I’m so excited to have football back! Along with photography, fitness has been another huge part of my life. This year I was asked to help with strength training for my son's varsity football team. I grew up in the gym starting at age 13, picking up weights for a membership and am still there several times a week. So, I was very happy to help the team and share some of my experience. It's funny, because when I was in high school and training for football, we used medicine balls, climbing ropes, and pushed my friend's truck in a parking lot. Fast forward to today and we are using the same stuff, except we switched the truck for a sled.
Good Day Sacramento Visit
I was honored to be part of a segment on Good Day Sacramento on December 23, 2016 featuring getting better results from your iPhone. It took me a day to prepare for the show with some help from Action Camera in Roseville and to line up a model to use for some examples.
Gear Bag
It has taken me years to build up my arsenal of equipment, but most of the time I use a small fraction of what I own. I am a Nikon shooter. I received a Nikon camera as a middle schooler and just built my gear around that first camera. Throughout the years, I’ve shot 35mm, a medium format Bronica, and finally DSLR. I sometimes miss my 35mm as the digital cameras only have so many clicks in them before they give up.
Color Shift
I've been interested in traditional ways to shift colors in my images. In a time when it's so easy to add digital flare it's hard to come up with ways to shift the image without relying on the computer and committing to a permanent shift in the camera. I like to see the if I can get as close to the final image as possible in camera. For me it keeps me in a tight visual string or style.
To this end, I have been experimenting with shooting through colored glass and objects. I find myself constantly on the lookout for interesting color or shapes to try.
I’m very pleased with this set of images! Christine and I made these a few months back at the Preston Castle. The light at this location is amazing and it always provides ample room to shoot. I found a small piece of red glass that matched her red lips. The glass was perfect for this set. I love the saturation and color it gave and with Christine’s posing this turned out better than I could have imagined!
It’s now part of my bag of tricks.
Nikon D4
ISO 800
85mm
f3.5
1/500
The New HTC One - Pre Production
As I’m sure you noticed in the last post, the crew list was pretty extensive. This project was no small feat.
The pre-production process took about a month, and even if we had wanted more time, it would not have been possible to get it. The phone was shipped from Taiwan under lock and key and was on a very tight schedule to make all of its appearances as there where only 4 in existence at that time.
After reviewing the production notes, there were obviously 2 things I needed to do right away. I had to build my team and I had to start location scouting. The idea for the shoot was to follow 5 young people through their weekend in a metropolitan area, specifically San Francisco. I quickly realized the scenes that HTC wanted were also available here is Sacramento. There was also the issue that the original schedule had us shooting in December which meant most of San Francisco was decorated for Christmas.
Kody, Christine and I went out and shot location images of our city to send to HTC and they agreed Sacramento was the perfect backdrop for the project.
Upon the decision being made that we would be working in Sacramento I was able to confirm the rest of the team and get to work reaching out to local businesses and resources. From city agencies, to restaurants, to casting agencies we had everything we needed to start building the schedule and the storyboard.
Even though California was having a beautifully sunny winter, there was concern that some of the outdoor shots would be disrupted with bad weather, so we also had to put in place backup plans for all the outdoor shots that could be implemented the day of shooting.
The next step was to cast the models. We had the pleasure of working with Amber Collins of Cast Images. There were 5 characters we had to cast in this project. Amber built some galleries for HTC to look through based on their descriptions and we had our models selected in no time at all! Sacramento has some amazing talent!
Now that we had our models I could send the wardrobe details and measurements to Simone to start pulling wardrobe for the project. We were given very specific requests for each model based on the character that was created for each of them. We scheduled a fitting and sent some images to HTC for final approvals.
So that was it, I had my team, my locations, the models and wardrobe, I had the storyboard and shot list on repeat in my brain. It almost felt like planning a wedding, all the pieces were in place and the last few days were spent waiting in anticipation of putting it all to work.
Next up, a behind the scenes look of our week long photo shoot!
