This past weekend I had the pleasure of photographing a family of six in Thousand Oaks, CA. The location was Conejo Creek Park. It’s an interesting park…not huge, but it has some great trees, a big duck pond with a fountain, and an artificial stream with rocks and bridges. The actual Conejo Creek is almost an afterthought, hidden in the woods next to the park. I had scouted the location beforehand, as I hadn’t used it before. I’m pleased with the choice the client and I made, and I’d use it again!

The client had advised me that her four kids (including twins, age 2) were “active” and were going to be a challenge. So how’d it turn out?

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It turned out great! While I won’t say it was a ‘piece of cake’—after all, anything involving four young children is going to be interesting—the portrait session went very smoothly. The kids were all very charming, and would even sit still long enough that I could get a series of family portraits together (see below). Their parents were pretty impressive too: they held up under a lot of pressure, and made it all look pretty effortless. I have two boys of my own, in the same age range as these kids, and I can barely handle just the two of them! So these parents must be undercover superheroes.

The lead shot is a candid ‘grab’ shot, but it’s one of my favorites. As we were walking from one location to another, the mom asked me to take some pictures of the kids walking along. My hands were full of lighting equipment, so I handed the gear to the parents, and took off after the kids. Which turned into a game of ‘chase the photographer’, as you can see above. (You can also see the parents holding my lights!) The pure expression of joy on the girl’s face, accented by the flare ’sunbeam’ in the upper left, just makes the shot for me.

And just look at this cutie (below). Need I say more?

Technical info: Norman 200B strobe through a 53″ shoot through umbrella, camera left. shoe-mounted SB-28 on auto, three stops down, for fill. Sunlight to the back. The SB-28 was triggered by the camera’s hotshoe, but I ran a cord out of the SB-28, into a radio transmitter, which triggered the Norman. This was the general set up for the entire shoot, which enabled me to go into ‘fill flash only’ mode if any of the children took off running. Which they did from time to time!

Below is the first location we used, which was by a willow tree I had spotted on my scouting expedition. It’s amazing what context (or lack thereof) does for an image. To me this looks like the little boy is deep in the forest. And yet not 50 feet from where we were shooting, there was a cricket match in progress. Yes, cricket.

And the whole family together.

Last weekend I had a great portrait session with a young family. They have a six month old son, who as you can see is just about as cute as babies get. A real trooper too, because it got a little chilly. He kept smiling until the sun went down, and only started crying when we were done.

I’ll let the images do the talking…

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Last week I took the portraits for a family at Gardens of the World in Thousand Oaks, CA. This was the first time I shot at this small formal garden, which is owned privately but open to the public. They allow portrait photography there with a reservation, and apparently it’s pretty popular.  And what a wonderful family to work with! Everyone was so sweet…one of the girls said to me “when we’re done I’m going to give you a hug.” And the little boy insisted on holding my hand back to the parking lot when we were done. It’s those little things that stick in my mind for a long time.

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I love these two images of the girls (above and below). They look like Renaissance paintings of the saints! ‘Angelic’ would be an appropriate word.

Mind you, just because they were sweet and beautiful children, didn’t mean they weren’t little fireballs as well. This guy especially…he’d sit nicely for one shot, and then with an impish grin would bolt as far as he could. And when I started taking pictures of the girls again, he’d sneak up on me and throw his arms around my neck. Cute

A pensive moment between sisters.

The three of them in a gateway to a mission-like courtyard.

And mom joined us for a few shots too. Thanks for a wonderful, touching experience, and a great work out too!

I did a model portfolio shoot for Kristin last week at Port Hueneme Beach here in California. I must admit, the idea of a beach shoot was not my idea of a great location! Man was I wrong…

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No offense to the town of Port Hueneme, but it’s not a great beach for a background, at least at first glance. They have a pier and bike paths and palm trees, the sort of thing that is great to visit and do beachy things at. But in terms of visuals, it’s well…boring. Piers are ho-hum. No dramatic rocks, no dunes, just flat sand and ocean.

