Connecting to the Plexus

November 10, 2022 in ad campaign, creative direction, marketing, photography

Our work revolves around finding people we can serve. This case study explores how I researched and met with one of my favorite designers to create an image that tells a story and attracts others I align with. Not to mention I picked up a SICK knife.

The Plexus by Arcane Design and Isham Bladeworks - Photo by Jeahn Laffitte

The Search

When I went full-time into commercial photography, one of the biggest struggles was determining what I wanted to do and who I wanted to do it for. It’s a huge question to work through and has taken me months of research.

That research led me to a blossoming community of creatives who each have a unique approach to their craft, knife-making. Knives are truly some of the most diverse tools I’ve ever seen, and there’s a world filled with millions of knife shapes, sizes, and use cases, just like photography.

The Find

If you didn’t know, I’m a huge Star Wars fan. It’s been a staple in my life since I was 4 years old. The culture of Sci-Fi has pulled at my heartstrings, informing my creative approach, and I was absolutely blown away when I came across a knife maker that bridged those two worlds.

Meet Arcane Design. Israel’s approach to knife-making is super unique and heavily inspired by Sci-Fi and Horror. But it’s not just the inspiration that’s so cool, it’s his approach to the design process and attention to detail that gives him such a unique product lineup.

Arcane Design’s “Crawler” and “Abyss” models

I spent the weeks ahead of the show interacting with Israel on Instagram and breaking the ice as best I could. This was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss. Turns out, he was just as awesome and friendly in person as his brand online shows.

Meeting Israel of Arcane Design at Blade Show West 2022

It was such an amazing moment, and I felt compelled to purchase his latest release, The Plexus, which, of course, is why I’m writing this now.

The Project

I immediately began thinking about how I could photograph this knife. It became quite the challenge approaching this angular design with light, but well worth the effort. Here’s how it went down.

Art Flows From Us All

So what was it about this object that drove me to spend days tweaking lights and reworking ideas?

This blade is like nothing I’ve seen or held before. The modular design and angular features speak to my soul. The titanium handle and m390 blade meet with the perfect marriage of form and function. The shape of the blade window flows seamlessly from the teal bolsters. The feel of the pivot bearings and the satisfying click when the frame lock is engaged, it’s all just right.

I suppose what I see in this knife is what I try to build into my own work: Simplicity through precision, beauty, and utility.

Artwork isn’t limited to a canvas or a computer screen, it flows through everything we do, and I can attest that Israel and Elijah are great artists in their own right, making people feel something through the story and design of the knives they make.

One day I hope to reach that level of artistry.

The ESEE-6: A Case Study by Jeahn Laffitte

September 02, 2022 in photography , creative direction, ad campaign, marketing

I love photographing All-American products, especially when they are world-leading in their industry. The ESEE-6 checks all the boxes. Here's how I designed and photographed this prospective ad campaign for them.

The Turning of a New Leaf

July 15, 2022

Humble beginnings 🙏

Today is the turning of a new leaf. For the past 4 years, my obsession has been learning everything possible about photography, composition, lighting, and storytelling, and 6 years before that, working in Audio Engineering, Graphic Design, Animation, Video Production, and more. Up until now, I hadn’t committed to one singular discipline; but today, that changes.

I will now officially be launching a commercial-level image creation studio for businesses of all sizes, who value premium results and world-class experiences.

I have so much to learn, and investing in such a huge initiative in such a small community is daunting, but I know that I have what it takes. All my mentors have said my work is incredible, now it’s just time to build relationships and serve people to the best of my ability.

Thank you all for your encouragement and support. If there’s anything I could possibly do to serve you, don’t hesitate to reach out! You might just be surprised what we can accomplish together. ❤️

God Bless,

Jeahn Laffitte

Overcoming Mild Depression

November 16, 2021

Time for a Real Chat

I don’t talk about my “feelings” on social, in fact this is totally abnormal for me even IRL, but I do think healthy conversations are important to a person’s growth in any area of their lives. Accountability is also, so that’s why I’ve decided to share this.

I got depressed. Not massively, not chronically, but enough to really affect my attitude and outlook on my life for a while. We all go through phases of self-doubt and fear, but this one lingered longer than usual and really ate me up.

In the last month, my family experienced nasty colds, I had to cancel a business trip I was super excited for, and once we felt better, my wife got food poisoning. All this compounded by poor eating, bad weather, and staying inside threw us for a loop with emotions running high, which is never a good thing in my experience.

Professionally, this made me feel like my career path was wrong, blocked, and hopeless to ever move forward. I feared rejection and to even speak with people. It’s really crushing to get inside your own head and tell yourself lies, even when you know there isn’t an actual problem in the real world.

Thankfully, after WAY too long of a stretch, the bubble popped, and I was sick of feeling so self-centered and lethargic. I decided to take my family for a drive to the mountains to get some photos, take a time lapse, (which I hadn't done in months), and to enjoy the fresh air. This was the first time I really left home in 30 days, and the first step to getting out of my own head.

