CONCEPTUAL

ONLINE GROUP CHAT

THE HERO PORTLAND DESERVES - Portland, Oregon, USA This is Brian, AKA "The Unipiper," AKA "The Defender of Weird" AKA Portland's mascot and a very cool dude. When he's not riding a unicycle while wearing a mask while playing flaming bagpipes, he's also the host of @PDXatTheMovies, and you can find out more about him, and how he keeps Portland weird, at the links below. Had a great time shooting with him, and the editing was... interesting. More photos of the Unipiper, as well as some behind-the-scenes (possibly NSFW?), coming soon. Follow me here and on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/robcorpuz/) to stay connected. http://www.unipiper.com/ https://www.facebook.com/theunipiper/ https://www.instagram.com/theunipiper/ https://twitter.com/TheUnipiper

THE HERO PORTLAND DESERVES - Portland, Oregon, USA This is Brian, AKA "The Unipiper," AKA "The Defender of Weird." When he's not riding a unicylce while wearing a mask while playing flaming bagpipes, he's also the host of @PDXatTheMovies, and you can find out more about him, and how he keeps Portland weird, at the links below: http://www.unipiper.com/ https://www.facebook.com/theunipiper/ https://www.instagram.com/theunipiper/ https://twitter.com/TheUnipiper

THE HERO PORTLAND DESERVES - Portland, Oregon, USA This is Brian, AKA "The Unipiper," AKA "The Defender of Weird" AKA Portland's mascot and a very cool dude. When he's not riding a unicycle while wearing a mask while playing flaming bagpipes, he's also the host of @PDXatTheMovies, and you can find out more about him, and how he keeps Portland weird, at the links below. http://www.unipiper.com/ https://www.facebook.com/theunipiper/ https://www.instagram.com/theunipiper/ https://twitter.com/TheUnipiper

UMLAUT https://www.instagram.com/umlautofficial/

QUIDDITCH PLAYERS - Portland, OR, USA http://www.iqaquidditch.org https://www.facebook.com/pdxquidditch/

GLASHA IN MOTION

SPOTS ON SQUARES - Lapulapu, Philippines This is George, my friend Jake's in-law's dog. I took this from his (Jake's) balcony. I'm not sure why they (the in-laws) decided to paint this particular pattern onto their patio, as there were no giant chess pieces in sight, but I'm glad they did. While I would've loved to have George in a different position, and a different pose, he wasn't the most cooperative model I've worked with (for instance, the possibility of the subject peeing directly on the backdrop is generally much farther down my list of potential concerns), so this was the best I could do, particularly since I put off trying this shot until a few hours before my flight out of the Philippines. Even though I was leaning out over the balcony as far as I could (without risking bodily harm) to try and get a straight perspective, I still had to remove some distortion in photoshop, as well as boosting the contrast and removing a couple of tree branches peeking in to the bottom right square. Thanks to Hassan for trying his best to keep George on the squares and for holding the strobe.

BUMPER CARS - Moscow, Russia The sign in the background basically says that crashing the cars is not allowed.

FOLLOW THAT CAB - Just across the Ukrainian border of Poland These three Brits (from left to right: Leigh, Paul and Johno) broke the Guinness World Record for the longest and highest (altitude) taxi cab ride. And if that wasn't already awesome enough, they did it to raise money for charity. Having bought a London black cab, affectionately christened "Hard Hearted Hannah," they modified it to beef up the engine, add a shotgun seat and remove the barrier, not to mention installing a needlessly (and gloriously) deafening speaker system, and drove it through over one hundred countries on their way from London to Sydney. I crossed paths with them in Kiev, Ukraine, and couldn't resist the invitation to catch a ride with them from Kiev to Lviv, and then on from Lviv to Krakow, Poland. We were stopped by Ukrainian police at least five times along the way. If I remember correctly, I was the first official fare of their journey. Thankfully, the guys were kind enough to accept (in lieu of the meter price of £1035) a tank of petrol, a few beers, some pasta and bread, and a donation, through their website, to the British Red Cross. More than a year later, I met up with them in Moscow and caught a lift again: this time stopping in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Luxembourg, France, and the U.K. They also asked me to be their photographer and document the last couple of weeks of their drive, and I was happy to oblige. The last time I rode with them, I figured they might never make it back home without killing each other, but after driving all around the world since February, 2011, they finished their epic and ridiculous journey back in London on May 12th, 2012, after four different continents, more than fifty countries, well over a hundred passengers, four flat tires, 8000 liters of petrol, £20,000 raised for the British Red Cross, one Bollywood movie appearance, and a couple of bullet holes. You can find out more about their amazing journey and see lots more photos here.

