What the F-stop & 3 Most Asked Photo Questions

(I love this picture...I love my friend Jordan blowing bubbles, and Okie, a master lighting guy, that works on huge music videos and shoots- holding  a Hello Kitty bubble blower! And how you couldn't see my checkered vans in any of the final photos- these are from the shoot that I use in almost all the intro's of my videos.)
I have a friend who takes amazing photographs.
His name is Ian Ruhter.
He has shot countless covers of snowboard magazine, his work has been displayed on billboards and in ads seen all over the world.
I've done make-up for him on shoots for Vans (shoes) and for Four Square.
He's taken some of my favorite pictures...

Ian travels all over the world, from Japan to New Zealand, for shoots.
Sometimes his shoots are so crazy it doesn't seem real....

I asked him some things about photography since I have no clue, other than i love it. I thought I'd share his "top 3 most asked photography questions" with you.


1. What kind of camera should I buy?
I always suggest using one that's very easy to use.  At the end of the day, the camera doesn't take the picture, you do. (Ian suggested I get a simple camera like the Canon Rebel to use for my blogs...Might be a little better than my "iphone photography"...ha ha ha)

2. What is the best way to create a beautiful image?
The technical aspects of taking a picture isn't as important as you shooting from your heart. When they emotions are conveyed through the photograph, that's what makes it great.


3. What is the best lighting for photographs?
I like taking photos in the morning or at evening when the light is soft and warm.

And what the f-stop he's doing that no one's ever done before- he's so futuristic he had to go back in time!  This is Ian and his a little somethin' somethin' on why he's making photographic history and what photography is missing these days:

When I started as a photographer, I was shooting film and enjoying making images with my hands. However, as my career and technology progressed my process switched to digital and somehow I ended up spending all of my time in front of a computer editing code rather than capturing life. Photography, which had started as a form of art for me had evolved into something else, something less personal and true, something
vapid and much less inspiring, and therefore less fulfilling.
This all changed when I began working with a process that would take my art and my life in a new direction. Over the past 18 months I have been working with a nineteenth century process called wet plate collodion.This is one of the earliest forms of photography and it produces some of the truest images I have ever captured.This process has transformed my life and reinvigorated my passion for photography.

 

(Ian, looking like a "creative mad scientist" on his wet plates)

Using wet plate collodion, my hand literally touches and oversees every step of the process. Each unique plate is a positive image captured in wet emulsion on a piece of metal or glass. I am now able to produce unique works of art, impossible to replicate, that express my true artistic vision and capture so eloquently the essence of my subjects.

The first photographer to suspend a subject in mid air was Eadweard Muybridge, and he did this using wet plate collodion. His famous images captured a horse galloping 40 feet per second, thus changing the way we see and understand the world forever.

Capturing an image through this process is extremely difficult as it requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about 15 minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. For these reasons it has mostly been confined to landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable. With my background shooting action sports it was inevitable that I would try to bring wet plate and action together. As I researched further however, I realized it had not been done since 1878. So, in the months leading up to the shoot presented here, I worked tirelessly experimenting with artificial light and the collodion chemistry. I never thought these experiments would lead to me doing something that had never been done before. In the process of losing my way I ended up back at the beginning not only of my career but photography. I was not aware at the time but everything I love about photography I
rediscovered through the use of wet plate collodion.

You can meet Ian and see his project that will traveling the country- if you're in San Francisco this Saturday, go check out his gallery show and party at:
111 Minna Gallery, Dec 17th 9pm
PEEP THE DETAILS AND HIS FACEBOOK  HERE.

Go say hi, and ladies, if you're single, so is he. ha ha ha He's gonna call me and make me delete this probably. Come on Ian, I'm just being a good friend and ladies love artsy guys! hee hee

huge hugs and let's make "what the f-stop" our new phrase instead of a cuss word, your kandee

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