Portrait: The Cellar...

Shot a portrait on assignment today...it's for a new bar that is opening up in Long Beach called The Cellar. I shot the 3 principals at the location, which is this neat underground area beneath a historic building. Lots of brick. The interior was really rough. They just got the leather seating but not the boards that go behind it.

I decided to try shooting them on the seat first. Two lights with two umbrellas on either side. One set to 1/4 power as the main light and the other to 1/16 as the fill. Lighting was ok. I wish the board behind the seats was anything but white because it robbed the photo of some contrast.


Next set up I tried was a verticle shot low to get some of the work lamps in the photo to give it an under construction feel. One main light to the left on an umbrella. Not my fave of the three, but I just want to show what goes through my head on a shoot.


The final shot, we did in the brick stairwell going down to the club. I wanted to break up the composition so had one of the guys in the foreground and the other two in the back. I'm using two key lights here, both on umbrellas. I have an umbrella on the guy on the foreground and another one on the left of the two in the background (just behind the door frame so you can't see it). I like this one best. The composition feels dynamic and light is nice and directional.

Mall Santa

Got the cover the District this week. Haven't seen the print issue yet, but the layout of the Santa photos is suppose to be killer. Pick up a copy if you're in the LBC!

Miracle on 14th Street

I was hired by Better Balance for Long Beach to photograph their annual event at 14th Street Park. They give gifts to over 2000 children every year.

This is my first job using the Rode NTG2 shotgun mic and I have to say it is pure awesomeness. All the audio was taken outside in a pretty noisy environment but the mic was able to isolate their voices. It's a great mic and has made an exponential improvement in my sound capture.



This is also the first time I gathered multiple voices. Still working on how to structure the narratives. This is a little rough, but I still like it.

An oldie but a goodie...

Thought I would repost this as a YouTube video to get a little wider distribution....This is actually the first day in the life of portrait type shoot I did and I still love it. I think the combination of the images and the music ("At the Hop" by Devendra Banhart) just yanks on the heartstrings.

Playing with myself...

Slow day today so I decided to play with my lights. I usually keep my lights pretty simple but after seeing a few videos of photographer Jill Greenberg at work on Strobist, I got inspired to experiment a little. So here is a portrait from start to finish.

The first set of lighting are two Nikon strobes that act as hard rim light.

The next light is a Norman 200b head with umbrella box that will provide the main light.

Another Nikon with a blue gel aimed at a thunder grey background.

The finished portrait with a little cleaning up.

The final image with some Photoshop to give it a Dave Hill sharpness to it. The whole image becomes a bit cooler (in temperature) and the highlights look metallic. Neat effect.

What it all looks like set up.

Twilight of the Press Telegram?

I shot a portrait recently of Joe Segura, who is part of the union at the Press Telegram, Long Beach's daily newspaper. Sadly, it seems that since the PT was purchased 10 years ago by a larger media company, it has gutted its editorial and photography departments.


The PT is now a shadow of its former self. The news is no longer really Long Beach oriented, but the sort of syndicated canned news that can be found in other papers.


To emphasize the point, Joe brought three newspapers during the portrait session, each with the same EXACT headlines and stories. Talk about homogenization!

Promo Pics

I'm going to have a small write-up in Long Beach Magazine this September. I wanted to reshoot the portrait of myself for the story.

I finally got the Xtracycle working with the Gary Fisher I recently acquired and took it out on it's maiden cargo voyage today. Laura and I rode out to the Queen Mary. I had my usual load of light stands and a Pelican case with my camera. I set up a few shots with Laura as the trigger woman. We were racing a bit with the setting sun, but I think the results look pretty good.

At Work....

I always wondered what I look like when I'm shooting. I imagined it was something a bit more graceful, but hey, that's why I'm behind the camera.

A recent client took some snaps of me taking some snaps (very postmodern), which in turn led me to try to find the snaps of which I was snapping at the time (or as close as I could approximate).

Say it Ain't So...

Well...had a good and bad day today....Good day because I finally got the cover of The District Weekly. It's a real minimal photo of the side of Acres of Books building. They also used quite a number of photos from that session in the article. The joy, however, was a bit short lived after I saw this anti-bike invective by Steve Lowery:

I’d like to continue on the cycling tack and say a few words about cyclists: I hate them. I don’t mean the top-notch, racer types; I mean the losers who think they are top-notch, racer types and insist on riding by you on the beach pedestrian/bike path yelling “On your left! On your left!” as if pedaling faster is going to make the wife come home. And then there’s the lot that likes to pretend they have every right to share the road with the adults in the cars. Look, just because you have a beverage-holder on that thing DOES NOT MAKE IT A CAR. And what is the deal with the clothes? Look, I get that you want to be visible, but dressing up in what appears to be Liza’s laundry-day duds only makes people want to hit you more . . . unless it’s Pride Week in which case You go, girl!

I've met Steve and he's a nice guy and I know this part of the magazine is meant to wind some people up, but it was still a bit irksome. So, I shot off this letter to the editors.

