Behind the scenes of Tresetti’s Fat Tuesday Poster from Luis Alcazar on Vimeo.

The making of the 18th Annual Tresetti’s Fat Tuesday Poster

Art Direction and Poster design by Tony Grajeda “Otranice”
Make up by Elena Grajeda “EG Make Up”
Photography by David Art “Kandidz”
Model Elizabeth Cruz
Film Production by Luis Alcazar

Produced by Reggie Rucker

Disclaimer: I have only claimed the visual part of the video. I DO NOT own the music and this is for entertainment purposes only.

Lucky Fest 2012 Behind The Scenes of Poster Photo Shoot from Luis Alcazar on Vimeo.

Model: Jennifer Jones

Creative Direction & Graphic Design: Tony Grajeda

Visual Branding & Photography: David Art

Makeup: Elena Grajeda

Hair: Alejandro Romero

Styling: Quart Judith

Behind the Scenes Images: Mike Alvarado

Cinematography & Video Production : Luis Alcazar

Talent: Kathleen Ennis

Set Production: Jennifer Allsup & Nannette Hawxhurst

Executive Production: Reggie Rucker

Music is not own by us.

When someone sees one of my photos they do not know what equipment I used, how much time I had or how much I was paid.  All they know is that it was shot by me.  What if someone was in a meeting with Anna Wintour and said hey let’s give this guy I have heard about a shot… David ‘Art’.  She says okay, Googles my work and it’s a group of images I rushed, shot with poor light and then slapped my name on it.  YIKES!  Additionally as a photographer I have tremendous competition on the low end of the market.  National photo chains are courting small and medium sized businesses with low prices and fast turnaround.  They are basically saying to my prospects, you are a sucker to pay more than 70 bucks for a photo.  Come down to your local mall and in 30 minutes you will have the exact same thing.  Well if you intend to shoot that client against a white wall, light him or her with the flash sitting on top of your camera, whip out your laptop and had over a CD of unedited pics then the national photo chains are right.

I believe there are only three categories in business, the best (Mercedes, Four Seasons, French Laundry, iPad), the cheapest (McDonald’s, Honda Civic, Levi) and everyone else.  Most photographers compete with the cheapest thinking they are easy targets.  But the cheapest tend to be just as focused and organized as the best.  It’s just that the cheapest operate on volume to reduce their cost of doing business.  So when the independent photographer takes on the cheapest they do not have the customer volume and therefore have higher costs resulting in lower revenue for the same work.  This is a bad situation but is far better than being in the middle.  The photographers in the middle of the market are not the best or the cheapest and are therefore at the whim of the market.  These businesses are constantly changing their prices, negotiating every deal and trying to carve out a niche to justify their existence.  No fun at all.

So for these reasons I strive to be the best in my market by not only charging more but more importantly giving the client more.  Sears is the preferred vendor of my client’s corporate office.  But for $65 you will get a photo but you will not get love.  In addition to a flatly lit, low contrast, low detail image, the photos often have a few flaws that the best would not allow:

1. Hair not perfected,
2. Since they do not offer a makeup artist, shadowing and fatigue under the eyes goes unfixed,
3. Skin discoloration from rashes or shaving is not adjusted,
4. Clothing issues like ill fitting shirts that do not meet in a ‘V’ are unnoticed,
5. Puckering
6. No one even fixed his shirt, before pressing the shutter.

‘Oh you are picking on Sears by choosing a bad photo’.  No my friends this is the photo Sears chose for their marketing materials to represent their ‘Business Portrait Package’.  Is Sears wrong for offering this package?  Absolutely not.  Sears is offering the cheapest business pic and you get what you pay for.  My choice is to either educate Sears clients on why my work is better or seek clients who desire more than the ‘basic business portrait package’.  I do both.

The majority of my business comes from either referrals where I exceeded the client’s expectations and the work of their previous vendor.  Or when I shoot an individual who is a member of a group or organization and when the new portrait is seen side by side with the old ones, the difference in quality is evident and my phone rings.  That is a good day.

I loaded the car Wednesday evening and headed to the gym. We were originally told that we could start at 9pm and the practice ran until 11. So at 7:30pm I arrived with the expectation that I would set up and by the time they got up a sweat, I would be ready to shoot. Well like the saying says “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. The update was that practice starts at 9pm and the gym is full of members until 9pm so no prep prior. Also we have to be out of the building at 11pm sharp…everyone! So with 90 minutes to spare, I fired up Yelp and found a Sushi restaurant to grab a bite and come up with plan B.

Upon returning to the facility at 8:45pm, I loaded my cart and began setup. Using the interior walls as giant bounces I directed two Profoto strobes at them to illuminate the gym without firing lights directly at the athletes scrimmaging. After taking about an hours worth of action shots, I set up on the other side of the gym for portraits. There was no time to erect a backdrop and we could not turn off the horrible yellow gym lights so we did the next best thing. I set up the camera so that the exposure would result in a near pitch black room. Then I set up a simple one Profoto light in a soft box setup with enough power to overcome the camera’s settings and light the subject. I quickly took the three star players images during the times they sat out of the scrimmage and was done by 10:40pm. Ron helped me tear down and we rolled out of the building at 11:00pm on the dot.

Markup of original image

Now I view a lot of commercial and amateur photography and one of the biggest differences is the editing/post processing. My favorite photography quote is “Stop taking pictures and start making pictures”. Most amateurs and viewers have no idea what is involved in creating a final image. As you can see in the original this is a rush, on location shot but that is no excuse to not MAKE a great picture. Would I have loved to stop the scrimmage behind him and turn off the lights…absolutely. But we are short on time and high on expectations. So we create an image that has the essential elements I have in my head and then I will perfect it in Lightroom and Photoshop.

While I am not going to go into exhaustive detail I have include the original, markup (which I never do on paper like this unless I am working with an Art Director. I can see and remember all the fixes in my head as I am a very visual person) and final image. In general I enter Lightroom and execute the easy adjustments like

• white balance
• exposure
• contrast
• color saturation
• color luminosity, etc.

Then I take this pre-edited image into Photoshop where I do the heavy lifting of highlights, shadow, curves, sharpening, vignetting, liquifying, color replacement and more. To achieve:

This along with the other pictures in the series such as…

are the start of new image for the East Bay Pit Bulls. We are hoping to generate public interest in these young men’s stories with new stills, logos, properties and the video documentaries also being created. Stay tuned

After Jennifer was masked I added a curtain background.  The stage lights were a simple gradient fill that I applied a cloud render and gaussian blur to.  The rest is just a bit of burning and dodging to create realism based on light direction and color.

Katelyn Kline Shoot from David 'Art' Wooten on Vimeo.

Beach shoot with model Katelyn Kline
Rio Vista, CA

http://www.kandidz.com
http:///www.facebook.com/kandidzportraits

http://www.wootenweb.com

Overview of the minimum amount of equipment I take in my Think Tank bag to shoots.

http:///www.facebook.com/kandidzportraits
http://www.wootenweb.com

http://www.kandidz.com

http://shop.usa.canon.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductListingViewAll_10051_10051_-1_2275

The Engagement of Michelle and Derrick from David 'Art' Wooten on Vimeo.

In anticipation of Michelle and Derrick’s wedding next year, we did an engagement photo shoot in Muir Woods. The photos were put into this video and shown at their engagement party as well as on their Save the Date magnets.

Test shoot I did for a new model named Corrie J.