The middle of No Where, California.

Have you ever driven to the middle of no where to hang out with family?

That's what I did two Monday ago. Athena's neice lives over in Lake Havasu, Az. She wanted to see us and we haven't seen the in a long time so, after some planning we decided to meet in Ludluw, CA. It's not much of a town, in fact there isn't a standing building even on Main Street. Ludluw is one of those old dying mining towns that still have a gas station and a cafe. The food was pretty bad but then again we shouldn't of had high hopes with a "B" rating from the health inspector.



However, there is some old burned down buildings and the old Mercantile building is barely still standing. So we all went out exploring. I tried doing some walking portraits as we went along.

Then decided I wanted a family portrait with everyone infront of the Merc. This part callapsed in one of Californias many earthquakes.



I set up one of my trusty sh-w Vivitar 285hv flashes connected to a PocketWizard classic. Shot through an umbrella on a light stand just out of the frame on camera left.



Here I used my lovely wife to model for me as I attempted to get the setting sun in the background and a nice portrait without using any flash.

Then we walked over by the railroad tracks and I used a voice activated light stand (thanks Josh) for these by the train. The sun had already set and I was trying to find a nice balance.



Even though Ludluw doesn't have much to do. Being in the middle on no where with some subjects, a camera and lighting gear you can make any place fun.


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Making Mom look good.

I spent last week out in California visiting my wife's family and friends. I'll be posting more about that soon.

Since, Las Vegas is only four hours from Orange County I decided to make a road trip to spend a day with mom. I got to Vegas about 3pm and waited for mom to get home from work. She's a manager of show tickets at the Excalibur. I didn't have to wait to long and the weather in Las Vegas is awesome this time of year. When she got home I told her I wanted to do a quick portraiture of her all dressed up in her business suit.

I ask her to stand our on the balcony with the late afternoon sun in the background. I wasn't to impressed with the plain light so I pulled out my special hard-wired Vivitar 285hv, a lightstand and an umbrella. I Set the 285hv to 1/16 power since it was about 3 feet on her right. I decided to get up high and shoot down on her to eliminate the roofs in the background. I took several shots thinking I got what I wanted. I told mom that would do it and started looking at the shots. I didn't like the darkness on her left, so I yelled to put her jacket back on, I wanted to try one more thing.

I pulled out another specialty hard-wired Vivitar 285hv (set at1/8) with a LumoPro LP653 Studio Clamp mounted to the storage door on the side of the balcony. I took a couple shots. It was to much light, so I dialed it back down to 1/16 then closed the door to make it as far away from my subject as possible. A few more test shots a step this way then, that way and boom that's the exposure.




Mom looks really nice and professional. Not bad for a lady who spent 15 years of her life cleaning other peoples houses to raise two sets of twins.

Later that night we went down to The Strip for some night shots and ice cream.
-Thanks Mom!



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Lightning in a bottle or was it bottles and lighting?

One of the nights I was out in California last week, I got together with some of my wife's old friends. It was the first time for me to meet all them so I had to make a good impression.

Avery & Joe opened their house up to everyone and we all hung out drinking beer, eating Avery's awesome lasagna and playing pool. I met so many really cool people that night. I know when we go back to Cali they be all good friends.



Somewhere along the night Athena and Avery convinced me it would be fun to pull out my camera & lighting gear and shoot some.



I bungee corded one of my specially hard-wired (sh-w) Vivitar 285hv flashes to the garage door guide rail on the right side of the garage. Then put another sh-w Vivitar 285hv onto a light stand on the the garage left. I pointed them both at the roof of the door to bounce the light off it. Using my PocketWizard Classics to fire the flashes I shot away.

This may have been a little lighting overkill for a garage party. But I enjoyed setting it up and I think it looks good. Plus it looked quite impressive to all my new friends.



Look I even pulled out the tripod and put the camera on timer so I could get in the shot. Then I strolled around that night shooting this and that.



The night was quite a blast and ended after lots of beers and way to many shots. I even walked backwards down their driveway. (which is steeper then Vail pass!) Then Athena drove me home.

