Teaching in Kansas City at After Dark

Yet another amazing time photographing models, teaching hands on classes, and having fun with friends. Between Sunday night and Thursday morning I slept a total of around 12 hours. I taught a bunch of classes on photoshop and also teamed up Dan Frievalt for a composite session and then with fashion photographer extraordinaire Brian DeMint for a senior posing and lighting session.

I'm excited to be teaching all around the United States in the next few months. Next month I will be in Wisconsin for their Fall Professional Photographers Convention and then I head out to Idaho to teach a course in the Grand Teton Mountains with Travis Gugelman. Then in January and February I will be a main stage speaker at Imaging (with around 10,000 photographers attending) then I will be speaking at SYNC in Florida. The week after that I will be at Iowa's Professional Photographers Convention and then I head out to Ohio to speak there!

Here are just a few images that I created in Kansas City - I have lots more to work on!

This was taken around 4:00 AM downtown Kansas City

 

 

This was the scene from somebody else's camera - I had gelled lights in the background to create the bright colors

Photographing early one morning with some other very fun photographers!

Volleyball posters

 

Three of my newest volleyball creations!

 

 

Playing off the fact that the year is 2012 and water boils at 212

Tory and Aaron's sneak peak

Tory and Aaron picked a beautiful day for a wedding and we found some cool spots a few miles from the church to take some stunning portraits! I loved the single white birch tree in the middle of the woods.  It made the perfect spot and they made the perfect couple.  The entire day was lots of filled with lots of great people and fun and I am certainly looking forward to showing them all their portraits.

 

 

Templeton Rye image with the groomsmen reflected in the windshield!

They decorated their reception with old books and flowers.  I loved their initials cut out of old books!

A few sweet new team posters!

This year has been especially busy with creating cool posters for teams in my area.  Most of the time these are my "treat" to myself because I get to stretch my abilities and see what I am capable of creating.  These are not really anything I make money at but something I just like doing and helps get my name out to seniors.  I've been in mass production mode lately though and when I am creating something I don't like to have time be a factor so in the future I may have to find a way to limit the number of posters I do each season.

There were almost 50 guys!  by far the largest I have attempted.  This was printed on a 9x27" poster for the school

The guys wanted to do a theme along the lines of the popular Ax Men show on the Discovery Channel.  I created this background from some images I had taken while teaching some photography classes in Oregon and some of my neighbor's trees.

TThe coach wanted to use the fact that 212 is right at the point water boils. The background was from an abandoned factory in Cincinnati

They wanted to do a cowboy theme.  The background was something I captured in Tucson this year and the horses were my parents' (it's good to know people :)

This team drove almost two hours to have me create their team poster.  The coach wanted to do something along the lines of the new Avengers movie that came out this summer.  (The team captains are the super heroes)

The Muscatine Volleyball team - I've photographed a lot of these girls multiple times in the studio this year. They are a lot of fun to be around and they are pretty comfortable hanging out here. They made themselves completely at home - dancing to songs, hanging around on couches and making fun of each other.

Illustrative work

Besides entering some prints into competition I also  entered some of my digital art into the PPA Digital Artist Category.  It is judged a little differently than normal prints and other factors are taken into consideration besides just the final result.  Judges look at the artistic vision and the original elements the maker used to create the art piece.  Three of my four prints merited with one of those prints being accepted into the Loan collection.    Below are the images I entered.

Titled - Final Drive - created for a senior football player

Titled - Persephone's Solace  The entire landscape for this piece was created from a single bush...

Titled- A Sound In The Wood.   The forest in this art piece was drawn entirely in photoshop.  I originally created this background while teaching a class in Cincinnati with the amazing fashion photographer Lindsay Adler

 

This robot was created entirely from images I captured of metal working machines in New Orleans. The building I photographed the machines in was also used in the movie the Expendables - it was their home base in the movie. The background behind the robot was from an abandoned factory in Cincinnati.

International Diamond Photographer of the Year 2012!

Each year the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) hold an international print competition in which photographers from all over the world send in their best images to be judged. PPA’s International Judging and Annual Exhibition of Professional Photography is known worldwide for setting the standard by which photographic imaging is judged for both artistic and commercial appeal. The very best of the best images are accepted into the Loan Collection.

I'm pretty excited to announce that for the second year in a row all four of my entries were accepted into the Loan collection! Only 7  other photographers in the world had all four of their entries accepted! It's a pretty amazing accomplishment to say the least and an even bigger accomplishment to be named International Diamond Photographer of the Year for the second year in a row!

The awards ceremony is held each year at Imaging USA, one of the photographic industry’s largest annual tradeshows and educational events. Last year an estimated 10,000 photographers attended the event. Last year was my first year ever attending and I was almost overwhelmed at the amount of photographers and things to learn. This year I was asked to be a main stage speaker! It's kind of crazy to me that I will be standing up in front of all those people talking about my photography (I try not to think about it too much).

Titled:  A Wild Ride

Titled:  Take Me Away  (This was created in a ghost town outside of Las Vegas)

Titled:  Wash Away My Fears  (this was created for an engagement couple)

Titled:  My North Star.  Created in the desert outside of Tucson at 3:00AM.  It was a 30 second exposure to bring out the detail in the stars. I had assistants shine flashlights on the cliffs behind her in a technique called "painting with light". This helped bring out the details in the cliffs. Andrea was lit with a 580 flash to freeze her in place.)

Nikki & Ben's Hotel Vetro Wedding

The day couldn't have been nicer and to tell the truth my job was pretty easy that day.  It's pretty hard to take a bad portrait of Nikki and Ben.  Plus their wedding venue - Hotel Vetro in Iowa City makes for a great location for beautiful portraits.  Nikki wore a stunning Vera Wang wedding dress and selected beautiful yet simple creams and greys as her wedding colors.  I can't wait to design their wedding album with all the simple striking beauty of their day!

Cake by Tip Top Cakes!  Sooo good

These dogs and their owner happened to be walking by as we were taking portraits and we decided to be a little spontaneous

one of my favorites! Nikki was stunning in her Vera Wang Wedding Dress