ALEXEY

VIKTOR

FOUND - Honolulu, HI, USA This was taken at one of my favorite spots back home, a location featured in a couple of episodes of "Lost" and some movies. Thanks to the lovely Diana for being my model and inspiration. And for not falling and crushing herself on the sharp rocks below :^)

BATH, INTERRUPTED - Moscow, Russia To see how I made this photo, please check out Part I of a two-part "behind-the-scenes" article describing, step-by-step, how this shot was created, all the way from conception to post-production, or just check out my blog. Thanks!

FAKE BLOOD - Moscow, Russia Although I'd bought some fake blood a couple of weeks before this shoot, it had somehow vanished when the time came, so I had to resort to a couple of blots of ketchup on Olga's face and Liza's neck, and strawberry soda for the broken glass (which was far too light and had to be darkened later). For some strange reason the girls didn't want to have copious amounts of ketchup smeared all over their dresses:) so I had to resort to painting pretty much all of the blood you see in with photoshop (including the top half of the glass). To simulate moonlight, I used strobes placed in the window just outside the frame with a couple of blue gel filters. Bounced another blue-gelled monobloc off the camera-left wall and had one monobloc gelled slightly warm in a softbox pointed at the girls (although I decided, in the end to cool down the skin tones in photoshop), as well as a ring flash on-axis. It took a lot of takes and food bribery to get my cat anywhere near the general vicinity of the frame. Ideally I would've wanted her perched on top of the sofa at another rule-of-thirds point, but for all of the shots she was there, either the lighting, exposure or expressions of the girls wasn't quite what I wanted. I did some dodging and burning in post along with a couple of contrast masks, but on the whole this final version isn't dramatically different from the original (well, aside from all the fake blood... and darkening a few white patches of my cat's fur... and changing the cat's eyes from greenish-yellow to orange-red... okay, I guess some things are different:) I'd also like to mention that I took this photo back in mid-May 2010, before I'd heard about that True Blood show, or seen any of the promotional photos for it, so any similarities are purely coincidental. (Update: I was recently adjusting my combination sofa/bed and suddenly found my hands covered in "blood." Turns out the fake blood had somehow rolled under the bed and didn't appear until I had shifted things around and squashed it, unleashing a huge puddle of dark red liquid which would have been far more convincing than the ketchup.)

IMPRISONED There really should be a couple of scrawny black rats running around in this shot, but I hate rats, and even if I found a couple to shoot and composite in I don't know how close I'd want to get.

WINE FOR ONE

WAITING BY THE PHONE This shot was lit using small strobes on manual settings and Cybersync radio transmitters, as the infrared line-of-sight Canon wireless system is pretty close to useless for a situation like this where the strobes need to be placed around corners away from view. I put one speedlite in an umbrella on a stand just out of view at the end of the hallway, bouncing light off the far wall to illuminate the background and put a slight rim light on her, and one speedlite in a snoot in a little bathroom (perched precariously near the toilet) just opposite her (camera left) to create the illusion of sunlight coming through a window. If I remember correctly, I had a touch of fill from an on-camera speedlite bounced off the ceiling. The phone was edited in from another frame during the same shoot.

BEFORE THE NIGHT OUT Lighting info: 1 monobloc in a softbox slightly off-camera right bounced off of the ceiling, 1 bare monobloc outside the bathroom in the hallway shooting through the open door, and 1 snooted speedlite off-camera right aimed at her face.

MORNING

FRIDGE For this shot I put two bare flashes inside the fridge (with double CTB gels) and set one speedlite in a shoot-through umbrella on a lightstand camera right (with a CTO gel), and set the camera's white balance to a warmer tone to try and get across the feel of opening a cool fridge on a hot day. I nearly forgot to take the flashes out of the fridge at the end and had to wipe a bunch of condensation off of them. Luckily they are still working (fingers crossed). Thanks to Mila for modeling!

