Roman Deity theme part 2 – Pluto / Underworld

If there is one Roman deity that gets a bum rap, it has to be Pluto.  Sure, he was the lord of the underworld and everyone was terrified to speak his name out loud, but….He was a dog owner, how bad could he possibly be?

This was our second Roman Deity themed fashion photography shoot with Courtney, and every time we work with her, Courtney’s fearless posing and intense eyes always makes for an incredible session. We had a great deal of fun with our Pluto shoot, despite the almost Murphey-like conditions.  As we drove out to the desert, huge angry storm clouds rolled in and we even got a few fat droplets along the way.  I remember saying something like “Uh uh, it’s going to take a lot more than this to rain me out today!”

I had also just purchased a new fog machine to complete the ‘underworld-like’ gloom, but as I opened the box, I discovered that it was missing the remote control.  Undaunted, I plugged it up to an AC inverter in my car, intending to have my partner manually push the fog button….and then the AC inverter stopped working….and then the wind kicked up to around 30 mph, which would have presented it’s own challenge.  We also had a hilarious time trying to keep the torch lit as well!  Despite all that, I absolutely loved this shoot and can’t wait to work with Courtney again!   Our third shoot will take place completely under water and despite the incredibly high cost of underwater apparatus, it will give us a unique opportunity to employ concepts and poses specifically tailored for a low gravity environment.  I can hardly wait!

Wow, we've been busy in our new Central Las Vegas studio!  Here's a few samples from some of our recent studio shoots over the last couple of weeks and it's a nice little mix of fashion photography, bridal portraits / engagement photography, boudoir and a dash of family photography thrown in!  That's my nice way of saying "we've had so many photography sessions that I haven't had time to blog about them all, so instead I'm making a hodgepodge"

2010 has been an amazing year for us in part due to the influx of really, really good fashion photography sessions.  While I absolutely adore shooting in our new studio, I've always felt most at home shooting outdoors.  Natural light is unpredictable, flattering and the tapestry of an outdoor setting makes for a dynamic shoot filled with intense color hues and rich, moody shadows and eye catching backgrounds.  Best of all, working with natural light requires little setup and almost no downtime, allowing a photographer to focus solely on angles and zoom lengths. 

You'll often hear me gripe at how difficult it is to shoot outdoor fashion photography in Las Vegas.  Any type of portrait photography, especially fashion or boudoir photography (and even wedding portraits!), is best shot without an audience watching and the sheer volume of people in Las Vegas presents a challenge. To compensate, my locations tend to be a bit exotic and out of the way, but the payoff for a little bit of driving is huge and the only other people we saw during our entire shoot were a couple of folks on quads, riding across the desert almost a kilometer away.

We met our bikini model Melissa some time back for an in studio family photography session and the confidence and poise with which she carried herself was uncanny.  Shooting with her was like shooting a magazine cover with a top supermodel; the angles she made with her body, her expressions and the intense look in her eyes were beyond stunning and if it wasn't for the sun disappearing from the sky, I easily could have shot for another five hours!

There was so much traffic going out of Las Vegas that I was initially worried that we'd arrive to our spot too late in the afternoon, but my fears were allayed when I saw how the golden rays of the late afternoon sun complimented her skin tones.  There was also a bit of a breeze, which eliminated the need for the fan and generator I had brought along.  For most of the shoot, we stuck to 100% natural light, but for a few of the closeup shots, my partner Sarah made excellent use of 32" and 60" (5 foot!) reflectors to fill in the shadows a bit and at the very end, we even threw in a little off camera flash. 

I often say that color makes a shoot and the vibrant colors in Melissa's outfits pulled her out of the background and complimented every stage of the afternoon sun and into sunset.  A wonderful shoot with a talented model with the natural ability to brighten an entire room!

 

I know, GORGEOUS!  Sarah and I are absolutely enamored with Abel and Kristi and cannot wait to shoot their wedding photography in Laughlin next month.  I'm usually smiling and laughing throughout a shoot anyways, but they're the kind of couple that will make you laugh so hard that you end up with smile lines at the end of the night.  This is what I love about engagement photography as a whole – it not only increases comfort in front of the camera, but it gives us a chance to really connect with our clients and build up a wonderful relationship!

We recently shot Abel and Kristi's engagement photos in Nelson, NV and had a screamingly good time working with them!  As we were driving up to Nelson, apparently their was an entire family of rams or some other horned creature that I completely missed as my white knuckled fingers maintained their death grip on our rental car's steering wheel (oh I cannot wait to get my poor injured Chevy Impala back from the butcher—er, body shop!) as I navigated across precariously narrow roads, complete with all of the obligatory winds and lack of guard rails one might find in a driver's safety video from the 1980's.