Dear Editors,
I have to say I was a bit mortified by Steve Lowery's comments regarding cyclists in the last issue's Vector Control especially when he wrote that he "hates them." There are lots of things to hate in Long Beach, like the Minute Men screaming in front of St. Lukes, the breakwater, the RDA, but cyclists? Those are words that I would expect from a yahoo in a pickup truck or the Traffic Engineer's office.

I can understand the disdain for the Tour of California, it was a lot of sizzle and no steak, but don't take it out on people that are just trying to do something good. I ride because I enjoy it, because it is good for the environment and because I have a brother in Iraq. When I'm on the street I'm not trying to be a car, I'm simply being a vehicle. As a vehicle I have the full and legal right (CVC 21202) to occupy the traffic lane (not the "car" lane) and to even take up the entire lane if I feel that it is necessary for my safety.

It's hard enough to ride day in and day out in traffic with people who would rather play with their iPhones than pass me safely on the street. I don't need another publication, especially The District, which I held in high regard, fueling the anger and ignorance against cyclists.

In a way Steve Lowery is right, Long Beach cyclists, the real ones that ride day in and day out not the "top-notch racer types", were the biggest losers from this whole embarrassing affair. Many biking advocates were bandied around city council meetings and planning meetings to demonstrate just how bike friendly Long Beach is. We were promised a Bicycle Action Team, the city staff seemed more than willing to try to make Long Beach the bike friendliest city in the US, for a few brief weeks we felt that we were finally being heard.

Of course, after all the bleachers were taken down and the lycra was neatly put away so were any intentions of carrying out the Bicycle Master Plan.

Lighting Exercise....my Spork!

So what do I do when I'm not photographing families, weddings or important city officials? I like to take pictures of my eating utensils :) I bought a titanium spork from REI a few weeks ago for my upcoming bike tour. When I first saw it I thought it was a bit absurd. However, after a few rounds in the store it began to dawn on me how perfect it was as an object. Half spoon. Half fork. All titanium. It is the culmination of man's ingenuity and learning.

Anyway, I decided to photograph it heroically, as is only befitting such a singularly perfect object.

It took about ten minutes to set up. Grey matt board as the background with a Nikon strobe with a snoot and gel for a splash of color. The only other light is another Nikon strobe gaffer taped to a gridspot and held by my hand. I had the camera on a tripod and moved the main light around to get different looks....something with even lighting, smothing high key and something low key.

Ta Da! Finally done!

Press the play button!

Well, my opus thus far for documentary family portraits is done. I shot about 20 gigs of images. Approximately 1600 RAW files. Of that, I did a first round edit to about 366 images. I had to pare down the 366 to 144 images for the slideshow.

Whew!

When you do an edit like that, everything comes into play. You measure carefully the value of each image, not only for its own weight, but also its relationship to other images. I think that's where the true art of editing takes place. It reminds me of this quote:

Perfection is achieved not when nothing more can be added, but when nothing more can be taken away.

Just a little compositing...

Well, still bummed about my lost memory cards. I was going to spend the money on a new tent for the tour, but that will have to wait. No cards. Can't shoot.

I can't really do much about the lost images, but I can work with what I have. I reworked one of the images from the shoot. The sky was totally blown out if I adjusted the exposure for the subject. Luckily, there was enough info in the RAW file that I could darken the top part of the image and bring the barbed wire and sky into better view. I think it definitely adds to the image to have that ominous barbed wire running across the frame.

Andy St. and a minor tragedy....

Well, I had a good and bad day...mostly bad, I suppose. I was out on assignment shooting a rough little neighborhood in North Long Beach. I was with the reporter and the story was about a street in Long Beach that was riddled with violence and drugs, but managed to turn itself around with community effort.

Andy St. was rampant with gangsters and drug dealers. The SWAT team made weekly visits there. At one point, the US Postal Service refused to deliver mail to the individual apartments and instead put up a group of mailboxes at the end of the street. So, to say the least, it was a little rough around the edges.

I met some families that pulled together to get rid of the troublesome residents, plant trees, paint a mural and more or less revitalize the neighborhood. I got some great shots of the families on the street.

When I was photographing some kids playing on the street, my wallet of memory cards fell out of my back pocket and someone either walked off with it or it grew wings and flew away. We scoured the street for a good forty minutes with no luck. I'm more upset with the lost images than I am with the cards, since I got some great stuff that I can't shoot again. Fortunately, I had enough variety in the final card that was in my camera to hopefully cover the story.

C'est la vie.

An amazing experience....

I'm back from SLO. It was a long journey and a great weekend. I spent the weekend with the family I was photographing, documenting everything from when they first got up in the morning, to making pancakes, to playing in a creek behind their house, to reading under the tree on their front lawn, to putting the children to bed, etc.,

For me, it was a pretty intense and amazing experience. Intense, in that I had to be constantly aware, looking for where the light was best, waiting for just the right moment and watching my camera settings. In all honesty, I didn't really know how it would go over. I've shot several sessions like this with families before, but never to this length of time and in such close quarters. Luckily, the family I was with was very open and willing so it made my job easy.

