Camera: Canon 5d Mk III
Lights: Hensel Porty Pack with 2 Hensel heads. 2 reflectors attached to each ranging from 6-15ft from talent.

(currently having trouble with WordPress and their new update, which is hindering me from posting images from today’s shoot. Bare with me please as I figure out how to tackle this issue)

2 weeks ago, I connected with Joe, the owner of Primo Boxing Club located at 701 East Haley St. Santa Barbara, CA and photographed some of the boxers he is currently working with. Before I show you a couple of the images I just want to say Thank You to Joe, Arturo, Eric, and he rest of the fighters over at Primo for making me feel as if I was a part of their family. These individuals displayed a camaraderie that I would expect from warriors who have trained together for many years, not only to one-another, but myself, whom they had just met.

Primo Boxing Club is a non-profit organization, and I plan on interviewing the owner, Joe, in the near future and posting that interview right here on the blog. Stay tuned for that!

©Danny Postawa @ Lispy Studios

©Danny Postawa @ Lispy Studios

©Danny Postawa @ Lispy Studios

Primo can be reached at

701 E. Haley St
Santa Barbara, CA 93013

(805) 455-2331

There is no way for users to opt out of the new provisions; however, you can prevent Instagram from using or selling your photos by deleting your account with them altogether. As nice as instagram is for their filters, and sharing capabilities, it is not worth the cost of them possibly making tons of money off your image/photography with no profit or benefit to you. The user still retains their copyright to their images, but grants Instagram non-exclusive rights to use them how they seem fit.

So, now that you have hundreds or thousands of images in your Instagram library, Facebook has built up quite the amount of stock imagery from your hard work, vision, and creative eye. Lets not give them the opportunity to profit from our hard work.

The link to the new changes can be found at: http://blog.instagram.com

What is your opinion on this matter, and are you going to keep your Instagram account? Comment below!

This weekend, a small army of Veterans from all branches of the military who study at Brooks Institute got together to show their support for their fellow brothers and sisters in arms by photographing the events not only for Veterans, but for McFadden & McFadden to help bring more members of our Armed Forces together in the surrounding counties for the years to come.

If you have not had a chance to thank a Veteran recently, or even a current member of our military regardless of duty status, please make sure to do so. Many do not realize the invisible struggle some are going through due to the nature of their enlistments and deployments. Your gratitude could highly impact their life.

Although Veteran’s Day is a day we show support to our Veterans and members of our military alike, I want to say thank you to those who have supported me throughout the years. Without you, I would not have made it where I am today. Without you, my life would have crumbled before it got started. I am strong, because of you, my supports.

Semper Fi!

Below are some of the images I took from this weekend. Please contact me if you are interested in using them.

Portrait

Huey

Ron

On Wednesday, May 9th, President Barack Obama stated, “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

I think it’s safe to say that that lifestyle and the sense of pride is becoming more mainstream than ever. Maybe since the President of the United States has verbally stated his support, every state will recognize equality and stop preventing those in love from marrying and those who do not, he will come to their aid.

With that being said, I just want all of you to know that I support you and your lifestyle 100%. I am offering a discount all of November for LGBT couples in the Santa Barbara area. If you’re not in the Santa Barbara area, DON’T FRET! I will offer a discounted rate plus travel unless you would like to journey to me.

I’ll even sweeten the deal, the first LGBT couple to contact me in the Santa Barbara area will get a one hour beach shoot FREE!

If you are interested, please visit the Contact page and put LGBT in the Subject line.

Equality for all!

If you’re a fellow photographer, or someone interested in photography at all you should take some time to listen to an online podcast called This Week in Photo (TWiP,) which is hosted by fellow photographer and veteran Frederick Van Johnson. This Week in Photo is a weekly podcast with approximately 60,000 weekly listeners from all over as TWiP goes over what is going on in the photography world. TWiP covers what is going on in the photography and tech world with interviews ranging from attorneys who fight for artist’s rights, to photographers, to tech guys and girls who keep us informed on what’s coming to the photo world. Definitely a podcast you should take the time to listen to. I listen weekly through the iPhone app Stitcher, which is a free app that lets people download and listen to free podcasts.

With that being said, I was recently interviewed by Frederick where we go over my transition from being a Marine to shooting a camera, to my current gallery on display at University California Santa Barbara from October 15th, 2012 until December 7th, 2012. You can listen to the entire show by clicking on the link below and also hear my interview with Frederick.

Also, make sure to follow Frederick on Facebook and Twitter
and This Week in Photo on Twitter

Follow my work on Facebook and Twitter 

Enjoy the show HERE

TWiP

Approximately fifty people showed up to show support and to bear witness to the tragedies faced by some of today’s service members, which allowed them to get up, close, and personal with what reality is like for these veterans every day. The project has allowed me as an Iraqi War veteran and photographer to help bring back sensitivity that over a decade of war and exaggerated media has removed from our daily lives. I strongly believe that this ongoing series will allow many viewers, regardless of age, to realize that not everybody comes back perfectly in tact. Christopher Lawrence shared with me what he’d like the typical person to know, and that is “I’m lucky, I’m lucky because I only had my leg amputated. There are people who go over there and come back with no physical injury, and those.. Those are just as bad, if not worse, than those with physical ones.”

I also gave a 20 minute speech about where I’m from, my experiences in Iraq, why I started the project, and what exactly it means to me. Afterwords, I asked people to stand in front of an American flag that I had set up prior so I could photograph them holding signs of support. If you would like to show your support, please email me your picture holding a sign with words of encouragement to info@lispystudios.com (These images may be used on my website, Facebook fan page, etc.)

