How About Some Light Painting

My assistant Erik Lawrence has posted a short video at YouTube at his blog showing how he created this photo using just a mag-lite. Light painting is a lot of fun and with digital now a days, you know what you have as soon as you shot it. You can read and see his video HERE.

Back in Sept. of 2007 I posted an article on this blog showing how I used a 1 million candle power flashlight to create this image of my stone path in my back yard. You can read more HERE.

Working For Free....

By now you all have heard about David Hobby's recent post "Four Reason to Consider Working for Free".  What David is proposing is not new, many well know photographers grew their careers by doing free work.

Many other blogger have weighed in on David post and I would recommend reading all of them.  Chase Jarvis, Moose Petterson and Vincent Laforet.  After reading all of these posts, I would have to say that I most closely align myself with Vincent's point of view.

There is a balance that needs to be struck... Read them all for yourself.

Only a Few Spaces Left!

I just got off the phone with Vanessa V. who is the Special Events Coordinator for Popular Photography/America PHOTO Mentor Series.  Vanessa told me that there are only a few spaces left for the Death Valley, CA trek in Feb.  Bill Durrence and I will be leading this Trek and if you've been sitting on the fence thinking about going, don't wait any longer.  I would hate to have you miss out on this wonderful trip!  I plan on bring a few strobes!

Denver Small Strobes, Big Results

Just a quick note:  I have 4 more spaces available for the Jan. 10th, 2009 Small Strobes, Big Results workshop being held in Denver.  If your interested in attending, please contact me.

Hiding What's Not There

I've been a contract shooter for Getty Corporate Images for more than 10 years. I shoot a handful of assignments a year for them and this post is about my most recent assignment for them.

I was asked to photograph a construction project just outside of Pueblo, CO for an engineering firm. The project I was assigned to photograph is a new "chemical weapons dismantling" facility. The U.S. government has stockpiles of WWII mustard agent mortars that need to be destroyed. This project is just getting off or should I say "out of the ground", the completion date is sometime in 2013 or so. Needless to say, there wasn't much to photograph, some concrete pad work and very little iron out of the ground.

Over the last 25 years I've encountered this type of situation numerous times. You have an assignment that sound terrific and interesting only to find out that there's not much to photography when you arrive on location. I know I'm not the only one that this happens to.

In situations like this you really have to put on your creative thinking hat. I keep mine just under my hard hat at all times! What I really needed to do was "hide" what wasn't there. At this particular location I had plenty of obstacles to deal with, the government was one of them. Not only was there little to shoot, I was restricted from pointing my camera in certain directions due to the sensitive nature of the location I was shooting at.

At this location there are what seems to be, thousands of "igloos". Igloos are the storage bunkers that the military uses for the "mustard agent" munitions. I am able to show you this example of what an igloo looks like, as these do not contain any of the munitions that are stored on base.

This site was a real struggle, trying to show construction progress without showing specific locations and such. I used the sky as backgrounds and shallow death of field (DOF) to hide specific details that the government wanted hidden. I was restricted from from shooting from high places as I was not "trained or certified" for lifts and harness restraints. The next time I shoot at this location or with this client, we will need to take the time for that type of certificate.

The photo on the top is an excellent example of using shallow DOF to isolate the subject from the background. This photo of just reflections on a fresh concrete pour is another way of hiding objects that where in the background of the scene.

Sometime we run into these type of situations that require a different way of thinking. Using the sky, reflections and shallow DOF where good solutions to the situation at hand. Here is one more shot from our location.