"A photograph comes from the eyes of the photographer, grows in his mind and manifests itself in the heart of the beholder."

Roberto Palmari - Photographer and Retoucher

Roberto Palmari

Professional International Collaborations
International photo shootings
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"It all starts at that specific moment in camera.
The moment you press that button...the mirror flips up, and the shutter is released. That single magic moment is where the art is conceived.
Then comes the craft, the artistic craft of the retouch.
And it just helps shaping that sparkle of pure art into a tangible illusion.
The magical illusion of a photograph."

Roberto Palmari - Photographer and Retoucher

Selected work

Services

Retouch

Retouch

I can realize Composites, Beauty Retouch and Photo Restoration on your photographs. Always remember that the best results are achieved with the highest resolutions and of course, RAW is always the preferred choice.

Photography

Photography

I can be hired for Corporate and Fine Art Portrait, Fashion, Commercial and Editorial shootings.

Wedding

Wedding

I can be hired to shoot your wedding and engagement session so that your memories will last forever untouched and always keep that mystical flavor and taste that Your Special Day has for you.

Training & Workshops

Training & Workshops

I offer personal 1-to-1 tutoring and group workshops. I am one of the founder of the LTLRLE collective.

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Blog

The Story behind the shot – the production series part 2 (Inspiration)

Hi there, welcome to part 2 of the series.

There are certainly many different approaches to the production of a photoshoot.

Sometimes you may have clients booking you for a shoot and you are provided a theme, an inspiration or a requirement. But what happens any time you don’t have a client directing you to his/her desire or creative design? Well this is what happens to me most of the times. In this cases my first step is to come up with an idea and develop it .

Today we will talk about this step 1 of my production workflow. Getting inspiration and building up on it.

"When you plan a shoot inspiration can come from any sort of source, be it your imagination, a movie you watched or a song you listened to, a friend, a feeling, another photograph you like."

I usually have two main source of inspiration, my own feelings and my wife’s make-up ideas.

Building up on your feeling is possibly the most complicated and elaborate project you may think of, at least it is for me. I usually start willing to represent a concept, an idea, a feeling I have inside, be it anger, happiness, sorrow, or any variation or elaboration of the likes.

Once you decide on what concept/idea/feeling you want to represent it is the time you have to translate this into images, then into items you will need. Background, location, props but also, colors, lighting, the choice of the model/s…all depend on what is that concept/idea/feeling you had in mind.

One tip I give you is to write down your concept, describe it on a piece of paper as if you  were about to tell it someone, write the mood, the reason why, the goal, the overall idea and start extending it. You don’t have to write a novel about it but it certainly will help you if you wrote a little story about it, this will be the story you want to tell in your picture.

"Write down your concept, describe it on a piece of paper as if you were about to tell it someone, write the mood, the reason why, the goal, the overall idea and start extending it....this will be the story you want to tell in your picture"

Building up on my wife’s make-up ideas it’s a little easier though because it is like working on assignment, the initial spark of creativity is injected by someone else, in my case my make-up artist, alias my wife.

In this or similar cases (assignments, external requests etc…) I usually request a letter of assignment describing the nature and reason for the shoot, what are the main goals and desired effect. If possible I ask also to submit a mood board with it. This is also necessary for the legal aspects of the assignment and of course for the contractual aspects  (that we will discuss in a later episode).

When you have a better understanding of your shoot in planning, when you described it on paper or when you received a letter of assignment or wrote one for it, it’s time to collect inputs and reference images and create a MoodBoard for the shoot. The Internet is an incredible source of imagery of any kind. You simply need to search through one of the very many Image portals and you’ll find plenty of resources.

Go back to the description you wrote down on paper and highlight the keywords: colors, moods, hints on the location and props you may need.

"Go back to the description you wrote down on paper and highlight the keywords: colors, moods, hints on the location and props you may need. "

Search those keywords on Internet in sites such as: GettyImages.com, Pinterest.com, Flickr.com, 500px.com, Fotolia.com and many others. You will find plenty of images you can use to create your final image and to tell your story.

I use Pinterest for my mood boards. For each new shoot I will create a board and I will pin all the images I find that will serve as reference and inspiration for my shoot.

"I use Pinterest for my mood boards. For each new shoot I will create a board and I will pin all the images I find that will serve as reference and inspiration for my shoot. "

You will see in a later episode how this will be very useful to share your ideas and vision with your team (make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe, model, art director).

And you?

What do you do when you plan a shoot?

What is your process, if any?