The time lapse I captured that day. It’s not perfect, but it was a good step.

I should have done that MUCH sooner. Duh. I used the bad wind as an excuse to not go out. I used my tiredness as an excuse to not wake up. I used my self-loathing as an excuse to not work on my craft. I knew the truth the entire time, that just getting going was the key, but I just wouldn't start.

That first step was so important, and just a couple days later, I felt much more grounded and ready to talk to people again. I offered my services to an old friend, reached out to a local business, made amends with my wife, and remembered how blessed I am to have the life that I do.

As I type this, I'm still feeling pretty low, but just interacting with people again has been a major spirit lifter. I was reminded by a handful of friends that joy is plentiful, help is always near, and just getting some fresh air works WONDERS. Why was something so simple so difficult to do?

Finally, getting over myself and thinking of others is where the tipping point was overcome. Fellowship with like-minded people and a common goal is super important for mental health. I'm thankful to have my God, my wife, my parents, my church family, and professional friends to talk to about anything, and I hope to be that for you too.

The only way to do that effectively is to stop worrying about myself and start focusing on others. So simple, but not always easy. Anyway …

Life is good, and I'm grateful you're a part of it.

Oh! Here are some running Bison to hopefully make this less sad.

How to Create Bold Beverage Photography

October 10, 2021

Don’t feel like reading? It’s okay, you can skip to the bottom of this article for a quick video I made.

Do you “thirst” to create stunning beverage photos? Do you want to “quench” your desire for beautifully styled drinks? Well you’re in the right place. In this article, I’m going to walk you through my process for nailing drink photography.

Lighting Easy as 1, 2, 3, 4…

As with everything, lighting is the most important ingredient for great beverage photos. In this example I’ll be using 3 lights and a fill for a total of 4 light sources, but feel free to pick and choose for your needs.

One way to add a splash of interest to your shot is lighting up the backdrop to compliment your scene. In this case, the label on the bottle is red so I wanted to match that.

I used a small RGB LED by Aputure but you can use whatever you have to get the look you want. I placed the light under the foam core “floor” to hide it from camera view.

The one light that really helps drink photos stand out is a back light. It makes the liquid glow through the glass and really shows off the contents and details. There will be odd refractions but we’ll address a way to fix that later.

I once again used a small Aputure MC and placed it about 12 inches behind the drink. A little brightness goes a long way and intensity will need to be adjusted depending on the light transmittance of the glass.

The key and fill are of course the most important lights in the scene. The key is a very large 4’x4’ diffusion panel lit by the Godox VL-150 and the fill is a large cut of foam core.

The idea with these lights is to position them so that the reflections run all the way up and down the edges of the bottle and land in a way that fits the labels nicely. With the fill, I specifically pushed it farther back into the scene to create a soft rim light on the right side of the bottle.

Note: If you don’t have access to a large soft box/diffusion sheet, there are lots of ways to get soft light. A good starting point is a large window with indirect sunlight. You can also buy white foam core super cheap almost anywhere and bounce a light source off of that. In fact, I find foam core to be way easier to use and more helpful than expensive alternatives for fill and bounce.

Ice Cold Styling

A plain bottle with no special coatings or effects can look decent with the right light, but if you really want to show off the texture and temperature of the beverage, you’ll want to add some extra love.

The industry standard way to make a drink look ice cold is to add fake condensation using vegetable glycerin. Mix 1 part water to 1 part glycerin in a fine mist atomizer and spray the front of your bottle with it. Remember that condensation doesn’t occur where cold liquid isn’t present.

The next effect I want to let you in on is a neat product called d u lling spray. Krylon is a popular maker of this magic juice but fair warning, it’s very difficult to get ahold of as of writing this article. If you can’t find it, you can create a similar affect with frosted gels or diffusion paper taped to the back.

Dulling spray is a temporary aerosol matte finish designed to specifically create a frosted look. It’s used in many ways for photography but in this case, we are spraying it on the back of the bottle to diffuse the back light. This makes the liquid glow much more evenly without all the crazy refraction.

That’s It!

With a bit of creative editing, that’s really all there is to making some dope looking drink shots. If you have any questions please drop me a line and share your photos with me @jeahnlaffitte.

Happy Trails!

Here’s a quick video of the process.

60 Second Process Video

Want to work with me to create epic shots for your products? Hit me up at Contact page of this site.

Creating My First Diorama - Pirate Theme

September 04, 2021

Pirate stuff is really cool. I mean, with all the stories out there, old or new, there is plenty of inspiration to make something fun!

Last week I took that inspiration out for a stroll by creating my first ever diorama. It wasn’t the most elaborate thing and definitely wasn’t perfect with scale and story but it really taught me a great deal about visual story telling and lore.

A Simple Idea

At first glance, you can probably name a few sources of inspiration. Pirates of the Caribbean, Treasure Island, Peter Pan. I didn’t look up any specific reference material but just worked out of my head from all the movies I’ve seen in my life.

