A couple of months in review...

It’s almost a month since I updated my blog. Sorry to the one or two of you that read it. The purpose of the blog when I started it was to put a lot of words and pictures on my web site for the search engines to crawl. This will help with the rankings of my web site and maybe have the site show up when someone types “Spokane Photographer” into the search engine box. My hope is it will turn into something more. I have to figure out what to put here and what will keep you coming back. Stay tuned...

I am still trying to balance my studio and also be a working stage hand with IATSE Local #93. The choice to work the run of Lion King, Nutcracker and LC’s Guys & Dolls was not that hard. I love the technical aspects of theater and sound and will continue to keep working these calls when I can. Many of the people I work with are my customers and so they go hand in hand. The Lion King was a huge time commitment and has left me a little bit behind. I will continue to balance these as best as I can.

Dancers

While I started shooting ballet to make a slide show for the spring recital at Ballet Arts, I quickly learned that my peak action skills that I picked up while shooting football and other sports also worked well for dance. The portraits that I take are usually a collaboration of the dancer and myself. When the dance brings something to the game, the pictures turn out to be unique, fun and original. This is the same thing with any portrait session really...

Please keep bringing your A-game to the studio or location session and I will continue to do what I can to pose, light and shoot great dance pictures.

High School Seniors!

Lets just say I am behind and should not even be typing this blog right now. -I will get the orders completely caught up the first couple of weeks in January. In 2010, I want to have an intern or possible a part time employee. Much of the work, like fielding phones calls and appointments to downloading the cards, backing up and sorting with the customers are a huge time commitment and don’t need to be done by me. The bulk of the help would be needed in July and August. I was shooting almost daily though September. Let me know if you are interested via email or a phone call.

Thank you parents and seniors for a stellar senior portrait season.

Audition Pictures

Please call and make an appointment ASAP to get the SI pictures done. I will make sure that we get the best arabesque we can with no pressure. Make sure you look like what you are going to look like at your audition. -This means hair up, black leo and pink tights for both the head shot and full body shots. Make sure they see “the you” in the photos that they saw in the audition.


Happy Holidays! See you in 2010!

Havasu Falls Pictures

Ugh! I don’t have any pictures of the falls up yet! I so miss the beauty and warmth of the place. Like it or not, winter is here. At least I have the pictures and videos...

Some old mining equipment

Shay

Shaky iPhone video in the canyon

Water!

On the left is the Havasupai convenience store. Who would have though you would find a place with ice cold pop (God it was good!) and ice cream sanwiches 6 miles into a hike to nowhere. Actually, the village has another store, motel and a restaurant. There is also a school and post office.

The new Navaho Falls

A major flood came through last spring and did some major damage to the area.

Time to find a camp spot

Camp Martinez...

My brother Lee setting up camp

Orian and Shay at Havasu Falls

Havasu Falls

After a long hot hike, the cool spray of the water was so invigorating!

Next we’ll head down to Moonie Falls...

Picture of the Week Nov 24th

It’s been a long couple of weeks with Lion King in town and getting ready for Lewis and Clark High School’s production of Guys and Dolls. I saw the run through for Guys and Dolls last night and its looks killer with some big dance numbers. Guys and Doll will be playing Dec 4th-6th and Dec 10th-12th. Ticket prices and more info at the Tiger Drama website.

Instead of one picture this week, I have the head shots for the 2009-2010 Theatre Ballet Company. Swing by my Facebook page and have a look at all of them.

Another, just a quick note. I’ve been working with Dodie to put Ballet Arts Academy on the web. In the future, class schedules and other general information will get posted there. Check it out and offer me feedback as to what you might like to see and be of help to you.

Picture of the Week Nov 16th

Picture of the Week for November 16th 2009. A simple picture in the back alley. It always amazes me that the little sliver of weeds in the middle of downtown Spokane can look like a large field out in the Palouse.


And a bonus back alley picture...

More Havasu Falls (part 2)

Here are a few more pictures from the trip to Havasu Falls. I hope to use a few of the shots I took on the trip in backgrounds. Maybe in a week or two I will post up a few examples.

