Working with a four month old isn’t always the most interesting job in the world. At that age, they just don’t tend to do a whole lot. Thankfully, we had a small army of coaxers working on… umm… coaxing him to do fun things.

Baby wranglers struggling to keep him upright

Baby Photographed on a Cabela’s ATV toy

Whether you need those images for actual commercial use, or just to make your family photos a little bit cooler, that’s what I’m here for. Give me a call!

Alice in Wonderland Test Photo in Snowy Forest

The color shift on these is all done in post. She wanted some otherworldliness to the images, which is a production direction I wholeheartedly agreed with given the shoot concept. I gave it the look of old cross-processed film, and am immensely pleased with the results. You can’t just slap a filter on an image and make a bad image good, but it can certainly turn a good image into a great one. The interesting blur in the top image comes from my use of a LensBaby plastic optic lens. I could go into a lot of nerdy details about it, but I’ll just say it’s really neat and fun in the right circumstances, and these were certainly the right circumstances. I, unfortunately, had to use something else at the second location, as the rain picked up and the LensBaby is not weatherproof like the rest of my kit.

Alice creeping through rocks at Moulten Falls, Battle Ground, WA

Thanks Chelsea for another way fun job, and I’m certainly looking forward to the actual shoot. If anyone else reading this has a photoshoot idea that they think would be crazy or fun, contact me and we’ll figure out price and logistics, and make something way fun and unique for you or your business.

The waterfront served us well for some basic portraits.

The weather was much too cold for the athletic stuff which was going to be the main focus of the shoot, so we took everything to a local parking garage. I’ve mentioned before that I love parking garages. They’re pretty much one of the best places ever when it comes to photos.

The victory shot of the day was this one, which has also made it into my background slideshow rotation. Knowing his gymnastics background, I asked him to show me some of the more interesting things he could do. While he refused to do a backflip over the concrete (understandably), he showed me this weird arm balance thing that was crazy. Not to mention, the strain it put on his muscles I could tell would photograph well. Unfortunately for him, that meant he had to do it several times while we adjusted slightly each repetition to get *the shot*. Thankfully, we got it.

Uhhhhh…

It sounded seedy until he specified that he wanted photographs of his upcoming marriage proposal as it was happening, followed by some quick engagement shots.

That seemed like a much better idea. I met with him one time five days before the proposal, around the time it would be happening so we could figure out logistics. Obviously staging his and her positions perfectly wasn’t going to be on the forefront of his mind at the time of the proposal, but we both knew it was important to get an idea of how things would be happening.

The location proved ideal, as the street light above it was slightly different than the rest in the area, and provided a very nice light, though not quite nice enough for reliable autofocus. I knew I’d be able to shoot the entire area at ISO 3200. It would be a little noisy, but that’s unavoidable in those circumstances, and emotions and memories matter more than technical perfection in cases like this. I also knew it would likely be raining, so I was counting on the weatherproofing of my kit.

The night came and I was sitting in my car on the corner where the shoot would happen, waiting for a text to say the operation was a go. The text came and I hopped into position behind a pillar across the street.

After the actual proposal, we went across the street under an overhang to do some staged portraits. While I was quickly adjusting the flash unit I’d pulled out (I didn’t have it out and ready as seeing a flash and umbrella across the street would have been a bit weird as they approached the proposal spot), she asked him to give her his proposal speech again. I immediately started shooting, knowing the emotional content of images in that situation would be high. As a side note, don’t you think those street lights on the right side kind of end up looking like hearts with the lens blur? Very neat and unintended happenstance!

The last thing I did, before sending them off to celebrate, was get an obligatory ring shot. Because you know she’s going to want to show it off!

All in all, it was an ideal proposal in less than ideal circumstances, resulting in great emotional and photographic memories for all involved. Congratulations you two!

This client was looking for something boudoir-y, but wanted to bring some nerdiness to it as well. I’m really happy with how her shots turned out, and am even happier she gave me her permission to share this particular one. She, like a lot of clients, wasn’t comfortable with actual posing in front of the camera. So I had her start actually playing a game. This made all her reactions natural, and I just filled in with simple things like “chin up a bit” “head slightly towards me” and that sort of thing. It made for images that hold a bit of verisimilitude, making the viewer feel that they’re actually there and that it’s an actual moment in time, even if it’s lit a bit dramatically.

