Photo by #CanonExplorerOfLight @jeremycowart | “Digital photography gets better and better. Cameras get more and more reliable and consistent. The quality is insane. But reliability and consistency can also make an artist like me really bored. I’m always dreaming of ways to figure out how to make digital photography weird and unpredictable without having to rely on heavy post-production. I’m certainly a Photoshop user but I try to only use it when absolutely necessary like light skin retouching. Nothing else.
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So when I was hired to create this image for an album package, the artist wanted something ethereal… something that looked like it was from another planet. For some reason my mind went to a place of him being submerged in another world… liquid or bubbles almost.
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So I had the idea to use the TTV technique which means “through the viewfinder” to shoot through an old waist-level viewfinder camera that I found online. Here’s the fun part: I wanted the lens to bubble up on the viewfinder camera so I set it on fire. I literally took a lighter to the lens in my kitchen and let the old vintage glass burn a little bit and burn and bubble up. The effect was exactly what I was hoping for.
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Then on our actual photoshoot, I took my Canon EOS 1DX Mark II and a 100mm 2.8 macro lens and I stood high on a ladder so that I could lean over and photograph the artist with my Canon DSLR through the burned vintage camera.
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I had just one light with a large octabank lighting him from the left and wha-la. Some light RAW processing later and there ya have it. No textures added or photoshop work done.” .
Camera: #Canon EOS 1DX Mark II
Lens: EF 100mm f/2.8L
Aperture: f/11
ISO: 400
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
Focal Length: 100mm .

Follow #CanonExplorerOfLight @jeremycowart for more experimental portrait techniques. He’s doing crazy things with Canon projectors and learning new tricks daily.

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