Blog Post

Meeting with Dave Dugdale

A couple of weeks ago I sent Dave Dugdale, a fellow dslr video user, an e-mail asking if he needed any help with some After Effects work. I was traveling to Pagosa Springs, Colorado for some video work and was going to be passing by his town. He e-mailed me back saying he’d love some help trying to simulate some of the effects in Deep Green Sea‘s video called The Carpenter. I created a few effects, met up with Dave at a Starbucks and gave him a little 1 on 1 instructions on how to make the tracked detail effect. Unfortunately the video we recorded in Starbucks had awful audio so I remade the screen captured tutorial and sent it over to Dave. You can see the video here:

Edit: There was a little negative response from a few people. Saying that the workflow was a little inefficient. I didn’t pre-compose my elements in the video. When Dave and I actually sat down and I precomposed it, the precomposed elements lost quality and instead of wasting Dave’s time trying to figure it out we just parented the layers instead. I should have included something in the video but I didn’t. Oh well.. Haters gonna hate. What are you going to do. I was just happy to meet Dave and let him know how grateful I was for his videos. I’m glad I was able to help him.

Flower Photos from the Canon Rebel T3i

Throughout the past week I’ve been taking various photos of my family’s plants. A great way to both experiment with composition and to find out more about my camera. After taking these I’ve learned that a tripod is vital to getting the image top notch. The wind moves the flowers and motion blur becomes a factor so having a high shutter speed is also a must when taking plant photography. I’ve also learned that more simple flowers make better and more cinematic looking photos. For example, a smaller lily or daisy can have a bigger impact than flowers that are more larger and more complicated such as the rhododendron. Of course you have to put into factor the type of camera, lens, photographer. Here are the photos below. Click on them for larger images and you will be linked to my Deviant Page where you can even purchase prints if you so desire to do so.

               

     

We’re Live!

It’s official, RyanRakowski.com is live and running! It’s still in its beta form though. Lots of new content will surely come and the design will change in due time. Favorite this site and check back often. A new video will be uploaded to YouTube and posted here every Friday so stay tuned!!