Derek Woods Photography

Radeo. LA. 2013. Polaroid 995. (Styled by: Julie)

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:01:00 -0700

Radeo. LA. 2013. Polaroid 995.

(Styled by: Julie)

Thanks for the answer :D i'll try that with my fiance, she helps me a lot with my photo but we never stoped to do that stuff you said :D and the third item! god, I pilled so many cameras from my collection :( i'll start to locking then haha and use one or two only for a few shots and see what I got :) thank you so much, you've been helping me a lot :D and you are a inspiration for me ;)

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:22:33 -0700

My pleasure!! Feel free to hit me up any time. Sometimes it will take me a while to get back to you, but I will eventually.

Take care.

Derek

Miss Kacie Marie. LA. 2013. Eos-3 935. (Styled by: Julie)

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:01:00 -0700

Miss Kacie Marie. LA. 2013. Eos-3 935.

(Styled by: Julie)

how to you overcome creative blocks or how do you manage to stay aways creative? and those stuff know? ;s i'm in a middle of a block :(

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:06:00 -0700

Hmmm. Good question. It’s not something I really have thought a lot about. I feel like I’m constantly running around so much that a block isn’t really an option. Though as I think about it 3 things come to mind.

1. Collaboration. Since Julie and I started working together our ideas grow very organically. We’ll settle on a model to shoot. We then come up with independent ideas, looks, themes, designs and then we go to a coffee shop and bring our independent ideas together. By the end of it we narrow down what we like to what’s going to work best for the model, location, time, ect. Most of the time our ideas come together to form lager ideas. This is the kind of chat you could be having with anyone you work with. Some models are open to it, others aren’t as much. But you may ask, how do we get those ideas to being together? That brings us to number 2.

2. Inspiration. I follow a lot of photographer, models, artists, musician, and even businessmen/women who inspire me. You have to look at your brain like a body. Feed it good, strong, inspiring content and it will produce similarly good stuff. There’s so much content on the Internet it’s trickery to find that stuff that truly inspires you and pushes you. But when you do and the more you study it the more ideas your brain will have at its disposal. An important note on that however, MAKE IT YOUR OWN (I know this goes without saying but still worth saying). The internet is a great source of inspiration, but sometimes you’ll not realize you’re rehashing something you saw somewhere else until you go back through your notes and realize you love that shot cause you saw it before. Ive done it myself and had to change things last minute when I realized I was copying a shot I loved by another photographer and didn’t realize it. But, back on track, the third and final point maybe the biggest.

3. Limitation. “The absence of limitation is the enemy of art” - Orson Wells. There are very few more true statements in the world. Every situation is like a box, small, big, whatever, but understanding the walls of your box allows you to understand how to fill it. You need to understand what you have, and don’t have, in order to know how best to work. Every shoot I have different resources and always want to do more than I have. But by understanding what I have that dictates EVERYTHING. How big of a space you have determines lights, lenses, film, cameras and styling. How much light there is in that room you love tells you what camera you can use, and more importantly, which you can’t. You need to know what you have, what you dont, what you can get, and then plan for how to shoot with that information. Limitation honestly is my greatest motivating force. All through film school my films were created out of the notion of what story can I tell with what I have. My photography is very much the same why. Most of my shots are more close up because it takes less gear. I like to move a lot and the more gear the slower I can shoot. Embracing this will narrow the endless scope of ideas and then help you birth executable ideas more easily.

Welp, thats it for long winded answers with Derek Woods today. I hope that helps.

Take Care and party on!

Derek

Mallory. LA. 2013. Leica M6 010. (Styled by: Julie)

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:52:50 -0700

Mallory. LA. 2013. Leica M6 010.

(Styled by: Julie)

The awesome folks over at Juxtapoze Magazine had some super nice...

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:21:37 -0700

The awesome folks over at Juxtapoze Magazine had some super nice things to say about my photography; you can read it here.

If you’re not a regular of the Juxtapoze Erotica section you’re missing out.

did you build your own infinity background or did you bought and installed? ;s

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:40:19 -0700

I built in my own but then came across one at a shoot that the company wasn’t going to keep cause they got new gear and they gave it to me. So Ive had both.

