Inessential Stuff

My wife and son and I were up in Seattle visiting my sis and bro-in-law and nephews, and we took in an Angles’ game (not to be confused with a Mariner’s game).  I decided at the last minute it might be a fun idea to do a shoot in the stadium, so I did a quick casting call, and managed to find the talented Brittney Burke (much thanks) the day before the game.  So we did a shoot up in the far, high, nose-bleed seats at Safeco Field.  Here are the results.

I did another fashion shoot with Ronnie from Glamarita. Our last shoot had been a bit chilly, so we scheduled this one for April 5. You know, Spring. For an outdoor shoot. Only it was snowing on April 5. Ronnie pulled some strings and arranged access to The Blvd, a BBQ house and music venue, so much thanks to them for helping out in a pinch.

So here are the results of the shoot. For those interested, it was done entirely with off-camera lighting, with a 580EX II flash through a transparent umbrella (plus a bit of natural light around the pool table). Take a peek at the pics, leave comments, and be sure to stop by the Glamarita store to buy some clothes.

So here is the third and final installment of the photoshoot with Valerie.

I’m not sure Valerie was convinced these would turn out, and she maintained (obviously incorrectly) that she didn’t look good when she looked “playful”, and it’s true that only one in three pictures was usable, and it’s true that the shoot kind of messed up Valerie’s hair, but . . . . in spite of it all, I think some of the pictures are a lot of fun.

For those of you interested in technical kinds of things, this was more playing around with my wide-angle lens, all of these being between 12-24mm shots. I used a strobe behind a shoot-through umbrella that was over the bed and triggered by my PocketWizards. I tried some on-camera fill-flash on some, but most of those were dismal failures. Live and learn.

I mentioned that when Valerie and I did our shoot, we got lots of good pictures. So many, that I decided to break them into several different galleries. This first was “Valerie against the Wall.” Now it’s time for “Valerie on the Bed.” There will be another one in a few days.

I did a shoot a couple weeks ago with Valerie, and we got a lot of good stuff. I decided to split the images into several different galleries. So this is the first set–the first shots we took. Kind of warm-up shots. We took them against a wall. Thus the name.
I was also playing around with some new equipment I picked up from the WPPI trade show I had attended the week before, including an umbrella, some pocket wizards, and my new 12-24 mm lens. With this wide-angle, I discovered that when setting up a vertical shot, I had to make sure my toes were out of the frame. Delightful! I would also, unknowingly, get so close to Valerie that she would say, “How close do I look, anyway!” I love the new lens.

Lindsi and Ronnie are clothes designers in the area. They wanted to do a fashion shoot to showcase some of their creations, and I was honored when they called upon me. We decided to shoot in an alley and on the beautiful old loading dock of the Barrister Winery, whose owners were so kind and interested in what we were doing, that they invited us to take some pictures down among the barrels in the wine cellar.

The results of the photoshoot are in this gallery. However, you should swing by Lindsi’s store, The KnottyMuse, and Ronnie’s Store, Glamarita, and check out their clothes there. And maybe buy and thing or two while you’re at it.

Riley wanted to do some lingerie shots on location somewhere. So we needed a place relatively private, and after trying a few other locations, decided on a little dirt road under a railroad track.

It was a surprisingly warm day, but still not really warm enough to be prancing around in lingerie. Still, Riley was game, and we got some good stuff. The colors were fairly warm, with a cloudy natural light from the side, but lots of the pictures look good in black and white, too. So you’ll get a little of both.

Christalle and I wanted to do a shoot that was dark and gritty. And what could be darker and grittier than an abandoned industrial building.

Well, not completely abandoned; we shared the building with a homeless man. And hundreds, if not thousands, of pigeons, most still living.

We had been watching the weather and had tried to choose the warmest day we could for a shoot. It wasn’t warm at all. It was about 33 degrees, and windy. The fact that Christalle doesn’t look cold is a testament to her modeling ability.

By the end, my fingers were so numb that I was making adjustments on my camera with my teeth.

That’s when we decided to stop. But we consider it worth it.

I wanted to do a shoot in an alley, and Octavier seemed like the perfect model for the task. His blonde hair and blue eyes and spiffy dress would contrast nicely, I thought, with the graffiti and bricks in the alley. We shot in the cold–very cold. We would have shot longer, but my fingers were too numb to work the camera. So we called it a short, but productive, day.

I did another shoot with Poison Ivy, whom I had worked at the end of last summer. We did a bit of studio work, but mostly shot in a tiny bathroom, featuring a very cool, and very large, Victorian clawfoot bathtub.

As a word of warning, the shoot is a bit, well, steamy.