Studio 3's Photographer Craig Wagner & CMD's Art Director Lawrence Wolf collaborate!

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

See below to view Craig Wagner’s in-studio Product Photography and his lifestyle images!

Studio 3, Inc, Behind the Scenes, Commercial Product Photography, Commercial Lifestyle Photography, Lawrence Wolf, CMD
We are excited at Studio 3 about our latest partnership with CMD in Portland. Craig Wagner (Photographer) and Lawrence Wolf (Art Director) talk about their thoughts around their latest creative venture. Read below to hear more about the collaboration between Studio 3 Inc. and CMD.
A few words from Lawrence Wolf at CMD.
“One of the great things about working at CMD is the way the company embraces the Rose City’s bike culture. Bike commuting is actively encouraged year round, with a lot of extra support for people who get into the saddle for the Bike Commute Challenge each September. And, as an art director, I get to spend my days crafting the visual language of all the things we make for our clients: websites, mobile apps, brochures, you name it. It’s a process where I’m fortunate to work with some really talented individuals. This brings me to Studio 3 Photography, and partnering on a creative project that reflects my personal passion for cycling as well as that embraced by Portland and CMD.
I first worked with Studio 3 in December 2010, shooting bird’s eye views of two Western Star trucks. It wasn’t an easy shoot, given the sheer size of the trucks. And thanks to the unpredictable nature of Pacific Northwest skies in winter, we were forced to shoot inside a warehouse. In that kind of situation, you can only get an angle so wide before running into problems with distortion.
But Craig was very methodical in overcoming these logistic issues. Over the two days we shot, we bonded over a mutual appreciation for all things on wheels, be it two, four or eighteen. That shoot was just the beginning of a strong professional relationship, and then this past spring, something got us talking about my old bike.

I’ve been customizing this vintage Trek touring bike since the birth of my son. It had sat in my garage, collecting dust for several years, because it’s so much heavier than my aluminum road bike and I tend to opt for speed. But it’s always been a great bike. The steel frame gives it a really comfortable ride. It reminds me of the matching, yellow Schwinns that my parents used to pedal me around on. When I started thinking about how to introduce my boy to cycling, I swapped out the drop bars for mustache bars (to accommodate a front-mounted child seat). This gave the bike a totally different look, and I suddenly developed a new appreciation for the bike’s classic styling.

Soon after, I added a Brooks leather saddle and matching bar tape. Then it kind of took on a life of its own. Since then, I continue to adjust little details like striped white tires, or black dice valve covers.

My latest addition was designing the “Slow Ride” aluminum head badge, which I had made at International Graphics. “Slow Ride” was influenced by a few things: My son’s 70s-era, Evel Knievel helmet, and the fact that the bike weighs upwards of 30 pounds. We won’t be winning any races on this thing, but that’s hardly the point of our rides.

I was thrilled that Craig was interested in collaborating on a “Slow Ride” shoot featuring the customized bike. As an art director, I really admire his attention to detail and the way he plans a shot. He’s keenly aware of potential challenges, and always has a good solution for telling a story through his lens. Half the fun of this shoot was working together on the idea, putting together moodboards, and scouting locations.”

A few words from Craig Wagner at Studio 3, Inc.
“Working with Lawrence’s “Slow Ride” concept was fun and allowed me plenty of creative freedom. The mood boards were coherent and well designed. With a clear understanding of the desired outcome and tone, we were ready to go. I look forward to many more future projects with Lawrence’s creative concept development and the CMD team. See below for some of the shots we got on-location!”

Get involved in the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s Bike Commute Challenge by clicking here.To view CMD’s joint blog post click here.

Photographer Craig Wagner: Light Manipulation!

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

Craig Wagner is brilliant when it comes to manipulating and controlling light. Read below to hear his thoughts around these beautiful images!
I’ve always enjoyed some of the surreal imagery created by Man Ray during the 20th century. My inspiration for these images initially stemmed from past memories of his work. He would use a process known as solarisation and the visual impact, yet basic, was amazing! He created a photogram silhouette of an object, by placing simple objects directly on film plates and adjusting the exposure. This technique would create a “rayogram” look and feel. He was well known for this look and I wanted to create something similar with glassware.
For this shoot I chose to use the Canon 5D Mark III with the Canon 90mm tilt shift lens. This lens allowed more control of the plain of focus, as if I was using a large format view camera.
With my first image I began with a silhouette type look, playing with the composition and selective focus of the glassware, this led me to stacking the glasses on set. I wanted a cooler black & white feel so I began adjusting the hue. I did this by gelling the lights.

