"I love these!!
...Is it normal to take so many shots?"
I had to think about how to answer that one. I delivered about 60 shots of 5 different locations with 3 different outfits for an engagement portrait session.
This happened last week with Aimee and Shu, two lovebirds whose Maui wedding I will have the pleasure of shooting this fall. Both are world travelers - Aimee just got back from New Zealand - and we wanted to shoot an engagement session loosely themed around travel.
When we started, we all had some ideas in our head, but by the end we followed some different threads. We hit a half dozen great spots in Atlanta, many of which were new to me.
I love it when a simple shoot turns into a little adventure for everyone, where things don't go exactly as planned. It's risky, but, as I answered Aimee, "I'm not a normal photographer."
Behind the Scenes:
I'm pretty sure that when they built the MARTA line, Atlanta gathered the best lighting engineers in the city, brought them down to the underground rail tunnels, and buried them alive. Only that can explain the hideous lighting in the stations. The extreme mix of color temperatures will drive you nuts, but the scale and spaceship-like architecture of Peachtree Station is too cool to pass up.
Below: Assistant Sharif Hassan (in red) and intern Brett May lighting it up.
I pack the Westcott Octabank on almost every location shoot but this time we used the Strip Banks a lot more, sometimes with egg crate grids, for even more control over light.
Recently I've been shooting the Zeiss T* manual focus primes a lot, for stills and video. The edge-to-edge sharpness and lack of vignetting is unmatched, and especially superior for use as a video lens, on a 35mm video adapter like the RedRock M2 for example - more on that later.
In the Lowepro Bags:
Westcott Strip banks and Octabank modifiers
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Where We Ended Up: Aimee and Shu Get Engaged
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Last fall I wrote about a project called Pimp My Wall, where a group of friends, in the spirit of an HGTV Extreme Makeover type show, built a surprise climbing wall for Greg Kottkamp, a climber and med student sweating it out in Augusta, Georgia.
Here is the video from that project, which I showed at the Dirty South Climbing Film Festival in Atlanta last week. Enjoy!
Pimp My Wall from Andrew Kornylak on Vimeo.
Ian Harding:
Pretty awesome video, and idea. I've been climbing a lot myself lately and am constantly trying to think about how I can incorporate it into my home. Also, love your photographic work. I'm hoping to attempt some climbing photography later this season. Keep it come'n!
(05.20.10 @ 10:22 AM)
BrianR:
Sweet video and really cool wall!
(07.05.10 @ 12:09 PM)
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Pimp My Wall: The Video
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Since I started doing "Stillmotion" pieces a couple years ago - creating video using short, high-speed bursts of still photographs - a lot of people ask me for a step-by-step roadmap to the technique so they can do it themselves.
Here are a couple of the more popular examples:
In Line from Andrew Kornylak on Vimeo.
The Beta - Six Feet Under from Andrew Kornylak on Vimeo.
You can see most of the ones I've done at my Stillmotion album on my Vimeo Page
It's something I've talked about in detail in a Guest Blog for Scott Kelby, on Robert Benson's blog, on the NikonRumors website, and as a speaker at the 2009 Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, but I've never really put it all down step-by-step.
Recently Digital Photo Pro Magazine interviewed me about it, and they did just that, spelling out in gory detail exactly how to do it. So stop bugging me about it.
Seriously though, It looks like a ton of steps but really, its hella simple. You just need to make sure you have the right tools. I happen to use Nikon DLSRs for capture and sequence everything in Final Cut Pro.
One thing DPP did not ask was, "Why the hell would you do it?" It does look pretty cool, and it's novel. That's probably enough for me. But maybe the benefits versus video (extreme resolution, access to unique lighting and shutter effects) do not outweigh the pain-in-the-asses (difficult frame rates, extreme workflow challenges, no sound). It's a question I ask myself, especially given that there are so many amazing video capture tools out there today - most of which I use daily for other productions.
So here's something: I believe that in the future, there will be full motion-capture technology that is very similar physically to what I am doing with a high-speed still camera. I want to be first in line for that, and I'll know exactly what I'm doing.
Chew on that, try it out yourself, tell me if I am full of shit, and enjoy the article:
Constantin:
Oh Boy oh boy!
Thanks!
I lack the tools but I'm always hungry fro video tutorials. :-)
Cheers!
(05.06.10 @ 12:35 PM)
Michael:
Hi Andrew
I have enjoyed my brief look at your work. I would like to understand where the benefit of high resolution fits in as with the exception of 4K projectors I can't see where I can view the clips in all their glory.
Kind Regards
Michael
(06.09.10 @ 08:12 PM)
akornylak:
Hey Michael - thanks. There are some resolution benefits even with relatively low-resolution output. There is a lot more image information per frame to work with, and even when scaled, the difference is there (consider for example how large format photography looks on a postcard versus 35mm, or how cinema film looks better than standard definition even on a television) There is also the ability to crop and zoom. More interesting to me is that any frame could potentially be used in full (or nearly full-)resolution print.
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Stillmotion Explained, Other Stuff Not Explained.
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I met up with them the other day in Atlanta for some photo shenanigans, based loosely around a sightseeing tour of Stone Mountain (You know, that mother-of-all-exposed-granite-monadnocks with a relief carving of the Southern Generals on its north face.)
Turns out I was on my way to some kind of 24-hour stomach bug, and the Stone Mountain Park nachos didn't exactly help. But we had a blast, buoyed by my mustachioed assistants Jon Kelso and Sharif Hassan and by some Windy City spirit from Emily and Shimby. Super cool cats. Can't wait till the wedding y'all!
Here are some memories:
First stop, Tupac Memorial. Yup, we didn't know either.
We forgot to pick up our photos, but what matters is that we took 'em.
Lunchtime.
True story: We passed a group of young girls, and I heard one whisper to the others, "Oh! She is sooooo pretty!" So Sweet!
Cool purse too.
Obligatory!
Ask me sometime how my assistant John Kelso gets kids to scram when we need to take over the telescopes. Solid gold.
Cutlass.
Airule:
Love ur works
(05.19.10 @ 09:41 PM)
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Two Birds, One Stone
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