[danquinonesphoto]

Hey guys!  So last week I had the opportunity to pretend I was a tour guide.  My friend Katrina planned a week long trip to fly out here to California to come visit and explore this beautiful state.  With that being said, I attempted to bring her as many places as I possibly could within the time frame, without completely wearing both of us out.  She flew into LAX, (that was a disaster in itself) and then we stayed in Santa Barbara for a night.  The next day we drove up to Sonoma County, went to my family's deer camp, drove out to Bodega Bay, and stopped at Armstrong Woods.  Along the way I made sure to grab a least a few fun images of this beautiful girl while I had her with me...and here they are.  I hope you enjoy!

[danquinonesphoto]

Hey all!

I am excited to share my latest conceptual portrait series called, "West".  This shoot is featuring my good buddy and fellow image creator, Maxwell Frank.  I spent a few days during the previous week scouting locations way out in the back country of Santa Barbara and definitely found "the one" that I wanted to shoot at.  Unfortunately, on the day we decided to haul all of our equipment out there (about a 2 hr drive) the gate we needed to get through was closed due to weather.  I'm sure you can just imagine how frustrated I was, but I had to rid of that sour attitude and focus in order to make the best of the situation at hand.  With that being said, we turned around and visited a different spot that I have also scouted in the past.  This location was probably just as good, but deep down I can't wait to return to my back country spots.  I guess I will have to create another character to tell a story about so I can use them.  Thanks for looking!

[danquinonesphoto]

Hello!  Today I'd like to share a few more images I created while in Venice.  As I had mentioned before, this has been by far the most photogenic town I have visited so far in my life.  I wish I could have spent at least three more days here to explore the city a little more in depth, but I'd like to close out my Venice series with these last five images.  Next up later in the week will be some images from farther down the country.  Thanks for viewing! 

[danquinonesphoto]

This was a pretty ridiculous day...My good buddy, Max and myself took a drive in the new truck up to West Camino Cielo and spent the afternoon in the mountains.  On the way we stopped by Big 5 and got ourselves a couple wrist rockets and took them with us to one of the little shooting ranges there.  While we were there the sun was just beginning to set and the light was out of control.  Luckily I brought my camera so I was able to create a few images of our afternoon.  I must say, it was pretty fun pretending to be a kid again and re-living my childhood.  Next time you're bored...go buy slingshots and drive to the mountains and stop complaining.  Be outside!

[danquinonesphoto]

Here are six more images from my family's trip to Italy.  This is the day we spent in Venice.  Venice was so photogenic, I took a ridiculous amount of images.  With that being said, next Monday I will be sharing another set of five or so which will also be from Venice.  The narrow walkways and scenic bridges provided me with excellent subject matter to photograph.  This place was just oozing with Italian culture.  Hope you enjoy the first set!

[danquinonesphoto]

Today I have decided to re-visit some older archived images I took throughout my trip to Italy.  Now that school is all finished up, I have found a little bit of extra time to begin my journey through the images.  There are thousands!  I feel like this will take me forever, but each time I open up a folder I get to re-live the days back there that I spent with my family.  Here is the first set that I am sharing from the trip.  The house in the first image was the house we started our adventures in.  It is located in a small village called Baio Dora.  The following images were taken during our drive to Cervinia which is a small little ski town at the base of the Matterhorn that shares the border with Switzerland.  Check back for more photos from the trip in the near future and I hope you enjoy! 

[danquinonesphoto]

Hey all!

It feels nice to be back creating images again after my much needed break following the Brooks Institute graduation.  So many life changing events have happened from the day I graduated up to this point.  My family and I left to Mexico for a week long inclusive vacation in Los Cabos.  There we drank, we fished, rode jetskis and met some amazing people.  Once we arrived back in the states, I purchased my brand new truck (probably the scariest decision I have ever made).  And lastly, my grandparents hauled the last of their belongings from my childhood home over to New Mexico where they will continue their retired life.  What a whirlwind.

With that being said, a few of my close friends and I decided to take a day trip up to the Deer Camp to shoot some guns, unwind, and most importantly…test out my new truck!  Needless to say, we had a blast.  The first image is of the cabin that Tony (the taller guy with the brown sweater in the second photo) and I grew up going to throughout our childhood with our families.  This is a very special place to us and everyone else that grew up here, so we love making semi-frequent day trips and sharing it with our closest friends that weren’t able to cherish a place like this growing up.  We cant wait until the next one!  

