Peter Belanger

 

 

The iPad is gracing the cover of the new Macworld magazine. I’m excited about the new cover layout. This is one of the first times that the product hasn’t been in the bottom right area of the layout. In fact, the photo is so big that it even covers the Macworld name. I can only imagine the meetings about that! It seems fitting to have the screen of the iPad represent the cover, seeing how the iPad is going to be such a great device for viewing magazines.

The cover was photographed in 3 parts. First, the hands where photographed while holding an iPad—but with lighting for the hands only. Then I photographed a straight-on view of the iPad with no hands, which enabled me to have more control over the product lighting. Shooting the hands separately also gave me the flexibility to move them around to fit the layout. The third shot was the 3/4 view of the iPad on the table. The gradated background on which the iPad sits was created in post production.

The accompanying article also has some images of the iPad in different environments. We were on a really tight deadline for the project, so I didn’t take as many behind-the-scenes photos as I would have liked. The environment photos were taken in my studio with hand model, Stacey Lee. Stacey had jury duty so we had one day to pull everything together and photograph it. At one point we weren’t happy with the chair in the photo and we didn’t have time to get a new one, so we drove over to my house and quickly grabbed one of my living room chairs. 

See my previous post for more photos. http://www.peterbelanger.com/posts/65-weekly-photos-april-1

The digital version is out now via Zinio.com and should be on newsstands shortly.

I have fond memories of visiting my parents at work. They may have seen their offices as unexceptional, but I thought they were a wonderland. Their everyday office tools were fantastic objects that held much intrigue for me. So many different types of pens, paper, copy machines, snacks, and my favorite—the staple remover. 

Now that I’m a dad, my own kids visit me at work. My studio may not be a traditional office, but it is my place of business. What I view as everyday tools, they see as amazing playthings. Wooden apple boxes become large legos, stands become rocket ships, carts are cars, large backdrop tubes are matchbox raceways. They even have a contest to see who can make the postage scale read the highest. Seeing my studio through their eyes is incredibly refreshing and exciting.

 

 

 

I’m obsessed with camera apps on the iPhone. I love running a photo through different apps and seeing how different they can become. No one camera app works for me. I need several in order to find the one that will work best for that situation. Here’s a list of the top ten camera apps that I keep coming back to.

Here’s the original unaltered photo from the iPhone.

 

 

Hipstamatic
I use Hipstamatic all the time, it’s my number one camera app. I love the very original images it produces. Great borders, color and contrast….what else can I say, I love it.
On the other hand, I do wish I was able to import a photo previously taken.

 

ShakeitPhoto
What makes this camera app great is it’s lack of options, point and shoot at it’s best. When I need a great looking photo fast I use this app.  Another nice thing is that you can shoot an image with the app and it also saves an original version of that image in your library.

 

TiltShift Generator 
When I don’t want to drag my 4X5 around, I’ll use this app to produce a similar selective focus effect. The interface on this app is really well done and a pleasure to use.

 

lo-mob
I love the selection of retro film border in this app. The newest version now lets you turn on borders and effects. This is great when you want to use an photo processed in another program and use a border from lo-mob.

 

TrueHDR
HDR is always fun to play with. TrueHDR does a great job alining the photos and keeping the detail.

 

PictureShow
What makes this app unique is you can add type to your photos. It’s like sending someone a postcard. The interface is nice and simple to use. It has standard pretest like Lomo and some unique ones like multi exposures.

 

SwankoLab
This app is made by the creators of Hipstamatic. There are endless possibilities for effects, which is why I’m glad you can import a photo. I take a photo with the iPhone camera app then bring my pick into SwankoLabs for processing. Unlike Hipstamatic I can try out different effects on the same photo until I find one I like.

 

CameraBag
This is another simple and fast camera app. The options are simple, straight forward and render nice results. They also make a desktop app for the Mac which is fun to use.

 

Pano 
Panoramic images are awesome and this app is great at stitching everything together. It works best with things at a distance. You can see in the photo below that the car in the foreground didn’t stitch together well.

 

QuadCamera
When just one photo won’t tell the store I use this app. The downside is even when the capture rate is set to slow, it’s still a little too fast for me. I need more time to think about the next photo.

Here are some more photos from my “Weekly photos” series.
You can read more about the series here. http://www.peterbelanger.com/posts/45-weekly-photos

 

 

 

 

 

We just posted a new portfolio update on our website. Since we like to keep the images fresh and update them often, it is important for our sanity to have a well-organized system.

Aperture is a key part of our workflow. The portfolio, for both print and web, goes through many changes and iterations. Aperture helps visualize how the photos will be arranged for both the online and printed versions. 

The first step is to use the “Light Table” feature in Aperture to organize the photos. Light Table allows you to freely drag, drop, crop and re-arrange photos on a gridded table.

 

 

Once the order is finalized, we utilize another feature of Aperture and create a “Book” with these images.  Book allows us to customize the print size and number of pages. This book is then named with today’s date and becomes our current portfolio live on our website or printed book. As we make edits and additions to the portfolio in the future, we always have the previous versions saved in Aperture which we can reference. 

 

 

When a printed portfolio is sent to a client the book’s name is added to the client’s name in our contact database. This allows us to track which portfolios a client has seen. We can also go back in Aperture to view all previous versions of the portfolio as needed. It is an easy way to keep a potentially chaotic situation quite manageable.

 

The Dwell Smokin’ Pots spread is printed and on newsstands in this month’s issue. I’m really happy with how things turned out and as always the dwell team was awesome. You can read about how the photo was created here.

You can also read the article on Dwell’s website.

 

The Macworld GPS photo is printed and on newsstands in this month’s issue. You can read about how the photo was created here.

Spotted a new version of the HP ad that I shot (with hand model Stacy Lee) in the Cinequest Film Fesitival magazine. See the original here.

 

Here are some more photos from my “Weekly photos” series.

You can read more about the series here. http://www.peterbelanger.com/posts/45-weekly-photos

I’m working on the opening photo for a Macworld article about iPhone GPS software. Unlike last month’s red carpet shot, we didn’t start with a sketch. This time we discussed in length what they were looking for. The concept is to show an iPhone mounted on the front windshield of a car. We started by contacting Mercedes-Benz of San Francisco to see if they would let us photograph one of their cars. They were extremely helpful and gracious. The only stipulation was we couldn’t drive it or take it off the lot—which wasn’t a problem since we were planning to composite the street view later. We were even lucky enough to have a break in all the rainy weather so we could shoot outside.

 

 

 

To photograph the view out the car window I rented some suction cups and mounted a camera to the hood of my car. We scouted possible locations by previewing the street view in Google Maps. The camera was tethered to my MacBook Pro, which I was manning from the passenger seat. I used the Canon capture utility to adjust exposure remotely and take the photos. Then I used Adobe Bridge to view the images after they were taken.