Nick Fancher's Blog, page 22
February 21, 2020
RJD2: The Fun Ones Photo Shoot
In late 2018 my buddy RJ (aka RJD2) approached me about shooting the cover art for an upcoming album he was working on. He didn’t have a concrete idea about what he wanted to do but suggested possibly involving his Delorean. He was specific about the images not being about the car itself but rather capturing elements of the cars shape and incorporating them into creative portraits. I was intrigued but really couldn’t visualize what the hell he was talking about. Eight months later he hit me...
February 17, 2020
Living an Un-curated Life
Today marks the one-year mark of me leaving social media. To say that this past year has been transformative for me would be putting it mildly. I’ve grown more mentally, emotionally, physically, and creatively in the past year than any other time of my life. I’ve come to learn that there was a significant amount of trauma in my past that needed to be addressed and worked through and through that process I learned to separate my sense of worth from what I can create or do for others. I’...
February 14, 2020
Wildfire
I am starting to work more with motion. While part of this decision is strategic (I see a massive shift to video in the commercial and editorial industry), a big part of it is passion. I’ve been obsessed with films since I was a kid. Back in my college days I worked third shift at a video store for just over a year and watched 3-4 movies a shift, catching up on decades of classics. Film is just so immersive for me. It takes storytelling to a whole new level. I love being able to pair image...
February 10, 2020
Creative Portraiture Workshop: New York City
It was great to be back in New York, teaching my two-day Creative Portraiture workshop. Photo god Lindsay Adler graciously lent me her Manhattan studio while she was off killing it in Milan. We had a blast experimenting with light, color, and technique.
Creative Portraiture Workshop: NYC
It was great to be back in New York, teaching my two-day Creative Portraiture workshop. Photo god Lindsay Adler graciously lent me her Manhattan studio while she was off killing it in Milan. We had a blast experimenting with light, color, and technique.
February 3, 2020
Creative Portraiture Workshop: Columbus
My sold out, two-day Creative Portraiture took place a week ago and we had students travel from three other states to make art at my Columbus studio. We began by covering different qualities of light (soft vs. hard) and how to intentionally create different types of shadows. Next we covered a bit of color theory and how to use cookies (cucoloris) with gelled lights to create colorful shadows. For the rest of the weekend we covered a vsat range of...
Creative Portraiture Workshop: Columbus Images
My sold out, two-day Creative Portraiture took place a week ago and we had students travel from three other states to make art at my Columbus studio. We began by covering different qualities of light (soft vs. hard) and how to intentionally create different types of shadows. Next we covered a bit of color theory and how to use cookies (cucoloris) with gelled lights to create colorful shadows. For the rest of the weekend we covered a vsat range of techniques, such as making multiple exposures; creating prismatic effects with a broken mirror; shooting through different materials; photographing warped and colorful reflections with mylar and prismatic window film; using shutter drag; making custom shapes and images by way of projector. It was a jam-packed whirlwind of a weekend but we all came away feeling inspired and ready to go back into the world and create.
January 28, 2020
Seasonal Affective Disorder and Hunting For Light
Lately I’ve been hyper-focused on light and texture. I can get seasonal affective disorder (SAD) pretty bad in the winter when the days are shorter and days or even weeks can go by without the appearance of the sun. When the sun does decide to make an appearance it feels like I’m awaking from a coma. I notice qualities of the light that I would likely otherwise ignore the rest of the year when sunlight is plentiful: how the light looks like water through an old window; the shapes that it creates when it hits a living room armchair; how it moves across nearby buildings until it hits a window and bounces into an otherwise dark corner of my room. It’s magical. I’ve recently taken to carrying a mirrorless camera around with me to make sure I’m ready when the sun hits.
My reawakened senses have also led me to notice textures around me, even when dynamic light isn’t present. The warehouse that my studio resides in has no end of patina and grit. Even if I don’t have my camera on-hand, my iPhone and Snapseed app are more than sufficient at capturing painterly images of the tactile world around me. While these exercises in awareness and being present are important in and of themselves, they also translate to my studio and portrait work.
January 20, 2020
Vibrant Vivian
This was my first time working with Vivian. I kept the session relatively simple, focusing on capturing the vibrance of her personality. I started off by using the prism film with just window light. Then I added red and blue-gelled LEDs that I used in combination with window light. I finished by giving the images a grainy, saturated film look to make them feel older.
January 13, 2020
Gilding Lilies
I’ve never been especially fond of flowers. Don’t get me wrong— they’re pretty and everything, but I don’t stop to smell them, much less know their names. That said, flowers make wonderful subjects. They sit nice and still and always put on a great performance as I take my time fiddling around with lights, gels, and camera settings. Though I suppose any inanimate object would suffice for testing, I find flowers to have a human-like qualities to them. They have a face, a neck, and elegance for days. That’s not to say they’re an easy subject. They don’t bring anything to the table, save for their looks. They don’t have a range of dramatic poses or expressions or wardrobe changes. When working with flowers as a subject you only get out of a shoot what you put into it.
I’ve developed many of my lighting and camera techniques by testing with flowers. If I want to learn how to properly blend an out of focus frame with a sharp frame, for example, I fine tune the process first with a flower. If I want to wrap my mind around a new sheet of reflective, prismatic window film that I recently purchased, the ever-patient presence of a flower affords me the space I need to learn it. The one task I give myself when working with flowers as a subject is to try and capture them in a way that surprises myself. I don’t want to limit myself by making sure to retain their natural appearance. It’s this exercise that always leads to discovery.
