MANUEL MOUSIOL - Photography

What’s the perspective?

The Creative Control — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:07:42 +0000

In the beginning of January I went to a Sumô Dôjo and watched the sumôtori doing exercises and small matches for around 3-4 hours. It was a magnificient glance into the world of Sumô Wrestling; how hard they have to train, how communication is between different sumôtori and their trainers. I guess, sometimes it can be pretty frustating too…

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Filed under: Photo of the Day

New Life

The Creative Control — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 08:23:10 +0000

I am living in Japan now.
The journey to Tôkyô was a long one, it took over a months through Latvia, via busses Transsiberian Railway through Russia / Siberia, Mongolia’s Ulaan Baatar and steppe, China’s Beijing and Japans Kobe and Ôsaka. I can recommend it to everybody, especially the Mongolian steppe is breathtaking and life of the nomads a fundamental lifechanging experience.
I am an “Assistant Creator”, hired as retoucher by the fabulous “Japan Digital Image” company. Check them out at www.J-D-I.co.jp!
As I am doing professional, commercial work now, I hope to dive into more abstract and experimental photography and design in my spare time.

Right now I am working on a travel diary from the last few months, and of course I have many ideas for new photo series and still thousands of photos to go through that I took in the last months. And a new website design is on the way. This year is another busy one!
Stay with me and enjoy the ride!

Woman on a bicycle in Beijing.
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Posted in Photo of the Day

Farewell

The Creative Control — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:15:34 +0000

Tomorrow is my last day here in Frankfurt/Germany. I will be going to live in Japan for one year and my journey will begin in Russia via Trans-Siberian Railway. I will be on my way to Kobe for the next 30 days, staying in Mongolia and China for a week respectively. I hope to take a lot of interesting photos which I hope to be able to share with you when I will finally be in Tôkyô.

I took this photo of Keiko in June, hanging out at Main river in Frankfurt. If people let me just do my stuff with camera and flash and everything is relaxed, I think a lot of nice shots can come to existence, like this one. It’s nothing spectacular (besides her attractiveness, beauty and absolutey amazing eyes) but a simple honest portrait, snapshot like, edited in a nostalgic style.
Reminds me of the good times here…

Lighting Info: Flash handheld left.

Postprocessing: Retouching, color correction, conversion to GIF and back to JPEG..

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Posted in Photo of the Day

Relax’n Hair Styles

The Creative Control — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:14:06 +0000

I was busy the last weeks with a huge assignment from my local hair stylist called “Relax’N”, for which I already did their advertising photo.

This time we had 11 models, including both hair stylists in various (lighting) settings for three day shootings. Sometimes you have to go save with the light, don’t have a lot of time, other times you can create something more interesting.

There are a lot of pictures to be posted on my Flickr-stream the next few days.

With these shots of three men and three women I was pleased because they look nice and professional, and I love that the models don’t smile but sometimes look a little bored or without perspective.

Lighting info: Flash through umbrella high left, goboed flash back right, goboed flash for the background

Postprocessing: Retouching, sharpening, tonecurve…

Ladie’s version:

Posted in Photo of the Day

Light experiment

The Creative Control — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:29:55 +0000

Since I am in London for a week now there will surely be some updates, finally. So I finally get to post this picture from around two weeks ago, that I did together with Manuel Hossfeld, fellow photographer and strobist.

The idea was to use these small light sticks that people take to concerts or so. The difficutly here is obvious: Trying to get the weakly glowing sticks to become vibrant while not getting distracted by a background that is too bright, and then lighting the subject accordingly.
What I really enjoy here are textures of the cloth on the head of the subject (that’s me by the way) and the jacket. The wide angle gives an aggressive feeling. Lot’s of things learned on this shooting.

Strobist: SB right high on head, left low on shoes, in the back.

Postprocessing: Different layers of exposure and contrast.

With Manuel Hossfeld

Posted in Photo of the Day

Local Hair Stylists in Frankfurt

The Creative Control — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:26:11 +0000

Long time no update.

I graduated a week ago and am now officially M.A. (Master) of art education and japanese studies. Currently working for a few weeks at a “normal job” and saving money to go to Japan again. So, quiet busy.

I did have an assignment a few weeks ago though. A local hair stylist just opened up and asked me to take a picture for an ad. Since it had to be done quick and it was just for a local newspaper I didn’t go for something totally wacky edgy, but something that would make people feel that these two hair stylists are young, pretty and have self-esteem.

Sometimes I wish I had more strobes and more time. I would have loved to sculpture the hair saloon with light, because it is quiet fashionable and would need more attention than just a overhead strobe…

Strobist: SB-28 through umbrella high, camera right; SB-24 in the middle of the room aimed at ceiling; SB-600 far right as a kicker (didn’t trigger)

Photoshop: Vibrance, Saturation, Contrast, LAB-Curves, Sharpening etc…

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The above photo is my choice, they used a different one for the advertising:

They are very friendly and the service is great. You can feel quiet at ease, as their name suggests: “Relax’N”. Located in Oberrad / Frankfurt am Main (Germany). Give them a call:
069 – 59 60 74 67

Posted in Photo of the Day

In the Garden

The Creative Control — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:17:29 +0000

Photoshop – I have a love/hate relationship in the sense that I prefer rather ‘original’/raw pictures. I like to plan things ahead and would rather use photoshop as little as possible, preferably not at all, like with this photo of my hair styles shooting. But on the other hand it is fun and can have such an impact on your photo. And you never have anything raw – every picture has to go through the settings in your camera, white balance, developing (either real or virtual), and in modern age it even depends on the monitor you use how the picture will look like!
In this case I was just doing some personal portraits for my pretty cousin Julia and liked this picture so much that I wanted to add something and make it really pop. I wanted to try something different than my usual postprocessing and I like the effect the blur has on the image…

Strobist: (lightly diffused) SB-600 camera left

Postprocessing: Colors, Contrast, Blur, Retouching etc…

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Posted in Photo of the Day

RGB Bridge

The Creative Control — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:41:17 +0000

I was location scouting with my fellow photographer Manuel Hoßfeld yesterday without any real equipment but my camera. The east harbor of Frankfurt is an amazing, mysterious place at night. So many cargo boxes, train tracks and lights – and this old, rusty bridge. I love how – yesterday with almost full moon – the colors mixed and made this bridge shimmer and give highlights and shadows.

Postprocessing: Different layers of contrast, color intensity, crop etc…

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Posted in Photo of the Day

Logo-Wallpaper

The Creative Control — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:45:51 +0000

I worked on my own logo for some time and you might have seen it as a watermark in the recent photos and also here. I used the traditional emblem of my family on my father’s side, which was used (and maybe created) for the printing company that exists since 1892 now – although the company itself is not in my families hands anymore. I wanted to change it to my personal liking. So I put in the buddha head and changed some symbols, so now flowing water and an eye are included. It looks so iconic, it’s almost embarrassing.

Pattern credits to: patterns.ava7.com

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Posted in Design of the Week

Thrown LoFi

The Creative Control — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:29:43 +0000

I heard of people throwing their precious digital cameras around with a slow shutter speed to get some crazy images. I am not in the mood to break my Nikon D300 plus equipment worth thousands of bucks for some gradients, but I figured I could try it out with my good old cell phone. If it’d break I’d just stop sending stupid text messages and finally get back to natural and healthy communication.
Well, it didn’t break, so here is the gradient, which I find pretty intriguing, especially since it would take so much more time to do it in Photoshop. Here, it took only a second and a good catch in my backyard. And unhealthy communication survives…

LoFi: Nokia 6290

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Posted in LoFi Photo of the Day