Shot some photos of the Maalouf Salon last month. It was quite a job. I rarely do shoot venues or comercial type work. The salon is located in downtown Birmingham. The salon recently opened up in January 2009 and the owners wanted me to photograph their salon. Maalouf Salon took several months to design and build. It’s convenient location lends it self to the community of the loft dwelling community.

Their Website is MaaloufBeauty.com. The Owners are hoping to launch their website soon.

I try my best to write about things that are only germane to Detroit Wedding Photography when I can. On the flip side, I do think it is important to show and write about things that are  Detroit & Photography related.

Time magazine in the March 26th, 2009 issue has a excellent series of photographs of Detroit Abandoned Building Photographs Shot by a photographer, Sean Hemmerle.

The photos are an excellent depiction of some current abandoned buildings and areas in Detroit. I think Hemmerle does a great job carefully framing and picking photos.

My Criticism & Insight

Trying to shed light on Detroit is what we really need. As an optimist, I feel it is important to spread and speak of good news and development of Detroit.  Unfortunately, at this point and in this case I feel Detroit has a plethora of gaping holes and abandoned buildings to pick up and restore. For a piece like this one, shedding light will provide a necessary cry for help from the national spotlight. The article by Time magazine also does a great job of showing that there is a semblance of hope for our City of Detroit.

See the Series by Sean Hemmerle

This past weekend i had the pleasure of working with several models in the DEAC collaborative workshop. I had the opportunity to work with Kitty. She’s been featured on covers of Real Detroit Weekly Magazine for the Detroit Exotica Events.

DEAC is a workshop aimed at creating opportunities for models and photographers to network and learn practice and learn about erotic arts as well as build their craft. I can only show you one set that is Pretty much Safe for work.

I thought this would be a great opportunity to work on glamour, posing & boudoir photography and add more pieces as well as refine my portfolio and break the rust that photographers get in the winter in Michigan/Detroit.

This model Kat was very experienced and very helpful in collaborating. I thought i’d share some of my photos from our DEAC photoshoot from the past weekend at the leland hotel in Detroit, Michigan.

For the lighting geeks. I lit this with one reflective umbrella in the first few shots. It was at 1/4 power and was at camera left of the subject. I set the camera to F/4 and wanted to delete any disgusting ambient light. So the shutter was at 1/200th of a second.

Photos in the break:

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So i was going through 2008 and playing with my favorite LAB conversion technique and updating my wedding photography brochures. I will blog about it later.

I am pretty confident I have one of the most excellant Black and White Digital conversion techniques ever. Thanks to David Williams, Dan Margulis & Dgrin.com

If you’re curious about the LAB Color space; theres an excellent book about it by Dan Margulis.
So here they are just a potpourri of black and white wedding photos (from several detroit weddings from around the area) that I have converted and would like to share with you.

Wedding Photographers hibernate during the winter. Especially this one. Here in michigan snow is no longer a pretty thing to see. At least for me. I feel like its an eyesore seeing and driving in gray snow and gray skies.

So a couple weeks ago my girlfriend and I  decided to head to the bahamas for a 4 day cruise on carnival. What a blast it was. This was my first cruise and first time ever visiting the Bahamas.

The food is excellent on Carnival Cruises and the service is unparalleled.

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is holding a photography contest in conjuction with its upcoming exhibition: Kenro Izu: Light over Sacred Places of Asia

The Detroit Institute of Arts are starting a contest through the Flickr Pool. Anyone can participate. If you’re not a member of Flickr, of the largest  photosharing communties owned by Yahoo!, you can signup so you can participate in the contest. They are looking for people to submit their photography that is related to Detroit. The subject can be anything related to Detroit.

Here are some rules from the official DIA Contest Blog:

• Photographers are allowed to submit one photograph that captures “Detroit’s Sacred Places.” An artist statement is required as part of the submission. The statement (maximum 100 words) should describe how the submitted image pertains to the contest’s theme, “Detroit’s Sacred Places.” Please include any photography technique(s) you would like to highlight. The artist statement should be included in the description portion of your upload.

• Submitted images must be in .jpg format and no larger than 20MB (3000 x 3000 pixels and 300 dpi) opened. Please make sure your image has a file extension of .jpg prior to uploading.

• Images should be unmodified. Please do not submit photomontages, double exposures, or photos with alterations, such as borders, watermarks, or added text.

• Please submit images that are true photography. Photos of paintings, screenshots, and illustrations will not be accepted.

• Photographs must be submitted electronically via Flickr and tagged with “Detroit’s Sacred Places”.

• Submissions are due September 3, 2008

• By submitting an image to “Detroit’s Sacred Places” contest, you affirm you are the creator and rightful owner of this image. In addition, you agree to allow the DIA to use the image in museum and/or promotional materials.

What do you win?

The prize is a signed copy of Izu’s work, Kenro Izu: Light over Sacred Places of Asia, and 2 front row seats to his lecture September 14th, 2008.

I really love what hour magazine has done on youtube. Check out why these individuals love Detroit.

I love Detroit as well. It is an underrated city in this world. I love the D. We have the best sports team of the world. I’ve lived here all my life. I couldn’t be more proud of anywhere I could call home.

This is one of the cake shots using hdr.