Student protest in Podgorica | Promo video is OUT and LIVE

As announced in my previous blog post, the new video is now out and streaming. Student Parlament of University of Montenegro, in collaboration with daa Montenegro have managed to whip out this striking promo video! Well, to be honest - in the beginning I didn't know what to expect. I got a call from Bada referring to the project, and I have to admit I was unsure, to say the least. But then we sat down, and I got briefed. As usual, he knows how to deliver a good idea, and since we are a great team for years now, I fully understood what he wanted. So, my answer was YES. YES to the idea of non-profit, activist promo video for students. I believe many of the things they want is legit. The shooting took place in 2 cities - Cetinje and Podgorica, with more than 50 people included. There is no acting in the video. These students protest their current status. Luckily, the shootings were done rather fast, which was great considering the fact we were on a very very very very, almost nonexistent budget (yet everything costs). Thanks to all the students who participated in the video, I hope you get what you want and deserve on this democratic and peaceful protest. Thanks to the people who organized the shooting on the Faculties, as well as Deans of the above mentioned.

For me, it was a great experience and lots of fun.

Cheers!

New video coming soon!

In the next two days a new piece of work will be published. My one and only daa is contributing to a public event during this week. I had to take a snapshot from the video, although it's not fully ready. Raw footage for the win! We shot in 2 different cities with crew counting more than 50 people. More info coming soon. . .

How to: Delete temporary files in Windows 7

Well, I just finished cleaning out my temporary files in Win7. 23GB of nothing useful.
There is a safe and efficient way to do it. Windows stores these files in a folder called Temp which is located on your hard drive disk where you have OS installed. For example the default location is C:/<USERNAME>/App Data/Local/Temp.
Fear not, this folder might be hidden. If you access folder options you can change settings so that Windows Explorer reveals all hidden files and folders. If you like these things the easy way you can go to Run program on windows (Windows key + R) and just type %temp%. Windows will open the Temp folder for you. When you are there just delete everything you can. If an error occurs that a file/folder cannot be deleted - skip it. The explorer is using those files to run itself.
Good luck cleaning out your closet!

Reinforcement has arrived

Tiffen Circular Polarizer, Zoom H4N, Dolica ND filters

Finally I got my hands on some new stuff I've been waiting for. Zoom H4N portable digital recorded with accessories, 3 Dolica ND filters (0.3, 0.6, 0.9) for my 17-40mm f4 L and Tiffen Circular Polarizer for my 50mm f1.4.

Zoom H4N for perfect audio capturing

     

Sony MDR-V6 headphones of perfection.

Tiffen Circular Polarizer for my 50mm f1.4

Dolica ND filters for my 17-40mm f4 L.

Got a chance to shoot some autumn forest scenery

It's been a while since I felt the need to shoot some forest scenery. Yesterday we went to National Park Lovcen, Montenegro, and hiked through the forest. The autumn colors dominated low contrast forest while the fog wasn't really helping. It was a good day to test out some settings on my 7d. I used my fave lens 17-40mm f4 L without any filters on it. Did some post processing in Photoshop (brightness and contrast etc).

The rest of the set can be seen on my Flickr account.

Cheers!

The forest way

Autumn colors

Autumn scenery

Off road

Season trees

Through the forest

A photo from an expedition to Rikavacko lake, Montenegro

The walk

While I was missing in action, I took a day off and went hiking with an expedition to a remote place in the mountains here in Montenegro. For this shot I used my Canon 7d with Canon 17-40mm f4 L lens. Had to run to a nearby hill for the vantage point. The line of people introduces to the midpoint of our hill where we were heading. It was an amazing day indeed.

More of the series can be seen on my Flickr account. . .

Montepass - Future in front of you. Montenegrin CV generator

Logo of the first Montenegrin CV generator

Well, it's been a while since I've blogged so I thought I should share the news with you. :) I'll dedicate this post to Montepass campaign that included Print + Video and was executed by daa Montenegro. The first time I was approached by Anton (our contact from Montepass.com) I was quite excited we were about to embarge in a fun and productive project. Once in a while we get projects like this one: one that we enjoy doing, that it's not dedicated to a big business but rather an initiative by young and promising entrepreneurs.

We decided that the punch line for the campaign will be "From now on the job looks for you" or in native language "Od sada posao traži vas". The key components to the campaign were elements of both the need to have a CV that is easy to fill, very comprehensive, detailed and visually pleasing and the other part of the Montepass is that companies buy the CV database to search for future employees. Knowing Montenegrin mentality we gave our best to attract all employed and unemployed citizens to fill out their CVs. Who knows - maybe it's today when they get a new job offer.

