Inessential Stuff

I did my third shoot with Elly.  This one was calmer than our other two, one of which had been a last minute dash on a rainy day onto a bus with dying light, and the other of which was a shoot in the freezing cold in the middle of no where, surrounded by strange sounds–owls and cowbirds, mostly–(again, against the dying light).  But this time, no rush.

It was relaxed, calm, warm.  Just like a cafe should be.  We shot at the Rockwood Bakery, trying to get some moody, coffee, European-ish shots.  This is what we got.

Autumn has settled over Spokane.  The trees are beginning to change.  The wedding season has slowed down.  The good people of Spokane have pulled their fleeces out of their closets.

And soccer has started.

Marcus is playing his first season, the lone boy on a team of six.

They are the Panthers, hold practices twice a week, and have games on Saturdays.

Marcus’ first game was last week.   Here’s a little gallery with some commentary.

(If you have an aversion to photographs of soccer and/or of fiesty little soccer players, you might want to avoid this here blog for a couple months.  Just warning you)

Did another senior portrait shoot. Lots of fun. Here’s a sample.

I thought I might put up a few images from the last month or so.  I have been so busy with weddings, and other photoshoots, that I haven’t had time to keep things updated.  This will give you a little taste.

Above you see Rachel.  We did her portraits at the skate park under the freeway just south of downtown.  Lots of graffiti.  Lots of skateboarders.  Lots of good places for pictures.  I plan to shoot there again.  I really liked the contrast of the graffiti with Rachel, who appears so innocent and wholesome.

To the side you’ll seeKatrina.  She wanted something urban.  She also likes pink.  So we shot in the Riverfront Parking Garage.

Then below is a shot from an engagement session with Shayley and Ryne.  They wanted their pictures at Bowl and Pitcher.  We shot there for quite a while, partly because I wanted to wait until it started to get dark to try some off-camera lighting with a brand new battery pack.

They were good sports, and we ended up with some fun stuff.  I like this photo mostly because of the light and the architecture of the bridge, but it also captures some of playfulness between Shayley and Ryne.

The common thread in all these pictures (besides attractive models)?  Off-camera lighting.  I’m really loving it.  Expect to see more, and hopefully fairly soon.

Well, you can tell it’s wedding season by the infrequency of my posts here.  Sorry about that.  I plan on a few more posts in the next few days, but I also have 3 weddings in the next 8 days, so we’ll see.

Anyway, I did manage to get a Trash the Dress shoot in with Kayla and Lucas, whose wedding was just a few weeks ago.   We decided on a farm shoot, plus a bit down at Liberty Lake.

We scheduled it for last Monday.  Locals will tell you that on last Monday, one of the most spectacular storms rolled into the Spokane area, a storm of biblical proportions.  Okay, I exaggerate, but only slightly.  5500 homes lost power.  The dust in the air (and smoke from fires) made the air quality the worst that day than it had been in over three years.  The rain that fell that night (starting while we were at the lake) was the first in six weeks, the 6th longest span Spokane has gone without rain.  It had been 104 on Sunday.  On Wednesday, it was 68.  So yeah, it was a big storm.

The benefits?  Some cool dress-blow-in-the-wind shots, beautiful undulating grass and reeds, and a sense of drama.  The disadvantages?  Crashing light-stands, dust in the eyes, ant hills (okay, the ant hills would have been there either way), and, at the lake, tree limbs floating past the bride and groom.

Actually, things were so crazy at the lake, that I didn’t get the kind of shots I wanted.  I have one on this page so you can see how neat the reeds looked (and how gorgeous Kayla, and handsome Lucas, looked);  but the gallery includes shots just from the farm location.

Click right this way for another gallery.  This is Taryn, and we did this shoot at the same time as I did the shoot with Valerie.  Thus, the same field, same lighting.  The difference is in their different personalities.  It was the first time I had worked with Taryn, and I thought she was great.  We are definitely going to shoot again.

(For those of you who might be offended, be aware that this gallery contains images that contain.)

I just found out that of 2700 images submitted for a Wedding Photography Directory contest, 2 of my pictures made the 80 Finalists!  A picture from the Fox Theater and one from a Trash the Dress shoot.  The main page is here, and there are lots of gorgeous images.  Feel free to vote!

It was so fun with Christalle (see below), I thought I’d do another.  See if I could get a different mood with basically the same concept.

So Valerie (and Taryn, who will show up in a future post) and I went out, found a remote wheat field, and shot away.  For July, the evening was cool.  A big moon came out.  The stillness of the wheat field, in moonlight, and Valerie slipping away toward the warmth of the car was a scene so perfect, I wish I had captured that on film (or in pixels, as it were).

But these images will do.

(For those who might be offended, be aware that this gallery includes some images that contain nudity.)

I haven’t posted in a while because it’s the middle of wedding season, which has been keeping me busy.  Still, this last week, I managed to work in a shoot with Christalle.  We had shot before, in miserable, cold conditions, so it seemed proper and right that we should shoot on a glorious summer evening.  We shot in the evening, past sunset, and into dusk.

I’m a Walla Walla boy–grew up with wheat fields behind my house.  Maybe that’s why there is something about wheat fields that speak to me.  But put me in the middle of rolling wheat fields, under a massive sky, and I get a sense of the infinite.

So anyway.  I had been wanting to do a shoot in a wheat field.  Results here.

Eastern Washington is dry country.  But with the spring rains, the land has been, lately and temporarily, green.  I went down to the river the other day and was mesmerized by the green-ness of the grass.  I took some pictures.

Then felt I needed to get closer.  There were so many different kinds of grass, and in so many different shades.  I zoomed in tight on some.  But I kept being drawn in.

Soon I was laying on my belly with a macro lens poking into the forest of blades of grass.  I have some of the pictures here.