After I scouted the location, I was even less enthused. But then I started thinking…hey it’s a flat beach. There’s nothing there. Let’s do something that makes use of this very simple environment, and bring some props. So I gathered and/or made a bunch of props. I wanted slightly absurd props, and envisioned a theme of loneliness. A “summer’s over and my boyfriend’s left me” sort of vibe. With a surrealist/absurdist feel to it, almost like a Dali painting or a Pink Floyd album cover.

Well they say that “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy”, and that’s true here too. Once we started shooting, the plan evolved and changed. I had originally imagined a muted, almost monochrome look to the final images. But once I saw what I was getting on the camera, that flew out the window. The colors were just too great, and the look…well, just take a look.

And what a great model Kristin was! Very personable, and she was very willing to put up with my crazy prop ideas. How many would have gladly donned my homemade dunce caps without a second thought? My only regret is that we would have had more time to try other props, other dresses, other backgrounds…well there’s always next time. Thanks Kristin!

So now some images.

I used two strobes throughout. The Norman 200B with a shoot-through umbrella, as I was combating full sun and needed all the photons I could muster. And my Nikon SB-28 on camera for fill. Both the lead image and the one below are shooting into the sun. The lead has the sun through the parasol (I think) and the one below has Kristin blocking the sun with her head. I think! I had her up on a small dune (so ok, Port Hueneme does have dunes, but they’re very small!), and shot mostly from below.

Further along, we found a small ampitheater with some weird acoustics (that don’t show up in the images for some reason). Shade from some palm trees and the back wall added the patches of shadows. I got up on a small concrete platform for this shot.

Now a wardrobe change. Kristin borrowed an old prom dress from a friend who keeps those sorts of things. The color practically glows on its own, and was a perfect sort of ‘princess’ dress for the dunce caps.

Off the concrete and onto the sand, still with dunce caps and prom dress in hand.

Yes I’m a poet. See? I know it.

Going for a slightly vintage look on the one below.

This one is my favorite of the batch. Setting sun behind Kristin’s head, a cool pose and look. Perfect!

I was hired by a company called RecWest to shoot some images of a playground they had just installed, at Oxnard Beach Park in the city of Oxnard. Originally they had envisioned hiring a lift truck to get me up high, so I could shoot the entire playground from above. However as we planned for the shoot, it became apparent that the city was going to ask too much in terms of permits and insurance. It quickly became impractical to use heavy machinery. The company was about to give up and cancel the shoot, when I hit upon an idea. Ever the DIY guy, I remembered reading about “pole-cams”…stick your camera on a pole and shoot from on high. Sure you can buy or rent super fancy versions of these, but that would have been as bad as the lift truck. So instead I set about making my own pole-cam based on this DIY version (link).

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The construction is almost identical to the webite I referenced. The long pole (mostly out of frame in the image below) is a 15 foot paint-roller extension pole. I sprung for the light fiberglass version, since I would be holding this in the air for a long time. Attached to that is section of a wooden paint-roller extension pole, which just screws on to the longer one. Drilled into the top of that is a 3/8″ hanger bolt, which allows the tripod head to be mounted.

I bought a remote control trigger off ebay for about $30, which allows me to half-press the shutter for focus, or to fire the shutter, all remotely. The unit’s transmitter was a little dodgy though, and required me to tap it against something to get it to work sometimes. But hey it was cheap and got the job done! I would not have been able to do this job if I couldn’t trigger the camera to fire remotely. Sadly, it seems to interfere with my radio flash units, so I couldn’t use both at once. Perhaps some more experimentation is needed at a later date…

The weak spot of this contraption is the wooden pole with the hanger bolt drilled in it, along with the plastic and ill-fitting coupler to the longer pole. I glued that plastic connector onto both the metal and wooden sections. But I was worried about the wood splitting at the wrong moment, resulting in several thousand dollars’ worth of camera falling to the ground. Sure they make nice bouncy material for playground surfaces now, but this isn’t a child we’re talking about, it’s a CAMERA! I wasn’t going to take any risks. So I took my tripod strap, tightened the noose end around the main pole, and then duct-taped it into position so it wouldn’t slide. I then clipped the other end of the tripod strap to the camera strap, to secure it. Even if the duct tape failed, the camera would slide slowly down the pole rather than come loose completely. That was the theory anyway.