The old I built I built by getting bike hooks from Home Depot and a roll of paper.

No question just a statement. You're a great artist. One of the best.

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:38:45 -0700

Well thank you so much!

Hello!! I really enjoy your work! Everything you do is always so polished & strong. I was wondering if you have any tricks to keeping your Polaroids so clear when you scan them. Mine always have dust on them:( Thanks in advance!

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:21:11 -0700

Thank you so much.

I dont know that I have a trick to keeping the polaroids clean. I do clean the glass and polaroid before every polaroid I scan. That helps a lot.

Also I do a decent amount of dust removal in LightRoom to clean up the dust that does get left behind. Other than that its just a matter of keeping the polaroids properly stored and not messing with them too much. I use to keep them out more but found that shuffling through them a lot would scratch them a lot. So I store them away now-a-days.

Hattie Watson. LA. 2012. Eos-3 804. (Styled by: Julie)

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:01:16 -0700

Hattie Watson. LA. 2012. Eos-3 804.

(Styled by: Julie)

juliesharpe: Britt Warner Photography by: Derek Woods Styling...

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:10:01 -0700

juliesharpe:

Britt Warner

Photography by: Derek Woods

Styling by: Julie

Dress For Black

Julie. LA. 2012. Polaroid 535. (by dtwoods)

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:16:30 -0700

Julie. LA. 2012. Polaroid 535. (by dtwoods)

Radeo. LA. 2013. Eos-3 948. (Styled by: Julie)

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:04:00 -0700

Radeo. LA. 2013. Eos-3 948.

(Styled by: Julie)

Mallory. LA. 2013. Eos-3 924. (Styled by: Julie)

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:58:00 -0700

Mallory. LA. 2013. Eos-3 924.

(Styled by: Julie)

Hey man, big fan of your work! I'm a film student that would like to try my hand at still photography, any advice for someone starting out?

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:55:27 -0700

Hmmm, well I could go on for days on this subject, Ive gone from being a photographer, to quitting photography to go to film school, and then kind of back again.

Over all the biggest difference is how a narrative is communicated and how movement is captured. If you’ve learned lenses really well in film school then you’re VERY prepped for photography.

Really, and everyone says this, the only way to start is to start shooting. Get a cheap film camera, I say film because when you have limited shots you will take your time framing and composing, and shoot at least a roll a week. That’s my advice.

Let me know how it goes and when you get shots up. Id love to see.

Derek

I agree with you a 1000% on shooting Polaroids. I've always had so-so luck shooting 35mm with my Diana. The LC-A sounds sexy. Followup: Do you develop your own film? Or do you outsource that?

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:52:37 -0700

I develop my own B&W but color (c41) I get processed and then handle the negative from there in most cases.

Just stumbled across your work tonight. Really loving the shots and the styling. You're definitely switching it up and doing awesome stuff here. Thanks for sharing with us here.

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:52:02 -0700

Thank you so much. I like to keep trying new things. There will be a lot of that to come!! Changing things up a bit in the coming months. Stay tuned.

Have u ever wanted to do a photo shoot for the suicide girls ???

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:50:53 -0700

Hello!! I get this question some what regularly, but I haven’t answered it in a while so Im happy to answer it again.

Although I like many Suicide Girls, and have shot a few, I wouldn’t shoot for the site because I would never hand over the copyrights to my images to them.

Also, the format that SG looks for in its sets isn’t really conducive to how and what I shoot, so I dont think it would be a good fit anyways.

That being said, philosophically I support what SG does, we just do what we do differently.

Britt Warner. 2013. LA. Polaroid 1055. (Styling: Julie)

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:28:00 -0700

Britt Warner. 2013. LA. Polaroid 1055.

(Styling: Julie)

Darth Dani. LA. 2012. Nimslo 3D 011.

Sat, 04 May 2013 13:01:10 -0700

Darth Dani. LA. 2012. Nimslo 3D 011.