This advertisement is amazing. Where ever there’s a RIU hotel there’s a beautiful beach.

RIU Hotels & Resorts

(Click to view a large resolutions from it’s original source on AdsOfTheWorld.com) Read more…

Supermodels For You, of Models of the Day, is sponsored by: The Super Models Gallery

Gracie Carvalho

(Click above to visit HQ pictures of Gracie on TheSupermodelsGallery.com) Read more…

The advertisement is amazing. Job offers where ever you are.

Advertising Agency: Ganem MexicoExecutive Creative Director: Yasser FloresCreative Directors: Yasser Flores, Iván GutiérrezArt Directors: Yasser Flores, Jorge GarcíaCopywriters: Eduardo Rodríguez, Iván AlvaradoPhotographer: Rames Read more…

Photo shoots are a lot easier when working with a team. If you’re job is to be the photographer then be the photographer, the stylist job is the stylist, let them be the stylist etc. I started building my team earlier this year. Before then, I’ve worked on Read more…

I shared an article about the mistake I made when I tried to shoot an editorial story. I believe in failing just as much as I believe in achieving; it happens. Check out that article, The Perfect Editorial Mistake. After fucking up with the editorial (don’t get me wrong, I still love my images from that shoot) I started to think of ways I could apply this technique to other photo shoots. Read more…

Nikon released a new camera, the Nikon D7000. That lucky bastard, whom I look up to, and have great respect for, Chase Jarvis (it’s all love bro!), had the camera a few months now for testing. I loved, absolutely loved the video Chase. Bro, you know I’m a huge Nikon fan and that I’m a developing “icon for Nikon” so next time, send me an invite with a plane ticket please! Read more…

I’ll be the first to tell anyone I still make mistakes. I fail, I fail again, and then I fail better.

I’ll be the first to tell anyone I still make mistakes. I fail, I fail again, and then I fail better.

People, ask, “How long have you been doing photography?” I tell them I’ve been taking photographs about eight years now, but I started making images about three years ago.

I’ve never had a huge client like Nike, or shot the cover for Maxim like Matt Jones. But, I’m on my way to doing so. My images illustrates that, I do know how to make a good photograph. However, I still have a ton to learn about the business behind photography and the good part about it all is that I’m still willing to learn.

I’m a commercial photographer for lifestyles and sports but when the tool is in my hand I simply enjoy making images.

About a month and a bit ago or so I attempted to shoot an editorial story. To be honest I had no idea what it meant to shoot an editorial story but I wanted to shoot one anyway.

I’ve been assisting for a few editorial photographers and I’m just starting to understand the format for shooting an editorial story.

When shooting an editorial for a submission you’re not being paid for the shoot. Photographers get commissioned for the editorials if requested by whom ever you’re shooting the editorial for.

Just because you’re not being paid for the submissions doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shoot them. The main reason why is because if you keep shooting the submissions and the magazine editor likes your work, he/she might eventually call you and start paying commission to shoot the editorials.

Other ways you might make money from the editorial is if your photograph makes it to the cover or if the magazine wants to use your images to advertise. (If you have anything to add or say about this add it in the comments please.)

I also think it’s good to shoot editorials because it gets your name out there as a photographer.

When I heard the words editorial story I started to think, “I’ll make a story out of images.” Don’t make my mistake.

When photographers talk about shooting an editorial story the photographer will use the same model and make the story about shades for example. You would keep the shades consistent in the shoot. (Again here if you have anything to add or say about this share it in the comment box below please.)

What I ended up doing in my story was using symbols to represent parts of the story. To be honest with you when I shot this story I was only shooting because I wanted to create some new images, I had an idea and I wanted to execute it.

Note: I’m forcing myself to write this story right now because I feel like such an idiot making this mistake. However I feel as if it’s my job as a photographer to share successful moments and failing moments.

I’m going to wrap this up. Shooting an editorial story doesn’t mean you’re shooting series of images to make up a story. When you shoot an editorial you’re going shoot a set of images either in similar locations or using similar props using the same model.

