Big pressure!

So those of you that don't know what PhotoVision is - PhotoVision creates educational videos for photographers. It offers the unique opportunity to observe photographers in their actual working environments. PhotoVision's cameras take you behind the scenes of some of the top photographers in the country to show you their workflow, their lighting techniques, their marketing ideas and much more. I have been watching them for years and last year I was honored to be asked to be a featured mentor on a series of videos for them. They spent three exhausting days at my studio filming me while I created some pretty cool portraits. I did everything from family portraits in a waterfall to an engagement session in an antique semi junkyard and even a senior with a horse in my studio under the chandeliers! I thought I would be super nervous but it was actually lots of fun!

I was again honored when Ed Pierce (the creator of PhotoVision) called me up and asked me to create some images for their new website they are launching! He wanted me to photograph some of the very best photographers in the nation and then create something cool from those portraits. Talk about nervous! Being asked to photograph some of these photographers would be like asking somebody to paint the portraits of Michal Angelo, Leonardo, and Picasso. Photographers like Brian DeMint (fashion photographer extraordinaire) Julie Klaasmeyer (maybe the countries most popular and well known children's photographer), Richard Sturdevant - (the only photographer in history to ever win two double diamonds in a row) and many other crazy awesome photographers who I have looked up to for years and have learned many techniques from. And me - yes ME had to come up with three different scenes, compose, direct, and light each of them!

Well I survived but barely :) These images are going to be viewed by 10's of thousands of photographers from around the world so there was also that to think about. Luckily I have learned a few things these past few years and seem to have a small knack for knowing how to light and composite people. If you know how I work you realize that I do things the hard way. Much of the time I don't know what the scene will be until after I photograph the subjects. I like the challenge of allowing fate and chance to play a big role in what I do. I feel it helps create unique situations with non-standard results which is what helps set my images apart.

Well anyway enough blabbering, here is what I have come up with. Hope you like them!

 

 

 This scene included Dave Junion, Julie Klaasmeyer, Beth Forester and Brian DeMint.  I will eventually need to switch out the images on the TV screen before they go on the website.

this was one out take from the shoot when Dave gave Brian a titty twister  :)  There wasn't a green screen available so I used a blue screen.

I wanted to use a vintage tv but vintage tv's are small so I had to make a big screen vintage tv - I kind of want one now!  notice the batman/photovsion logo in the sky!

This was option B - having them all gasp in fright (but we didn't really want them make people think photovison would be something they might be scared of)   This scene included Chucky Arlund, Amy Parrish, Jed Taufer, and  Mike Ridinger.

This scene I had to change a few different times.  I had a few different ideas with a jacked up red 55 Chevy but it got sold so I used the truck of one of my seniors.  This was especially difficlut because I had nothing built beforehand so I had to guess on exact positioning and angles.  This scene included Richard Sturdevant, James Hays, Dan Frievalt, Dan and Alex McClanahan and Me!

this was a fun shot of Dan that I used.

 

Beautiful Engagement

Megan and Sam love the outdoors and wanted to do something that reflected who they were. We did some brainstorming together and came up with the idea of photographing them along the banks of the river. I few days before their session I happened to get up a little earlier (okay a lot earlier) than usual and as I was driving to one of my sessions I saw the steam rising off the water as I crossed the bridge just before sun rise and thought that it looked pretty amazing. So later that day I called them and told them that I wanted to reschedule their session for sunrise (most days that is out of the question because I normally work past midnight). That morning I got up extra early, loaded the boat and all my equipment and was on the river before sunrise. Luckily last year I had come across the perfect old oar boat and had purchased it just in case I ever needed it for a session. I found some old oars in the attic of my parents garage that happened to match the boat exactly. I also brought one of my old muslin backgrounds that was just the right color and texture for making a cool vintage tent. When I got to the river the steam was rising off the river and the sun was just beginning to have the pink orange glow of sunrise. I loaded a bunch of my equipment into the boat and oared a few hundred yards downstream to a sand bar along the bank. I pulled the boat to shore and quickly began setting up everything. I found two pieces of drift wood and stuck them into the sand to make the poles of the tent and tied a rope between them then draped my background across to make a tent. Then I laid down an old quilt on the ground for them to sit on.. Then I gathered some firewood and placed an picnic basket near the tent with an old book setting on top. Soon Megan and Sam arrived. There was a steep trail that lead down from the road above to the sandbar that they followed down. The steam was still rising off the water and the sun had now broken over the trees lighting the sand bar, tent and oar boat in a golden haze and the rest of the morning.... well see for yourself.

This portrait will be a 40 inch print hanging in their home with a series of smaller portraits from their session above it.

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.