Seoul Searching

Alright, that's a lame title, and I'm almost sorry about it...but I just couldn't resist. I happened on these pictures I made in Seoul a few years ago, and I don't think I ever shared them here. Seoul was a pretty incredible place. Having lived for two years in Taiwan, and one year near Beijing, I found Seoul to be the perfect mix of the two. It had all the modern amenities and open minds of Taiwan, with the great weather, atmosphere, and tasty foods like I found in China. I highly recommend visiting and spending more than the few days I had while working. Definitely check out the old palace while you're there, which is where I made all these.

Tetons in the Morning

I'm co-authoring a book on using Lightroom's Develop module to finish photographs, and it's a much bigger endeavor than I ever imagined. It's amazing how hard it is to make time to write! There are so many other things that one could do instead...like write blog posts...

This is an image I may or may not include in the book. I made it last summer when my family had a reunion in South East Idaho, just a stone's throw from the Tetons. I awoke very early, prodded my Mom and Dad out of bed, and we headed up the road to the Park. It was a terrific morning, and I think we got back in time for breakfast.

Nikon D800, 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens @28mm, f/16, 1/60s, ISO 400.

Happy New Year!

Gosh, it's been a great year, and 2014 is really looking up, as well. If you're reading this, thanks for sticking with me. It's not that I've quit writing, it's just that I've been writing so much for Photofocus.com. Follow this link to see what I've been doing over there.

In other news, I got to make some pretty cool picture in Michigan the other day. I met up with my friend Bryan, who I met on the Photofocus page on Facebook, and we went shooting on the streets of Grand Rapids before work one morning.

While in Grand Rapids, I also got a minute with Breck to make a fun portrait.

Lastly, after shooting with Breck I was walking down the hall of the hotel and saw a horse and carriage pull up outside in the blizzard. When I got to the elevator, a couple jumped in, and told me they had just gotten engaged! I suggested we make a quick portrait, and they obliged. Congrats, guys!

I hope things are going well for you all, and I hope you get out and make some pictures with family and friends before the holidays are over.

Alvey's Candies

Nikon D800, 105mm f/2.8 Micro VR lens, f/11, 1/200s, ISO 100. Photography's greatest gift is making pictures of chocolates!

When I was in high school, my pal Jenny and I spent our evenings after school working at Michelle's in Colorado Springs. We entered the cafe and confectionary shop at street level, meandered passed the candy counter, grabbed a taste at the ice cream counter, stole a fry from the kitchen, and washed our hands in the sink at the back. Then we roped up and rappelled down the stairs to the dungeon basement. Well, we didn't actually rope up, but the old stairs were so steep and slippery with chocolate crumbs and kitchen grease and ice cream toppings that it really felt like we should be lowered down on a winch for safety's sake.

Having descended into the very bowels of the city, we put on our aprons and hair nets and turned on the flickering light over our work table. In the next room the ladies were running the conveyor and dipping the chocolates and putting them on big steel trays to cool. Our job was to transfer them to boxes for storage until they needed to be packaged for sale. Our process was something like this: soak hands for several minutes in a bucket of ice water (mustn't leave finger prints!), grab two chocolates, put in box, grab two more, put in box, oops dropped one, put in mouth, soak hands, repeat. 

During the various seasons we specialized in different kinds of candies. We made a game of figuring out what the abbreviations were supposed to be. Ch'Butter was a favorite. Ch'Bacon would be a hit, we were sure. We also explored the truly creepy limestone caverns of the building and wondered what skeletons were hiding in the shadows.

Nikon D800, 105mm f/2.8 Micro VR lens, f/11, 1/200s, ISO 100.

Michelle's is closed now, but imagine my excitement when Alvey's Candies in Richmond, Utah called and asked me about making pictures for them to use on their website and marketing materials! We chatted and I was proud to know something of the production process and talk about how we could make the pictures look tasty. Finally, we made a date, and I headed to their facility in Richmond, with my pal Bob on hand to help.

Nikon D800, 105mm f/2.8 Micro VR lens, f/11, 1/200s, ISO 100.