I am happy to report that the camera and pole performed wonderfully, even though the winds picked up to 30 mph by the end of the shoot. The only moment of fear I had was when, on raising the pole for the umpteenth time, I saw the camera rotate as it went up. I gently brought it back down, to find that various screw-mounts had come loose in all the handling. I caught that potential disaster in time!

This pole camera was so effective, I was able to stitch together large panoramas of the playground, simply by rotating the pole and taking multiple shots. Also, because I was shooting with a wide angle, the camera appears to be shooting from much higher than it really was (about 16 feet up).

I got to the location before dawn, so that I could get some dramatic lighting. I picked morning rather than evening, because the client wanted the playground as empty as possible. Kids don’t go to the playground at 5:30am, but they do hang out there at dusk!

I brought some lights so I could ‘augment the ambient’. Below is an image after sun had just risen, casting dramatic shadows with the poles. Meanwhile I had my Norman 200B lighting up the front of the structure, from camera right. Otherwise this side of the structure would have been in almost complete darkness (compare to the dark palm trees, which is how the front of the structure would have been).

A pre-dawn shot below, this time with my Norman to the right, and my SB-28 to the left. All were triggered with radio triggers from the camera. Note the handy seagull in the upper left.

For awhile now I’ve known that sunset photographs are a dime a dozen. Heck, the sun sets just about every day around these parts. Sunsets are wonderful to experience in person. But to make a really good photograph, you need to put people in front of them.

Last weekend was a great opportunity for just that! I had taken this family’s Christmas portraits last year around this time, and we had a similar experience. Perhaps they’re lucky? This family didn’t bring their two australian shepherds this time, but that’s ok. Nice dogs…convinced me to get one of my own in fact! It’s great when wonderful people, nice light, and the right timing come together. And that’s what we had!

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I know it’s a tired cliche, but it’s amazing how fast kids grow up when you haven’t seen them in awhile. When you’re around them every day, sometimes you wish they’d grow up a little faster! But it’s been a year since I’ve seen this boy, and…well he’s a big boy now! And a real ham too. He and I had a great time getting his parents to laugh and smile, and that of course is the key. Get the little one giggling, and everyone else follows.

Technical stuff: it was a slightly overcast light, so I didn’t bother pulling out the Norman. Instead I used the SB-28 as my main light, through the ubiquitous 53″ shoot-through umbrella. I gelled a Sunpak 333 with a ‘liquid amber gold’ gel, and used it as a hair/edge light. For the images above and below, the edge light is to camera right. It helps the sun out a little bit, which seemed more concerned with putting on a show in the distance than actually doing any work where we were. Nice soft light as main, nice definition on the edges, and very natural looking.

And below was a test shot after we’d moved locations, but I liked his quizzical expression and the seriously knocked-down ambient. The edge light is just out of frame, and even though it’s snooted, it’s causing flare which resulted in a light circle above his left shoulder. As far as I concerned, it adds character to the shot. And it’s a very manly shot! Needs to go in an issue of Esquire or something.

Well I’m no David Hobby, but a couple of weekends ago I conducted a small-strobe off-camera lighting seminar for a professional organization I belong to, Channel Islands Professional Photographers Association (CIPPA). I had originally planned to conduct it in a city park, so that I could demonstrate the use of ambient sunlight and balancing flash. But it rained that weekend, so at the last minute we moved it to the Mystique Studio. Thanks Leanne and Brenda for letting us use your space! I don’t remember the exact number, but we had roughly 10–12 attendees.

We also had two models help us out for the seminar. Cassie and Laura were very gracious and professional, even though there was a fair amount of sitting around while I talked. Much thanks to them as well!

All of the shooting was done with one or two lights. I started out with a single hard light (below). Hard light like this gives a very 40’s movie-star portrait look.

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I believe this next shot of Cassie (below) used a small silver umbrella. The light is a little softer, but it’s still pretty hard. Right here I was demonstrating that if you get your light in close, the difference between subject and background is much greater. The background here was a light tan, and the room was small. But dialed down and in close, the subject is properly exposed while the light-colored background falls dark.

I switched to a 53″ shoot through umbrella to shoot Laura. The light is much softer and the shadows fill in a bit more, even with just a single light. The shoot-through does tend to throw light around the room more, which can also account for some of the shadow fill.

