Rosten Translation

Super Mom & Photoshop

jesse@jesserosten.com — 2009-01-04T14:19:21-08:00

Title: Super Mom
Location: Kids Kingdom Playground, Redding
Model: Angie and her daughter. Special thanks to Michelle for her stellar make-up work.
Lighting: Three 1200ws strobes (I forget the brand), shoot-thru umbrella, high output fan (for the cape) and a generator to power it all.

For this shot we used the trusty (and glossy) three light setup. No, it’s not the three-light setup you’re thinking of (key, fill, back). It’s an edgier take on the three-light. Actually, it’s more like a four light setup if you count ambient as a light source. So we’ve got a strobe with a shoot-thru umbrella camera left as the key. It’s about a stop over ambient allowing ambient to act as fill. And then to add the “light-wrapped” look, dual strobes coming from behind at 45 degrees. The light from the left strobe was blocked by the swinging girl so doesn’t quite reach the subject, but you can really see the wrap effect on the monkey bars and rear right pole.

Couple things I learned on this project:
1. 20 seconds of adjustment on set can save HOURS of time in post.
2. Dodge & burn and the healing brush are the skin’s best friend. Great way to smooth the skin without ending up with a textureless, poreless, plasticy mess. Let me tell ya from experience, if you’re going to BLUR the skin to smooth it out, be sure to add the texture back in using some high-pass filter. I’m tired of seeing photos of people that look like two eyes and a mouth floating in a solid patch of skin-toned color. Wow. A bit of a mini-rant there.

Below is 6 hours of Photoshop editing condensed into 6 minutes. Enjoy!

2008, exit stage left

jesse@jesserosten.com — 2008-12-31T14:41:41-08:00

I have to admit, I’m not sad to say goodbye to 2008. What a challenging year. Lots of great moments though. Here’s the year as seen by my iPhone.

Team Rosten Christmas 2008

jesse@jesserosten.com — 2008-12-25T02:19:39-08:00

(click to watch)

Update: Santa just informed me that Youtube has upgraded to HD. Well, it’s not true HD but it looks a LOT better than it did. I’ve relinked this video to youtube so it should load faster now. Merry Xmas!

Portland Cyclocross

jesse@jesserosten.com — 2008-12-14T16:17:07-08:00

(click for pics)

Last week we visited Portland to watch Chris race the U.S Gran Prix of cyclocross. It was a whole lot of muddy fun. Stay tuned for footage.

Gallagher Pics

jesse@jesserosten.com — 2008-12-12T12:49:11-08:00

(click for pics)

Meet the Gallagher family. About 4 years ago we met these lovely folks while manning our video booth at the Redding Wedding Extravaganza. (Side note: no, we don’t shoot wedding videos anymore. Unless, of course, you want your wedding shot in 4k. Call me, we’ll talk.) The Gallaghers have since become friends and they’ve multiplied into a little family. We were privledged to do some Christmas pics for them. Here’s the strobist rundown for all the camera nerds out there:

* Two kino 4 banks as 45degree kickers. (It’s not that we needed kinos for this, it’s just that’s all we had.)
* Nikon Sb24 with shoot thru umbrella overhead.
* Silver reflector on the floor.

Props to Lyn for her masterful camera work!

The background is wrapping paper Lyn bought from the dollar store. We ran strips vertically on the wall and photoshopped out the seams. The sticks are dead bushes from our backyard, painted white. The ground cover is cotton from JoAnne’s fabric store. We found the snowflakes there as well. They’re edible cornstarch flakes. In retrospect, we were very glad we didn’t get the polyester flakes as a lot of them ended up in little Daniel’s mouth. When he wasn’t eating the snow, he was screaming, terriffied by the white stuff falling from the ceiling.

Underwater Housing and fish Ich

jesse@jesserosten.com — 2008-12-04T12:51:39-08:00

(click to watch. 18Mbs)

After a few failed attempts at building an underwater housing device for the Red (can you say large open tupperware with a viewing window at the bottom? Me neither), I settled on the simpler task of building one for the lowly Canon HV20. It was pretty easy to do, actually. A few pieces of ABS from Lowes, a little pipe dope, some teflon tape, and a used filter attached with silicon. The final setup setup looked kind of like a weapon with its nifty handle (which I filled with lead weights for stability)

Location of choice was Clear Creek right beneath the falls. Most of the healthy salmon split once I jumped in the ice cold water. But I found this little fella’ that was too blind and sick to scram. So what exactly is all that ick on his face? Well it’s Ich. Or more specifically, Ichthyophonus hoferi. Ich (pronounced "ick"). It’s a well-known disease, (caused by a parasite) and is harmless to humans. It starts as white spots on the fish’s heart and spreads outward to the skin. Ick, indeed.

And while we’re on the topic of fish, please enjoy the photo below of a monstor salmon found in our own Battle creek - Lyn’s old fisheries biologist stomping grounds. The fish was dead when found but was estimated to weigh around 90lbs when alive. You can see from the photo that this fish is about the size of a cow and probably would have fed a family of three for an entire winter.

(DIY underwater housing for Canon Hv20)

(It’s deeper than it looks)

(Monstro, The Killer Chinook)