If my experience at Michelle's felt like working in a dungeon, then walking through the doors at Alvey's was like entering the Pearly Gates. It's a bright building, and though it's packed to the gills with milk chocolate and dark chocolate and cashews and peanuts and pecans and cherries and mints and creams and everything nice, it's also clean and well kept. The contrast with my experience was incredible, and it was a joy to work with the Alvey's team, too.

Nikon D800, 105mm f/2.8 Micro VR lens, f/11, 1/200s, ISO 100.

We setup our studio in the shop and made pictures all day long. They just kept bringing out mouthwatering candy after mouth watering candy. I felt like I couldn't make a bad picture.

Nikon D800, 105mm f/2.8 Micro VR lens, f/11, 1/200s, ISO 100.

Finally, we finished making pictures, and Bob and I departed with plates full of delicious samples ("Uh, I touched this one, too--better send it with us at the end!" ;). It was a good thing, too, since those candies kept me alert during the drive back to Lake Oswego, Oregon.

I hope you'll call Alvey's this holiday season for some of your gifts. They have some terrific boxes for companies, too. I mean, nothing says, "I love you" like a box of delicious chocolates.

This post corresponds with another on Photofocus.com.

The Painted Desert

The Grand Canyon, aptly named, is a revelation of hundreds of millions of years' worth of history. It's incredible to see and consider. Besides the geologic grandeur, the sun's setting painted a continuously variegating pallet of colors right in front of me this evening. 100,000,000 years of change before my eyes, and 10,000 Maniacs in my mind.

Nikon D7100, 70-200mm f.2.8 VRII lens @ 70mm, f/8, 5 seconds, ISO 400. Photographed at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA.

A Horse With No Name

Jesse and I were heading across Utah to Delta to make pictures for USU a couple of months ago; it was a lot like this video. Jesse remembered a friend telling him about a ruins that was pretty cool and nearby. We found the old mineral kilns west of Santaquin right at sunset and had a good time hiking around them and exploring the graffiti. This was a favorite. 

Nikon D800, 14-24mm /2.8 lens @ 24mm, f/4, 1/100s, ISO 200.

Pacific City

I hate to do it to the locals, but the world must know: Pacific City, Oregon is incredible. The beach is simply a wonderful place with incredible surf (point break characteristics?), and the most splendid tide pools on the planet, plus luscious dunes and caves and enormous rocks. 

I spent an afternoon there last week, and I can't wait to go back. I got to go make pictures for a wonderful family from Idaho, and everywhere I turned there was a great image waiting.

Highly recommended and totally worth whatever drive it takes to get you there.

Nikon D800, 105mm f/2.8 Macro VR lens, f/4, 1/1600s, ISO 100. Pacific City, Oregon's beach is stunning, and Lake Oswego is just a two hour drive away.

Brothers Walking

Nikon D800, 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens @135mm, f/5.6, 1/125, ISO 1600.

I was fortunate enough to attend Photoshop world in Las Vegas last week, and also to lead a photowalk with a bunch of terrific photogs. Lemme tell you, Vegas is different from Lake Oswego, but photography is the same everywhere. It was 100 degrees at night and all we could do was keep walking and shooting. It was a blast.

As we walked, I noticed this bright, soft light shining on R.'s face, so I begged a portrait of him. He was a little reluctant, but incredibly patient as we waited for the huge sign overhead to cycle through different ads and different colors of light. I love happening on this kind of thing, and I love that R. let me make a portrait with him.

R.'s brother, R., was also along on the walk, the two of them visiting from New York. There's this wonderfully lit stairwell we passed, and I just had to have a portrait with R. Funny thing is, as we made a few frames we gathered quite a crowd of international tourists. Apparently, R. resembles one of Bob Marley's sons who lives in Vegas. Who knew?

Nikon D800, 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens @112mm, f/5.6, 1/80s, ISO 1600.

Walking The Strip at night shows all the lights of Vegas, and it's really fun to see. However, most of those lights are not the best for portrait lighting. In situations like this I search for light to make my subjects stand out, and that often means the portrait will be a few highlights on a black field. I like that. It fits my mood. High ISO's are my salvation when photowalking at night.

"Just Got Home From Illinois..."

The Chicago Skyline from nearby Navy Pier. I love Nightscapes like this.