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the release of , “The Mountain Man: Series 2” portrait and story series.

[danquinonesphoto]

Alrighty, so here is my second CGI image for my Dodge Ram Mock-Campaign.  This one has been my biggest challenge yet when it comes to CGI, but at the same time I am the most happy with this outcome so far.  Below are the post production steps that I took in order to create this image...very similar to the first image of the Dodge Ram CGI series that I posted a few weeks ago.  (steps for shooting all images can be seen at above link)  

Very Top Image- The image at the very top is my completed and final version.

Image 2- This is the back plate image that I started with.  This background was an image that I took at my family's Deer Camp in Northern California...the same location that I used to create The Mountain Man Portrait series that I released months ago...PS.  Stay tuned for The Mountain Man 2 portrait series coming out in January!

Image 3- Here, I desaturated the background of the back plate while keeping more color information up front in the foreground.  This helps direct the viewers eye to where the most important subject matter is.  I also brought back a little bit more blue in the right corner of the sky planning to use that to contrast against the orange flare that I put in later on the left side of the image. 

Image 4- This is the image as it stands when I first placed the truck in the environment.  Looks pretty bad...ya...

Image 5- At this point, I begin to add some key elements that are essential to "Glue" the truck to the back plate such as darkening the tires, adding a "Contact Shadow" where the truck meets the ground, and also putting a subtle blur from the windshield to the back of the image to mimic a somewhat shallow depth of field bringing the focus of the viewer to the front of the image once again.

Image 6- This is my the beginning of my favorite part of the image construction.  I have a deep love for a warmly backlit image. As you can see, it was a very overcast day with little to no sunlight to give me any sort of a back light...so I decided to create it.  I did this with masking a curve adjustment in the sky which made the right side of the sky darker and blue and the left side of the brighter and orange to mimic a real sunset.  I then selected a large soft orange brush and clicked over the area I wanted the flare.  (Same technique for headlights) To make this more believable, I went back and added some orange to the hillsides in the background that would be facing the sun, and blue to the sides of the hills that would be shaded if this scenario were actually happening.  This is also where I created the long shadow on the ground.  Something I kept in mind while doing this was, the lower the sun is in the sky, then the longer and softer the shadows are that objects create...so I created a long soft shadow on the ground once again to help "Glue" the truck to the environment. 

Image 7- Here, all I did was add more contrast with a curve layer to give more contrast to the image globally as well as a basic warmth color treatment to add to that typical sunset color.

Image 8- This is it!  The final image...My last steps in creating this were to add noise to the entire image which hides the over-sharpness of the truck as well as add the real "Grit" that I was looking for to the over all image (I targeted more grain to the sunset side of the image...just my taste).  I also went back and brought down the front end of the truck both in exposure and physically slightly just because it didn't match perspective perfectly.  But now I think it feels pretty good!

Thanks for viewing at the images, reading, and following.  Feel free to e-mail with questions if you have any.  More images viewable at http://www.danquinonesphoto.com/faces

[danquinonesphoto]

Over the past few weeks, I have been pretty engulfed in this CGI project. My concept is to create a three image series featuring this 2009 Dodge Ram CGI model.  Image 1 of 3 is shown in its completed state on the very top of the page.

(Image 2) I started with this 3D model that I purchased from a site called Turbo Squid.  At this point in the process, the model looks just like a computer file without any paint, textures, or materials attached to it.

(Image 3) This is my RAW image that I took for as my background plate.  This image (along with the 360/180 degree panoramic shot needed to light the truck in the 3D modeling software called Keyshot) was taken at my family’s hunting cabin in Northern California. The same location that The Mountain Man portrait series took place.

(Image 4) At this point, all the necessary textures and materials have been attached and rendered out of the Keyshot 5 software and I have now placed the truck over the back plate image in Photoshop. Next I took a large, soft brush white brush at a semi-low opacity and simply clicked on the ground to mimic the light that would fall from the headlights as well as directly behind the truck to give it a “backlit” feel which in turn helps “glue” it to the background.

