The DecisiveDesign Blog

I know it’s been a while, again… and honestly, while I haven’t been doing a bunch of shooting, I have several things I need to post up – I just haven’t had time while finishing up my degree this summer.

But! I finished this last week and have a few pictures to share of Jess, a great model I met through ModelMayhem. I setup my new black/white backdrop & stand in the garage, borrowed a lighting kit from the school, and we shot for most of a Saturday.

The pics in the gallery below are a sampling, and I think we turned out some cool stuff! I definitely liked the black background and got to spend some time with constant lighting, which is good. My paintball gun and vest, along with my Springfield XD-9 made very cool props! We did some artistic nudes, as well, which I’ve decided should stay on my ModelMayhem profile. They turned out well, and portfolio-worthy, I think, so I’ll chalk that up as another first and a success!

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

 

Ok guys! I know it’s been a little slow lately, but I took a week off for the US MotoGP Races (pics coming soon!) at the Mazda Raceway – Laguna Seca in Monterey, CA, and am now recharged and back in Texas to get rolling again.

These pics have been a long time coming, but I really like how they turned out. If you recall the DFW Supras Dragstrip Event that I posted some pictures about a while back, these pics are from the Dyno Day at MVP Motorsports.

Unfortunately the weather was terrible, and we ended up getting rained on all day. Mel, the owner’s girlfriend, and Yoshi, stopping by on her way to Dallas from Oklahoma, graced us with their beauty for a few shots when the weather wasn’t being ridiculous and we were able to get some pretty good shots.

The black Supra is Mel’s, and I’m not 100% finished adding the MVP logo, etc to the car, but I thought the images were ready for the blog and I really need to update, so enjoy!

Also, please forgive the sort order, for some reason it’s not saving my changes!

 

I wasn’t 100% sure what to think when I received an e-mail from Xoe saying that she liked my work and wanted me to photograph her while she was seven months pregnant. Luckily we were having some fantastic weather that week and Halford Park, the same place I photographed Melissa, hosted us perfectly.

I enjoyed the shoot, Xoe was great, and it wasn’t weird at all. I actually had fun capturing the natural beauty of the pregnant form and think we got some really great shots.

Check them out and let me know what you think.

 

So it has been a while since I posted – I can explain!

You see, there were finals (projects, exams, procrastination, etc etc…), then there’s DallasBarReview (COMING SOON!), and my experiments with Social & Emerging Media… and of course the ever present attempt at becoming a professional photographer. There just hasn’t been time for an update!

That being said… I’ve got a pretty sweet list of articles/posts/galleries that will be going up in the next few weeks:

• UTDallas Portraits (You won’t see these, but dangit, they consume time!) – Editing Stages
• DFW Supras May Meet Track Day @ Eagles Canyon Raceway (ECR) – Editing Stages
• Xoe’s Pregnancy Shoot @ Halford Park – Editing Stages (almost done)
• DFW Supras May Meet Dyno Day, featuring Mel & Yoshi on sexy cars! – Editing Stages
• DFW Supras May Meet Drag Day @ Dallas Raceway – Editing Stages
• Maggie Mae in a playful, fun, sexy shoot – Tentatively Schedules for later this week
• Lone Star Jeep Club (LSJC) run @ BMRA – This coming weekend

This blog will likely be migrating towards more of a “hey, look what Jason is doing” theme, since there are a lot of projects going on at the moment, so I hope any of those that might be coming back for more will enjoy a look into those endeavors with me.

Peace, for now…

It’s been tough to organize shoots as of late, with school, work, and some freelance stuff breathing down my neck, but I did manage to get out and accomplish one of the shoots i’ve been wanting to do since I stumbled across the location a few months ago.  If you recall, I found this beautiful old car pretty deep in a local park. It struck me, and from that moment I wanted to do do a shoot with a classy model in that unconventional environment.

I was fortunate enough to work with a great model. Melissa was communicative, punctual, fun to be around, and of course beautiful. We also brought out a new friend of mine, and makeup artist, Alison, to add a little extra beautification, which turned out fantastic. Alison’s husband, John, helped me out with the reflector since Mr. Hawes couldn’t make it out, so it was practically a full on production!

As you’ll see in the gallery below, the place has grown up quite a bit, so we actually had a hard time finding it again.  That was fine by me, however, because we didn’t have to worry about anyone bothering us! It was a very fun shoot; hopefully we can get together with everyone in the future and do something else – something even crazier!

 

• Yeah – you’re going to need that reflector… the big one… and pray for sunlight through those trees.
• Also… if you haven’t visited the location in a month or so… its probably grown up a bit, especially if the seasons have changed!
• You know better than this, but add at least 3 different outfits if shooting in similar locations to diversify the shoot – otherwise you’ve got a lot of images with the same clothing and you don’t really want to use more than a couple in a portfolio or profile, unfortunately

A lot of the images of people we see in magazines, online, or on television are, to a trained eye, severely altered. They are often so manipulated that you might barely recognize the original subject. Many people have ethical or moral issues with this, claiming that it sets an unachievable standard for [mostly] young men and women who don’t have the sense to live their lives without idolizing false beauty [see: Sex, Lies, and Photoshop], but I challenge it on the basis that the art of photography is tainted when many photographs are modified to this degree.

Downsizing a model or airbrushing skin tones to the point of unrealism kills it for me. When I edit photos, I generally touchup lighting issues, smooth or remove major skin blemishes, bruises, etc, and thats about it. You can still tell that it is a real person, instead of a doll, and it’s still a photograph. In the end, though, there is always a client… and that’s who determines the end product. I just wanted to put that out there, and hopefully, as someone getting into the game, I won’t have to take that route just to make it in the industry. Here’s to the people that appreciate natural beauty.