The Wrong Light.

Another pair of sisters who needed pictures for their mom. Go figure.
The only problem was that there were no clouds and the sun was still at its zenith around 5pm.

We made do.

Also, two posts on a Friday? Madness!
Have a good weekend!

On A Mission.

I “met” Thadd through ModelMayhem. He’s one of the small group of people on the site who’s not just interested in shooting glossy glam photos all the time. He’s up for a different kind of challenge.

We talked a bit via email and conspired to meet to shoot together. I invited Richard and a buddy of mine, Nia, to come along and the four of us checked into a motel on the southside of Richmond for a few hours. We shot for a little over 4 hours and came away with a lot of cool stuff.

We grabbed lunch at a pizza joint nearby and parted ways by the early afternoon. We’re totally gonna cook up something else to work on together and do it again. We all had a blast.

I’m learning some post process from Richard — little things about cleaning up edges in images and working with skin tones. A recent one is putting these bars on the tops and bottoms of images to make a more cinematic feel. I’m thrilled for the tutelage and pleased with my results so far. Look for a few more images from this series as the week goes by.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.

After he fixed my bike, my friend Cary showed me around his house.
Y’see, when he’s not out riding bikes with the cool bike-race set, he’s a contractor. He builds things in people’s houses to make the houses pretty and raise their property values.
And he’s good at it.
Heck, the space he nonchalantly refers to as “The Bike Shed” is really a man-cave of the highest caliber.

Anyway, he asked me if I’d be interested in shooting some of his projects from time to time. I was all for it so when he suggested I start with some shots of the killer living room he’d put into his house, I was thrilled.

This is one of the ones from a hurried 1 hour session earlier this week.

I’m looking forward to working with him on more projects as the opportunities arise.

Reconnoiter.

I’m shooting a wedding early next month with Joe and we decided to take a quick jaunt out to have a look at the space. Turns out, the Inn at Warner Hall is amazing. It’s the kind of place I’d like to have free run of to shoot a clothing line. The spaces are decadent and rife with natural light. The views are breathtaking. I’m gonna see if I can’t get my wife to run away with me there sometime soon. ‘Course, someone’ll have to babysit the kids… Wanna help?

I shot these as grabs with the G10, ’cause no matter what anyone tells you about how “real” a photographer he (or she) is, it is far easier to take snapshots with a point and shoot camera.

This is the view that greets you upon entering the house:

And this is the back porch:

And there’s this amazing outdoor chess/checkers set:

This wedding is gonna be fun!

Strange Goings On.

I was working with Chris again. He’s so very pleasant and willing. I mean, how many people do you know who’d wade out into the river (the bottom of which neither of us could see) and wait patiently?

I’d tentatively titled this “Regarding the Recent Occurrence at Spaulding Creek,” thinking I’d write a short piece to go with it that was (longer than, but) in the spirit of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Alllsburg. Alas, I never wrote anything. Go figure.

I’ve got a couple of other shots like this planned and Chris has agreed to help me. Moreover, I’ve got some cool new models lined up to work on more images in this kind of spirit.

Keep watching!

This Is Not The Post.

That is, it’s not the post I wanted to use for today, but I got my wires crossed and bought new sd cards that are high capacity and my reader is not. My images are trapped until I can get a new reader (which I anticipate doing sometime today) on the new cards.

In any event, here’s yet another snapshot. These are the lights on the chandelier in our living room. I kinda thought they looked neat and I was seeing what the camera would do.

Inspirational.

This is from waaaay back when I was figuring out how light worked and how to move it around.

Despite the fact that I’m on the faculty, we got kicked out of the library (or at least told that we couldn’t shoot photographs there) moments later.

The Light, The Light.

I haven’t figured it out yet — why is the light so much… prettier on a Polaroid? There’s something ethereal about the way it bleeds around and almost falls.

At any rate, I have another surfer in the stable. Enjoy.

In the Woods…

…if you’re quiet enough, and you look closely enough, sometimes you can see them: Woodland Accordion Sprites. (chuckle)

The Middle of Nowhere.

Yeah.
I had to look at it twice when I saw it. S’why I love carrying the Holga.