The gallery will be displayed at the UCSB Student Resource Building inside the Women’s Center from October 15th, 2012 until December 7th, 2012. Please stop in and see these powerful images for yourself. Also, please take time to sign the yellow guestbook inside.

Support!2

If you are a veteran who has been injured as a result of combat and would like me to photograph you, please contact me at the email above, or visit my Contact Me page here on my site. Semper Fi brothers and sisters!

Clemons Funeral

Protesters from the ruthless “Christian” organization Westboro Baptist Church were supposed to be on scene spreading their version of God’s word. Now, for those of you who are not familiar, their methods include, but are not limited to: Holding up derogatory signs reading “God hates fags; thank God for 9/11, thank God for IEDs,” etc. etc., and screaming to the top of their lungs chanting hateful slurs. Remind you, family, friends, and relatives are in attendance and must listen to these cruel babblings and read these heartless signs, which ultimately make it almost impossible to lay one of our countries service-members to rest.

Clemons Funeral

I left Santa Barbara at 5am on my journey to help create this barricade for a fallen brother named Sgt. Clemons. On the way to San Diego, I stopped by Carlsbad and picked up friend, and fellow photographer

Clemons Funeral © Jerry Chen

 Jerry Chen to assist me in documenting this event. Upon arriving to San Diego, members of the Patriot Guard were going over instructions on how to handle the protesters once they showed up. After creating a mock barricade, people broke to give their condolences to the family of our fallen brother. Jerry Chen and I went on to photograph this powerful bond between members of every service from past and present as well as other military supporters who wanted to lend their time to ensure Sgt. Clemons could be laid to rest peacefully.

Fortunately, no one from Westboro came on scene, and Sgt. Clemons was laid to rest peacefully that morning.

Help raise awareness, and I ask that once, just one time, attend a military funeral and stand toe to toe with members of this so-called church. Stand next to and feel proud to be an American with those who have fought again and again and again.

To all my brothers and sisters out there, God bless you, Semper Fi, and stay strong!

Clemons Funeral

The flyer Westboro posted on their site.

WBC

©Danny Postawa / Lispy Studios

Camera: Canon 5D MKII w/ a manually held 580 EX2 speedlight and shoot-through umbrella.
Settings: 1/40 @ f/3.4 ISO 400
Lens: 24-70mm 2.8

1) Create a duplicate layer to work on in Photoshop so you’re not damaging the actual background layer. I usually rename this layer “r1″, which is short for Retouch layer 1. This is the layer where I smooth and soften the skin using the Spot Heal tool and Clone Stamp at a low Opacity, usually set between 18-21 on the Clone Stamp opacity, not the layer visibility.

Tips and Tricks R1

2) The second thing I normally do after retouching those pesky blemishes is contour the body and slightly refine the edges of the skin in order to replicate how we actually see the individual being photographed rather than skin bunched up, which is unflattering. Remember, skin is skin, that doesn’t mean fat. I handle this by using the Liquify tool located in the Filter drop down menu at the top. The size of the brush you use to liquify is dependent upon the area that you’re adjusting and I usually keep my Brush Pressure under 40.

Tips and Tricks Liq

3) The third thing I do after removing blemishes and contouring is color adjustment. The color treatment of your image defines the mood you set for the audience. In this case, I used an 81A warming filter on k10, which pops out nicely against the vivid blue saturation Lake Tahoe is naturally blessed with. I wanted to enhance the saturation of Lake Tahoe since the sun was going down and the vividness of Tahoe was being diminished every second with the setting sun. I rarely adjust multiple colors at a time when using the Hue/Saturation adjustment tool to in this case I wanted to enhance the blues so I created a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer and brought the blues up +57. One thing you have to watch out for when adjusting color is ensuring other blue areas in the photos that you don’t want affected get masked out, which ultimately leaves those areas “untouched” by the adjustment.

Tips and Tricks +b

4) Next, I focus on shading. Shading helps define your shadows and highlights that are already present in the image. I shade using a technique showed to me by Kayla Raw. Create a blank layer (CMD+Shift+N) and rename is shading. Once the layer is visible use Shift+Delete to fill the layer on 50% Gray. Change your blend mode to Overlay, which will “hide” the layer, but its secretly resting over the image. I use the Brush Tool set at a low opacity (usually 10-15) and paint with black to help define the shadows, and paint with white to help enhance the highlights. After I’m satisfied with the shading, I apply a Gaussian Blur to the Shading layer at about 36%, which allows the shading to blend in more naturally to the skin and shadows already present.

Tips and Tricks Shading

5) After looking at the overall image, I decided the overall warmth was still a bit too much for the mood I wanted to portray, so I used the Color Balance Adjustment layer to reduce the Reds and Yellows throughout the entire image until it reached the desired color temperature, which in this case happened to be:
Red/Cyan: -10
Magenta/Green: +9
Yellow/Blue: +18

Tips and Tricks Color Balance

6) Finally, the last thing I do is Sharpen the image. The way I like to sharpen is by going down the Filter drop down menu to Other, and click on High Pass. When using the High Pass sharpening method, make sure you don’t over-do the amount because doing so will create posterization and banding. This is when the edges all throughout the image has the whitish/yellowish outlines. This is unflattering for the photograph, and especially on the talent. Remember, Less is more.

And that’s it! These techniques can be used for various types of photography and post production.

Tips and Tricks B/A