The entire train ride over I tried to empty my mind and be open. I knew something like this would only be successful if I was fluid in the moment. If I tried to force shots or over direct, it would ruin the delicate balance of the situation.

I remember reading about Cartier Bresson, the great Magnum photographer, talking about his style. He said something to the effect that one must always place the camera between his shirt and his chest.

That is to say, you have to shoot with the heart.

My furthest assignment....

This weekend I'm going on a mini-adventure! I've been hired to shoot a weekend documentary portrait of a family celebrating their new reloaction. In many ways this is my dream assignment. I've found a client that understands my approach and he also happens to be the CEO of a wonderful company called, Blue Marble.

Blue Marble is an investing firm that specializes in creating socially counscious portfolios. We're both in tune with many issues and he loved and understood why I bike. He asked me if I would be interested in taking a trip to San Luis Obispo and I said yes!

San Luis Obispo is quite a way by bike and as much as I'd love to ride the entire stretch, I won't be able to this time around. I am, however, taking Amtrak. There is a station in SLO and it's a short ride from there to their house.

I still find it pretty amazing the places you can go without a car and a little ingenuity.

I'll be documenting my trip as I go....

A little more dramatic...

I photographed another lawyer this week from the same firm. We did the regular backdrop shots and he was game to go outside and do some portraits there. I could tell he wanted something dramatic so I tried to find a patch of sky with some clouds in it with a building. I shot low, underexposed the background and hit him with a nice hard light. It was hazy so I had to work the clouds over in PS but it came out pretty well.

Photography can be loud!!!!!!

I had a relatively peaceful afternoon today. I met with a family about ordering prints. Had some tacos at my new favorite taqueria stand (Taqueria Mexicana for the LB locals). I put on a new front rack for the bike I'll be taking on the bike tour this summer.

Then, I had to go to San Pedro for a band shoot. San Pedro is a terrible city to get to by bike from Long Beach. You have to take Anaheim (heavy traffic, crappy road) to Gaffey (heavy traffic, crappy road, hills), since it would be a near death wish to ride over the Vincent Thomas bridge.

One thing I've learned is to work smarter, not harder. I took my folding bike and piled on two light stands and a pelican case with my camera and strobes and went multi-modal (part bike/ part mass transit). I rode to the transit mall, picked up the Commuter Express to San Pedro, got off on 7th and Gaffey and rode the remaining 8 blocks to my job. It would have been feasible to do it all by bike, but by the time I got there I would be too wrecked to shoot.

The assignment was the hardcore punk band, 46 Short. They were practicing in the basement of the drummer's house. It was a small hot room that filled up with loudest punk rock I have ever heard in my life. Luckily, they had a spare set of ear plugs so I wouldn't go deaf. I could feel the air literally vibrate when I was shooting. It was hard to get a good shot of the whole band in the room, so when they went on break we went outside to shoot.

Photography is Improvisation...

Plan but don't over plan.

Have a vision of the final image, but be willing to let go of it.

This is usually the mantra going on in my head as a I pedal to a job. Most of my assignments require me to shoot in a limited amount of time with a limited amount of information. Most of the time I have no idea what my subject will look like, what the environment will look like, if the light is good or bad, if my subject is willing or ornery.

At first I found this extremely stressful. I would stay up the night before and storyboard, or dream up different approaches and contingency plans, all of which I either forgot or went out the window once I got to the location.

Needless to say, I've learned to deal with it. I simply accept things won't be perfect, that there will be constraints, but within those constraints is my arena.



This assignment today was a good example. I had talked to the PR person for the two DJs and had anticipated being able to shoot inside the club. When I arrived it was in full swing and there was no way I could set up in there. Luckily, the club had a foyer with a big green wall. Unfortunately, there was a whole bunch of stuff in front of it. So the first fifteen minutes was moving stuff away from the wall and then dragging a speaker from the other side of the room into the frame.

Also, there was a lot of outside ambient light coming in, which wasn't helping the picutre. So I had to dial down to my lowest ISO and my hightest flash synch speed so I could make my strobes the only light source. But to do that, I had to pump the strobes up to almost full and bring them in really tight, giving me a limited number of shots and slow recycle times.

It's organized chaos.

I feel most alive when I'm shooting, it's as if everything in my head turns on and I'm observing and judging variables all at once to create the picture. It's turning the survival instinct into art.

Life's Funny Moments...

I photographed another great family at their home the other day. This is one of the first photos that jumped out at me while doing the edit. Sometimes you get little gems like this given to you. A nice visual koan where all you have to do is click!.

Another Great Family Portrait Session....

Sometimes, it's hard to not love my job :) Nothing beats running around the park on a summer's day photographing an adorable family.





Hire me today!