Forgive me for this post.

I’m not going to continue. If you’re interested in looking at the images I made for the story here it is: No Love

The story was about a woman who got dumped by her boyfriend. Her boyfriend kept her financially stable. He didn’t know she had money of her own. When they broke up she was lost/ confused about what to do and the last images sent her message to love.

Good bye, enjoy your day I promise to have better articles coming soon I hope you learned at least one from what I wrote though.

I’m going to bed now.

To start, a special thank you to all of the followers of the Dwayne Tucker’s facebook fan page. Another thank you to the followers of my twitter. You can keep up with me daily from my DailyBooth. It’s a really cool website go and sign up and try it out (I really love the site and no I was not paid to write that.) I take my followers in the personal life of DT. via that site. I’ve met some really cool people from there; it’s 2010 almost 2011 buddy. Read more…

Making Your Photographs Better, I wrote about what I look for in the post-production stage of my photo shoots. In this article I share small things to look for in the production stage and a little bit of post-production editing. If doing things on set (in production) saves time in post-production why not do it; time is money, keep that in mind.

The photograph is a portrait of my friend, Christian Carabias; actor for Telemundo’s show, Mas Sabe El Diablo and Sacrificio De Mujer Univision.

I finished setting up lights two hours early of my shoot. Christian was at the pool when I asked if I could use him to test the lights. His name is Christian (emphasize Christ) and he’s an actor so I asked him to act as Jesus praying to the father.

On huge photo shoots when you are a big shoot photographer hiring a team you’re going to have a MUA, Stylist, Hairstylist and one or three Assistants; depending on what the shoot is for you might even have an Art Director, Creative Director, Copywriter, Graphic Artist, Photo-Retoucher etc. breathing down your neck as you shoot. However, a good team creates great work; those people are there for reasons.

Those big shot photographers don’t hire those people because they can. I’ve assisted on photo shoots with large teams as such. They the team members have titles for reasons.

I’m not considered globally a big shot photographer as yet. But, on my smaller commissioned shoots and some of personal shoots I’m working with a MUA, Stylist, Hairstylist and maybe an assistant to help with reflectors etc. Doing so now prepares me, and makes me feel comfortable when I’m working on my larger commercial client’s projects.

I encourage you to build a great team to work with because it makes life so much easier at the end of the day.

However, there are still times, like this one when I photographed Christian, when I need a fix for my addiction to photography. When this craving occurs, once again I’m the assistant, the MUA if necessary and the stylist.

I’m going to take you through the process of this quick image and simple things to remember when you are the team of your photo shoot.

First thing as a photographer, using a DSLR camera, please, please, please shoot in RAW. Shooting in RAW gives you complete control over your images in post processing. You are able to color balance your photographs, adjust / decrease the exposure, fill light, clarity, blacks, brightness, and highlight etc.  To get the directional light I used honeycomb grid on Elincrome 500 strobe and positioned the strobe head above the model titled down about 45º.

The arrow above is pointing at those cutout-animal rubber bans that seem to be in fashion currently in Miami; everyone’s wearing them. I don’t really care much for them and I knew as soon as I saw the photographs uploaded to the computer I didn’t want them on his hand in the final image.

Stylists are a necessity. Even though the model doesn’t have a shirt on for the shot there are still minor distractions/considerations that the stylist would have to take care of. On these one on one shots you’re going to have to be your own stylist. Forgetting like I did, often results in unnecessary Photoshop time.

If I did hire a stylist for a shoot I probably would have asked them to bring the thorns of Jesus’ crown, drape a garment on him and the ask the MUA to make blood around his forehead.

If it were for a client, you’ve been your own team for so long, when a team comes along to work with you, you’ll know whether it’s good enough, or if you need to get some new team members.

For this shoot I was my own team, but now, that gave me a chance to collaborate with a really sick graphic artist if I wanted to. If I did collaborate I would have the artist put a crown of thorns on his head etc and the blood marks; making sure the artist is very professional and work is up to the industry level.