My next thought was toward tonality, I wanted to simulate a warmer Gelatin silver print so I changed my camera angle to give it a different perspective.

Again wanting to create as much “in camera”, not in Adobe Photoshop, I altered the image by holding different glassware in front of the lens until I achieved the “Motion Blur” effect you see here.

I must say since I spent so many years shooting with film and now exclusively digital, I sometimes miss the older technology and the in camera control.
To view more of Studio 3’s Product Photography click here!

Meet Niki: Chaos Wrangler with a passion for Commercial Photography!

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

Niki our newest Studio 3 team member loves Commercial Photography and a space filled with creatives!

Studio 3, Inc, Behind the Scenes, Portrait Photography, Lifestyle Photography

Every Commercial Photography Studio needs a Niki! We are so elated to introduce our newest addition to the Studio 3 team in Portland! She’s a woman of many talents, interests and experience. She always has something interesting to share with us, to say the least. Read below to learn more:

I love sorting through hurricanes of disorder and packing things away neatly into beautifully labelled little boxes. I’m obsessed with systems: analyzing them, creating them, breaking them down and rebuilding them again. This fascination led me to a crazy wonderful studio in the heart of Portland. At Studio 3, I can use my skills to continually improve our near flawless work flows – meaning clients get their photo and video assets faster, with less hassle. Every creative environment needs some structure to balance the forces of inspiration, creating the ideal blend of impeccable execution and expressive flair.
Of course, that doesn’t satiate my need to wrangle the chaos of life. When I’m not at work, I’m keeping track of cats, snakes, chickens and chores at my urban oasis. Thanks to Studio 3, one of my beautiful snakes is determined that she has a modeling career in her future.

On the weekend, you can find me at exotic pet shops, Portland’s legendary Urban Farm Store, or piecing together larger than life house projects with a little more than bubblegum and a prayer to the DIY Goddess. My tireless fiancé, a converted cat lover and avid skateboarder, helps me tend to the tomatoes and ensures we have time to tear up epic dance floors at The Goodfoot. Creating our ideal blend of uproar and order is second nature; if anything, it’s where we shine.
When things finally feel calm enough, everyone knows I plop down with a full cup of coffee, a plate of bacon and a textbook on political economies.

Lifestyle Photographer Matt Jebbia & Digital Artist Alex Gumina "Peace of Mind"

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

It’s summer in the Northwest, the perfect opportunity to get outside and shoot. Recently, Lifestyle Photographer Matt Jebbia headed to Green Lake to capture the practice of yoga in a peaceful setting. He came out with some great pictures, read below for his inspiration behind the shoot:

There is just something amazing about shooting outside in the NW. Seattle being one of my favorite areas to live and work has just an astounding amount of parks with water that just add an awesome element to any photographer’s photo shoots. These yoga images were shot on a pier at Green Lake in North Seattle. I was a bit concerned that my choice of time of day was a bit ambitious given that the sun is usually at its hottest point at 4:30pm. Turns out that in relationship to my model the sun created some pretty nice lighting on her face when she turned just the right way. This inspired me further, knowing with the help of our digital team, we could create an awesome tropical, yet serene image.

The pictures inspired a collaboration between Matt and Alex, with the end result of the model appearing as if she were in a tropical place like Bali or the Maldives. Alex Gumina shares how he created the tropical feel:

When Studio 3 photographer Matt Jebbia originally came to me with these yoga images he wanted to give them a more tropical feel. They were shot on location at Green Lake and although a beautiful setting, it certainly feels more like the Pacific Northwest than it does a tropical paradise. His initial edits for me were “remove the houses, lengthen the dock where needed / remove the railing, and see what you can do with the background in general”. The words “see what you can do…” sort of opened up the door for me to get creative, and I decided to take full advantage.
I thought to myself “where would be a really beautiful, peaceful place to do some yoga?” and the Maldive Islands came to mind. After a quick Google search I found an inspiration image and went to work. If you look closely, you’ll actually see this image at the top of my layers palette. I pasted it in so I could sample the blues for my sky gradient. For the clouds I considered using a Photoshop brush or some vector art, but I wanted something a little more original so I decided to hand “paint” them in on my own. It was at this point that I decided to start recording a video (see below).