BREAK-UP TO MAKE-UP After knocking over a glass table and breaking it, I decided it might be useful for a photo someday, so I kept most of the big pieces (but stupidly, only two of the three legs). I thought of a rough concept pretty soon after that, but as I tend to do every now and then, chose to put it aside just for a short, little while... So... after about six months of having heavy, jagged shards of broken glass sitting around my apartment (and a couple of incidents requiring bandages), I finally did something with them. In the time that had past I'd also broken three drinking glasses and, naturally, saved them as well (Yes, actually I AM a klutz). So here is the result: It took a while to arrange a time with Stacia (the model), and twice we had it scheduled but plans fell through (once because of a friend's pregnancy). When the schedule was finally worked out, I had to move several pieces of furniture out into my hallway to get the setting I wanted, as the room is small (a LOT smaller than in looks). Unfortunately the hallway isn't exactly giant, and the furniture basically barricaded the front door, trapping Stacia inside my apartment with me, surrounded by sharp slabs of glass and a hammer. Of course, she had brought her own gun to our previous photoshoot, so I suspect she wasn't too worried:) The lighting set-up included one monobloc in a softbox high and about 45 degrees camera-right, pointing down at her face. I had another monobloc in a softbox right next to me camera-left a bit lower, bouncing light off the wall (both for fill light on Stacia and to try and get some depth in the objects on the floor). I put two speedlites in the window (one clamped to the handle) with CTO gels, using the curtain as a partial diffuser, to get the shadow pattern on the wall and ceiling. I also had on-axis fill coming from a speedlight stuck in an Orbis ring flash. The flashes were all triggered with Radiopoppers. I did a lot of post-work to get the look of this shot the way I wanted (surreal), which, on its own, is already quite an involved, time-consuming process, involving two or more RAW file conversions, and lots of contrast masking with filters. There's no automatic action for this, as far as I know. You've got to get the lighting right first, of course. No amount of editing can make good light when it wasn't already in the original photo; and anyone who thinks it's easy to just photoshop something any way you want and have it look good, please pass on your secrets to me:) Since I had only kept two of the (table) legs, I used a tripod and moved them around in a couple of different frames and merge them together later to make it look like there were four. Unfortunately, I didn't realize during the shoot (but should've suspected) that I was repeatedly nudging the lens with the ring flash, which slightly shifted each frame. Not really enough to see it on the camera's LCD, but definitely enough to make merging the separate layers a gigantic pain in the... well, you know. Particularly since the six-year-old computer I was using at the time was so terminally ill that it sometimes took 10-15 minutes JUST TO SAVE A FILE. Grrrrr... At least I can finally throw out those glass shards. Well, wait... hold on. Hmmm... maybe there's another photo concept that I can use them for... I think I'll just hold off throwing them out for a short little while... P.S. I realize that technically there should be little pieces of glass all over the floor as well, but even I have my limits. Particularly since I'm already running low on glasses... P.S.S. This photo looks best at larger sizes!

DIVORCE, PART I That is her actual wedding dress, and that is his actual wedding ring (but not his hand). This is a composite of three separate shots. Lots of photoshop, obviously: contrast masking, texture, blur, desaturation, and a hint of green color cast added, along with the usual exposure and sharpness adjustments. Also, the original had a straighter composition and more space around the edges. I decided to crop it (using the HD video aspect ratio) with a tilt and cut off portions of the elements within the frame to try and create a rougher, out-of-control feel. Note also that Russians wear their wedding rings on the right hand.

DIVORCE, PART II This is another in a series of photos for Diana, who wanted to document the emotions involved in closing one chapter in her life and opening another. That is her actual wedding dress, and her ex-husband's wedding band is lying next to her. I did lots of editing on this photo. In the original shot we used a toy knife (with a retractable blade), so I could make sure there wouldn't be any difficult shadows, and then I edited in a real one (from a later frame) afterward. The lighting here isn't too complicated (a couple of monoblocs in softboxes and an on-camera flash in a ring attachment) for the same reason: I knew I'd be adding in a knife in photoshop and didn't want to make things any harder than they needed to be, but there were still multiple catchlights that I decided to remove in an effort to make her eyes appear more "dead." The ring was also too close to her (and thus too small) in the original shot so I rescaled it, moved it away from her, and blurred it slightly (technically it should be even more blurred, which is clear when compared to her right hand, which is a similar distance from the camera, but I didn't want to risk making it unrecognizable due to added blur). Along with the usual sharpening, toning, skin and background retouching, and noise reduction, I also desaturated the color of the blood (the fake blood we used was far too bright), cloned out a bunch of bits of leaves from the dead flowers, added texture, did some contrast masking, and tinted the white balance slightly green.

READING IS FUN - Santorini, Greece It took a really long time and many, many tries to get this photo. The next day we happened to be back in the exact same area (up at a fort on a cliff), and due to a very strong wind this shot would have been impossible at the time, since it required him jumping off of a wall overlooking a very steep drop.

READING IS HOT Thanks to Lena for both modeling and providing the concept for this photo.

BEAR HUG - Moscow, Russia

MONKEY BUSINESS

FROG TAXI - Usovo, Russia The Cyrillic on the side of the car tranlates, literally, to "toad carrier." In Russia, "toad" is a slang term for what Americans would call a "gold digger." I'm going to divulge a big secret here: Frog isn't a real cab driver! He is, in fact, the first professional model I've worked with. Thanks also to Richard (the passenger), for helping out pro bono and being willing to make goofy, no-so-flattering faces in the name of photography. Frog, on the other hand, simply will not allow his likeness captured without a ton of make-up caked on, and he refuses to make any other expression other than his trademark "Green Steel" look.

