Making Photography Simple
And old friend of mine and Camera Stupid community member Jonathan Samson hit me up the other day asking for some tips for photographing knives. His cousin owns Scar Blades and creates these beautifully finished, hand-made masterpieces.
We spent a morning experimenting with different shots and setups using props we were able to pull together the night before. Take a look behind the scenes in this video: [Read more…]
Update: I’ve just released a video course that shows you exactly how I setup, light, and edit for this high end beauty portrait look. Check the video series out here.
Three years ago if you had told me I’d be photographing professional models on a set in LA I’m not sure I would have believed it. I’ve found that a career in the creative fields is always unpredictable and I’m okay with that. It keeps thing interesting. Shooting skin care and beauty is not something I’ve really ever done before. But I’ve learned that stepping outside your comfort zone and learning new things is what keeps photography fresh and exciting. These types of shoots stretch my abilities and I’m almost always feel like I’m a better photographer afterwords. [Read more…]
Recently I’ve been reflecting on the type of photography I enjoy the most. I’m fortunate to work as a full time photographer/videographer, but I’ve come to realize that many assignment I get paid to do don’t have a lot of personal meaning for me. Don’t get me wrong – I’m passionate about creating good work, it’s just that much of what I do is used for a corporate purpose. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, but it got me thinking about what pieces of my own work do I value the most. I set out to pick my top three images – the three images from my body of work that I have the strongest connection to. [Read more…]
Real estate photography is a bit of right of passage. Some of my first paid photography jobs were for realtors that needed photos for their listings. I still do real estate photography on occasion, but I usually hold out for the higher end properties that demand a higher end photography to show them off.
If you have shot interiors before, you know how tricky it can be to get a quality image, especially when dealing with different light levels and color temperatures. In this video tutorial, I show you how I use a single speed light to capture multiple exposures lighting various parts of this apartment. I then demonstrate using photoshop to blend the different images into a single image. [Read more…]
Are you new to flash photography? Here are two tutorial videos that introduce the basic equipment and how it works: Download Tutorial Videos
No matter where you are on your photographic journey, the fastest way to grow as a photographer is through shooting personal projects. Personal projects allow you to take the pressure off, slow down, and experiment in a way that you can’t normally do when shooting client work. Some of my favorite images always seem to come from these types of projects. [Read more…]
Time Slice 1.0 has been a huge success! I created the Time Slice desktop app because I was frustrated with how difficult it was to create this relatively simple effect of slicing the individual frames of a time-lapse to make a single image. It’s been really fun to use on my own projects such as the example I shot above of the Salt Lake City skyline. It’s also been really fun to see examples other photographers have sent me that they have put together using the app. [Read more…]
A couple of weeks ago I received the assignment to travel to Hawaii and shoot a cover shot for a corporate magazine. My visit was scheduled to take place during a sales rep meeting where there would be a few hundred people attending. 50 or so of these sales reps have qualified for a company car and would be driving it to the event to participate in a road rally around the island of O’ahu.
The creative brief called for the shot to include as many of these branded, white company cars as possible in an attractive setting. Shouldn’t be too hard in a beautiful place like Hawaii right? [Read more…]
ISO 640 17mm f/4.0 1/200 sec
During my short photography assignment in Alaska, we found some time to stop by and photograph seaplanes at Lake Hood Seaplane Base directly across from the airport in Anchorage. Lake Hood offers seaplane pilots a place to dock their aircraft and a waterway to take off or land. It’s the perfect location for taking some exposures of a variety of small aircraft in a beautiful setting. For the above shot, I was looking for a unique angle to show off the aircraft. I got the idea to try out my 17mm lens and see if I could keep the wing tip in focus as well as the body of the aircraft. The lens is wide enough that the entire airplane is in focus even at f/4.0. I like how the wing tip provides an interesting foreground to the image, the wing leads your eye the body of the aircraft in the mid-ground, and the sky and water serve as the background. This composition breaks the image into thirds, from top to bottom. [Read more…]
I was on assignment shooting video and still photography last week in Alaska. As is common in Alaska, the weather was always changing and unpredictable. We set out on day one hoping we’d get enough of a break in the wind and rain that we could create some image of our model collecting wild blueberries. It can be nice to photograph while it is overcast as the light and shadows are soft and flattering. I decided to try and simulate some sun backlighting the leaves and our model so I setup a speedlight on the ground behind the subject. [Read more…]
I’ve spent the last week in Busan, South Korea photographing a corporate event with over 5,000 attendees and world class entertainment and stage performances. One of my favorite performances was by a Korean drummer, Choi Suri. In this tutorial I will go over how I shot and post processed this image for the above result. [Read more…]