Digital Composite Photography Techgniques

This page has all the tutorials you will need to build a successful composite image!

First some inspiration:


And in case you haven't seen this yet...https://vimeo.com/69911353

Digital Composite Technique Tutorials

















A Powerful Way to Change Background in Photoshop by Using Blend Modes

George Wilson Composite - Part 1 - Extraction of the Subject
Joel Grimes: Photoshop






Lighting Techniques for Digital Composites:
Behind the scenes with Photographer Joel Grimes/Swimmer

How to Effectively Light a Subject for a Realistic Composite Portrait
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkzoQzP9mpI [FRAMED] Episode 9: Joel Grimes Composite Photography

May 26th, 2009 FAVES Documentary Film Panel
This was a panel discussion I helped organize and host. It was only the second meeting of a new grassroots arts organization FAVES, that has been formed in partnership with Community Minded Television and the Magic Lantern Theater. Special thanks go to Tom Dineen and Juan Mas who I have worked closely with the put this together.

J Clements
Clements holds a MA from Stanford University (filmmaking program) and has over 20 years experience in all stages of filmmaking. She has produced films that are distributed through New Day Films that have aired on the Discovery Channel and PBS and is a consultant for Independent Television Service. As a consultant Clements works with filmmakers on all stages of production including, initial concept, funding sources, production schedules and budget, crew dynamics, editing consultation, and distribution and outreach.

For more information about her films you can checkout:
http://www.newday.com/filmmakers/J_Clements.html
http://www.thefilmfarm.info/

Irv Broughten
Living in Spokane, Washington, Irv Broughton is an author and independent film and video producer known for his films on American writers Frank Stanford and George Garret. He has also taught documentary film studies at Spokane Falls Community College for thirty-three years.

Broughton is the author of ten books including The art of interviewing for television, radio, and film and Producers on Producing which are considered required reading in many film schools. Broughten is also widely known for his book, Creating an Empire ESPN - The No-Holds-Barred Story of Power, Ego, Money, and Vision That Transformed a Culture.

Broughton’s latest documentary represents a 30 year project devoted to the life story of George Garrett. His production is a testimony to the value of storytelling and the changing technology used to document it.

Colin Mulvany
"I want to tell stories the local TV news stations, with their breathless reporters, doing live stand-ups of stale stories, fail to do anymore."– Colin Mulvany in the Wall Street Journal September 2005

Colin has worked as a photojournalist with the Spokesman Review for over 20 years. In 1996 he was named photojournalist of the year by the Harry Chapin Media Awards and has been honored by the National Press Photographers Association, AP, Gordon Parks Center, and the Picture of the Year International Photojournalism
Awards. four years ago Colin made the transition from still photography to video and became the newspaper’s first multimedia producer. His video blog receives over 100,000 hits a month and was featured in the Wall Street Journal as being an example of things to come for print news media.

Colin has traveled throughout the country as part of the National Press Photographers Association “Flying Short Course” training newspaper staff in
the technical skills needed for the 21st Century documentary journalist. He is also the author of the blog ”Mastering Multimedia” that is tracked by journalist all over the world.

You can find out more by checking out:
http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress.com/
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/video/


Bob Lawrence
Bob is a producer and director for the KSPS documentary series “Northwest Profiles” which has been telling the stories of interesting people in our region for 22 years. He is one of our regions most well known and respected story tellers.

In addition to short biographical pieces featured in the Series Northwest Profiles, Lawrence works on many of the longer documentary films that KSPS produces such as the recent film about the Fox Theatre renovation “21st Century Fox.” KSPS followed the project for the past three years and has captured every aspect of the renovation.

You can see examples of Bob Lawrence’s work on Northwest profiles by visiting:
http://www.ksps.org/local/nwp/index.htm

David Tanner
Producer, Director, North by Northwest Productions
President of the Nonfiction Program Division

With over 20 years in the industry, David Tanner has worked in multiple capacities on numerous feature films, and is the Executive Producer of The Basket (distributed nationally by MGM) and Mel (HBO and Showtime). He produced and directed a high definition feature documentary on street basketball called 3 on 3 (premiered fall 2004 on HDNet) and served as producer of In Time of War (broadcast on American Public Television and accepted in 92 PBS markets nationwide), as well as Take Me Home, a documentary short accepted to the largest international children’s festival, Kids First! Film and Video Festival. Tanner is one of the founders of North by Northwest and heads the Nonfiction Programming Division. As a commercial director, Tanner has received numerous awards including a national Addy promoting the Congress on Race Relations. He has produced ads for the Portland Trail Blazers, American Psychiatric Association, Albertsons, Micron Electronics, and Oregon Health Sciences University. His most recent project was directing an award-winning cross-platform public information project for the Washington State Department of Agriculture.



