Carl Sison » Photography

Brim & Soul AW 2012 BTS

Carl Francis — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:34:33 +0000

With the recent launch of the Brim & Soul Collection I decided to put together a small post about the shoot itself. Just a few words about working with an absolutely fantastic team. I say it all the time, surrounding yourself with the right kinds of people can just launch you creatively. When the vibe is right it really doesn’t feel like work. I dream about just shooting projects like this every night. Everyone is just there to take good pictures, drink wine and chill out.

Some outtakes after the jump!

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Richelle O

Carl Francis — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:53:33 +0000

I spent much of the summer reflecting on how i thought about images. I spent so much time shooting things like weddings that I became very one track minded in my work. Trying to get away from that and start expanding my default I’ve made a conscious effort to shoot a little differently from what I’m used to. It was always just so easy to just drench an image with light and let the sun become such a prominent feature in all of my images. But versatility demands much more than that. It’s been a recent theme of mine to play with shadows to create depth and character and to see how drastically the mood can change with just a little bit less light.

I’ve been playing with technique, if all goes well I may get the chance to create something a little more extensive with maybe even some narrative to it. Don’t forget to click through to see a few more images from a recent photoshoot!

Model: Richelle Oslinker (Wilhemina NY) | Assisted by: Ellen Yoon

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Brim & Soul AW 2012

Carl Francis — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 04:13:50 +0000

It’s been difficult not to share this set with the world any sooner. I’ve been all kinds of excited about this project since way back in May when Keesean Moore of Brim & Soul (formerly known as De Bas En Haut) emailed me about working on some sort of lookbook for the Fall and Winter seasons. Keesean and I actually went to High School together way back when, and I can tell you that neither of us would have guessed we would be collaborating on something like this. Ever.

Keesean describes Brim & Soul as a boutique for risk takers with an affinity for the past. Let’s get it straight from the beginning, this isn’t some hipster run wannabe fashionista sartorialist chasing hole in the wall shop. This boutique is curated painstakingly by Keesean himself. What struck me the most about pieces were Keesean’s nearly obsessive connection to them, to the point where he could barely imagine selling them. I’m not going to embarrass myself by trying to talk about fashion, because I would get laughed of the internet, but I think what Keesean pulled together for this season is some premium grade items.

We got together and went hard on this project early in August with a late September shoot date. It’s amazing how everything simply fell together, for one of the first times in my pursuit of professionalism I felt like that this project was being done right. When we chose our crew and cast we surrounded ourselves with people who we knew had distinctive styles and tastes along with fantastic work ethic. One of my goals since I started to take photography very seriously was to work with a larger team on more complex photoshoots. Having individuals dedicated on specific tasks and creative decisions helped a lot in letting me really hone in on what I was trying to contribute to the shoot. It was nearly two months of planning for a simple two day shoot. I’m just so freaking happy how it turned out.

It came out to be about a 60 image set, with around 20 going into a limited run printed lookbook for the launch party for Brim & Soul. Be sure to check out some of the images from the lookbook after the jump!

Be sure to stay tuned for the launch of Brim & Soul’s Online Boutique! I’ll update this post as soon as a link becomes available.

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What I’ve been up to (shameless plug)

Carl Francis — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:42:33 +0000

Post graduate life has been a mix of unexpected busyness and relentless moments of boredom. At one point I was very literally watching paint dry. Though I managed to reign in my procrastination and get around to living my life. In my last post I said that there would be some changes in how I ran this blog. One of those is actually an addition! I’ve been posting onto a Tumblr account. I’m already informal as is, so what you see there is very much unfiltered. When I started getting into photography I took my camera everywhere and took photos of everything. Somewhere along the line I stopped doing that as much. Now its back, accompanied by a flood on immature side comments and life stories. Join the ragefest!

chuas.tumblr.com

Link to my Personal Blog.

