Joseph Francis
Profile Photos
Vital Stats
- Age: 45 (Birthday this month)
- Location: Los Angeles, CA, United States (Male)
- Listed As: Artist, Photographer
- Looking For: Models
- Last Active: Jun 21st, 2008
- Joined: Sep 11th, 2005
About Me
My name is Joseph Francis. I work in the visual effects industry in Hollywood.
I'm here at retrokitten to have some fun. I plan to use a new, highly realist computer graphics renderer called The Maxwell Renderer (http://www.maxwellrender.com) and my camera to make some theatrically lit, lushly beautiful, kickass, appealingly kitschy imagery.
I'm going to make virtual background- and virtual wardrobe-enhancements - carefully, and with great attention to lighting and realism - and combine these elements with photography of the human form. These will be carefully planned images. They will be slow to produce, and each one will be a highly crafted piece.
If you and I work together on one of these images you'll know in advance what the finished piece will look like. The backgrounds will largely be done before any photography takes place, and we'll have already worked out the pose. The planning is important, because an invisible, virtual version of you in a matching pose will create the shadows and reflections necessary to tie your image into the virtual backgrounds.
Important though they be, the backgrounds will not dominate the picture. They will subordinate themselves to you, the talent. You will not be small in frame; you will dominate the frame. Any images we make together will showcase you.
For some work-in-progress, look here - http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2006/06/maxwell_rendere.html
The fun of this is to use the Maxwell Renderer to make low-tech, inexpensive-looking dioramas, and yet to honor those dioramas and take them very seriously, as if they are real places. I'm not going to keep the virtual nature of the sets secret, nor do I want to showcase that fact. They will be rendered to look real - dirt, nicks, scuffs, hinges, light bulbs, power cords in the shadows, and yet they will function fundamentally as throwaways - as mere backdrops - these images are about yo