Lisa Carcases Photographers

What to do with the rest of a roll of film.

rcarcases — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:09:47 +0000

Short blog post:

Ray shot some images for a recent engagement shoot using B&W film and afterwards asked “what do I do with the rest of the roll?” It sort of brought home the fact the advantages of digital. In film, you’re married to your ISO and whether or not you’re shooting color. In digital, each image can have its own unique ISO settings. Ray would, in the old days, manually rewind the film then store it and reload it when he wanted to use it. But with the F100 we use, it autorewinds. So, I looked at him and said “go out and shoot the rest of it”.

So, Ray embarked on a street shooting trip on the way to the film lab trying to find something interesting. He got some interesting photos and we’ll just publish them a little bit at a time along with some of his thoughts about it. He had fun, and there’s a few lessons we both learned.

Ray was standing in front of the Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables, which has been around for almost 90 years (that is really old in Miami) looking for something. He had been looking at things around the area and heard something and saw a nun scurrying from the church to some nearby church buildings. He said “I set the camera at f8 just so I could react and saw her and had enough time to raise the camera and snap before she scurried away”.

The thing in my mind that makes me wonder is “where was she going?” and “why is she in such a rush?” We’ll never know.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Time to jet.

Lisa

Don’t Stop the Dance – Part 2 (Little Dancers)

rcarcases — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:51:05 +0000

We’ve been doing a lot of dance photography lately. We switched gears from college students to young girls starting out in dance with third annual Creativo Dance Studios end of year portrait session. The subjects are the students who participated in the end of year show held on December 11, 2011. We photographed over 60 girls, aged 4 - 14 and had a busy but fun time. Some of the girls we have seen since we started so it’s been fun seeing them grow up and perform more sophisticated routines.

When photographing these children, I sometimes wonder which ones will move on to other interests and which ones will stick to it and be like the college students that we’ve recently photographed. But, at the same time, they are adorable little kids and I enjoy just watching them perform.

Here are some of our favorite images. Let us know what you think, we appreciate your comments.

Don’t Stop the Dance – Part 1

rcarcases — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:35:51 +0000

We were asked by the Program Director of the Dance department of Miami-Dade College to photograph their December 9, 2011 performance. She had seen the images we photographed during their October performance and asked if we could come back and invited us to their final rehearsal to familiarize ourselves with the routines (normally, we just show up and, as they say in the NFL, “read and react”). We were thrilled to be asked as we support the arts and, IMO, dance doesn’t get as much publicity as other art forms. Also, Ray is a Miami-Dade College alum so he’s happy to give back as an alum. And, it’s a challenge. We decided for this (and other sessions) to rent a D3s to both use it’s low-light capabilities for this shoot and to give it a test drive. We wondered a little bit about whether it was overkill.

Boy, were we wrong about overkill.

It was DARK. Really dark. The performances were choreographed by faculty and the theme was darker in nature and light was scarce. Anyone that is familiar with us knows that we really don’t care about gear or go on much about it, but we can honestly say that there is no way we could have gotten the images we did with a lesser camera. We ended up with a large number of images we were happy with and what we do is post them on Facebook, so that the student performers can see them and to get feedback from them. We really don’t use Facebook for trying to get sales because we think it’s all a lot of hype. Maybe in some markets Facebook is a viable business generation machine but in our market we don’t see it. What was interesting was the sheer amount of comments and reactions we got. It’s always interesting to see what others like about your images.

Here are a few of the images we shot. If you’re interested in seeing additional images, we’ve posted them on our 500px account here: http://lisacarcasesphoto.500px.com/MDC1211#/0 . For now, here are some of our favorites:

We Love Dance

rcarcases — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:50:16 +0000

Last month we took in a dance performance at Miami-Dade College and we shot some images for ourselves. Our good friend and model Kat is a dance major and we always like to support her in her dream and take in some good entertainment. The dance numbers are choreographed by some of the students and they put a lot of time and hard work into their performances. These are young people who have a passion for dance and put their hearts and souls into what they do. The director of dance, Michelle Murray, runs a great program there. She’s a good instructor and a very interesting woman to talk to.