Until next episode,

Roberto

The Story behind the shot – the production series part 1 (Intro)

hello folks,

I have always been fascinated by the behind the scenes documentaries and reports.

I love to have a glimpse behind the curtains of big and small productions, trying to grasp hints and wherever possible contacts and referrals for my own productions.

 

a small room turned into a portable studio set.

 

an office space turned into a Xmas studio set

Today I want to begin sharing my own production struggles and successes,  will go through the planning of a new shoot from the very first steps (inspiration, ideas), down tithe search for props, sets, models, costumes to finally finish with the shoot itself.

It’s going to be a story in several episodes, hope you stay with me as I walk you through it.

Coming up next:

Chapter 1 – the inspiration

DXO took Chase Jarvis by its words

Chase Jarvis (http://www.chasejarvis.com/#mi=1&pt=0&pi=4&p=-1&a=-1&at=0) once published a book called “The best camera is the one that’s with you” wher e he collected four years of photos taken exclusively with his iPhone, starting with the very first iPhone released.

Now DXO definitely gives Jarvis’ words a brand new flavor and flair with the introduction of the first pocket size 20Mpx camera add-on for the iOS devices.

The DXO ONE is a camera add-on that you can plug to an iPhone and turn it into a 20Mpx, f/1.8, 1080p/30fps and RAW capable camera “that’s with you” … i mean … this thing would ALWAYS be with you.

The device is now only available for pre-order in the US market and should have a target price of around 599$, not cheap indeed, but it it delivers as it promises…

Let me know what you think about it.

Ciao,

Roberto

 

Dynamic Range or not Dynamic Range, that is THE question

Hi there,

it’s been quite a while since I wrote my last post but I have been busy with my daily job, sorry.

I take the chance today to share a link I found looking for information to clear my mind about the question: “Which camera has the best dynamic range” ?

If you are a DXO Mark fan you know already that Sony A7R and Nikon D810 (but most of the Nikon do score quite high anyway) are absolute winners and if you happen to also be a Canon shooter as I am, well, your disappointment will risk to be lethal and you may be tempted to sell out your gear and run toward Sony cameras and sensors (indeed Nikon sensors are provided by Sony while Canon develops its own ones).

Well there is not much online to compare the DXO results and according to my dear friend Hector at DXO they are serious about their tests and we may want to accept them as is.

But…yeah, you know, I find it a bit strange that Canon scores so bad in the DXO Mark rating…I mean, I am probably biased because I bought Canon long time ago and I can’t switch systems any time I want but…all those professionals out there shooting Canon 5Des and 1DXes…are they all crazy or blind?

I don’t think so, I think that there is a difference but I think there is some sort of bias in the DXO tests, something that makes their tests “more favorable” to Sony sensors perhaps. Not that they make it on purpose to influence the market but there may be something that shifts the results somehow.

My opinion, as I found out, is shared with the guys at Outdoor Photo Academy, and you?

What do you think about it?

Until next time,

Ciao,

Roberto

Astropad – Turn your iPad into a Cintiq

Hey there what’s up?

Tune in tonight for the review of Astropad, the iOS App that allow you to turn your iPad into a Cintiq like graphic tablet.

I will perform a quick retouch of one of my portraits using the app with my finger on my iPad Mini 1.

Astropad is an App for iOS tablets which, thanks to it’s counterpart running on your Mac, is able to share the main Mac screen on your iPad.

With the help of your finger or using a dedicated pen such as the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus 2 (or others) allows you to perform your Photoshop/Lightroom edits directly on the iPad screen.

Combining the pressure sensitivity of a creative stylus with the screen replication on the iPad it is possible to work on your images the same way you would work on a Cintiq Companion.

I find the opportunity simply amazing. One of the thing that was really annoying for me in the otherwise fantastic Cintiq Companion line-up was that Wacom offers a Windows and an Android tablet but no integration whatsoever with iPads. I am a long time Apple user and I always have my iPad with me, this software is finally bridging the gap.

But let’s get technical now.

To be able to use Astropad you need to install the app on your iPad and another server app on your Mac.

The application running on your mac works as desktop replication server (for geeks like me just imagine something like a VNC server running on your Mac).

The app running on your iPad gives you access to the remote screen plus an additional set of predefined control keys which are configured to interact with Photoshop reproducing some of the usual controls such as Brush and Eraser size increase/decrease, Zoom in/out and Undo/Redo.

This is it for now and for the introduction, I will post a video later tonight in which I will go through a beauty retouch on one of my latest portraits.

For information, details and prices, visit the Astropad website (of which I am in no ways partner nor endorser).

Ciao,

Roberto

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