I've been waiting four years to title a post for this song...

See, I spent last week in Chicago, Illinois, at Skip Cohen University's Sumer Session where I studied with the best photographers in the world to better my craft and make new connections for my business. It was a lot of work, a lot of late nights, a lot new information, and lot of fun. Stick with me a minute, and I'll lead you through some of my favorite pictures I made during the week.

Started it all with a venture downtown with my pals Sherry and Mark. Starting with a deep dish pizza at Gino's East, we spent the whole night shooting downtown. As we were shooting nightscapes, we met a man who's a broker for an international realty firm...and he asked to see our pictures! Needless to say, running into him shaped our evening's pictures and we started focussing more on the buildings in the neighborhood. That image at the top is a panorama I made from the pier looking back at town.

That was late night number one, but the walking and the shooting and the Pizza made it all worthwhile.

Next day we headed downtown again, this time with more people and we planned to wrap it all up by shooting the fireworks over Navy Pier in the evening. We started on the Mag Mile, a huge shopping district. Obviously, we didn't really make it into any of the stores...not with half naked skateboarders walking the streets and enormous panhandlers who wouldn't take 'No' for an answer.

Seriously, I saw some interesting light falling in the reflections from a sky scraper and asked the guy with the board if I could make a quick portrait, and he obliged. Next thing I know, this dude is telling me he can take off his shirt and run down the street and make an awesome picture...and it'll only cost me three bucks! Unfortunately, I didn't have any cash, but he said that's ok, other people will see how awesome it is and want to take his picture too, so my picture would just be the seed for a little street performance boom. Well, unfortunately, I didn't have the right lens for that kind of work. That's ok, says he, I'll just do some pull ups right here, then...and then Sherry walked up and said, "Let's do it! Let's see what you got!" So, there's me, the Reluctant Photographer, and Sherry shooting this dude in the alley. It was fun, to say the least.

What started that whole little exchange was the light I saw on this flower...

Which I thought would look great on a person. So I turned to Bob Coates, who I found to be a fine photo walking companion and incredible instructor at SCU, and asked if I could make a quick picture. See, I tested the settings on Bob before the skateboarder with the hairdo walked by.

We continued down the Mile, found a real Chicago style hotdog, and this guy waiting for custom at the pub next door. When I talked with him about a picture, he gave me the thousand yard stare that all professional tourist handlers have learned to adopt.

Fortunately, this officer hadn't quite perfected the stare, but was obliging anyway as we listed to this other fellow perform on the corner. The Police are important on the street corners of the Mag Mile: people are so often stunned by the sites that they forget to pay attention to traffic.

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Also, Carlos Danger was walking with me, but he couldn't seem to hold still for a portrait. After hotdogs we headed back over to the waterfront to make our way toward the fireworks, and of course we stopped at Millennium Park to photograph the Bean. It's quite a thing.

I taught a class on Lightroom myself the next day, and we had another wonderful pizza at Giordano's. Monday kicked off with our class time with the incredible instructors. I chose to learn with Suzette Allen, and she opened my eyes to lots of new tools I'll be using to make my pictures and video really sing. In fact, we photographed a family of singers in her class.

We all spent Monday evening at the hotel, but that doesn't mean we didn't stay up late! We had a great time making friends and making plans. My Tuesday class was with Ryan Schembri, Australia's photographer of the year, and a hugely decorated artist, and I had a wonderful time and learned some things that I have never seen before, and that's not common. I should explain, also, that at this conference I got to choose two instructors to spend the entire day with, and there were fewer than 20 people in each class. That's unheard of! These are people who usually speak to groups numbering in the thousands, and I'm on a first name basis with them now. Skip Cohen has really put together a wonderful program, and it's truly the best education on the planet in the Universe! 

NO photoshop work here--isn't that amazing?!?! I learned so many new things.

I can't wait for the next program. It's going to be amazing, and I'll be sure to let you know about it here. Finally, here's a little time lapse video I made at the Bean...

Spaceship Chicago

Nikon D7100, 14-24mm f/2.8 lens @15mm, f/8, 3 frame HDR, ISO 200, Nik HDR Efex Pro 2. Movie in Millenium Park...can you name that show?