What we normally do is post our favorites on Facebook and give them to our friend Kat. It’s amazing how fast things can go viral with Facebook’s new Share function. All you do is click on the share link and the album is suddenly on your Facebook wall as well. The students really enjoy them and we like to hear the comments not for an ego stroke but just to see which images resonate with the dancers with their perspective. It’s an interesting insight.

Funny story: When reviewing the images, we came upon one that Lisa was adamant about and I was ambivalent of. She insisted we post that image. A couple of years ago, I would have fought her on this but time has taught me that (a) it’s very hard to persuade Lisa to change her mind and (b) she has this tendency to be right. To use an Apple analogy, she’s Steve Jobs and I’m Wozniak. She knows the technical but her true strength is her creativity, her vision, sense of style and personality. So, being a smart husband and partner, I included the image. The dancer loved it but what caught my eye was that a couple of nationally known photographers whose work we really like commented on it. I told Lisa about this and I knew what she was going to say: “See, I told you I liked that image!”. Right again. Here’s the image:

We’ve said it before but we’ll say it again: we love dance. It’s not something we grew up with or have any formal knowledge of, but the grace, strength and timing needed for a great performance is amazing. We never appreciated how hard it was until we started photographing it. We love photographing dance because to us it’s a great photographic workout. We don’t know the routines, don’t attend the rehearsals. We just look at the area and begin to shoot. But there’s a certain flow that dance numbers have….where you can anticipate something interesting photographically is going to happen. I’ve learned to open my left eye and close my right to see the entire stage so I can anticipate how new dancers introduced into a number will interact with dancers already on the stage. We love the colors and drama as well.

Here’s more images. Let us know what you think. Thanks for reading.

Lisa & Ray

Dance Rehearsal

rcarcases — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 03:45:18 +0000

I’ve been wanting to work with film more lately and am interested in using B&W film in high ISO situations vs. shooting digitally and then converting to B&W using Silver Efex Pro. Silver Efex Pro is a great tool, it doesn’t compare to film. It can’t, the latitude of film is superior. So, I asked my friend Daysi Cepeda, owner and head instructor of Creative Dance Studios if I could come by and shoot some images.

I used Ilford HP5 and rated it at 3200 to see how it handled the grain. Processing done by Hot Shots lab (local). I thought that the juxtaposition of these young girls in a gritty and grainy film setting under fluorescent lighting would be a nice juxtaposition.

Check out the images and let us know what you think. Comments are always welcome.

The Second Annual Carcases Family Portrait Session

rcarcases — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:31:34 +0000

We had a quick portrait session of the family in our Halloween costumes for the second year and, by quick, we meant quick. The kids were anxious to get going, we were running late (well, late for the rest of the 49.5 states, still early for Miami) and, just like any other parent, your children will usually be the toughest subjects you ever photograph. But I’m glad we do this because it’s a nice memory to have years from now, especially with all the work that goes into the costumes since there’s quite a bit of “costume customization” involved.

Anyway, let us know what you think and hope you enjoy!

Lisa and Ray

The Color of Freedom is Pink

rcarcases — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 01:30:21 +0000

One of Miami’s attractions is the Freedom Tower. Built in 1925, this building used to house the offices and press of the now-defunct Miami News, but was vacated in 1957. In the early 1960s, due to the influx of Cuban refugees escaping communism, this building was used to process and provide medical and dental services to arriving refugees. This building is now owned by Miami-Dade College via donation and is unopened, but it still is a reminder of an earlier time when Miami was a sleepy town and Cubans were another in a long line of immigrants trying to make it in America. In honor of October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the local govt. agreed to have the tower lit up in pink lights for five days (September 30 – October 4, 2011) in honor of breast cancer awareness.

