Rock & Roll Stops the Traffic

While I was in San Francisco last week attending the Google Plus Photography Conference I participated in the Embarcadero photo walk with Trey Ratcliff. As part of the walk we came upon the Vaillancourt Fountain and I realized that this was the general area that U2 held a public concern years ago. I vaguely remembered that Bono had spray-painted a sculpture and had gotten in trouble with the city. No one on the walk seemed to remember the incident and when I finally got a chance I looked it up I found this YouTube video.  The incident occurred during the bands Rattle & Hum tour in 1987. In the video Bono climbs up on the sculpture at around the 2:50 mark and records the message that "Rock & Roll stops the traffic." The graffiti was removed long ago, which is sort of a shame since it was an iconic moment and it would have been fun to still see the paint today and remember a moment 25 years ago.

I've included a few more of the photos at my Google+ page which you can find here.

Update: Unfortunately the video was pulled by YouTube for copyright reasons. I think if you search "U2 Embarcadero" there are still some other videos out that show some of what was in the video above.

Photoshop World Las Vegas

I'm back from Photoshop World in Las Vegas that ended on Friday. I'm an enthusiastic amateur photographer and there is no place better to get the latest training and trends in the photographic industry then to attend a PSW. The National Association of Photoshop Professionals puts on two of these events a year, one on the East Coast (usually in Orlando) and one out West (usually in Las Vegas). I haven't been to the event since 2007 and below were the trends that stood out to that previous show.

• Video with DSLRs. In early 2009, Canon came out with their 5D Mark II, which included the ability to record HD video. I'm told that this was almost an after thought by the Canon engineers thinking that there would be a very small audience that would be interested in the video capabilities, perhaps a handful of photojournalist or wedding photographers might use the feature. Well there has been an explosion of interest and excitement surrounding this capability and there were several classes at PSW that dealt with capturing, editing and creating video with DSLR cameras. Count me as one of the ones who is trying to learn this new skill set and expand my ability to tell stories with it.
• HDR Photography. High Dynamic Range photography is a complete creation from the digital age, it isn't a process that the old analog darkroom could create. As such, it is fairly controversial in terms of its appeal. Basically the process involves taking several exposures of a scene (usually 3 to 5) and then using software blending these exposures together into one photo. By using the multiple exposures the photo can greatly increase the tonal range of the image. There were several classes on HDR at the show, and while I was there Apple announce that it would include HDR capabilities with the new iOS software.
• 3D Design. The 3D capabilities came in with a prior version of Photoshop but there seemed to be more interest in it this year. I sat in on one session that went over the capabilities and it was interesting. To me, this is just a starting marker for Photoshop and sometime in the next five years the capabilities of 3D will begin to expand rapidly. For example, loading multiple photos of a subject and then loading them into Photoshop to rotate around it would be very cool and something I think is not to far off, although I am completely speculating here.

Other observations: there were supposedly 3,000 people in attendance which seem strong in this economy, the accompanying trade show seemed much smaller than I remember with less vendor participation. The show itself seemed more diverse, with more women and African-Americans. In the past these shows seem to be a young to middle aged white guy fest. The diversity was a welcome sign.

Well that's all for my notes from PSW Las Vegas. I hope to make it back in a few years to see how things have changed.

Holiday Pictures

My sister and brother-in-law invited me over to take some holiday photos of my little niece, Erin. She is a great little kid and very photogenic. We had fun running around the different locations near their house where we were able to take shots. We were not the only one out there today as many people were setting up family group photos. It was great to see my sister, brother-in-law and Erin and I got to watch a video of a recital that Erin was in this morning - very cute and very funny.

Not much done to the photo other than a slight warming filter effect in Photoshop to cut the white color cast of the flash. Click on it to see a larger version.

I have been taking pictures of a lot of models during the last year and sometimes I feel a bit self-conscious about it because I really don't think of myself as a fashion or glamour photographer. I do have fun with the models that I work with and consider many of them friends. But one thing that I realize during the past few months is that by working with models I am constantly learning and using new techniques. If you look at this photo and the one in the entry right below you'll see a very similar style and feel. I did use a more powerful light with Christina in the photo below, but the bigger difference is, that last Saturday, I was with Christina for several hours setting up and shooting. Today with my niece I had maybe 20 minutes. It was the time practicing beforehand that helped me feel more confident today and to be able to capture an acceptable image.

Rainy Day in Maricopa

Spent part of Sunday down in the town of Maricopa. My friend Jim has a house there and I discovered that there are so many places to shoot. The town reminds me of a past time in Arizona when there was the old, mixed with the new, and things seemed less crowded.

