Whole Life Times

Got a little blurb in Whole Life Times. Check out the article here. Haven't seen the print edition yet, but I'm hoping they run a photo with it as well.

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.

The Gatherer

Just finished my multimedia piece on Laura. Visit her site here.

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.

Episode 1: FOUND Magazine

Finished the production on my multimedia soundslides on FOUND Mag founders Davy and Peter Rothbart. Great guys. Here is the highquality soundslide version.

And here is an embed of the slightly bastardized YouTube version:

Some snaps from the fire...

Firefighters walking down the street at the Santiago Canyon fire.

House narrowly averts disaster.

A Long Beach firefighter looks on while waiting to be deployed.

Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster and Rex Pritchard from LBFD survey a burning hillside.

After four days of fighting fires without a shower, small comforts like a new pair of socks bring great relief.

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.

The Typewriter Woman...

I had an interesting assignment today. I photographed a woman whose typewriter repair business was forced to move from a store front to her garage (after her rent was raised exponentially due to new development...familiar story).

Over 20 years ago, she purchased the business from her husband whom she divorced. He thought that she wouldn't last two months, much less two decades. It was a real touching story about perserverance and quiet determination.

I wanted to photograph her with some lights to give the editors an option for a slicker contrastier photo, but also a softer and more sentimental portrait. For the former I set up an old typewriter on the desk and had her lean against it. I shot a few wide shots, showing more of the garage, but decided to get in closer and use the typewriter to draw the viewer in. For the second look, I found a large window and positioned her next to it to get some good light and asked her to hold a smaller typewriter. It was perfect. Nice and symmetrical. I loved the shape of her hands on the keys so I took a quick detail shot of it.

It's always these little windows into people's lives that I love about photography.

Portrait in the Park....

Past client, Art Tabuenca was in town from San Luis Obispo and we met up to do some quick headshots in time for the launch of one of his new products. He's the CEO of Blue Marble, a firm that specializes in socially responsible investing. If you've got dough you want to invest and want a portfolio that is guilt free, he's the man to talk to.



We shot it at a Bixby park and walked around looking for the right combination of grass and trees. It was a little tricky to get a clean background because everywhere there are parked cars and people milling about. I brought a step ladder with me on the Xtracycle to give me some height so I could fill the background with grass instead of someone's F-150.

Back in the LBC!

I'm back in Long Beach. The trip was wonderful, painful and amazing all at once. Definitely a life changing experience. I'm going to post a few pics from the trip every few days (I took about 1700 RAW images) with a little blurb about them...here's a few as a teaser...


The 32 hour train ride from Los Angeles to Portland was very relaxing...

It was nice to get on the road...

We were blessed with some beautiful weather and nice stretches of pavement...

Nothing quite like riding your bike to the woods...

...or even through the woods for that matter.

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.

Another cover....

If you're in Long Beach, be sure to grab a copy of The District. Got the cover this week! It's a shot from the Andy St. assignment. It's a bit of a crop but it still came out well. There's also a nice spread of images inside.

Gun for hire...

It's wedding season and this summer I've been hired as a second shooter for several great photographers. I learn a bit from each one and it is always interesting for me to see their different styles. Today, I shot with my friends and colleagues Taso and Annie. Annie was one of my first photography mentors and taught me how to print in BW as well as some of the nuances involved in documentary photography.

Here are some shots from the event tonight....it's late and I don't have all my memory cards back yet, but I liked this short sequence. Here, the bride and groom are watching as the groomsmen and bridesmaids make their entrance into the reception. As you can see, they're having a great time watching their friends dance and strut down the isle. Usually, you don't get this point of view, since the primary shooter is going to shoot them coming down the isle. But as a #2 I have the freedom to roam and grab fun moments like this.

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).

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.

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.

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.