Megan Schuyler
Schuyler is a producer/video editor for the Non-Fiction Division of North by Northwest, a production company in Spokane, Washington. She graduated from Washington State University as the Outstanding Graduate of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, with a BA in Broadcast

Megan and her twin sister Mallory founded GryffinClaw Productions, LLC, in support of their production of a feature length documentary “The Wizard Rockumentary” which chronicles the cult phenomena of music based upon the Harry Potter book and movie series. The sisters write on their website, “We're taking a chance with our time, money, and energies for something that we love and we are having a freaking blast!”

You can find out more about their film at:
http://www.wizardrockumentary.com/about.html

Thinking about Robots..

I've been thinking a lot about robots lately.  It seems that virtual reality, augmented reality and augmented intelligence is already a part of our everyday life.  As technology progresses we will need to deal with the issues that only writers and cinematographers had dreamed of before.  Here are some video clips that express the connection I am making.  The last one is in reality the oldest one and came out well before we could really contemplate the existence of technology such as we will soon see.  Fantasy and Science Fiction seem to be the place that imagines and normalizes our perception of the technology that confronts us eventually.

For a more in-depth discussion about robots in our culture check out this recent episode of Fresh Air.

New Softcover Edition of Contemplation Available

Contemplation

By Gardner Media Group LLC in Photographic Collections

56 pages, published 8/30/2012

This is a small book filled with images of quiet beauty and timeless words of wisdom inspired by nature.

Massai Batik Painter Sironka joins Gardner Media Group

Gardner Media Group is proud to announce that they are now the exclusive North America and European representative for Sironka.

Sironka is a member of the Massai tribe in Kenya who creates astonishing Batik paintings that capture the essence and wisdom of Massai culture.

Over the next two years Gardner Media Group will be developing Print and ePublications that will combine words, images, and video recordings that will share the beauty and tell the cultural stories of this tribe to a new generation and worldwide audience.  Original paintings and Giclee reproductions will be available for purchase as well.

Check back back frequently for major announcements coming in Fall 2012.  For information about purchasing art or arranging a gallery exhibition, workshop, or lecture please contact Ira Gardner at 509.435.7420

Gardner Media Group Publishes "Contemplation"

Contemplation by Ira Gardner

Contemplation

by Ira Gardner

This is a small book filled with images of quiet beauty and timeless words of wisdom that are inspired by nature.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.  Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.” 

Marcus Aurelius

This is a new project by Ira Gardner and is being released in conjuction with a new exhibition of photographs at the SANTE Gallery and Restaurant in downtown Spokane Washington.

In the beginning....

I'm taking a day to clean my office.  I finally let go of the drawer full of floppy disks.  It reminded me of how much I have loved my career and how far we have come in media design.  I started out learning about page layout, halftone screening and color separations when it was cut and paste and we had to go to a service bureau.   My father was the first yearbook designer to do a complete book digitally in our community.  Back then desktop publishing was so brand new that the printers and designers were learning all together and there were constant struggles with getting peripherals to talk to each other.  The internet didn't exist then but we had bbs bulletin boards and fax machines.  I use to work with an art director that would fax me specs and I would set up the photo shoot, make a polaroid, scan it and put it in as an FPO and then upload that to a bbs and wait for a phone call to move forward.  Today we skype and don't think twice about the miracle of communication technology. Just yesterday I was having a skype meeting with an organization in Ghana Africa and one of my other clients is in Kenya!

For those of you just coming into the business you missed out on the era of when we used to work on our own machines and it was the wild west frontier for typography and graphics when a 24bit dot matrix printer pumping out a GIF file was cutting edge.  Networking was so unreliable even the software for connecting computers together was called Timbuktu!  I remember the day we converted our 44 and 88mb syquest drives into doorstops.

I suppose there are new frontiers to conquer.  I know I'm excited about ePublications and the convergence of still photography and video and how type can now dance across the page if I want it to.  There are new frontiers to be discovered with touch screen technology.  But for just a few moments this morning I will remember with fondness the thrill of getting words and images together on a computer screen that is WYSIWIG.  Life was beautifully contained within an Encapsulated Post Script file that would actually download to an imagesetter without errors.

I still remember the day I walked by the first generation Apple store downtown and saw the Apple Lisa in all of its monochrome beauty through the glass window and I had to go inside.  I remember designing databases and games in PASCAL on a friends Apple IIC with a green monitor and the joy I had when I put a 32k upgrade card into my Mac Color Classic and how proud I was to spend 4K on a brand new Mac IIci for my father so he could get that yearbook out the door and still get at least four hours of sleep because of the speed increase.

I wonder if anybody remembers the wonder of watching the Space Shuttle missions and knowing they were controlling all of that machinery with an Apple III.  An iPhone has more power than that.