(Image 5) Next, I made some global color adjustments to have the image move from a “cool” color palette in the clouds to a “warm” color palette at the edge of the horizon and slightly in the headlights

(Image 6) Lastly, I added some monochromatic noise (to give it a more rough and grainy feel) globally to the image and adjusted the contrast in specific areas.  I also slightly desaturated areas in the background to make the warm colors in the foreground pop out more, that way the colors would contrast each other which increases the over-all mood of the image.  

Completed Images 2 and 3 should be up within the month.  Thank you for reading and following along with this project as well as all of the others!

[danquinonesphoto]

Black and White

Over this past week, I was... "challenged" to post five black and white images over a five day period by my good friend and fellow photographer, Amy Barnard.  (Click on her name to view some of her work!)  She publicly called me out on Facebook notifying me to complete this challenge.  I have never done one of these challenges, and I have always looked down on them because I thought they were just silly and a waste of time.  To be honest, I have been dreading the day that somebody would actually challenge me.  

Abo is a series of images that I created specifically for this challenge. Every one of these was created with the camera on my phone.  I wanted to see just how spontaneous I could be in creating the images for the challenge, so what better way to do so than use my cell phone rather than my typical tripod, full frame dslr camera with various lenses and a remote shutter release.  

This project has gotten me to shoot daily again.  I now have my own challenge.  Every day I challenge myself to take at least one picture, either with my sell phone or my big camera.  Lately, most of my images are requiring a huge amount of time.  On average, including shooting and computer time, I spend anywhere from 10-15 hours total on an image at least!  Needless to say, I have been getting just completely drained.  

By participating in this challenge, I am now starting to bounce back to my creative self and I have noticed that new ideas are coming to me with much less struggle than they have been in the recent past. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the almighty, "Cell Phone Images"! Stay tuned in a few days for my step by step breakdown on how I created my latest CGI image of a Dodge Ram up in the mountains of my Deer Camp (The same location as The Mountain Man portraits).

[danquinonesphoto]

Seasons

This past weekend I made a pretty spontaneous trip back to Santa Rosa, CA.  This mini vacation was definitely one to remember.  Last Thursday, my housemate Maxwell Frank and I carpooled up to Mill Valley to see one of my favorite bands of all time, Big Mountain, at a small little cafe called Sweetwater Music Hall with some of my other friends from back home.  The show was super intimate and the band played old classics and new material as well.  I am extremely thankful that I got to finally see this band perform live!  Friday, myself, Tom (The Mountain Man character) and this girl, Stefanie, took an afternoon drive up to the hunting cabin (The Mountain Man Location).  We spent the afternoon just taking images of the epic sky-scape and exploring a little bit with the jeep.  I was also even able to experience a little bit of sprinkling for the first time in forever! As you can see, the weather definitely permitted us to bundle up a little bit and even light a small fire back a the cabin before we left to return back down to the valley.  Here is a fun portrait that I was able to get of Stef bundled in her winter clothes showing off her contagious smile.  Thanks for checking in and stay tuned for some new Automotive CGI work as well and the introduction to another character portrait series!

[danquinonesphoto]

Project: 1963 Mercury Meteor

This past week, my good friend Luis and I teamed up for some outdoor natural light portraits of him and his beautiful 1963 Mercury Meteor.  We just starting chatting about it and settled on a day that we could take a drive up to East Camino Ciello on top of the mountain that overlooks Santa Barbara. We planned the shoot around "Magic Hour".  For this shoot, I wanted to use only natural light.  I did this so I wouldn't lose out on the passion that Luis has for this car.  I wanted to be able to connect with him and the car directly and I felt that the best way for me to do that was to stay behind the camera and not worry about messing around with lights and directing an assistant.  Here are a couple fun portraits from the shoot.  Thanks Luis!  Enjoy.

[danquinonesphoto]

My introduction class to CGI

This semester I enrolled in the CGI class that is offered at Brooks Institute.  So far I am having a blast and learning an enormous amount.  This is my very first completed and rendered CGI project of a 2009 Maserati Granturismo.  Now, I realize that I am not a car photographer or CGI artist by any means...I am a total newb when it comes to this medium, but for other beginners out there, I took screen shots of the basic process that I went through to create this. 

The CGI rendering program that we are using in class is called Keyshot.  In that program we import a 360 cad style model and apply various materials and textures to it as well as create a complete lighting environment for the subject.   The image is what it looks like when you first import it.