One of the snapshots from the video

The video was done in HD resolution (720p) and was developed in Adobe software (Illustrator, Photoshop, After effects and Premiere Pro).
It was great fun working on the project and we hope it gets the success it deserves.
Kudos to Bada who designed the visuals and was involved in the whole process.

Get Inspired! "What light" and "Bruce"

British animator Sarah Wickens created this amazing stop motion using the Sun as her medium. It's inspiring and haunting at the same time. In the end, even the credits were made using the sunlight, but it also reveals the secret behind it.

Tom Judd wrote, animated and directed this amazing short. The story is beyond powerful, and the sounds really made me smile. Amazing piece of art in both cases, but still they remain very different in their mediums.

Get inspired!

Trippy [dot] com - The new way to travel

Hello all,

Ask yourself: What's the worst thing about planning my trip?


The answer in most cases will be the fact that you don't know where to go, where to stay, how much does it cost, how good the service is, how clean the rooms are etc.
With the internet growing like mad, I got hooked to trippy.com website. I was referenced by a colleague photographer and I am rather stunned. Although, I didn't go anywhere yet (I just found out about it) the rumor has it sells so good.

So what's that different, why is it so good? If you are alive and have internet access, the chances are you are signed up for a some sort of social network. For example, if you're on Facebook, Trippy will scout through your friends and see if they ever lived/traveled to your desired place. Their impressions, photos and stuff will also be available for you to see. Once you sign up with your network friends, you can recommend each other places to visit, wine and dine etc.

So, rather not read my blocks of text, and check their advertisement about it:

This is a great opportunity to share and plan your travel plans. See it for yourself!

PS: To use the actual application, type in "chase" without quotation marks as your beta code. Have fun!

DIY Light box - cheap and effective way to have fun and earn some money!

DIY or Do It Yourself is the best way to get something when you can't or don't want to buy at the moment. I've been preparing some material for a new article coming soon about stock photography and I thought I shouldn't spend so much money on Light tents/boxes. We use them to shoot not too big stuff that somebody or even you might use someday in designs. The lightbox gives you total control of the ammount of light hitting your "subject", what will the background look like (white is most preferred) etc.

Some test shots I took using my homemade DIY Light box. Various settings.

So, how can you make a light box from stuff laying around your house?

STEP1:
Take a somewhat big box and carve an opening on one of the sides from which you will shed light.
I used an old cardboard box that was laying around in the closet and scissors to carve the opening.
Note that you can use multiple openings and get multiple light sources. I decided to go for just one.

STEP2:
Put a semi-transparent material on top of the opening and fix it in position.
I used baking paper and glued it to the box, but I also used some duck tape on top of it just to make sure. You want this baking paper to act as a diffuser of light - The light that comes in the box will disperse upon entering. You can use any thin white paper or even white plexiglass - but beware the plexi is rather expensive.
This is what I got:

I wanted to have 1 opening. Use scissors and put Baking paper on top of it.

STEP3:
When light enters the light box, you want it to disperse from walls of the inside. You also want to have universal background and "flooring" for it. I used regular A4 printing paper for this. Just glue it to the sides and bottom of the box. In this preview I glued it just so much to cover the "shooting area"

Glue some white paper to the bottom and sides of the box. 

STEP4:
You need a light source. Now remember, this is a low budget light box and you can use any kind of light that you have available in your house. Use an ordinary lamp that you use for reading, or maybe use a bit stronger light like I did. Some time ago I purchased a cheap construction reflector for 30€ that fits a 500W halogen bulb in it. That's a lot of light. Point the light source(s) into the window(s) and shoot.

Point the light source at the window. I used 1 light source in this example.

For my first test shots I previewed in the top, I used my Canon 7d with Canon 85mm f1.8 lens. Since my light box is a bit narrow it's much better that I used a longer focal point lens. You don't want a wide angle lens to shoot with. If you have 100mm macro or something like that - it's perfect. But, once again - you can use any lens. If you are a Canon user like myself, you can use 50mm 1.8 lens (around 100€) or even the 18-55mm kit lens. Be sure to zoom it to 50mm or 55mm. I also used different settings in order to get a bit more varied feels to the photos. I took my 50mm lens shot with a wide aperture and slow shutter speed and I got a blown white background. However on other shots I used a bit closed aperture and a faster shutter speed so my background wasn't white but more of a greyish with some natural gradients of light on it.

Feel free to improvise, test and shoot. If you have any questions and comments feel free to use the comment section below or just Tweet me.