garretthamilton

Rochester, New York Senior Portraits

garretthamilton — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 04:29:32 +0000

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Irondequoit, New York, which is a suburb of Rochester to shoot a senior portrait session for a good friend’s daughter, Arianna. My senior sessions are always fun and bubbly and Arianna’s session was no exception. We kept each other laughing the entire time while creating some fun portraits for her on a sunny day around 2pm. Take a gander below

Jasper-Troupsburg Senior Portraits

garretthamilton — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:42:00 +0000

During my entire childhood existence I was surrounded by fresh air, open fields, and blue skies. Jasper had been my home for 18 years until I moved out on my own to establish myself in the world. I still call the Jasper-Troupsburg area my home as my parents and siblings still live there. I quite often make the short drive back to visit friends and family, and of course, do portraits. Here are a few from my most recent bookings.

Aimee wanted to get away from the “country” feel so we headed into Corning, NY to get a little more of an urban atmosphere.

Miranda on the other hand, wanted a very down-home country feel to hers so for the first image seen here we headed to the upper portion of our property for a sunset photo, while the last image was created only a half hour before in a road-side hay field.

Samantha

garretthamilton — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 19:07:42 +0000

In late August i had the opportunity to shoot with a colleague of mine whom which i graduated from highschool with. Her name is Sam. Sam and I have been good friends ever since we were 4 years old in the head-start program. I shot Sam back in highschool during 11th grade with some success in the studio. Since then, we have both matured quite significantly and were both excited during the shoot. I decided to run a natural light set-up with no modifiers of any kind. Sam is a naturally beautiful young woman and i wanted to show off her body lines and skin by using natural light on all of the shots. Lenses used were a 50mm prime and my 70-200 2.8 zoom on my Nikon D300 body. Images were processed very lightly in LightRoom. Please take a look below.

Progression

garretthamilton — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:26:21 +0000

I got to thinking today about how much our “art” is really being demoralized by people who just have a few extra bucks in the bank and think they can hang with us. Yes, im talking about the kid, who’s mommy and daddy have some extra cash and buy the kid whatever they want, and then that kid takes thats camera and says “hey, i have a camera, im gonna be a ‘pro photographer’”. Well i say screw that! It’s ludicrous to think anyone with a camera can run a photography business and attempt to charge the same amount as their local pros. Yes, my parents bought me my first camera. But, it was after i had taught myself the ins and outs of the business before hand and took first place in the ’07 NYS Skills USA competition in “Cuse. My shit wasn’t just handed to me like the kids of this generation. Photography is an art form. We are quirky, and weird, and downright obsessed with every aspect of our craft. If you’re not doing this as well, then its merely a hobby for you. Every pixel of an image matters to me and if it’s not right, then it will never see the light of day. The main point of this is that we as a people need to recognize the difference between tom-foolery and an outright professional. I see too often, people being swindled by the aforementioned, “pro”.

March Madness Does Not Only Pertain to Basketball

garretthamilton — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 02:34:35 +0000

When it come to getting me excited, and my blood flowing, there’s only one thing greater at the task than creating an awesome, and that’s music. I wouldn’t say that I’m a very picky person when it comes to anything other than my own work. I like to be able to sit back and relax to a nice, mellow song, but also love to get my heart pumpin’ to some house music with floor shakin’ bass and ear splitting trebles.

I had the opportunity to work with musician Ade Adu at the beginning of the month as we both traveled to the home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park, NY to create some images that could be used for promo purposes such as CD covers, social media, as well as flyers/printed media.

The following image was my favorite from the series. We had been shooting in the hair salon for the majority of the day, moving between using a large, open window for our main light coming in from camera right and an SB-800 for a rear kicker to the left side of the frame. I needed some extra space in order to produce an image suitable for multiple uses. I then flipped my Nikon D300 to the left to snap a few vertical frames and came up with the image below. I know I wanted to be able to light the entire body of Ade, but with a concentration of light more so on his colorful shirt and upper body.

I chose to use my Alienbees AB800 monoblock to get a little extra oomph behind the light, and attached to the 800, my 22″ silver beauty dish with the attached diffusion sock. The sock take the beam spread from a very narrow 40-45 degree beam, out to a significantly wider, 120 degree beam. My light was roughly 10 feet away to camera right, but nearly 13 feet high and aimed right at Ade’s chest. His shirt is fairly dark, and of course, with his dark skin, I did not have to worry about harsh hot-spots.

As far as camera settings; I knew i had to keep the camera shake down because we were shooting in low light, and most of the shake would be coming from myself, as it was about 32 degree F outside with 15mph winds whipping past the alley. I was at 1/200th of a second at f/6.3. This gave me a big enough depth of field to include the wires in the background along with the painted mural on the camera left. I was at 75mm on my 70-200 f/2.8 lens, which I feel is one of the better spots on my lens, at 1:1 this image is so sharp it could make a steel block cower in fear.

I wanted the feeling to be dark and moody and have the viewer’s focus immediately head toward the subject, Ade, and his tool of the trade, his guitar.

Please let me know what you think of this image and dont hesitate to ask any questions.

www.garretthamilton.com

Update of the “Big” Things of 2010

garretthamilton — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 06:18:42 +0000

It was about this time last year when Craig Randall, owner and founder of Legs N Kegs Dzyn, a t-shirt and promotion company in Hornell, NY, sat down and discussed plans of a major project that we had both had been humming and hawing over for the last few months. We were setting out on our maiden voyage of photographing and capturing images for a 12-month calendar, something the likes of which, had never, ever, been done in our area of Western New York. This would be a major project for the both of us as neither of us had ever done this before in any capacity. Sure, I’ve photographed many models, captured many evironmental portraits, and shot in various lighting situations, but never have I banged out 12 completely different shoots of beautiful models in a matter of a couple months in venue’s that I have never been in before let alone in “impromptu” situations which involved patrons of these certain “sponsor” locations which were photographed during regular business hours.

Along the way, both Craig and I, learned a lot of things about each other and about the area in Western New York which we both grew up in. We would spend the next two months together doing shoots together, shooting at these venues, having our ups and downs as any other project has, and in the end pulling off a very successful calendar project known as the 2011 Legs N Kegs Model Calendar. The calendar would feature some of Hornell, NY’s top bars, pub’s, and tattoo shops.

We had originally planned to have our Calendar Release Party in November but with printing restrictions and other upsets, we unfortunately had to move it back and eventually worked out a deal with with Illusion’s Night Club in Hornell, NY to hold our bash featuring area favorite band and Calendar sponsor Vendetta to highlight the show! Throughout the evening Craig had his eyes pealed in hopes that a potential new model would come out from the 200+ crowd at Illusions and thats exactly what happened. I provided two free photo packages to a couple lucky girls who could potentially become part of our modeling staff for our 2012 Calendar endeavors. Here are a few shots from that night at Illusions Club with Vendetta. Stay tuned for a write-up of my shoot with the first of the two photo-package winners.

www.garretthamilton.com

Brand New

garretthamilton — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:40:00 +0000

I always love brand new things. Not as much as I love old things, but I would say a very close second. This is my second of two blogs and I feel that the WordPress version is much better than others that I’ve seen and used in the past. Stay tuned and track my progress as I profess my love for the only thing that truly makes me happy in life, photography.