Rastafarian Flag

This is an edit for one of my friends and client. He wanted something reminiscent of the Bob Marley posters with the Rastafarian flag. I put off this project for a while because of the editing mostly even though it only took me about Ten minuted to put it together and about 30 to clean it up a bit. But this is the final result.I asked on of my friends in the know the meaning of the colors, and she said:

Red: The Blood that was spilt fighting for freedom.

Green: Our land which many of us have fought and died for.

Yellow: The yellow sun in the Sky. 

I already knew two of the colors because they are in the Kenyan Flag as well as in the flags of most African countries as well as in countries with some-kind of African ancestry and some with out.

All in all I am happy with the final result now the only remaining thing is making it posters. I cannot wait should look cool!!!

How I did it:

The original pic was taken in color, then I later edited it on grey scale on photoshop. That is where this journey starts, I opened the black and white pic and converted it back to RGB color, then I duplicated it three times. I added a new solid color layer under the layers menu, and with each duplicate I made one in yellow, one in red, and the final one in green then I used the quick select tool to select and bring together the layers in one plain, then i played around with the curves and adjustments and one thing led to another... this is the final result. Hope you like it!!!

Family Portraits Remixed!!!

I recently had a shoot with one of my favorite professors from my undergraduate years and his family.

He contacted me and said the words that every creative likes to hear, we want the pics done your way, throw your creativity in the mix; and I did.

I have always been a fan of Gap Ads, and the current ones are my favorite! I love them: love the colors, simplicity, and warmth. They have became my inspiration for this type of family shoot!

I am a naturally commercial photographer, I grew up seeing all kinds of ads everywhere and that is how I try to make my photography. I mean why should'nt family portraits or any type of image look like they belong in a magazine. I am tired of the glamour shot type portraits that we have all grown up with where everyone in the picture looks uncomfortable wishing they were somewhere else.

So with my images, I want them to look effortless, I want my subjects to have a memorable shoot, so that they can come back year after year not because they have to but because they want to! Overall we took well over 1000 pictures around 800 of which were in studio and here are the results I hope you approve!

Strobist info:

For the shoot I had a great studio space, with a basic three light setup. In my corner were two White Lighting X1600s one as the main light camera left with a Large Octabox with the top diffuser removed and second to light the background with a 32 inch white diffuser umberalla; For the fill light, camera right, I used an AB1600 with a medium sized octabox with the top diffuser removed.