Forgive my nostalgia.  I take comfort in knowing that the latest OSX operating system I installed this week is still based on 1960's technology and that an Amiga had parallel processing and video editing features long before Adobe released the creative cloud.

Documentary Filmmaker Panel Discussion

May 26th, 2009 FAVES Documentary Film Panel
This was a panel discussion I helped organize and host. It was only the second meeting of a new grassroots arts organization FAVES, that has been formed in partnership with Community Minded Television and the Magic Lantern Theater. Special thanks go to Tom Dineen and Juan Mas who I have worked closely with the put this together.

J Clements
Clements holds a MA from Stanford University (filmmaking program) and has over 20 years experience in all stages of filmmaking. She has produced films that are distributed through New Day Films that have aired on the Discovery Channel and PBS and is a consultant for Independent Television Service. As a consultant Clements works with filmmakers on all stages of production including, initial concept, funding sources, production schedules and budget, crew dynamics, editing consultation, and distribution and outreach.

For more information about her films you can checkout:
http://www.newday.com/filmmakers/J_Clements.html
http://www.thefilmfarm.info/

Irv Broughten
Living in Spokane, Washington, Irv Broughton is an author and independent film and video producer known for his films on American writers Frank Stanford and George Garret. He has also taught documentary film studies at Spokane Falls Community College for thirty-three years.

Broughton is the author of ten books including The art of interviewing for television, radio, and film and Producers on Producing which are considered required reading in many film schools. Broughten is also widely known for his book, Creating an Empire ESPN - The No-Holds-Barred Story of Power, Ego, Money, and Vision That Transformed a Culture.

Broughton’s latest documentary represents a 30 year project devoted to the life story of George Garrett. His production is a testimony to the value of storytelling and the changing technology used to document it.

Colin Mulvany
"I want to tell stories the local TV news stations, with their breathless reporters, doing live stand-ups of stale stories, fail to do anymore."– Colin Mulvany in the Wall Street Journal September 2005

Colin has worked as a photojournalist with the Spokesman Review for over 20 years. In 1996 he was named photojournalist of the year by the Harry Chapin Media Awards and has been honored by the National Press Photographers Association, AP, Gordon Parks Center, and the Picture of the Year International Photojournalism
Awards. four years ago Colin made the transition from still photography to video and became the newspaper’s first multimedia producer. His video blog receives over 100,000 hits a month and was featured in the Wall Street Journal as being an example of things to come for print news media.

Colin has traveled throughout the country as part of the National Press Photographers Association “Flying Short Course” training newspaper staff in
the technical skills needed for the 21st Century documentary journalist. He is also the author of the blog ”Mastering Multimedia” that is tracked by journalist all over the world.

You can find out more by checking out:
http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress.com/
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/video/


Bob Lawrence
Bob is a producer and director for the KSPS documentary series “Northwest Profiles” which has been telling the stories of interesting people in our region for 22 years. He is one of our regions most well known and respected story tellers.

In addition to short biographical pieces featured in the Series Northwest Profiles, Lawrence works on many of the longer documentary films that KSPS produces such as the recent film about the Fox Theatre renovation “21st Century Fox.” KSPS followed the project for the past three years and has captured every aspect of the renovation.

You can see examples of Bob Lawrence’s work on Northwest profiles by visiting:
http://www.ksps.org/local/nwp/index.htm

David Tanner
Producer, Director, North by Northwest Productions
President of the Nonfiction Program Division

With over 20 years in the industry, David Tanner has worked in multiple capacities on numerous feature films, and is the Executive Producer of The Basket (distributed nationally by MGM) and Mel (HBO and Showtime). He produced and directed a high definition feature documentary on street basketball called 3 on 3 (premiered fall 2004 on HDNet) and served as producer of In Time of War (broadcast on American Public Television and accepted in 92 PBS markets nationwide), as well as Take Me Home, a documentary short accepted to the largest international children’s festival, Kids First! Film and Video Festival. Tanner is one of the founders of North by Northwest and heads the Nonfiction Programming Division. As a commercial director, Tanner has received numerous awards including a national Addy promoting the Congress on Race Relations. He has produced ads for the Portland Trail Blazers, American Psychiatric Association, Albertsons, Micron Electronics, and Oregon Health Sciences University. His most recent project was directing an award-winning cross-platform public information project for the Washington State Department of Agriculture.



Megan Schuyler
Schuyler is a producer/video editor for the Non-Fiction Division of North by Northwest, a production company in Spokane, Washington. She graduated from Washington State University as the Outstanding Graduate of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, with a BA in Broadcast

Megan and her twin sister Mallory founded GryffinClaw Productions, LLC, in support of their production of a feature length documentary “The Wizard Rockumentary” which chronicles the cult phenomena of music based upon the Harry Potter book and movie series. The sisters write on their website, “We're taking a chance with our time, money, and energies for something that we love and we are having a freaking blast!”