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Runway

Carl Francis — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:42:34 +0000

For every year I spent here at Rutgers University I photographed CSO’s annual cultural fashion show. This years iteration is number sixteen and I’m glad that I’ve been given the privilege to document the last four. Always expanding on the previous years’ success the show never disappoints. You’d be surprised how much time and effort went into this production. The amount of whip cracks would make you think this was opening day at the Mercedes Benz fashion week.

Unlike previous years I decided to take a different approach in coverage. Instead of elbowing it out with the other photographers in the pit, I decided to spend my time backstage in the thick of things. Shooting was tough, it was really dark back there and very tough to stay out of people’s ways. It may be student run, but this fashion show had all the makings of the real deal: slips and falls, wardrobe malfunctions, broken heels and just organized chaos. It’s always good fun.

Follow the link to see more behind the scenes fun!

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Detail

Carl Francis — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:15:32 +0000

For the second project in Photo 1A we were supposed to create 3 detail prints. I did the regular acorn and manhole cover but I wanted to experiment with something. Crunched on time I had a friend come over and pose for this one. Much of this photo was inspired but that really confusing ad by Reebok. I imagined all those bodyscapes I’ve seen in art galleries. Shooting this was actually pretty tough, it was a single lamp held by Byron. Luckily in black and white I didn’t have to worry about any white balance mess. To get the magnification I wanted I had to use my 85mm, but even still I couldn’t get close enough because of it’s minimum focusing distance. Btw, the depth of field of a 85mm f/1.4 @ mfd is SO thin. I had trouble getting the belly button in focus! This was the best of the couple of frames I shot, but I still had to cheat a little and crop it. Hope my prof doesn’t notice. Or read this. Damn.

In case you were wondering here is that silly Reebok commercial:

Some Tri-X for you

Carl Francis — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:07:31 +0000

Fresh from the scanner!

Carl Francis — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:28:40 +0000

Processing black and white film happens to be the easy part of the battle. It seems the bulge of the effort is getting in from the drying rack to the photo enlarger without amassing vicious particles of of dust and micro hair. Like seriously, was that a pubic hair? How did that even get there. Becomes incredibly irritating when I’m trying to produce a print for submission and a less than 1mm thick shirt fluff looks like its an inch long when blown up to 6×9! Yeah straight from a scanner I have that nifty clone and stamp tool, but once its been hit with light and dunked into that first tub it’s done. Making the matter so much more pensive, I don’t have an unlimited supply of enlarging paper. Thank goodness I purchased in bulk instead of picking some up from the local stores, making bank on students in dire need of classroom essentials. Shooting and developing was the fun exciting part. Enlarging is where I start sweating and hoping everything is in line before I press the run button. I find myself taking my can of air and microfiber cloth into the enlarging room, probably the wrong way to do it. Any tips from the film savvy?

First image was done to display shallow depth of field, second for high shutter speed and the third for kicks. I had better pictures for high shutter speed usage, but I liked that one.

My First Contact Sheet

Carl Francis — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 04:18:46 +0000

Processing my first roll of Tri-X I found it comfortingly simple. Though, I still felt like it would have been so easy for me to just easily screw it up. In the darkroom I made my first contact sheet, fumbling over the reverse use of aperture on the enlarger and learning the wonderful usage of test strips. Still working on this first project, definitely excited.

Photography 1A

Carl Francis — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:20:14 +0000

This semester I decided to take Photography 1 because I really wanted to learn darkroom techniques. It’s interesting taking a step away from the LCD screen, I find myself out of habit chimping an imaginary screen. Using an iPhone lightmeter probably isn’t the best way to go about things either. Giselle came over today to help me out with my first project. I feel like a semester’s worth of Tri-X is going to have some sway on what you’ll be seeing in this blog. I’m going to be processing that first role of Tri-X this week and I’m actually a little nervous about it all. Paulo tagged along and snapped an action shot while we were standing out there in some serious skin biting cold.