Our friend Christina, had agreed to model for us and did a great job. I'm still trying to learn my relatively new light which is an Elinchrom Ranger. We lucked out when we had some stormy clouds move in which gave us a great backdrop to shoot against. One of the images from Sunday is near by, click on it to see a larger version.

A quick head shot set up

I went to Scott Kelby's Lightroom 2 Live Tour this week in Los Angeles. As always Scott did a great job covering the material and bringing everyone up to date on how to use the software, but it was something he said about a lighting setup towards the end of the seminar that peeked my interest. As an example for an ad for a beauty product he brought up an image of a model that he had shot previously. It was a simple head shot against what I had originally thought was a white seamless paper roll. But instead he had shot the model in front of another light. I have done the same thing in the past, but instead of shooting with the light directly pointing at the back of the model and towards the camera, he pointed the back light upwards at a 45˚ angle. This had the pleasing effect of wrapping the light around the models cheeks, neck and shoulders. I really liked the look and was anxious to try it myself.

As luck would have it my friend Vicki had asked me to create some head shots of a friend of hers who had agreed to model for us both. Melanie was great and was very patience with me even though she had not model much before. I used the technique to create the near by image of her and I was pleased with the results. This setup is another tool in the bag that I can go to for a quick clean head shot of a model.

The best laid plans...

So my friend Crystal asked me if I could take a few photos of her son and their two dogs for a Christmas card this year. I was happy to do it and suggested that we scout out a location at Phoenix South Mountain Park as a great location to shoot.

The conversation went something like this:

"You do realize that I'm pregnant, my son is only a year and a half old and we own bit bulls, right? Oh, and my dogs pant when they are outside in the sun" Crystal said as I related my plans on how I envisioned the shoot going.

"What's panting? Never mind. It will be great, I have the ideal location, we will just hop out of our cars set up and take a few quick photos. We will be done in a half hour." I said confidently as if I knew what I was talking about.

"Ok...but wouldn't it be simpler in your backyard, we would have more control" said Crystal

"No, no this is going to be great, the best Christmas card you ever had!" I said as I hung up the phone.

Let's just say Crystal was right and I was wrong. Trying to control two bit bulls while balancing lighting equipment on the rocks in the middle of a dessert park ain't so easy. And although, Caden, her son, was a trooper, but he wasn't so keen on being left in a toy fire truck under a huge strobe while I confronted him with a menacing camera lens.

Nearby you'll see some out takes from the shoot. Click on them to see larger versions. Crystal's husband Joe, a real firefighter and the reason for the toy truck, tried his best to get things in order but to no avail. Oh, and you'll notice from one of the shots that Crystal's dogs pant when there outside in the sun.

Let's just say we rescheduled the shoot for later in their backyard.

Seriously

My friend Nicole asked me to take some promotional photos of her boyfriend Daniel, who is an up and coming hip-hop star. Daniel goes by the stage name Serious. I'm not a huge fan of hip-hop but I have to say I'm really enjoying the CD that he gave me after the shoot. We shot at a warehouse downtown that has several areas where graffiti covers the wall, which we thought would make a nice backdrop for the photos and give it an edger, urban feel. I have been experimenting with a three light set up recently. This type of arrangement, with two lights at 45 degrees behind the subject and a beauty dish as the key light in front, is very popular right now. Not only does it provide nice lighting coverage and separation from the background, but it supports an edger, more contrast type of post processing in Photoshop. We had a lot of fun at the shoot, we had two other photograhers, Jim V and Megan, along with Lorri helping with make up. Serious also had his entourage which included Adrian, who helped by holding some lights during the shoot.

Sedona

Coming back from Page and my visit to Antelope Canyon, my friend Mia and I drove through Sedona. I have an off roading book called Backcountry Adventures Arizona that I bought a few years ago. One of the trips in the book is the Schnebly Hill Road, which is a easy trail that runs from Arizona 179 right off the Oak Creek bridge and winds through the mountains east of Sedona. The trail ends at exit 320 on I-17.

The trip takes about an hour and is a little bumpy at first but the views are great and it is not crowed when compared to Arizona Route 89A, the paved alternative. We shot a few photos along the way including one of Mia standing on Schnebly Hill Vista, which I have posted nearby. You can click on the photos to see larger version.

Dusting Off the Blog

It's been a little while since I have posted anything on the blog so I'm dusting off the blog and will start posting again. I've still been shooting and so have a bit of a back log to go through. Nearby is a photo that I shot with a lens called a tilt shift lens. It allows one to move the point of focus around the frame. I rented it recently to test it out, for me all it became was a wide angle lens. Anyway, a new post to keep my blog running.