I had originally planned to shoot ‘tethered’, so that the images would appear on a laptop (my wife’s laptop that I had borrowed). However for some reason I couldn’t get it working during the seminar, and decided to forge ahead. So I ended up showing everyone images on the camera display. Not the best way to demonstrate lighting techniques! If this were a bigger production, I’d shoot tethered and put up a projector so that people could see what I was doing. And then of course I’d have to charge money for it. Here I am, showing Cassie the results on the back of the camera (below). Note that giant softbox in the studio. It wasn’t used, but the little umbrella in the foreground was.

A shot of Laura posing while studio co-owner Leanne shoots. Whoever shot this (there was much sharing of cameras) managed to catch the strobe going off. Cool, huh? Note the main light is the umbrella to camera right (Leanne’s camera). The actual image was shot on a wide lens, so the umbrella is closer than it appears. That’s an SB-28 doing the hard work in the umbrella. The big glare behind the model is a Sunpak 333 with a cardboard snoot, for a hair light.

At one point the discussion turned to lighting large groups. I mentioned that I’d much rather light a large group indoors than outside, and someone didn’t believe me. I decided to set up the shot and show how to do it.

Here’s the problem: outdoors, in the sun, you’ve got a couple of choices. Point the group toward the sun, and watch them all squint and squirm and get dark shadows everywhere. Or you can put their backs to the sun and use the sun as a hairlight. But then you have to light their faces with strobe. And a big group requires distance from the camera, which means your light needs lots of power to cover the distance and still get even coverage and remain out of frame. All the while you’re managing your aperture against your maximum shutter sync speed with the sun. End result: lots of firepower needed.

But indoors, you can bump your ISO up to compensate for strobe deficiencies. Outdoors you can’t, because the sunlight is an ever present hassle. Indoor situations also often include free diffuser panels (i.e. walls and ceilings) that you can bounce your strobe off, which is better than any softbox or umbrella for a large group. Below I shot three of our attendees, Lisa, Bonnie and studio co-owner Brenda. I bounced the SB-28 off the light tan backdrop we’d been using with the models. I think my ISO was 800 on this. The result: nice, soft even lighting.

Photographers don’t seem to like having their pictures taken, for some reason.

Last week was a busy week! Three shoots in three days, and I also taught a lighting seminar. I’ve been working nonstop to get everyone’s images ready, and then it’s back to more shoots starting tomorrow. It is that time of year after all, and it’s exhausting…but a lot of fun. Last Thursday I had the distinct pleasure of photographing four very charming little girls (and their mother) in their backyard.

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And what a beautiful backyard! Mom had just given birth three weeks ago, and didn’t want to take her new baby to the beach. The baby slept peacefully throughout the entire session—and of course woke up as I was leaving!

For the picture above, I set the girls in front of an outdoor fireplace. The entire area was in shade as it was late in the day. I used my Norman 200B in a 53″ shoot-through umbrella, which lit the whole scene nicely. I had to watch for reflections in the stainless steel fireplace, which was easily solved by moving the light and camera position a little.

I then posed the eight year old and twin three year olds in the middle of the lawn, on a cute chair. Typically on grass one has to watch for a green tint to shadows on skin and clothing. However the light beige acted somewhat as a natural reflector for the light, filling in the shadows and removing any green cast. I placed the Norman and the umbrella to camera right. The hair light is a Sunpak 333 with a ‘pale amber gold’ gel on it, to simulate sunlight. I also made sure to properly expose for some detail in the background.

The oldest daughter insisted we take some pictures with mom in them. Mom was a little reluctant to be photographed, having given birth recently. But I’m glad we did! Such a wonderful, charming family.

Shot in Carpinteria, CA.

Oh this is sad.

My wife insisted we clean out the laundry room. Why is that sad? Well it’s a really big laundry room, and it has also functioned as my darkroom for the past few years. Except, well…the darkroom hasn’t gone dark very often lately. Maybe once in the last year have I actually done any ‘old school’ photographic printing, or even ‘older school’ alternative printing such as kallitypes.