I had already drawn my path around the model and used an alpha channel for her hair, so it was really just a matter of cleaning the image up, dropping in the background, and changing the color of the water. While reviewing the image with our Studio Producer, Megan Nolan, she pointed out that it looked like the model was struggling a bit with the sun in her eyes. I did some quick adjusting to fix it and I think the end result is perfect.
I spent about half an hour on the image before I started recording, and about three hours on it after. When I finished I imported the video into Adobe Premiere, did some quick editing, squished it down to three minutes, and added an audio track. What you have here is the final product. Enjoy!

Cycle Oregon 2013 with Photographer Henry Ngan!

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

Once again this year’s Cycle Oregon 2013 weekend ride was an amazing experience both days! The weather could not be more perfect. My brother Ben, sister Betty, nephew Paul Schommer and his uncle Bob of Schommer & Sons were all along for the ride and encouraged me along the way. Ben and wife Julie did their ride on a tandem, Betty and husband Tom rode their own bikes. I personally rode on a custom no name frame outfitted with hand-me-down parts from Ben’s old bike parts.

Someday I may get a Specialized or a Cervelo or a Cannondale but for now this is the perfect bike.

I could have used one lower gear on Sunday’s climb to the north up to the Lewisburg Saddle Trailhead. The rest of the 42 mile ride through a series of rollers was palatable and actually fun. I learned a lot on how to attack the next hill.

Saturday was a picture perfect postcard day through beautiful country roads to the east of Corvallis. Except for a few headwinds, and a swarm of honey bees trying to get back to their hive, it was a blissful 51 miles of fun. Our host, Oregon State University provided really nice facilities and generous hospitality for camping, eating, and entertainment.

The folks from the Bike Gallery provided the technical expertise to make everyone’s bike a perfect riding machine. They adjusted the new chain I purchased at their Hollywood store in Portland. We had live entertainment from Funk Shui (Fri) and Madison Jones (Sat) and a beer garden at the Memorial Union Quad. Everyone came home to the finish line amongst a cheering crowd and ice cream from the Schwan’s catering truck.
For the Studio 3 blog, I captured all these images of the Cycle Oregon 2013 weekend ride using two cameras. Some of the images were captured using my Samsung Galaxy Note 2. The rest were captured using my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5. These did a great job and kept the weight under control and storage manageable.

Commercial Product Photographer Chris Eltrich and Splashing Goggles!

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

Commercial Product Photographer Chris Eltrich has been playing with splashes to add some fun to his photography portfolio. His recent shoot included goggles and an aquarium. It was a day full of fun that ended with Chris dropping everything from lemons to bananas in the water to see which created the best splash. When it comes to focusing on the perfect splash, Chris offers some insight on how to get the job done:

The biggest challenge to the splash shot is the timing. Just capturing the splash is fairly challenging, but you want the product to look good too. You could, alternatively, take a bunch of shots and composite pieces together, but I wanted to get the splash and product in the same shot, so I needed a consistent method. Now at this point, a gear savvy photographer would begin assembling an elaborate system to trigger the camera when the product falls past a certain point, that you can tune to a fraction of a second. But as the jobs of my generation are slowly being appropriated by “the machines”, I decided to go all “John Henry” and show these machines we humans are still relevant.

I had my assistant drop the goggles about two feet above the water and I hit the shutter right before they landed. The first drop turned great, so I gave myself a congratulatory pat on the back (actually, I instructed my assistant to give me a congratulatory pat on the back.) Oh the joys of being a professional photographer. And so we began our day-long adventure in dropping things in an aquarium.

After a morning of getting great shots of goggles and receiving upwards of forty congratulatory pats on the back (so many that I ended up congratulating him with seven pats of his own), my timing abilities began to decline, and I started getting a lot of pictures of an empty tank or a pair of goggles floating.

Now some would fault me with not hitting the shutter at the right time, but I believe it was the machines, jealous of my amazing “early morning” timing, using some sort of time travel device or computer virus to stop me from getting amazing product photography consistently all day. Luckily, since I had already taken some shots that I loved in the morning we still felt like we had defeated the growing menace that is automation.

To view more of our Commercial Product Photography please click here!

Commercial Lifestyle Photographer Matt Jebbia Summer Fun!

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

This shoot was a fun collaboration between many of us here at the studio. What made it work was having access to some great vintage props, a great model and a perfect morning of Seattle summer weather. A few words from Commercial Lifestyle Photographer Matt Jebbia!

