Lahij's Craftsman Portraits

In July I was invited by the Azerbaijan Photographers Union to take part in the event organized by the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations “ASAN service” in Lahij. Lahij is a notable place in Azerbaijan, with its authentic handicrafts traditions. Removed and isolated, this town has its unique atypical style of life. Coppery, brass work, woodcarving, and handcrafting are the main occupation of the villagers. The village's carpet and rug crafts are also well known in Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus. Ten photographers from the Azerbaijan Photographers Union stayed there for 5 days and each photographer worked on his own project during these days. My project was the environmental portraits of Lahij's craftsman. At the end of the project period I came up with five different craftsman portraits that you can see below. The first image is an ancient and authentic copper-smith's shop that is still functioning nowadays. Enjoy!  

The copper-smith's shop

The blacksmith

The carpet maker

The tailor

The harness maker

The copper-smith

Studio Portraits Campaign - Zemfira

Zemfira is a photographer and a friend of mine but this time she wanted to try herself as a model and see how it is being on the other side of the lens. She arrived in the studio already prepared and I knew that it is going to be a nice, moody retro style portrait session.

Cinematic Street

Here are some of my street photos I made in cinematic style with my new "Cinema Night" lightroom preset applied. Some of these images I posted earlier just as regular street photos but with new cinematic preset they get quite different look and mood. The rest of the photos I am posting for the first time. By the way, the preset is free and available for download, so please see my previous blog post with sample images and download link of my "Cinema Night" lightroom preset. Enjoy!

Cinema Night - Free Lightroom Preset

The cinematic look is becoming more popular nowadays. It is a way of post processing when the images have a look as if they were stills captured from movies. But of course, the images should also have a cinematic mood. Impressed and inspired by color grading in movies like "The Imitation Game" and "Bridge of Spies" I decided to create a lightroom preset with that cinematic look. After few attempts and tests I came up with the "Cinema Night" lightroom preset. You can find a download link at the end of this post. By the way it is free! Hope you will find it useful. 

Here are some examples of "before and after" of  "Cinema Night" preset. After applying the preset you will still need to adjust and tweak every photo, since there is no one magic formula for every shot, as each shot has it’s nuances, so the presets are just good starting point. You may also apply the final widescreen look (black bars) in photoshop after completing all the adjustments in lightroom if you like. 

Here is a dropbox link to download the "Cinema Night" preset. I will be glad to get your thoughts and feedback about this preset. Also feel free to post links in comments below to your own sample images with "Cinema Night" preset applied.  

Studio Portraits Campaign - Mesi

As you probably remember few months ago I launched new free Studio Portraits campaign. Mesi was one of the several applicants who responded to my casting call. We met last week, planned the session and set the date. Here are the portraits that we made this week in the studio.

Vintage Camera Poster

After renewing my small studio I was looking for some nice posters to decorate it. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a free and high resolution vintage posters online so decided to make my own. Since I have a descent collection of vintage cameras I thought it would be great to use one of them for the poster. I am not as good in Photoshop as in Lightroom but with the help of few online tutorials I finally was able to create something that will look nice on my studio wall.   

This is the photo right out of the camera with some slight tonal adjustments in Lightroom. The image was later exported to Photoshop for further design adjustments.

  

I found a great website called Tagxedo for creating word cloud online, uploaded my text, created and downloaded the word cloud image. After some few simple tweaks in Photoshop I came up with the final image below. The next step is to print it, mount it and hang on my studio wall. I do not mind sharing it for personal and non commercial use, so drop me a line in the comments below and let me know if you would like to have a digital high resolution copy of the poster. 

My Best Street Photos of 2015

Here is the selection of my best street photos I took in 2015. Enjoy my photos and the great music by John Deley. You can also watch my best of 2014 here. Your comments and feedback are welcomed.