See Spot's Shadow

click to embiggenJust wanted to give everyone a fun behind the scenes look into what we do on a photo set all the time. Our job this day was to shoot and retouch a red dog bone into the mouth of Target's dog Spot for a cover page of Target's Weekly Circular.

Since Spot had been shot previously we had to match the existing light of the dog and blend that with the best light to make the dog bone look great.

The trickiest part of placing an object like this is creating a shadow that looks natural on the bone. Rather then trying to do it completely in Photoshop we did our best to create shadow on set and in camera.

So I printed off a photo of Spot and create a top jaw to cast a natural shadow on on the dog bone. The whole thing kind of made me giggle while I was making it. I made a quick video showing part of the set and some behind the scenes footage.

Enjoy.

Making it Rain

Here's just a quick screen capture I did.  More of these to come in the future I hope.

Starring Savings and Saugen Photography

click to embiggen

So, my client approaches me and tells me they need this movie marquee photographed but the only problem is that the movie marquee doesn't exist in the real world so I get to create the marquee in Photoshop.

I spent two full evenings in and around Minneapolis looking for and photographing all the right pieces to the marquee puzzle.  We ended up at about seven different locations to create this marquee and the background of the piece.  To name a few you can find bits of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Pantages, and The State Theatre in this ad.

I find myself shooting outside in the winter about once a year but every year it's always the coldest days of the season this year was no exception.  I froze my butt off shooting this.  I'm glad we brought Conor with to keep the truck running.

The guy in the yellow jacket...  That's our off duty police officer making sure no cars hit me or anyone tries to steal the ladder while I'm standing on it.

If the image of the ad looks a little odd it's because I just took a screen grab off of the internet.

Photoshop Disasters

Every morning you wake up, reach for your laptop, and check on your list of crack sites.  My crack sites include digg.com, www.dvorack.org/blog, www.gizmodo.com, www.facebook.com, and my ever so favorite photoshopdisasters.com.

This little beauty here is a great example of some horrible photoshop work.  Listen.  People.  Because you can do photoshop doesn't mean you should.  There are things in this world called perspective, and scale, and also fucking freaky kids.

Please, remember.  Photoshop is a lot like Elmer's glue.  A little goes a long way...

Also, if someone knows you did retouching on the photo, you did something wrong.

I swear to God those eyes follow me accross the room like that painting of Jesus.