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Dana Hursey Photography Blog

Dana Hursey Photography Blog
Los Angeles Photographer Dana Hursey shares what litlle he knows on his blog

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Epson Print Drivers & Leopard
2007-11-12 23:16:00
So upgrades on all of the computers have gone, for the most part smoothly. But as with any new operating system, software will always be playing "catch-up". And so much of the time you never know what will and won't work until it does or doesn't! Today we found out that Epson Print drivers are only minimally functional on OS X Leopard . On their web site they indicate that they should have fully functional drivers available for many of the printers in December. Although we are able to print, all of the customizing functionality in the Print Dialog boxes are not available. Ooops. So any high end printing that we might have done over the next few weeks has been put on hold.
More About: Drivers

OS X Leopard
2007-11-09 20:00:00
We have been cautiously installing Mac OS X Leopard on all of our systems. We have heard a few horror stories about peoples systems being trashed by the installation, but as of yet we have had nothing but success. We have done 3 of our 5 systems. Two of them have had 100% success and we love the OS. On our "shooting" laptop the installation showed that the new OS is not fully compatible with some of the software out there and that updates are necessary for some applications. With Phase One Capture One Pro, it proved incompatible. For us Capture One has been on it's way out for a while. This may have sealed the deal. On a shoot this week we relied on the Canon EOS Capture software (which does function with the new OS) and Lightroom to accomplish the shoot. Capture One is coming out with a new version but there is no tethered capabilities at this point so for us... why bother? We are awaiting the new software called Phocus from Hasselblad which will be our capture software for ...

Tripod Too
2007-11-08 19:03:00
So in addition to the new Tripod Head that we purchased we also picked up a new Tripod. Our trusty Gitzo that we have had since 1988 has served us well an frankly is still a perfectly good tripod (eBay - here it comes) but it was time to upgrade, for one main reason. Our old tripod is a tank. As in "Very Sturdy", but it weighs as much as one as well. And frankly we carry around so much gear that any way we can lighten the load we are going to take advantage of! So when we picked up the new Tripod Head we also got a Gitzo GT3540XLS which is code for a Carbon Fiber Tripod. It is a bit longer than our old one but a bit smaller in circumference. But the biggest difference is weight! The new tripod is SO MUCH LIGHTER! It also has new locking mechanisms on the legs which makes it easier to extend the legs. And last but not least it extends much higher then the old one.

Staying Focused
2007-11-07 18:43:00
We have been doing film and video projects off and on over the past 10 or 12 years. Our second company "Portico Productions" specializing in this work has had it's ebbs and flows. But the past few years despite our love for occasionally working on a good film / video project, our attentions have been pull almost exclusively to the still work (my first true love). We haven't really ever pushed or "sold" our film work, it has just kind of fallen in our lap. With technology the way it is these days, keeping up with new hardware / software requirements is a monumental task in any field. Till now we have been dealing with it on two fronts, Film & Photography! The few die-hard clients that we've had the past couple of years have really only served to pay for the constant upgrades that are necessary to stay current in the field. Consequently, last week we decided to officially phase out our Film/Video services. With the past few projects this division has started to show up as more...

Web Site Additions
2007-11-07 02:48:00
We have made a few changes to the web site this week. The main one is the addition of "Conceptual 2" to the Portfolio Pages. This new section mostly contains imagery from our latest round of photography for Deutsch & UnitedHealthcare. We shot over 45 different set-ups in this latest round so there was plenty to share. Check it out by clinking on the "dhp - home page" link to the right and then click on "Portfolio". We also cleaned up a bit of the programming. The Portfolio pages take a touch longer to fully load but once they do, clicking through the images is MUCH faster!
More About: Site , Web site

UnitedHealthcare Shoot.. Cont....
2007-11-06 03:01:00
Here is the other shot I was referring to in Last Friday's Post. This was another fun image but needed much post-production as well. We have included the three base images we used to build the final. There were additional elements used but the majority are from these three images. We could not actually shoot the swimmer in place and use that as the final as he was WAY TOO SMALL relative to the size of the pool. So we needed to shoot him as a separate element and drop him in much larger than he would normally be. Final Composite Elements
More About: Shoot , Heal , Unit

Another UHC Image
2007-11-02 22:00:00
We thought we would share a "before & after" image from the recent UHC shoot we did. This one was fun to do. But there was a lot of post production. We shot this from a "cherry picker" poised high above the tennis court and just shot a bunch of images of the two players going at it. This and one other shot (we'll share that one on Monday) called for a UnitedHealthcare Membership Card to be incorporated into the scene. We shot an oversized mock UHC Card later in studio and then melded the two together in post as well as adding a better sky and cleaning up and simplifying the court. Here are the Before and After
More About: Image

Skin Exhibition
2007-11-02 01:33:00
In and amongst the chaos of the last month or so we actually had the opening of our Exhibit ion of "Skin " at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music for the 2007 Pasadena Art & Ideas Festival. It was a wonderful evening where we were able to share the collaborative work that we did with the Conservatory and it's instructors and students. The images were quite well received and the evening was a pleasant break from the craziness of the production we were in the midst of. A few of the images were sold and limited edition prints are available through the Conservatory with half of the proceeds going directly to the Conservatory. The 16"x24"prints were hung in floating clear frames in the freshly renovated main hall. And we all enjoyed a little champagne and hors douvres. If you would like to check out the 12 images that were hung for the show take a look at the gallery on our web site.