Special thanks to Avery & Joe for throwing a great party.

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[b] inspirered

Have you ever done lunch with someone in your field that you admire? I have been following beckersblog.com for about a year now. [B]ecker is a professional wedding photographer out of Orange County, CA. I really like how open he is to sharing and helping out photogs who are starting out or trying to make it. To make that job all easier he started thebschool.com.

I signed up to thebschool about a month ago. It's an online community bringing photographers closer together. I've met some nice people on there already and have been learning and sharing with other like minded photogs. A week before I left for California I dropped [b]ecker a line saying I'd be in his part of the world, could I buy him lunch?

He quickly wrote back and lunch plans were made. Over the next two weeks I anxiously waited, trying to figure out what to say. I made several notes of questions I'd ask. When the time came it was like meeting an old friend. I knew so much about him from his blog that we talked for over an hour at P.F. Chang's.

[B]ecker didn't give away any magic formula or keys to the kingdom. He just Inspired me to get organized, get my business set up, and get out there and network. I walked away thinking it's more about having a good personality and making every situation a win - win for everyone involved, then taking the best shots everytime.

Thanks for going to lunch [b]ecker.

More than teaching, IWs want you to be successful.

Last year, I took the "Passion + Profits" class at Illuminate Workshops to get my photography business started off on the right track. You can read about it here.

Since then I have spent several nights out shooting, I've called, emailed and even gone to dinner & drinks with Efrain all to find more ways grow my photography business.

Everyone over at Illuminate Workshops is deadicated to your success as a photographer. They provide several classes including the previous mentioned Passion + Profit, also Photoshop, Lightroom, Architecture Photography, Photographing Children and even a Wedding Photojournalism class.

Now, to help you out even more, they have a sign up post for student and upcoming photographers to put their contact info on. "What for?" You ask? So that when clients call into the school looking for an amateur photographers to shoot their subject/event. Illuminate Workshop will refer them to you!

I've already had a couple referals from the school in the past year. So all you Denver area photographers looking to get some potential clients follow the link to sign up.

Jon

After the lights go on.

Last Saturday night I went out with a bunch of really fun & interesting photographers. It was the latest Illuminate Workshop's night photography outing.
(see the dancing snow?)


When I did this in the summer months we had to wait till late in the evening before it was dark enough to shoot. Now we can shoot at 6pm but boy does it get cold!

(Thanks Efrain for holding the second flash, and Mary for releasing the shutter on this one.)

(think i'm going to redo the color on this. what do you think?)

It was over cast all night and I intentionally left my white balance on cloudy so I could get some color besides grey. I think the orange/red is pretty cool.
(click on the pic to see the different color balances)





I'd also like to thank Chase Jarvis for his advise.(I read about this on his blog) This photo was taken with my iPhone and stitched together with the Pano software.

If you want to meet some pretty cool people and shoot the Denver area at night, come on out to one of these events. They are quite fun and you'll have some new photos to work on.

Cold Colorado days with pretty ladies

Last Saturday I had my first family portrait shoot of the new year. Vendria and her mom Larita came out on such a cold windy Colorado day.



These two troopers stuck it out in the freezing tempertures. The wind was so bad after the sixth shot my umbrella blew over and BANG! down goes the light stand. It bent the shaft so now it almost looks like a "J".

Don't know why I bothered with it. I knew it was windy the snow was blowing sideways. Now I'll have to see if I can bend it back without breaking it.

Dispite the snow, wind & cold, these two ladies were an absolute blast to photograph. We would shoot some then run into Ink Coffeeshop on Little Raven to warm up, having a good ol' time all the while.

The New Year!!! has it really been 3 months?

So what I have been doing? I done two family portrait shoots and one senior portrait. I'll be posting about them soon.

In the mean time I've been making some home-made grids thanks to Strobist. These little things didn't cost me much.
1. Cardboard from waffles
2. Black Gaffers tape
3. Rubber Cement
4. Night out drinking with friends to have them get me all the little black straws I can ever need.



With lots of movie watching being done over the holidays I managed to cut and paste and tape these babys together. I'll be trying them out soon.