A great thing about having a photographer wife is that she’s always game for photographing interesting and unique events. Lisa suggested we go and photograph the building on a Sunday night and I thought it was a great idea. Over the past several months, we’ve seen some of our favorite locations either change (removal of train tracks, putting up of fences, repainting of certain walls) or become much more restrictive on being used as a photography location. It’s a shame because this ongoing war on photography that began with the 9/11 attacks is making it harder to shoot outside, even in public places on public land. So, when the opportunity to photograph something unique comes along we’re much more eager to jump on it because things change. You can’t say “oh, we’ll do it next month” because it may not be around next month.

So, Lisa and I spent a Sunday night shooting the Freedom Tower bathed in a dark pink light. It was a lot of fun and an active evening downtown. Here are our favorite images. It may not be much but, in a world where preservationists had to fight tooth and nail to prevent the building of condominiums next to the Tower back in 2005, the Tower may one day simply cease to exist.

Regina and Franco – Film & Digital

rcarcases — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:31:25 +0000

Regina has an exotic look owing to her background: She’s Nicaraguan with an ancestry that includes Chinese, Swedish and English roots. The shoot was scheduled to coincide with a visit by our good friend Gary of GPhotoDesign.com. We both shot with film and digital, the film I used was Portra 160 VC.

I enjoy shooting with Gary because he sees things differently than I do. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different and that’s a good thing. It’s good to get different perspectives from the same location, it challenges you and makes you think a little more. That’s how you grow.

We shot both in a warehouse area and in the Miami Design District. These were my favorite film shots:

The images below were captured digitally. With digital, one of the major advantages over film is the ability to adjust your ISO. This is an obvious but often overlooked ability. With my old Nikon FM with a manual film wind, I could note what frame I was at, wind back the film slowly, put in another roll at another ISO, shoot it, then re-load the old film and reshoot all the previously shot frames with the lens cap on and get back to where I was at. With the F100 and it’s auto-rewind, you’re married to a roll of film until I’ve shot the entire roll. With digital, you have tremendous flexibility in what you want to do.

Yes, we could break out lights (which we did have with us) but unless you have a dedicated lighting assistant and have time, it’s not always the most feasible option. For instance, the first image below was shot by me standing in the middle of the street. I didn’t have the luxury to work with OCF while avoiding being run over.

One thing about each shoot is that there are opportunities where you can do something unplanned that adds to the shoot. Regina brought along Franco and Franco was a hip, cool guy who didn’t try to be cool and hip, he just was himself. So we had him in some of the shoots too and he was great. Often, men don’t want to be “bothered” with photoshoots because it’s “not cool” but he was great and really enjoyed the process. Here’s some of them together:

I was going for this “I love you honey” from her while Franco is acting all “you’re just one of the harem baby”.

Inadvertently, I got some insight into the whole “film vs. digital” argument. In my opinion, they’re both good, it just depends on the situation. I think that saying that one is definitely better than the other is short-sighted. It’s not the gear it’s what you do with it that matters. But not all tools serve all purposes. The important thing is that, regardless of whether you use film, digital or a homemade camera obscura is that you know what the heck you’re doing.

South Beach at Night

rcarcases — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:56:47 +0000

Though this is different from the portrait/event/wedding work we do, Ray shot these long exposure images at South Beach recently and we though we would share them. Not much else to say but enjoy!

We Finally Got That Roll Developed

rcarcases — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:05:12 +0000

After finding the only lab in Miami that does non C-41 film processing, I had an old roll of B&W film developed. Honestly, I forgot what was on it and wasn’t even sure if it would come out decent. Among the images included some street photography I recently did. This reminded me about one truth when shooting film: If you don’t get a roll developed fairly soon, you’ll eventually forget what you shot to begin with. The interesting thing is that, in this time of instant results and gratification, the experience of having an unknown product (when you’re used to it being instant) was different.

I also confirmed one thing: No matter how good the software (and Silver Efex Pro is pretty good) and all things being equal, a film B&W image will always look better than a digitally converted image. Maybe it’s the latitude, the grain, I don’t know. But it has more to it.

As always, let us know if you have any comments and thanks for reading!

Ray