Tag Archive: Photography


Perth Photographer Brodie Butler

A lot of work I’ve been doing lately (and haven’t been able to show) has been composite work. Superimposing portrait images onto alternative backgrounds. It’s something that I enjoy doing because I get to play with Photoshop a bit more and be a little more creative.

This self portrait image above was yet another one of my tests.  This time I was testing out a new post production photoshop technique I am using to do my composite work which involves shooting on a seamless grey background. The technique means I don’t have to do any cutting out of people! Maybe I’ll share it on the blog at a later date.

So my new grey seamless arrived, and I had just set it up in my garage and I needed to test it by capturing a couple of really quick shots. This happened to be one of them, and I have no idea what that pose it meant to be. I never intended to use the photo so I just sat my butt down and looked away from the camera.

After I superimposed myself onto this gritty background, I played around with the whole desaturated, contrasty, grungey look and threw it through a couple of NIK Software filters and it was done. I’m only sharing it because I really like how it turned out.

Anyway, just a fun update. Check out my Terminator basketball Self Portrait I took a couple years ago, which was the result of another simple test. Photoshop works wonders eh!

 

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to Ping.fm

Daniel Lomax Shooting Jennifer Kirk at Brodie Butler Glamour Workshop

Well I’ve finally thawed out enough to write this post after a rather cold ending to our outdoor workshop yesterday. The workshop was excellent, it just got really really cold as soon as the sun set. The winds certainly didn’t help the cause. We were on the beach by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed from the photo above of Daniel Lomax taking a snap of our model Jen. I’m very happy with how the workshop went, the students got some amazing photos and I tell you what, I’m even jealous of a few of them. Well done all, it was great meeting you and I hope you took a lot away from the workshop to help improve your pictures.

2011 Ocean One Calendar Girl & 2011 Zoom TV Calendar Girl Jennifer Kirk was our beautiful model for the afternoon. Jen did an excellent job especially having to put up with the cold weather in the least amount of clothing of anyone there. Well done Jen and thank you for coming, I think you will be very happy with a few of the photos the guys took!

Also a massive thank you as always to my trusty assistants Karl Pearce and Jay Wells. This kind of thing just isn’t possible without you guys so thank you.

Jennifer Kirt at the Brodie Butler Glamour Photography WorkshopAfter the workshop, Jen & I decided to do a mini photoshoot of our own, experimenting with some coloured gels and I invited the workshop students to stick around and watch in the hope they might learn a little something extra. “Watch” for a photographer I guess now means standing with a camera to your face and snapping pictures away non-stop, so thats what they did. Might be good to see a Behind the Scenes shot but I’m pretty sure they weren’t pointing their camera anywhere near me! I don’t blame them.

To the left is a shot straight out of the camera that I took from our little after-shoot. I setup my Elincrom Ranger RX pack with just one light. That light had the 53″ Octabox attached to it for nice soft light which will make our model Jen look much more flattering.  I placed it to the right of camera a few feet out of frame. Then some handy reflector work from my assistant Karl who was just out of frame on the left, helped fill in some of the shadows on the left hand side of Jen. For the gels in the background I used a couple of Canon Speedlights. I used the Lumiquest FXtra gel holders and picked out a couple nice colours from the Rosco strobist gel kit. I had a little difficulting deciding on a colour but I actually quite like the result.

I switched to using the Yongnuo RF-602 wireless triggers for this shot because I like being able to slide the speedlights straight into the hot-shoe on the receiving triggers. And also because I didn’t have enough pocket wizards handy on the day. So there you have it! That was my bit of fun for the day.

Here’s a couple of snaps I managed to take behind the scenes at the workshop.

Behind The Scenes at BrodieButler.com Glamour Photography Workshop Behind The Scenes at BrodieButler.com Glamour Photography Workshop

Behind The Scenes at BrodieButler.com Glamour Photography Workshop Behind The Scenes at BrodieButler.com Glamour Photography Workshop

Behind The Scenes at BrodieButler.com Glamour Photography Workshop

Brodie Butler Glamour Photography Workshop Group

Brodie Butler Glamour Photography Workshop Group

Look forward to seeing more pictures from you all!

B.

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to Ping.fm

Photoshop World Las Vegas 2010

What a huge first day, and it isn’t even over yet! The training has finished for the day but there are still some activities to take part in. Personally, I am going to be attending the After Party @ the House of Blues located in the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino which is also where I’m staying.  Before we get to that though, you can probably notice from the photo above there was a KISS theme for the opening keynote and it was hilarious. The entire keynote presentation was really well done and it was good to hear from some Adobe head-honchos.

Calvin Hollywood InstructingAttended some really good classes including Calvin Hollywood and Russell Brown’s presentation where I was also napping a few Behind The Scenes pictures for Calvin. The classroom was packed out which was great! I took a bunch of pictures which I will post probably tomorrow in another blog post.

So the after party looks to be a very interesting night with some food and drink provided and a chance to meet a few more people from this great event. I’ll check back in and finish this post when I get back…

…. few hours go by…. then a few more ….

Well I was going to finish this post off once I returned from the after party to wrap up day one, however things didn’t quite go to plan. I just got back to my hotel room and its 6:30am the following day, but what a night! I guess that’s the effect of Vegas for you! So with my travel buddy Natalie, and Calvin Hollywood we attended the after party as planned and it was great! The food was actually pretty tasty and we were able to get a few free drinks!  Plus Scott Kelby and the gang put on a fun performance with their band that rocked the house. It was really interesting to meet a few more people such as the great Wacoom staff, which by the way sold me on a new Wacom Intuos4 tablet. Met some other great folks including a young budding photographer Jake Peterson (yes, son of legendary wildlife photographer; Moose) and Im really enjoying some of his aviation photography work, check out his blog here. Also had a nice chat with photoshop guru Matt Kloskowski and I met Nick Saglimbeni from Slickforce Studios too.  So after the after party, lets just say things started getting a little bit messy and i’ll leave it at that. Now when is the best time to gamble? When you’re completely intoxicated of course! So a couple of us were off to the Luxor poker tables to have a bit of a gamble. Against all odds and what you might think, it actually turned out to be a good idea! I doubled up on my money!

More from me in the coming days direct from Photoshop World in Las vegas.

B.

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to Ping.fm

Glamour Photography Workshop with Brodie ButlerWell here it is! After receiving a few emails from people the past few months asking me if I would be doing any workshops for photographers, I decided to actually do one. It’s going to be heaps of fun and there’s going to be some great images created I can feel it!

Read the full article for a full Q&A on the workshop.

View Full Article »

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to Ping.fm

Happy New Year

Like everyone else, I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope the year ahead is a successful one for you all. 2009 finished up fairly quiet for me, at least it would seem that way to the outside world. Under the covers I have been working away like mad trying to tie up all the loose ends so I can have a clean slate to start from in 2010. Not only that but I’ve been extremely busy teaching myself new tricks especially in the post production and retouching arena’s, so I can offer more to my clients and achieve better end results. For anyone out there who wants to learn photoshop or is interested in expanding their knowledge and learning from the best, I would highly recommend joining me over at NAPP (National Association for Photoshop Professionals)Scott Kelby, who you may know of as a well known photographer himself, has done an amazing job at putting together this excellent learning resource so at least get over there and check it out.  I’ve also been reading some excellent books and I’m currently half way through Joe McNally’s “The Hot Shoe Diaries” which is so far an amazing read.

View Full Article »

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to Ping.fm

Brodie Butler Photography - Sharing The Passion © 2010