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Now to be fair, my wife only insisted we clean it out and get rid of the junk. She didn’t insist that I get rid of any darkroom stuff. But when I contemplated cleaning it all out, I realized there wasn’t much point in saving a lot of this stuff that I wasn’t using. My business takes just about all of my time, and I just don’t get time to dabble with printing anymore. And realistically, it was always a chore. I didn’t do it often enough to keep chemicals mixed all the time. So I spent hours preparing for what may or may not have been a successful printing episode. I had a better time when I took some printing classes at the local community college, because I could just walk in and start printing. Didn’t even have to turn the lights off, as someone else had taken care of that.

I’m sad though because this was part of what defined my photography when it was a hobby. Especially the circa-1800s printing technique called ‘kallitype’. I love the way those prints look, and love the fact that they’ll last a few hundred years. When I made these, I wasn’t just a photographer, and I wasn’t just a film photographer…I was a kallitypist for crissakes! I mixed foul and noxious chemicals, coated expensive paper with said chemicals by hand, and toiled for hours to get maybe three or four good prints. That’s macho photography, not some wimpy shoot-and-download photography.

I also had an enlarger, for more ‘normal’ silver gelatin black and white printing. I used it a little, although I found it almost as laborious. Had I done it more often, it would have been easier. Had I done it more often, I would have done it more often!

So I made the decision that traditional printing, at least for the foreseeable future, was a thing of the past.

Fortunately, I like waaaaay too many things about photography. Traditional printing. Photoshop manipulation. Film photography. Digital photography. Building cameras. Buying cameras. And when I discovered a few years ago that I really like taking pictures of people, the nerdy mad-scientist stuff just gradually faded into the background. Some amount of specialization is necessary if you’re going to become good at something. And even more so if you hope to make a living doing it!

However I must point out that I have not given up shooting on film! Processing black and white film doesn’t require a darkroom, merely a film-changing bag and a bathroom with chemicals in it. And color film is sent to the lab. I love film too much to give it up, although even that pursuit has dropped off a bit. I squeeze some film into most client shoots I do, mostly for my own amusement. And I shoot film whenever I’m shooting for myself, for ‘art’ or even for family snapshots. As I’m fond of saying, “I never use digital around family or friends.” Which of course is an exaggeration.

So to commemorate this momentous watershed moment, here are a few alternative process prints I made in that laundry room.

This one won first place at the Santa Paula Arts Festival (or whatever it's called).

A wetlands area in Homer, Alaska. Actually shot on a digital camera and then printed as a kallitype.

This is a cyanotype print, which is much easier to do but does not have the longevity of a kallitype. Oh and it's always blue, blue, blue!

Things come together sometimes in ways you can’t predict ahead of time. I had read and/or seen videos of a few photographers shooting ‘guerrilla style’ (Mentioned on the David Hobby’s ‘Strobist’ site here and Bert Stefani’s blog video here), which is just a fancy way of saying that you’re traveling light, finding locations as you go, and seeing what you can come up with on the spot. Jazz improvisation for photography, basically. Meanwhile, I’ve really enjoyed the commercial shoots I’ve done recently (here and here), and wanted to do more. So I finally decided it was time to actively pursue it. I sent out some inquiries to local models on modelmayhem.com, and Sharylyn responded and liked the idea. And here are some of the results of our adventure in downtown Ventura, CA.

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The idea was to walk around downtown Ventura with a camera, a couple of lights, a pretty model, and take some great pictures as the opportunities presented themselves. The first thing I knew I’d need was an assistant. While I could have managed this with a light stand or two, that wasn’t ideal for a couple of reasons. First, light stands are heavy. Second, I didn’t have a permit for shooting, and didn’t want to do anything that impeded pedestrian traffic or otherwise screamed “commercial shoot for big money!” And this was in fact strictly a ‘portfolio-builder’ (industry-speak for “no one’s making any money”). And third, adjusting a light stand was going to slow me down. So I asked around at the local professional photographer’s association I belong to (Channel Islands Professional Photographers Association), and Heather graciously volunteered. I owe you one, Heather!

The second thing I needed to do was scout general locations for shooting. When you improvise music, you usually have a general idea where you want to go, and how to get there. It’s the individual steps that you decide during the actual performance. So I took a few hours to wander around downtown, finding suitable backdrops. It was key to go at the same time of day as the scheduled shoot (10am), so I knew which buildings would be in shade, how they would look etc.