Once I finished applying all the textures, colors, and the lighting environment to my model, I then exported it and opened it up in Adobe Photoshop where I used the gradient tool to create the background behind the car.  At this point it clearly looks extremely fake (not saying my final product looks totally real or anything...because it doesn't)  And now the fun begins. 

My next step was to mimic a flare coming off of the the headlights.  I did this just by selecting a very soft, round brush, sampling the color from each light bulb separately to match color temperature,  and simply clicking once or twice directly over each bulb at various opacities.  (Brush size was just roughly 3 times as big as the actual light source)

I then created a nice, large flare right where the center of the background gradient was using basically the same technique in the previous paragraph.  This really helped "glue" the car to the background because it matched the lighting direction of the light hitting the car and it covered the layer that the car is on just a little bit.  I also changed the over all color temperature of the image and brought just  a bit cooler to match my next step.

My last step was to create some atmosphere by simulating snow fall.  I did this by adding noise and combining it with various level changes and blurring techniques.  And there it is!  My first CGI image and how I created it! I still have a longggg ways to go...  Check out some of my more "normal" work at my website, danquinonesphoto.com

[danquinonesphoto]

Lately I have been learning so much about composite imagery.  I have been really attracted to this style of photography for the past year or so now.  There is so much to learn and it is extremely challenging, but that is why I love it. 

When I am lucky enough to find time in the midst of school and work, I love exploring to remote locations.  These remote locations are what usually make the best background images for these composite portraits that I create.  For others, it may be different types of terrain such as cityscapes, but for me, I just can't get enough of staring out into a vast landscape at sunset.  As I return back to real life from these adventures to new locations, I reflect.  I try and pick apart how the experience made me feel, what colors I saw, and most importantly where my imagination went when I was there (Or where it is going during my reflection).  I then use that information to formulate a story telling component to my future image concept.  I make up a fake character (usually influenced by a real person in my life, or an experience that I've had).  From there I think about time period, styling, props, and pose to really bring the character to life.  With those brainstorming components, I then find a model that I feel will fit the part and I take their portrait in the studio against a white background so I can cut them out and place them into my vast landscape image from my previous adventure. 

Here are the basic two images that I used for this composite.  There were actually a few more for exposure purposes, but these two will give the idea of the process from the background plate being shot first and then the portrait being shot in the studio with a matched lighting scenario to the landscape shot.  Enjoy!

[danquinonesphoto]

This past weekend I drove back up north to Santa Rosa with my best friend, Tom… the infamous “Mountain Man”, to surprise friends and family.  At our deer camp, we do an annual Polenta Feed where we invite all the families of the hunting club members to come up on the hill and get together.  Year after year I seem to enjoy it more and more.  I took this shot of Tom and I after everybody went to bed on Friday night.  It was just him and myself that were out there watching clouds that were being back lit by the rising moon as we sipped on Chuck’s homemade Pinot.  This is our paradise.

[danquinonesphoto]

Solo

I have definitely been spending a little bit more time by myself lately in hopes that it would help influence some inspiration for photo ideas, and it has.  For this image, I took a drive to one of the local lakes here in Santa Barbara and photographed the hill side across the water as it was being lit by the sunset.  Most of the time, I back light my images, but this time I wanted to use the warm color tones that the sunset itself was painting the landscape with.  The next day, I took my buddy Max’s 4 Runner and lit it with a gelled large softbox to match the warm colors that I saw back at the lake and took that image in the driveway.  My intentions here were to combine the images and place the vast lake landscape into the windows of the 4 Runner as I was making my bed in the truck to portray the idea of being alone with nature and camping out in a remote location by yourself.  Many things can be learned  and enjoyed through self exploration whether it is exploring the land in a literal sense, or exploring your feelings, thoughts, or emotions.  This image was created to reflect the beauty of that concept in a visual way.

[danquinonesphoto]

Here is a pano I took looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge on my way back to Santa Barbara.  I have parked at various spots along these cliffs before, but yesterday I decided to do something a little different.  On this trip, I wasn’t in any sort of rush to get back to Santa Barbara, so I decided to hop the fence and hike my way along the ridge line in order to see the bridge from a completely different perspective rather than taking the image from the same vista point, at the same camera angle, and same camera height as everybody else.  So, if you have ever thought about hiking down one of those trails towards the beach and wondered what the bridge looked like from there, this is what it looks like!