What you can’t tell looking at the image is that this was not done in any fancy studio. It was shot in the client’s living room. There is a gray wall and white blinds about three feet behind her, with a bit of window light popping in from the cloudy sky outside. But thanks to a few grid spots and well controlled light, you’d never know.

Clients often come to me worried that their home won’t work for any type of shoot. It’s then that I’m glad I have shots like this to show that – with a little bit of lighting knowledge – you can turn any room into a gorgeous boudoir studio.

I was going through my lightroom catalogue, cleaning some things up, when I came upon these couple of pictures from a job I did earlier this year. I’d forgotten about them. They weren’t the clients. They were a couple of homeless by choice men living near the waterfront here in Vancouver.

I recall that one of their names was “Mountain Man”, though for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the other.

They offered their modelling services in exchange for a few bucks, which someone I was with chipped in. The photos were real quick and easy. I literally shot one frame of each of them and they came out good. Didn’t even need to light test.

I wish I had gone back and talked to these guys some more, or at least given them an 8×10 each. Talked to them, gotten more of their stories.

The character in their faces is wonderfully honest. I adore these photos.

Kate is a Comp-Sci major at WSU Vancouver, and the only female in her class level. While it’s sad that that’s the case, she thought her determination to stick with the program despite any gendered odds against her is something worth celebrating. I’m inclined to agree.

I got up to her place which is on a fairly hefty lot of land. At least compared to the suburbs I’m used to. Her family’s lived there for a long time, and given her connection to it, I wanted to make a photo that would bridge her computer geekery with the nature and home she’s so in tune with. If her reaction at the photos was any indication, I’m pretty sure I succeeded.

While this first shot looks a whole lot like natural light, the natural light under the pacific northwest autumn clouds was a whole lot more flat than this. I put a small light to the left of frame to give just a touch of shape to the face. It definitely wasn’t necessary, and the light would have looked good natural, it’s just the kind of little pop of ‘something extra’ to make the photo shine. She mentioned that white board as something she uses a lot as scratch paper when doing homework or coding, so we wrote out some fake python code and made it an element of the photo.

This shot is my favorite of the day, and one that I think succeeds most in bridging all those various aspects of Kate’s life. I used one of my big lights to light the front of her and bring that light pop to her immediate surroundings, and then used one of the small flashes about a foot behind her to bring in that edge light that separates her from the background and really emphasizes her presence. As is usual in my work for clients, I like to leave that nice bit of negative space on one side. It lets them add in their own copy for use on websites, brochures, business cards, anything really.

The nice thing about the Vista House location was the fact that it gave as access to backgrounds facing both ways down the gorge, towards the setting sun, and away from it. This meant we could do a lot of variety in very little space and time.

The tail end of summer and beginning of autumn is really the perfect time for some outdoor portraits for either your personal or professional life, so contact me now before the weather gets terrible again (though that can be fun too!)

We started out by hitting Orchards Park. The foresty backdrop may have been a bit cliche given the subject matter, but hey. Cliches work.

Halloween is a great time for fun photos of yourselves or your kids, so don’t hesitate to give me a call and set up an appointment to get some – if I could be immodest here – straight up awesome pictures made.

The first day of the shoot was all product shots.

After getting the ‘group shot’ in the bag, we did ‘individuals’ for each product. I really approached these the same way I approach most of my portrait clients. I lit them as if they were people. I styled them as if they were people. The products needed to be sexy, to be desirable. To be something that someone would see and without even knowing what they were think “I want that.”:

I sprayed each product with some water to give it the appearance of sweating, and I removed the black paper in the background, letting in a bit of the earth toned walls.

For the second day, it was all about people. The story we came up with was that while these products are designed with professional (or 24-hour) athletes in mind, isn’t everyone a 24-hour athlete? We don’t just work out at the gym. We’re working out when vacuuming at home. When working at the office. When pushing around the grocery cart, when playing basketball with friends on the weekends. To get that message across, I went with highly stylized photos like you’d see of an athlete in a magazine or on a billboard, but of normal people doing normal every day things.

Besides upping the contrast, I superimposed the ’24′ logo somewhere into each image, in order to push the brand.

Lastly, we did a poster shot. Not the most original idea, but the execution came out great:

Thanks to the client opting for a non-exclusive license, these images and more are also available for rights-managed licensing to any Herbalife distributor through This Gallery