If you compare the last two screenshots you’ll notice that this one here is a bit cooler, not cool as in “duddeee” but cooler as in literally less warm. That’s called correcting your white balance. The easiest way/the proper way to correct the white balance would have been to have a gray card and take a picture with the gray card against the model. Leave your camera on a tripod with a sync cable, or a wireless remote, or putting it on self-timer, or if you have a really fancy trained chocolate-lab dog, or an assistant you call your dog (what-up dog) then have him/her/it stand in the frame with the gray card.

Next you would use the eyedropper tool in camera raw, drop it on the gray card and POW, there goes your white balance. If you have a client that’s going to be like, OMG you’re the final image is in black and white/ OMG the final image has so many gradients and photo filters on it did you forget to use a gray card?!” if so go ahead and get one.

If purchasing your digital camera and your tripod drained your pockets, $30.00 looks a lot like next months electricity bill and not a gray card. The next option to white balance the photograph is to find something as neutral (gray) as possible in the image and place the eyedropper tool on it.

The arrows in the last image were pointing to where I wanted the image to be brighter and darker. When in camera raw I like to open my photographs as an object in Photoshop, instead of just clicking the open key. The reason for opening as an object is because when you double click on the object layer you created, it will take the image back in to camera raw. (Step 1) I duplicate the image layer in Photoshop, hit (E) for the eraser tool, click on the image a message will come up asking to rasterize the image, hit yes. Now you would have an object layer below and a copy of the rasterized image above. The next thing would be is to double click on the object layer and bring it back into camera raw to fix the bright ness and darkness. Open again in Photoshop and repeat step 1.

You would now place a layer mask on your photograph then paint. The default layer mask it’s on the mask will be white. When like this you mask away the areas you don’t want. Example: I know I wanted his face to be brighter like the image but keep the other areas dark. I would have been time consuming for me to paint away the areas I don’t want.

To avoid this long process I simply invert the layer mask to white by selecting the mask then pressing command + i (control + i on a PC). When the layer mask is white, layer beneath it will be shown. Now here’s the thing to remember. When painting on a layer mask, if the mask is white you use the black paintbrush to show and the white to hide again and if the mask is black you do the opposite the white to show and the black to take the image back to its original look.

To make the image in black and white I press command + u (control + u on a PC) then the color balance window will pop up, you will see saturation use the slider and take it all the way to the left. Simple. There are other ways to make your image black and white this is the one I chose to go with.

Now we are almost close to the final image.

If you compared the screen shot to the previous one you will see I removed the rubber bands from his hands. It’s simple to do that. Get familiar with using the clone stamp tool, the patch tool and the healing brush tool. I use those tools to remove objects and work on skin etc.

The image is almost complete. I could leave it at that stage if I wanted to put I do a little something extra in the post processing of my images to give it a look I’ve locked down. It’s nothing genus like a Dave Hill effect, but it’s something I’m persistent with and here I’m now announcing it, “that, Dwayne Tucker Touch”.

Before I speak about that Dwayne Tucker Touch effect I want to point out something else I’ve adopted to my preferred style look. If you look at most of my portraits in my portfolio you will notice some of them are either in the left side of the frame or positioned in the right side of the fame. After shooting so many of them I filtered my images and noticed I like doing it and stuck that look.

The image now looks gray because I applied a high-pass filter. To access that you go to filters – other – high pass. When I apply this filter to my image then select overlay to overlay the layer it sharpens the photograph and gives some really cool highlight effects. After working with it several times moving the sliders back and forward, you’ll notice how sharp is harp enough for you. For females I like to keep the skin unsharpened because it looks nasty, but I do like to bring more highlights in the hairs and eyes etc. Play around with it and you will figure out what works for you.

Now Christian Carabias is a black and white Jesus in my photograph.

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…A quick update / what’s coming next on the blog/But First: I’ve been assisting on set for photographer Joao Carlos on photo shoots here in Miami, Florida. Read more…