CAT IN BED - Moscow, Russia No flash used for this shot--strictly ugly, fluorescent light, but I think it suits the mood I was trying to get at here. Just added contrast and texture in photoshop. To learn more about this photo, please go to: http://blog.robcorpuz.com/2014/08/18/catastrophe/

AUTUMN - Moscow, Russia

CORPUZ FAMILY PORTRAIT (2010 A) - Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA Well, here's my crazy, weird, perhaps mildly disfunctional... but always loving family:) These days it's pretty tough to coordinate everyone's schedules to arrange a family portrait, so I had to wait for a candid moment to capture. Luckily, purely by coincidence, I just so happened to have my camera on a nearby tripod with a diffused, speedlite in the hotshoe, one bare strobe at about 45 degrees camera right on a lightstand (too windy for an umbrella), and another bare speedlite at about 80 degrees camera right on a gorillapod slrzoom on the ground. All of the lights were gelled with 1/2 CTO filters. I forgot to bring my radio transmitters but luckily infrared did surprisingly ok. If you look closely you can see me pointing the remote trigger under my brother's arm to set off the camera. Was originally planning to edit it out in photoshop but decided to leave it, as my original idea for this shot was to show all of us in a natural state, doing things that we can often be seen doing, to try something different than a standard "smile-at-the-camera" shot. It was kind of a pain to peel the five of us away from our busy schedules to go somewhere photogenic at the same time and get this done, but for me it was worth it. Got a couple more versions to come too, but I think I like this one best. If you look closely you can see a sailboat and some kind of parachute or paraglider thing. To see the remake of this photo in New York City, click here: http://smu.gs/uGagJj

CORPUZ FAMILY PORTRAIT (2010 B) - Brooklyn, NY, USA This photo is kind of a remake of another family portrait which I think I can safely say is one of my better shots (see it here: http://smu.gs/tLCxGi) While I don't think this picture is nearly as good, I still like it, and because it's my family, I love it. It's taken straight from the camera without any editing. I was always planning on coming back to improve this one but decided just to leave it as is. The background is darker than I wanted it to be. If we had eaten our Katz diner sandwiches a little faster and arrived ten or fifteen minutes earlier I would've been able to catch a glorious sunset sky of pink, purple and orange. I could see it on the walk to the pier from the subway. With every labored step, as my back and shoulders ached from the weight of my massive camera bag, I could see that gorgeous sunset steadily fade away, and by the time I got there and had my tripod and three speedlites set up it was gone. Ohhhh well.

IT'S ALL IN THE EYES If I had thought of this concept before I shot it I would have taken two different photos to make it happen (and angled it differently), but unfortunately the idea only occured to me afterward (months later, actually), so I had to take one frame, make a duplicate with a reversed orientation and alter it by painting in a new set of eyes. I'm curious to know how obvious it is which one of these photos is the original, and which one has the painted eyes. See the comments below for the answer...

BLACK OR WHITE The shot on the right is entirely unedited, and all I changed on the picture on the left was darkening a couple of patches of light spill on the background and tweaking the color and contrast a bit.

STEAMY SILENCE

FOUR GIRLS NAMED LENA

LIGHTING UP A DARK ALLEY - Moscow, Russia Lighting info: the key light is a small strobe in a snoot with a couple full cuts of CTO gel off-camera right on a light stand. I had another speedlite on-camera with a big bounce (and, I think, a CTB gel) to provide some fill. The columns in the back are lit pretty much entirely with ambient. I wish I had used another strobe to give just a touch of rim light on the guys in the background. I wouldn't want these shady characters to be entirely clear, but here I feel they are a bit too ambiguous. As it is, I'm not even sure they're noticeable to most people. Oh well.

DAYDREAMING Kudos to Stacia for being such a great model!

TIED

SPITTING DISTANCE - Chicago, IL, USA This is my brother Evan. Surprisingly, got this shot on the very first try.

BLEAAAAAAAHHH!

SOME PEOPLE JUST DONT LIKE HAVING THEIR PICTURE TAKEN - Moscow, Russia No strobes for this photo: only ambient light. I shot it while lying on the cobblestones of the Red Square, with the exposure cranked up one stop to get some light on everyone's faces and blow the sky out to pure white. Some photoshop was involved to increase the mid-tone contrast and pull out detail, as well as the monotone conversion. My friend Rosa was arranging a "fight" themed shoot with some friends, and I tagged along and took a few frames while she was changing film. I'm looking forward to seeing what she got and will definitely share a link whenever she's done with the post-work.