A group of artists here in Atlanta have started a project in conjunction with the Inside Out Project. The Inside Out Project was started by French street artist JR. You may have seen JR’s TED Talk about using art to turn the world inside out. If you are not familiar with his work you should take a little moment right now to feel ashamed of yourself and go research the hell out of what that man is doing with a camera, tens of thousands of square feet of paper and vinyl, a few friends, and a metric shit ton of passion.

#weloveatl and Atlanta artists Brandon Barr, Tim Moxley, Aaron Coury, Monica Campana and 45 photographers in Atlanta are participating in this project. The project is called 45×45 and is centered around an area of Atlanta called the Beltline that touches 45 neighborhoods around the urban center of the city. I was assigned a neighborhood and was given the contact information for the neighborhood association president and there was zero hesitation when asked who we should photograph in their neighborhood; It HAD to be Rabbit.

Rabbit is such a lovely man. He’s soft spoken and about the kindest person you could meet. I figured he’d also be a great addition to my Faces & Spaces project so that was the approach I took for this assignment. I wanted a nice clean headshot on a white background followed up by an available light portrait in his environment.

In the video above I outline my usual steps for B&W conversions and little things I do in Lightroom and/or Photoshop to finish an image. I’m working on a full length workflow / post production / archiving / nuts & bolts video right now. I skip over a few things in this video because I spent half my time just talking about things like the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport. In the full length video and an upcoming DEDPXL post I’ll go into detail about things like the ColorChecker Passport and why I use it and how I use it. I also skip a bit about Color Efex Pro in this video because that’s a discussion that can be had on its own. Below you can check out the three steps for the headshot image of Rabbit from the color image to the first click of the B&W conversion to the final image after I tweaked it to my liking. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

In the video you will also see the new LG 21:9 34UM95 ultrawide screen Thunderbolt monitor. I found out about this monitor sometime back in February and pre-ordered it at the price of $899. It had an MSRP of $999 and there was a $100 rebate. Score! I had to wait until mid July for it to start shipping to the US. It’s now $1,294 on Amazon. I see that Amazon has it as Prime item but I can’t get a direct link to that one for some reason. They are selling it for $1240 and they say it’s 3 to 6 weeks for delivery.

Is it worth that price? OMG yes. I knew that as I began upgrading my workstation this year I would be replacing my six year old Lacie monitors that are starting to have some issues. While the Apple Thunderbolt display is a pretty nice screen I wasn’t convinced that I wanted two of them on my desktop. At $999 per screen I figured there were some better options out there. I’ll talk more about monitors in an upcoming post.

I’m so glad I waited. It’s hard to see in the video how wide this is because Caleb shot the video above with the Panasonic 7 to 14mm lens. It is easy to see in the video how wide I AM, though. Jeebus. That lens does me no justice does it? I’ve recently cut three food groups out of my diet to work on that: Beer, bread, and sugar. Anyhoo… Here’s the LG next to the Apple. (It still doesn’t do this monitor justice.)

I hope you enjoyed the video. If you have any questions about the gear I used, the lighting, or about the post production please hit me up in the comments below and I’ll answer them for you.

Cheers,

Zack

PS – If you are in Atlanta be sure to check out the 45×45 Inside Out Project that will be up by September 6th. I believe the location is going to be on North Ave under the Beltline bridge. I can’t wait to see all the photos from the 45 photographers.