So the first shot, above, was taken about ten feet from where we all parked. It was a good way to warm up. Sharylyn was incredibly professional and upbeat, and immediately went to work. If she was nervous, she never showed it! For this shot, I actually had the light positioned incorrectly—or rather, it wasn’t where I’d intended it. But turns out the light coming from the back works really well. It has a bit of drama that subsequent shots didn’t have.

For the technically-minded, Heather was holding my SB-28, shot through a 53″ shoot-through umbrella. The flash was triggered using cheap ebay radio triggers. I had an on-camera flash (SB-20), on a pretty tall flash bracket, set to ‘auto’ but cheating the aperture about three stops so it was a (usually) subtle fill. this was also triggered by a radio trigger, even though it was attached to the camera by the bracket. Keeps the wires to a minimum. I also had my Sunpak 333 with me, but never ended up using it.

Next we went over to another brick building. I asked her to peer into the windows, and to appear apprehensive. As we were shooting, a man swung open one of these windows and we all startled each other! He was concerned he’d hit me with the window. I was concerned he was going to tell us to scram, but nope! We shot a few more frames, but felt a little silly after that, and moved on.

As we walked around, we had a few people ask what we were doing. I was alert for people giving us trouble, but mostly people were just curious. One homeless man welcomed us back (!) to Ventura.

Time for a wardrobe change in the car. And now for something completely different, a short red dress and leather jacket. The above location was one I had high hopes for. I thought the painted text on the wall would add a nice touch. We would have shot more, but two things intervened: first, my camera started acting up. This was later resolved when I found out the battery-grip was misaligned. But I was losing shots for no apparent reason. And then a pickup truck decided to use the nearby parking garage as a slalom course. He came flying out of the garage, wooping and hollering, and then parked about fifty feet away from us. I got a little concerned, as we were in a back alley with a very visible model. So we decided to move on.

For this next shot, I’d picked out a wall with faded colors, and knew I wanted to do some ‘perspective’ shots with a short depth of focus. So I switched to my 50mm f/1.8 lens, so I could open up wide for the small DOF. Woops! I forgot I was still shooting on manual, and squeezed of about ten frames before I checked my images. Totally blown out. I adjusted and kept shooting. However when I transferred them to my computer that evening, there was something to the overexposed look that I really liked. With some adjustments, I got a nice vibe and high-key look that I wouldn’t have gotten without the ‘mistake’. This was the only image of this series where I didn’t use strobe.

By this time, we’re improvising and completely without plan. We start heading back, and walk past the Ventura Theater. It’s an old theater with a really cool—but dark—entranceway. Initially I’m intrigued by the diffused light coming in from the street. I place Sharylyn in front of the black wall to highlight her beautiful blonde hair. But my shutter speed is 1/30s at ISO 400, and I’m not getting very sharp images handheld. The flash bracket is heavy and tall, making it harder to hold steady at slow shutter speeds. I decide I’m just going to have to simulate daylight with Heather and the umbrella. Heather stands off to the left, where the sunlight is coming from, and I have her fire over Sharylyn’s head toward the ceiling. I nuke the ambient light with a shutter speed of 1/250. The colors just pop!

After a silly romp under a tree in the park, which I might post later if I can photoshop some cars out of the background, we decide on one last location. There’s a restaurant with bright yellow walls, and it’s in full sun. Shooting in full sun is problematic, but I had lots of shots, and wanted a challenge. So I repeatedly had Sharylyn walk along the wall quickly, with her shoulder almost brushing it. The sun is to the back of her, but was positioned so that if she looked straight ahead, she got some unflattering splashes of sunlight on her face. So I told her to pretend she was window-shopping, and to turn her head slightly toward the wall. Meanwhile, I positioned Heather so that the bare strobe (no umbrella) was literally up against the wall, firing slightly outward toward Sharylyn. The result is some great cross-lighting (if I do say so myself), with a nice strobe sparkle in her sunglasses. Or rather, Heather’s sunglasses, since Sharylyn left hers in the car. I did the full glamor retouch on this one, as it just screams California.

So everything came together! I moved on an idea that was percolating in the back of my mind, and had a great team that resulted in a successful day. You can bet I’ll be doing more of this.