Old Route 66

The Havasu Hilltop was the base camp for the descent into the canyon. The Helicopter would fly in and out every once in a while.

Inacio and I were the last to head down. My brother Lee was racing down to get a good camp spot. I ended up going back up after a few hundred yards to get my GPS to get a map of the trail and record my time. I started back down the second time and wondered if I had locked my car doors. -So I headed back up again and they were locked. I took a while, but I caught back up with Sadie and Inacio.

Looking back up the hill. I believe the bulk of the descent was 2 miles.

I caught up to some people and had them shoot a picture with the beautiful canyon in the background.

Two or three miles in, there was a sign saying stay out of here during rain storms. It was a flash flood area.

The 1st Cactus

One last file for today. A movie of a mule train. Some of them fly up and down and you have to get the heck out of the way. I'll post more of the videos on my YouTube channel when I have more time.

Photo of the Week

I miss summer already. I miss the green grass at the park and even the sometimes excessive heat of the midday sun. Editing and print some of these high school senior portraits is not helping. Oh well, here is a picture of Lexi from a sunny, warmer day.

Halloween at Ballet Arts

Halloween at Ballet Arts!
Level 5's

A lamp, candy corn and at least two ballets dancers in the 3/4a class...

Set... Hike!

Candy corn was flying about!



Nothing good can come from three blind mice doing pirouettes...





Not sure about these two



look for Nemo

at least she said please

had to make an appearance

fairy tale ballet

Peggy, the keeper of the sugar.

Michael shows how its done!

Havasupai Falls Trip

I finally got a few minutes last weekend to look through some of the pictures and videos from the trip to Havasupai Falls by the Grand Canyon. It was a blast except for the 2500 miles of driving. Actually the drive south through Utah, Arizona and Nevada was beautiful. Most of the following pictures were taken with my iPhone.

The land looks like its out of a road runner cartoon

The Hoover Dam was a sight to see. Such a massive structure. They are building an overpass so that cars will no longer go over the dam.

Inacio, one of the hiking team. -Also an excellent brewer of beer.

We stayed at the Cavern Inn Motel the first night. We packed and repacked the backpacks. It was sort of a "do or die" on what we would take with us on the 10 mile hike into the canyon.

It's getting late so I will post more of the trip tomorrow...

Photo.net Photo of the Week

I got a short email from the administrators at photo.net that I got the photo of the week. This is kinda of cool in that I have seen some stunning POW's and always wished I could have just a little bit of the skill-set of the many talented photogs on that great site.
This was a shot taken in the middle of getting some portfolio and audition pictures for Jaimi McGuire. I remember the idea came when she was putting on her pointe shoes and was sort of shoving her toes in while holding herself up with her hands. -It is really only possible to ballance for a second or so. Jaimi pulled it off by looking relaxed for that split second.

Ryan Callan was off to the side handholding a mono light with a medium softbox low to the ground. The white seamless had some water drip on it from a leaky roof the night before so the lower left has some bad haphazard photoshop done to it.

The Ideas in my Head

This was an idea I had rolling around my brain for possible dance portraits for the Theatre Ballet Company. While we eventually opted for a simpler head shot instead of going with the silhouette theme, it was a fun learning experience.

The first ideas was to try to make you do a double take and with a mirrored version of the main dancer. Is that how a shadow works? Is this Photoshop? Or would it be subtle and the viewer would go "cool photo!"

My main light was a large softbox overhead and another monolight to the left, high and behind to get a little separation. I used a Nikon SB-900 speed light and fired it way off to my right placed on the ground with a snoot to keep it from spilling all over the background. I gelled it with a 1/2 CTO.

It was harder then I thought to get good consistent results in camera. The shadow subject needs to face straight on to the light (SB900) and not the camera. The light needed to go way back. -About 25 feet. The closer the subject to the wall, the smaller and more defined the shadow of the dancer. To get the timing for jumps I framed the shadow dancer so I could see them in the view finder and clicked at the peak action, cropping them out in the final image.

Thanks Adrienne, Ashley and Mackenzie for you patience and the smiles.