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.

SLO Journey...

A few more pics from my recent trips to SLO....

Some beautiful light in Union Station at 6:45 in the morning...


My BikeFriday loaded and ready for adventure...


Trains coming and going...


A combination of the dirty Amtrak windows and sleep deprivation make everything impressionistic...

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....

Native Plants

On assignment today for the District Weekly. The location was a 10 acre wholesale garden grower in Long Beach (who knew?!), The Garden of Eva.

The light wasn't the best (1pm, summer sun beating straight down). I decided to put into practice what I was playing with at my brother's graduation. I put my flash on the TTL cord, set the camera to -1.3 and the flash to +2 and held the flash with my hand. The woman, Annika, was a great sport but had a wide brim hat. I had to angle the flash so the light would get under the brim and still create some nice sculpting.

CETMA Rack Pics 1/2

I recently purchased a CETMA 6 rail front rack. Lane, CETMa's owner and sole employee, is a bike messenger and handmakes each rack. I paid a little extra for the new powdercoated version of the 6-rail rack.

Delivery time was around two weeks, mostly waiting on the painting to be done. The rack came in a box and was wrapped with newspaper and had a plastic bag that contained all the mounting hardware.

If you've put on a Wald basket before, you'll know how to assemble the rack. I hadn't, so it took a little trial and error to get it just right. The rack is sturdy and inspires confidence. The stays are nice and beefy and won't be crumpling anytime soon.

So why the front rack? Sometimes I want/need a normal size bike instead of the Xtracycle to do a shoot. This front rack lets me carry a bigger load than a bolt on seatpost rack on my fixed gear in a supposedly more stable manner.

I've only ridden a few miles with the rack and a load so I can't make any definitive statements, but so far it has handled well. The steering is slightly altered, but much less than having a single full pannier in the rear....more impressions forth coming...

Here is the rack without a load and some details on the mounting points.

Tangerine Treehouse

I shot some photos for Tangerine Treehouse today. Laura, the maker, is inspired and influenced by nature and the environment. A lot of her pieces include actual bits of nature in them as well (leaves, flowers, seeds, etc.,)




The setup was fairly simple. Single softbox as main light source. Flexed matboard as the background and a small mirror beneath the jewelry as a kicker. This is my Macguyver-style product setup. Fast, simple and gets the job done with great results.





You can purchase Laura's jewelry here.