone who has ever tried to carefully compose a shot with a TLR and a waist level viewfinder (without a tripod) will understand the frustration. As someone who came from a graphic design background and puts a lot of stock in careful composition and lines, I sometimes find myself frustrated when trying to fine tune a shot, but after the film is developed and I realize I nailed it, (if I actually did nail it) I feel like I just conquered the world.

Given the time and effort that goes into every frame, we only managed to run 3 rolls of 120 Kodak Portra 400vc through it during the trip. Shooting the 6×6 format (which I prefer to the rectangular) we only get 12 exposures per roll, meaning that we walked away with 36 total frames about half of which I liked and are in a slideshow at the bottom of the post. That is an almost 50% keeper rate, which in the world of photography, isn’t bad at all. The vivid color film makes the colors pop nicely as you can see in the above image of the cornfield against the blue sky. The images have a definite mood and texture to them which I like. If you’re wanting a quick snapshot of a scene and have only a few seconds, there are other cameras that will do a better job, but if you can spare a few minutes and can take your time in a fairly static scene, the Lubitel can give you a nice image. Of course, it’s no Hasselblad, but for the price and weight, it can’t be beat.

15 of our favorite Lubitel images from our trip are below, including a few more double exposures as well. Let me know what you think of them on the Todd Spoth Photography Facebook page or Twitter page and stay tuned for the last post in the series (which may be the most interesting) coming soon!

JULY 2010: LUBITEL OHIO – Images by Todd Spoth

This second of the four part blog series focuses on images taken with my Canon 5D mark II digital SLR camera. This is one of my main cameras I shoot assignments with on a daily basis. Its accurate, does it’s job and is my workhorse. Anytime I travel, regardless if the trip is business or personal the 5D II is always with me. And almost all of the time I am packing a pretty sizable digital kit as you never know when the opportunity will present itself for a serious shoot even if the trip doesn’t seem so.

However, on several of my last few personal trips, I have found myself using my 5D less and less and instead opting to use the camera that is always by my side, my cellphone, but since that post is coming, we will talk about the 5D here. It’s actually pretty interesting to be able to lay all of my images from my trip out and be able to identify which device was used in each situation. For example since the 5D kit is heavy and oftentimes cumbersome to manage, most of images taken with it were from my aunt’s house where we stayed or nearby. Most of the images taken on different day trips here or there were with other, smaller, devices. This doesn’t mean I love my 5D any less, it just means that since I am on vacation and my other, smaller, devices produce their own interesting images, I opted to save my shoulders and leave the heavier kit in its case. I thoroughly enjoy producing interesting images, but given this was a personal trip, I was not in a pressure situation to produce a certain image for a client, thus I could take advantage of using my toy/smaller cameras and experimenting to my heart’s content.

I did however use the 5D to capture a lot of video clips and time lapse sequences of our family gathering as well, so even though it may seem as if I didn’t utilize it as much as I could have, I really did put it through the usual paces.

21 of my favorite images are in a slideshow below. We have 2 more posts in the 4-part series coming in the next few days so be sure to check those out as I think they are going to be the most interesting of the bunch.

JULY 2010: DIGITAL OHIO – Images by Todd Spoth