hellu....hey hey. This picture is gr8.
I love the light and the way you brought out the shadows. Looks like they're coming right out of the picture.^^
I've got a question. Did you use any tools to make your pictures look so glamorous? Cause all of your pictures could be found in magazines.

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Our world is just one of many marbles that gods are playing with.

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

The tool we used on this shot (besides the obvious - camera/lens) was a cheap round reflector. It was gold (hense the really yellow early morning/late afternoon glow to the light). I had Mallory (the amazing stylist, mua) holding the reflector just off to the right of the frame.

The narrow depth of field (ie, the blurred background) is a result of the lens and shooting at an aperture of f/1.4.

To me, however, what really makes this shot is the styling and the model - her pose and expression were just wonderful here (and all day). Truly a joy to work with.

Hope this helps - any other question, I'm happy to answer.

Okay, so disregard the above! I wrote it thinking of another image.

Heh, serves me right for trying to go fast.

The shadows above - the entire effect, is a post-processing technique done in photoshop involving a number of filters and tone curve adjustments, plus a healthy bit of sharpening, dodging and burning. The original shot is much flatter and less punchy.

Also, I've got no idea how this actually looks on your (or anyone else's) particular monitor if it's not calibrated. Generally, with shots more or less from the camrea, I know that uncalibrated monitors will show them brighter and more vibrant than I see them (I process for printing, not web display, so my monitor is dull and unsaturated compared to how they come from the factory). But with the number of adjustments and filters I've put on this shot, I haven't a clue what it would look like on a really bright gaming/store calibrated screen. Heh - could look totally different!

tnx very much for answering the questions. I love your work.

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Our world is just one of many marbles that gods are playing with.

wow....:speechless: .
This sounds complicated. My schoolmate told me, that using photoshop right, needs more then 2 years of studying.

So I've got another question. ähmmm...when did you first start photographing and are you a professional photographer or is it just a hobby and your passion?

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Our world is just one of many marbles that gods are playing with.

Well, photoshop is a lifelong learning process for most people, and learning to use it is like peeling an onion. I'm fairly confident that I can teach anyone enough photoshop in 2 hours to make their images instantly better, but I also am pretty sure that I only know about 15 per cent of Photoshop's features and usefulness, and it's taken me years to get here.

I've taken 3 courses at community college on Photoshop, and I began using the program with version 1.0, then didn't use it for a while, but got back to it at version 5.0 and have used it fairly regularly since, getting deeper into the feature set around version 7.0. I first felt like I knew what I was doing about a year or two ago, but even now there are tasks and processes that I practice and practice and practice just trying to refine my skill and 'get right'. The most obvious example in my work, I think, is skin smoothing. There is a lot of discussion and debate on if smoothing should be done, how much is too much and what technique(s) to use. I'm still working on getting it subtle enough to pass, but I tend to naturally prefer a very processed look - to many it might seem plasticy, but it's that airbrushed magazine look. I don't think anyone is right or wrong - it's an aesthetic opinion. That said, even the heavy/plastic look can be done well or poorly, and I still have misses in my processing. But every image is a new opportunity for me to refine (and occassionaly experiment).

Professional is a tough term. Yes, the majority of my income is earned from photography, and I don't have a real job. I've been published a lot of places, and companies, people, models, actors etc have paid me to take their pictures. Still, I've only been photographing people for a year. And I have no education background in photography at all. So I guess the best way to characterize my position is that I'm a professional photographer - but a very very new one - kind of an apprentice to the craft.

At the risk of boring most folks, the way I got into photographer is a bit of a long story. But if you're interested, read on.

I first started taking pictures in high school. But I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I didn't know what aperture did, and didn't really understand how ISO worked. But I enjoyed it, and for a year, I was the only person taking yearbook shots at my school, so I've got a fairly nice book of my early work (our yearbook). I got back into it about 6 years ago when I was working as a communications person at a major local infrastructure project. Staffed mostly with engineers, I was the 'artsy' guy on staff, so they handed me the camera when images needed to be made. A good part of the first year of the project was documenting sites and I got to use some good gear. It was fun, but again, I still didn't know much of what I was doing.

When that job ended and I took a job at a newspaper, I was given the task of editing the weekly automotive publication. The imagery in the thing had been pretty poor, and all the same - shots of a car beside a car salesman on a dealership lot. When I took over, the first thing I did was look at publications like Car & Driver and Road & Track - and the obvious difference was that their images were amazing. We had no budget to get the staff photographers doing our shooting, and freelance writers didn't get any extra $ for doing images, and this lack of attention showed in the product. So I figured I'd try to do it. I talked at length to the photographers at the newspaper, I bought my first DSLR, got a couple good lenses, and convinced dealerships to give me the featured vehicle for a weekend. Things worked out well, and while none of my writing (as editor, I wrote a fair bit) got any attention, some of my images started to be picked up by the manufacturers and used in regional and national campaigns. Soon I was getting flown around North America, driving some of the coolest brand new cars out there and taking shots in places like San Francisco, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Quebec City, The Rocky Mountains, LA, San Diego, Calgary, Vancover, Boston etc. FUN!

Had to leave that job when my mom got sick, and I wanted to spend time with her (she lived in another province, so I flew back and forth for a week or two a month to be with her for treatments, and give my dad a hand taking care of her). That went on for almost two years. In that time, I did freelance writing and photography for a whole bunch of publications - mostly local stuff, and a lot of stuff for the auto manufacturers. Over that time, I found that I was getting more work and more pay for my photos than for my writing. I also found that I absolutely loved the photography side of the job - more than anything I'd ever done before. So despite 10 years of university and three degrees, when my mom passed away, I decided to take the plunge and try to be a photographer. In January I opened my studio, and I've been working at it ever since. Not sure how it will turn out, but I've given myself 2 years to learn the ropes, and another to break even. It's sort of my learning-on-the-go education by fire. If things go well, and my work continues to improve, in a few years I'll feel comfortable calling myself a professional photographer. We'll also see how this whole thing turns out. But no matter what happens now, I can say that the last year has been amazing - probably the most rewarding of my life, personally. So in that way, I can say, so far, so good.

This is absolutely stunning, Brent! You're my special little guy

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"It's better to be looked over, than overlooked"-Mae West

wow...I LOVED the whole story....and it wasn't boring at all . I was very interested in it. Cool. That was alot of your biografie and I think it was personal for you too. Great to see that somebody takes alot of time to write so much infos for his fans.^^
By the way my condolence to you that your mum passed away.
May I ask you what course you've taken at the University? Was it perhaps the "media and society" or perhaps "Law"? Cause you said that you were working for the newspapers.

And you've already experienced alot of things in your live. I think that you're probably 40 years old. I'm 19... alot of things to do in these days. . I think I'm gonna study economics after grammar school, but who knows. Perhaps I should take photographie too.

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Our world is just one of many marbles that gods are playing with.

Well, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I'm 36. 19 was a while ago, but you'll likely find too that age is a state of mind, and my theory is that most people stop aging in their mind sometime in their mid 30s. I think I stopped around 32, if that makes any sense.

As for school, I have an undergrad degree in History and English. I have Masters degrees in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, and Marine Management from Dalhouse University - and it was also at Dal where I went to Law School. Anyway, lots of book reading and essay writing for not a lot of purpose now, though I suppose it helped make me the person I am, for good or ill. Economics is a good field. One of my best friends is an economist, and my brother in law is an economics professor at an Ontario University, but he did his PhD at Perdue.