You can find out more about their film at:
http://www.wizardrockumentary.com/about.html

The President's Photographer

Watch Full Program on PBS. See more from The Presidents Photographer.

Charlie Rose Interviews Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes

Charlie Rose had a great interview with the CEO of Time Warner Inc, Jeff Bewkes.  Mr. Bewkes gives a great rundown on the current digital media landscape and highlights the importance of Storytelling and the continued viability of legacy media like magazines as well as new ways to build niche markets in the digital environment.

Click here to see the interview

Publication of the Willis Bell Collection

The Willis Bell Collection Volume 1

By Gardner Media Group Spokane Washington in Photographic Collections

44 pages, published 2 MAY 2012

This is the first volume of historic photographs made in Ghana Africa by the late Willis Bell. Proceeds from this portfolio go to the Mmofra Foundation (Mmofra means "children" in Akan) in support of the Willis Bell Archive and the development of urban playgrounds for children.

Wired for War - P.W. Singer

Renaissance Prospects

Click here to listen to Doug Rushkoff's lecture "Renaissance Prospects"

Memes of subversion

Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language -- this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable. - Adrienne Rich

"Every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.” – Walter Benjamin

Interesting reflection on how photography and media work

Lobsters, Art & Public Policy A Conversation with Ben Cameron 10/27/2004

Seattle Channel Video can be played in Flash Player 9 and up


What can we learn from lobster fisherman about the 'ecology' of arts and culture? Ben Cameron leads a lively conversation about the value of arts and culture in our region.

Here is Ben Cameron's talk at TED from 2/26/2010

Is new media a replacement for traditional English studies?

A colleague of mine who teaches English posted this video on his blog. I enjoy it immensely and think it applies to the discussion of media studies, culture, and the convergence of legacy media into new digital media and the ongoing struggle between depth and breadth of knowledge as we expand our command of technology and see English departments blending in with Communications departments. Where I teach, digital photography and video production has found its way into English classes and traditional composition is being taught in our photography and video courses.

While the representation of Nazi's is a little harsh the irony is worth it. I wonder what Walter Benjamin would think...

Visual Poetry: A collection of Photographs

Perhaps one of the fundamental issues with being in grad school is formulating the answer to a question of self identity. Why am I doing this? Why do I seek recognition through the completion of another degree. The workload necessary to work full time and go to school certainly puts a strain on family relations and on my own sense of self as I try to balance out external and internal demands.

In the past month I have tried to revisit my core self by returning to work on my personal photography. In reviewing my work I take comfort in knowing that it is perhaps the purest expression of who I am. The written word obscures what I can feel within the tonality of a black and white photograph. Here is a small collection of black and white silver photographs that I have made from images I have created over the past twenty years.

The Decline of American Newspapers - An Independent Film Project

Here is a preliminary trailer I have put together for a film I am working on about the changing media landscape and the decline of American newspapers.

A Tribute to Walker Evans

I've been researching the work of Walker Evans who is considered one of the greatest social documentary photographers of the 20th century. Although he abandoned the candid moments in the tradition of Henri Cartier Bresson, Evans would return to a place with a large format camera and capture the essence of our culture through the presentation of artifacts within the landscape.

Lloyd Fonvielle writes about Evan's work that is published by Aperture and describes it as a vision of American poverty that is unlike European poverty which had been romanticized in the work of Atget, but rather a "poverty of culture" whereby our architecture may refer to european style but is cheaply built in an industrial age by a young country that has chosen to litter the landscape with advertising in pursuit of the wealth of the "American Dream."

I have always been drawn to this type of imagery due to my own blue collar roots and family mythology of working, traveling, and working some more. As I look around Spokane I am fascinated by place names that reflect wealth, power, and happiness and yet are far from it. In neighborhoods of every kind we see the all too common white picket fence that illustrates our pursuit of the American dream, although if you look closer you see emblems of alternative beliefs and politics.

These photographs were taken primarily around Sunset Blvd, Government Way, and Inland Empire Way which connects Highway 2 and the Latah neighborhoods. I have included a couple of previous photos from the South Hill and the lower East Side along the Internet just to sparkle some extremities to my portrait of Spokane.

Sunset Blvd is a street filled with old motels and apartments that have been usurped by larger hotels near the airport. These photographs are like a cross between the Brat Pack 60's and Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Today these are often used as flop houses for a transient population. I also photographed the Latah neighborhood which runs along Inland Empire Way. This neighborhood is a modern reflection of the 20th century challenges for the working class. And finally to complete my patchwork quilt of Americana, I revisited some rural areas within a few of miles of our downtown core.

The final image is the last remaining film store in Spokane and seemed appropriate for this photographic project.