Tripod Heads...
2007-11-01 02:32:00
I have never been 100% happy with a tripod head... until now. For most of my career I have used a tilt/pan head.. and it has always served it's purpose, but minor adjustments were always a bit tedious. About a year ago, I got a ball head for the studio stand. Some colleagues just rave about ball heads, but I never thought I would like them. And although it is very robust, I was right.. I don't like them... My problem with them is that if your tilt just right but need to adjust your vertical/horizontal you always end up throwing your perfect tilt off by trying to fix the v/h! (or vice-versa) Although I have barely had a chance to use it I just purchased the Manfrotto 405 Geared Head. I know I am going to LOVE this head! It is compact in that it does not have long arms sticking off of it, but it is a tilt / pan head with two types of adjustments for each movement. One for broad/rough adjustments and another for fine adjustments. And the fact that it is geared (unless disengaged fo...
More About: Heads

New Hasselblad Equipment
2007-10-31 00:59:00
Well after some product research and a demo for the Hass elblad rep we finally felt it was the right time to get the latest high-end medium format camera. So about 4 weeks ago we got the Hasselblad H3D II. It's a 39 megapixel camera with some amazing glass! It came with an 80mm (normal) lens, but in addition we picked up the 28mm, the 120 macro, and the 50-110 zoom as well as the pro shade, some extra batteries, and a new tripod and head. I tell you, we could make a lot more money if we did not have to keep investing in all of this expensive equipment! With wrapping up some projects and printing new portfolios and promos we have not even had a chance to shoot a single frame on the system but we'll definitely share our thoughts with you once we start!
More About: Equipment

We up and did it!
2007-10-30 02:26:00
About two weeks ago, just towards the end of our UHC project we bit the bullet! We purchased the brand new Hasselblad H3D II. This camera was just release and we very well may have been the first studio in Los Angeles to have one! Check out the camera web site and we'll tell you a bit more about in the next couple of days! (Yikes!!)

More to Come
2007-10-13 08:46:00
Well we'll be working through the weekend on retouching and compositing. I was hoping we could get another interesting image up today but they are all still "in process". So check back in next week and we'll have something new to look at. We also have a bunch of other news but need time to pull it all together. So have a good weekend and we'll be back on Monday!

Working Late
2007-10-11 08:59:00
Well I do my best to try and get a post in everyday, but the clock just struck midnight and so this post counts as Thursday instead of Wednesday. So... no double duty for me I am going to accept the fact that I missed Wednesday and here is my Thursday post. Obviously we are working late. Retouching the UHC images, trying to get them out as quickly as possible (the client is very anxious to get them). Here is one of the ones we delivered earlier today. This was shot on stage with a set wall. We could have just as easily shot this in a home, but we had two other sets running at the same time on the day of this shoot and consequently is was less expensive to build exactly what the client wanted rather than trying to "make a house work".
More About: Late , Working , Workin

Okay, This took way too much time...
2007-10-10 05:34:00
Here is another shot from the UHC campaign. We are delivering this shot to the client with the signs blank. But to illustrate the concept we inserted some graphics so that you could get the point of the shot... alas, way too much time spent on little details!
More About: Time

Game Over!... Well Almost
2007-10-09 02:55:00
So last Friday we finished shooting the UnitedHealthcare Campaign that we have been working on for over a month. Tomorrow we will make selects and then the retouching and compositing begins. That will take another two weeks. We did over 40 different set-ups and many of them are going to require a bit of post production work. We'll share a few of the images with you over the next few weeks as we finish them up. Maybe show some before and afters and pieces that get put into final images. So to start things off here is one of the images (before post-production)
More About: Game , Well

We're still kickin'!
2007-10-04 05:36:00
We're hoping to get back on a daily posting schedule next week. We are in the thick of a huge UnitedHealthcare campaign and we finish up shooting on Friday. We have a couple of weeks of retouching to do once we are done, but at least we'll be back in the office and can take the occasional moment to get in a post. Lots going on here both with the campaign and otherwise, so we'll have lots to fill you in on when we return! Talk to you in a few days!

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