Marliese in Santa Fe

I'm planning on writing a more complete post on my trip to Santa Fe later in the week, but for the moment, I thought I would post one of the pictures from the weekend. This is Marliese who is a relatively new model, only 9 months in the business, and a mere 19 years old. As my dad use to say, "I think I have ties older than that." (Do people still wear ties?) Anyway, not only is she a natural beauty, but smart and creative to boot. I put one of the other shots from this set up on my Flickr page, so as not to bore people over there with redundant shots I thought I would post this one here. More on this trip later this week.

The Mojo Farmers

One of my friends at work is managing a local band on the side. They have a new CD coming out in a few weeks and so I asked her if I could photograph them and would be happy to let them use the photos on promotional material or their website. The band is called the Mojo Farmers and they have a really good sound. I got a chance to shoot with them last Sunday.

One of the things that I am learning about photography is that it is not just the technical aspects (lighting, exposure, post-processing)that you need to learn but also the ability to bring creative ideas to your subjects so that there is a collaborative effort in producing the final image. So as I started out to photograph the band I was thinking more about an edger, ultra-modern look like Dave Hill or Joey Lawerence. I wasn't able to take the time to really learn what type of image or feel these guys were going for. They are more of a laid back group, in the same genre as the Grateful Dead. As you can see by the near by photos I'm pretty sure I did not get the image that they were looking for. I pushed the limits even further with the individual head shots that I took. I was going to line all five of the shots up side by side with all five band members. I took these extreme close ups and then post processed them with an edger effect. The feedback that I got back from my friend from the band was not the greatest: they thought I made them look like meth addicts. Nearby is Darin's before and after picture, and no he doesn't work in a coal mine and is not a meth addict. Sorry Darin!

Overall these guys were really good people, friendly and great to work with. I just wish I could have connected better with them and gotten them photos that they would have liked, well, there is always next time.

My friend the band manager gave me permission to blog about the shoot and post the photos; as she said: "any publicity is good publicity'.

My Baby Portfolio Grows

Well, maybe I should clarify the title, my portfolio of baby pictures grows. Being divorced twelve years now, I need to keep things straight. I will admit to a certain sheepishnesses to answering the door on Father's Day though.

In any event, I had the honor of photographing the babies of two friends during the last few weeks. As I have noted in past post (here and here), babies are wonderful models because they have perfect everything: skin, eyes, honest disposition. There is not nearly the effort after the shoot in editing the photos that one has with adults. It makes the "right out of the camera" experience a lot of fun.

I still have a lot to learn about posing and coming up with creative shots while in the moment, but these little people were so beautiful it is not hard to get a great photo. I want to thank Dana and Shane for sharing their supermodels for the shoot.

Clouds

So coming back from the San Diego trip that I discussed in my previous post, I passed through some weather. It gave me a great opportunity to shoot some interesting clouds. As I learn about photography, I learn more about the differences between the way our eyes and brain interpret the world and the way a camera captures the world. Let's just say our eyes and brain kick ass. Cameras can only "see" a portion of the tonal range that our eyes can see within a particular scene. Ansel Adams developed an approach called the "zone system" to explain the 5 or 6 tonal ranges or zones that a camera can capture depending on the settings. Our eyes and brains can see 10 to 12 tonal ranges.

Clouds can sometimes create great challenges to the photographer, for what the eyes sees can sometimes never be captured by a digital sensor. I was pleased that I caught some of the essence of the weather that I passed through on that ride back. It was really fun to see.

San Diego Weekend

I spent the last weekend of February in San Diego floating around taking one of the Mentor workshops. I've taken a couple of these workshops before and I have enjoyed them a great deal. Not only can you learn from the professional photographers/mentors but the quality of photographers in the workshop provides for another body of collective knowledge to draw from. We had rain on the Friday and Sunday, but had a sunny day Saturday. We had five shoots in all, Balboa Park, sunset shoot from Catalina Island, a wildlife park on Saturday morning, surfers Saturday afternoon and the USS Midway on Sunday morning. I got some decent shots but had a minor personal snafu, when I deleted all the photos off my hard drive after I had returned home. A hard lesson but certainly one that will make me more careful about my workflow. I did have a couple that I had saved on Flickr which I have link to here.

Photoshoot with Devon

Devon, a model that I have worked with before was traveling through Phoenix and we had the opportunity to go out one afternoon and work on a photo shoot right before sunset. We went to the Rio Salado Habitat area that I mentioned in the previous post and I was happy at the decent variety of backdrop and locations that I was able to get. If you go to my flickr account you can see why I was frustrated with the "cloud" picture of her shown to the right, so I won't repeat it here. But, all in all, it was a fun time to be out shooting in the nice weather and with interesting backdrops.