The primary vision I had in my brain was Cortez’s treasure trove on Isla de Muerta from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Gathering the Elements

Im not sure where the original spark for this idea came from but I knew I wanted a glossy black skull to use. So after some googling, I found a company called Skullis that makes skull shaped gemstone carvings of all kinds. Now I don’t believe in any voodoo healing crystals in any way whatsoever but their products are really high quality and look incredible.

For the treasure chest, I literally just found some miniature ones on Amazon that were designed for the Dungeons and Dragons game. I know nothing about DND but they were perfect so I snagged ’em.

The only other major set pieces I needed were the rocks. I wanted them to look very dark and jagged and thankfully my dad had the perfect ones left over from a construction job a couple years ago.

The rest of the elements like the key, seashells, rum bottles, gold coins, rope, etc. were all purchased on a scouting run to Hobby Lobby and Michael’s. At that point, I had no idea all the things I wanted to include, I was just on a mission for anything pirates!

Building the Set

Once all the elements were gathered, it was time to build the diorama. I knew the general idea, so I set the backdrop with black paper, set the floor with glass covering blue foam core for water, then started stacking rocks.

I decided it was important to focus on the set before trying to compose my camera. Of course I knew the general direction I was shooting in but I didn’t want that to pull away from the whimsical nature of a set built for real life and not just the lens.

As you can see, the set is pretty simple! I stacked the rocks on the glass, stacked the props on the rocks with the treasure up top and then just added the effects and lights.

One key light focused on the treasure, a fill, a bounce, a cyan top light to reflect the water, an orange back light to diffuse through the haze and some good old glycerin solution sprayed over all the parts of the set that should look wet.

The Edit

Once I got all the shots I needed, it was time to edit. I wanted it to look super dim and contrasted to compliment the jagged rocks. I added a decent bit of clarity and texture in Lightroom along with a massive gamma lift with the curves to give the shadows a boost since the scene was pretty dark, but the chest was really shiny.

I also used the secondary color sliders to adjust the blue water to look more dark and teal rather than bright blue. That way the shine of the cyan glow would cut through.

A little secondary exposure to dim the edges and bring focus to the chest and voila!

Conclusion

My main takeaway from building and shooting this set was that it’s soooo worth the effort! I didn’t have the strongest idea and it shows, but it’s so much richer than just a plain old skull on a black background.

Next time, I’ll definitely improve the composition and story so that the focus is more clear and the viewer feels more than just “cool set” in their brain, but overall, I’m super stoked with the outcome and have learned so much in the process. Stay tuned for more to come.

Creativity with Miniature Sets

August 21, 2021

It’s safe to say that photography is fundamentally 2 things; light and composition. Light is literally what bounces off objects in the scene and composition is where you place the camera to capture it.

What’s really amazing about shooting miniature scenes is that it becomes incredibly easy to experiment with the placement of everything since it’s all so small.

The Process

Below is a quick video showing the behind the scenes of the image above and below that is a video sharing a bit of my process on lighting a tricky glass image.

You can see in the second video how easy it was to just move the lights around until I got the results I wanted.

It’s probably obvious but in the first video with the Storm Trooper I was inspired by the production methods of The Mandalorian using the TV screen in back as “The Volume”; a virtual environment for interactive lighting and instant backdrop changes. The set isn’t perfect and the floor is just some foam core that doesn’t blend in at all but the concept has great promise. The key to everything, however, was matching the lighting on set. Here’s another example to illustrate that better.

So this photo is on the same exact set. I just swapped the background to a canyon image and moved the camera in closer. You can still see the floor ramming into the screen with no transition but it works, I guess.

Now go check out how I matched the light above. I used 3 very small wallet sized RGB LED lights (Aputure MC’s) to dial this in.

Looking through the viewfinder of my camera, I matched up the hue, saturation and luma values of the lights as well as the positions so that it matched seamlessly with backdrop image. Looking through the viewfinder was key since cameras see things differently from the way we do.

I used one light as the key on the upper-right side in a light lavender color, a very similar color in the lower left to act as a fill of the light bouncing off the ground, and finally I used a third light in the upper right behind the figure to act as the rim light and matched that with the yellow of the highlights in the image.

It’s not perfect but I was blown away at how well this actually worked! The human eye can be tricked pretty easily in certain circumstances.

Conclusion

I hope this brief article has shown you that working with miniatures is an amazing way to start playing with and learning lighting, composition, set design and more.

Not only is it easier to manipulate than full size sets, but it’s also cheaper to get into and can be done in your bedroom with a few simple tools. There is so much that can be done with these ideas.

I’ll leave you with some links to amazing toy photographers that are on a whole new level for you to take inspiration from.

Robert Day - 97 Parsecs Photography

Chris Rose Photography

Greg - Toycap

Dale Stroud

And of course I have a thorough list of some amazing places online to learn photography here on my website.

Catcha in the next one!

Jeahn