We came up with the concept of using Dick’s burgers due to the upcoming 60th anniversary of “Dick’s Drive-In”, and we were lucky that fellow Studio 3’s Commercial Product Photographer David Bell had the perfect vintage VW that he allowed us to use.

Since we were a bit worried about taking this awesome vintage car on location I decided to use the Studio 3 parking lot. It provided a nice backdrop and allowed us to utilize some studio equipment that would have been harder to use out on location.
We set up a 6×12 foot sail in the parking lot that helped to diffuse the harsh noon sun, added a medium soft-box to add some light to our models face, and played around with some different camera angles and props to bring this shoot to life. We use a variety of camera systems at Studio 3 but for this shoot I opted to use the Hasselblad H2d with an 80mm lens. It’s not my camera of choice for location shoots but since we were 10 feet from the studio door it made it easy to use and allowed us to shoot tethered for quick image review.

I have a coca cola image in my portfolio already and decided to add the coke bottle at the end of the shoot, just to add a different prop and I felt that we had the perfect model, vehicle, and location to make it work. It was a bit stressful working so closely with a vintage convertible owned by our Senior Photographer. But once we all got into the flow of creating the perfect shot, it all seemed to come together. And luckily for all of us no vehicles were damaged in the process!

To view more Commercial Lifestyle images created at Studio 3, Inc. click here!

Food Photographer David Bell Fish Out of Water

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

It’s finally summer and that means summer food, like delicious fish…or sardines? David Bell Studio 3’s Food Photographer had quite the challenge ahead of him making the shiny, little fish look quite scrumptious. He decided to shoot a recipe of sardines, radishes, and lemon, highlighting the freshness of it all. Read below to learn about his techniques and inspiration behind the series:

I wanted to shoot this particular recipe, because it is that time of year when the radishes are fresh, yummy, and abundant. As you will see in the images the radishes are roasted, which brings out that fresh, rich flavor that we all love. Not to mention the beautiful color!

Pairing the radishes with a strong taste, like sardines, makes a very nice earth and ocean dish…delighting the taste buds. Knowing the mix between the two I knew I wanted to create a beautiful daylight effect. Being the control freak that I am I knew I could control this lighting and really bring out the uniqueness of this dish and to create that I used the Studio Strobes. I used the Hasselblad tilt shift adapter to capture the details and showcase the beauty in the elements. I wanted a surface that was not too rustic or modern. My intention was to find a table that could easily be in ones home or even a restaurant.
In the images below I was trying to attain a real & natural look, without everything being overly styled and perfect. For this project I chose to work with a stylist that was trying to break into the industry. This was a fun experience!
I think the lack of perfection in the styling is what draws you in and makes you want to try the dish. I hope this series will make the viewer want to experiment with sardines and fresh, earthy produce!

To view more Food Photography images created at Studio 3 please click here!

Product Photographer Craig Wagner Time for a Dip!

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Studio 3 Inc

Product Photographer Craig Wagner puts his creative skills to use for our client Nixon. Utilizing natural elements to add drama and movement brings these watch images to life. Read below for a few words from Craig!

This photo shoot required a lot of teamwork and was a problem solver’s dream. It was obvious that digital art would be needed but I chose to capture as much as we could in camera giving the final image a surreal look.

For the first image of the Nixon Dip Dye collection we utilized the Profoto Pro-8a 2400 power packs for their high flash duration to capture the water splashes and their impressive recycle time to capture the floating colored dyes. Studio3’s custom made “Time-Delay” triggering device allowed us to precisely control the amount and height of each splash. Managing the colored dye proved to be the real creative challenge on this shoot. Our studio producer rounded up a variety of colored powdered pigments and dyes to suspend in the water. We were surprised to find that regular kitchen food coloring provided us the results we were after. To get the right amount of movement of the dye we used a 33 gallon tank which allowed us enough water space to create just the right current.

The second image below of the Nixon Velvet collection was shot on black plexiglass utilizing our Roscoe smoke machine. which we love to pull off the shelf and add into many of our fun creative shoots. Finding that the smoke was a big challenge to manage its direction and flow on such a small set, we turned to dry-ice which provided a smaller much more controllable amount of vapor flow. Adding colored gels to our strobes really made the smoke stand out and added a lot of movement to the overall image. Nixon’s creative team was great to work with. They had a (tight) solid concept but were very open to experimentation and my team’s input. This shoot gave us the opportunity to play with some new equipment, pull some of our fun gadgets off the shelves and exercise our creativity to bring these Nixon watches to life!

To view these on the Nixon website click here!