An Omen

I think of myself as a realist. I've never been much for horror movies and don't have too many superstitions. For most of my life, good decisions and hard work have rewarded me with "good luck" and bad decisions and laziness have resulted in "bad luck". So I don't usually buy into signals from the great beyond.

I may have to modify this attitude somewhat after a recent encounter. I was in my kitchen yesterday, when I looked out the back window and immediately noticed an owl. For many people, seeing an owl may not be that big of a deal, but for someone in central Phoenix it is an unusual sight. I immediately grabbed my camera and got a few shots before he took off. By the way, this was no small bird, I estimated he had about a four foot wingspan. We have a surprising variety of birds that migrate through my neighborhood during the year, but this was fun to see.

I guess I am not such a realist as I thought, because I immediately came in and Googled "owl omen" and read up on the various susperstitions surrounding an encounter with an owl. The whole incident made me laugh because there is some sort of built in psychology regarding meetings with the unusual. In any event, I am going to take it as a positive sign and look forward to my good fortune in 2008.

Fall Forward

Normally, I don't put up cheesing pictures of flowers on my blog but every once in a while you see something that represents something else. For the Southwestern United States moving from summer into fall means our release from the air condition enclaves that we retreat to in the late spring. Suddenly I new world opens up, and we are free to plan outdoor activities and our houses are larger because we can have backyard barbecues. There is a rebirth of vegetation as temperatures cool sufficiently for them; therefore I am posting the blooming of the bird of paradise in my courtyard to celebrate the approaching autumn and all that it means - cooler temperatures, bigger houses and more time with friends.

Flickr Slideshow

I just learned about this new way to be able to post some of my Flickr photos here on my blog and they are in a slideshow format. I thought that I would try it out with some existing photos that I have on Flickr. These were shots that I took while I was in San Francisco earlier this year. Click on the thumbnails below the larger photo to see that image. Click on "Photo Link" below the image to see the larger image in Flickr.

Saturday night on Mill Avenue

I spent the weekend at a photography workshop in Tempe. The workshop was presented by SnapFactory which is the husband and wife team of Mark and Diane Wallace. This workshop was their "Digital Photography 101" and it is a great technical overview of photography explaining the functions of the camera through the elements of proper composition. We had some interesting hands on assignments, including walking around Mill Avenue on Saturday night.

Using a technique that I had practiced in an earlier assignment, I was panning everything that I could see, from the cars cruising on the Mill to people walking down the street. I also found an interesting spot where I could capture some shots of the pedestrians below. The lighting worked out to create some elongated shadows which added a particular mood to the photos.

I like attending workshop like these because not only do I learn some things, but it motivates me to go out and explore the world, particularly places close to my house. I will certainly wander down to Mill Avenue with my camera again soon to see if I can find some new subjects and explore the ideas in these shots a little further.

Everyday Photography

You know that your life is a bit boring quiet when you find yourself photographing kitchen utensils. Actually these shots were inspired by an assignment on a photography blog. The assignment was to use off-camera strobe units to light ordinary items found in the kitchen, but the shots should include some element of a specular highlight. What is a specular highlight you ask?

"The specular highlight is nothing more than the reflection of the light source in the object you are lighting. This reflection is an often overlooked control in lighting design. In it's most basic form, it is simple to grasp and to predict. Explored more fully, it allows you to completely manipulate the tonal structure of your subject."

Ok, I had a little time on my hands this weekend.

But looking at these photos now, I'm not actually sure that I got any specular highlights in any of my shots, there are definitely edges that show a glow of the lighting but nothing that shows a the true reflection of the light. Perhaps a knife wasn't the best subject to pick for this assignment. Probably a better example of specular highlights are in the the pictures below of that cute kid Caden. There is definitely a true reflection of the light source in his eyes - perhaps too much. When a specular hightlight shows up in a persons eye like that it is sometimes referred to as a catch light. In any event, the pics got me off the couch for a while trying to learn something and causing some blood to run through the gray matter between my ears. My one confession about these shots is that I kind of cheated a little. The photo blog that I got the assignment from is for learning how to use the small hand held flash units off camera (the type of flash that can attach to a camera body). The lighting that I used was a bit more powerful and that might not have been the best choice either.

Sometimes when one is looking for inspiration the easiest and best place to look is just around your kitchen. Earlier this year I took some picture of wine corks that I had sitting on a window sill. I posted that picture on my Flickr account, but I don't think these will make the cut (the pun was intended.)