Nelson, NV is always a treat and it was great chatting with the caretaker Tony again and working with a great couple like our friends Abel and Kristi

Let it be said that I love Mount Charleston, especially for wedding photography; it's literally a whole different world and you would almost never believe that this was just minutes from busy Las Vegas!

Not only did is the weather cooler, not only is the view absolutely breathtaking and not only did I have a chance to catch up with The Resort's wedding coordinator Gina, whom I haven't seen in months, but the clients we worked with were the highlight of my entire day. 

Despite having booked us as their wedding photographers only a few weeks before their ceremony, when my partner sarah and I met with Chad and Chantel in our studio, we instantly hit it off and in the span of a few minutes, we were all chatting and laughing like old friends.  I've always said that the relationship we have with our clients is the true magic behind wedding photography and with these two, there was an almost audible 'click' and I was pleasantly surprised at how much we had in common. Chad and Chantel are from Minnesota, where Sarah and I were once based out of (and to this day, Sarah still has a Minnesota accent!) and their easy smiles and warm, open personalities reminded me of everything I love about the midwest states.

Their wedding was officiated by one of my favorite pastors in Las Vegas, Peter Starzyk, who we have the pleasure of working with around 3-4 times a year.  Whenever we see Peter we know that everyone is in for a treat, as he keeps each ceremony exciting, poignant and hilarious all at the same time.  We truly couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day for a wedding and I highly recommend Mount Charleston for everything from weddings to portrait sessions – a short stretch up the road from the resort also yields lush forests, mountain vistas and even tall flowering plantlife that makes for a unique and gorgeous backdrop filled with beautiful seasonal colors and clean fresh air that is a pleasant departure from busy Las Vegas.

From front to back, we enjoyed every single second we shared with these two and can't wait to work with them again!

We're having an amazing time at our new studio – as I was just telling a new client today, after a couple of weeks being there, the new studio just today began feeling like 'ours'.  There's usually a brief period of awkwardness, as every shooting room has a decidedly unique light 'acoustic', but I have to say that out of every studio we've shot from, this one immediately fit like a glove.  Different sized or shaped rooms require smaller or larger lighting modifiers and it's actually been a good deal of fun testing out different lighting configurations.

The Norman LH500 strobes that we're using in studio are just wonderful.  Our older studios required humungous 2000 watt/second power packs and umbrellas the size of me to overpower all of the ambient light and the huge warehouse space we used to rent back in the day (which always seemed to result in a burned out pack, modeling light or flash tube every week), so the opportunity to have a scaled down lighting setup and still achieve the same results is a breath of fresh air (and please forgive my ever-present camera geekery – I promise I'll refrain next time and get right to the pictures )

If you're friends with us on Facebook, you may have seen my little tour of our new place and if so, our model Erica may be familiar, as the client in our makeup and wardrobe room, along with our amazing makeup artist Christa.  Before I get to the photos, I would like to give Christa a very big nod; the quality of her work is uncanny and her rates are excellent, but most of all, her personality has always left us and our clients with a very big smile!  Since we began working with Christa, she has provided flawless professional makeup for well over 150 of our clients and watching her in action is akin to watching a master painter or sculptor at work.  I cannot recommend her enough!

Not only was Erica beautiful, but she was made for the camera.  In fact, she even bears an uncanny resemblance to the famous model Carmella Decesare and I could easily see her career take off just as quickly.  Her personality could switch from pure and light hearted to sultry in the blink of an eye and throughout the entire shoot, we all chatted like old friends and had such a good time that I didn't even realize that we had shot almost until 10pm!  But in that time, we had the opportunity to try out a goodly amount of fun light setups and concepts, including a semi-duplication of the famous bar scene with Jessica Alba in the movie interpretation of Sin City (the name of which is ironic, as Las Vegas is often dubbed 'sin city').

While processing the shoot, I decided that a shoot like this begs for a fog machine to complement the colored background lighting and will be picking up a very nice unit in time for our next studio shoot.  We're hoping to work with Erica again, as the experience was just wonderful for all of us!

Phooey on Google’s “Don’t be evil” slogan!

Over the last few days, I had been ‘losing’ emails and I just now discovered that they were being stolen by Gmail, which I had set up to sync with my Outlook calendar.  My primary workstations use an Outlook calendar to keep track of meetings, appointments, shoots, etc and since I’ve gotten into the whole iPad/iPhone/iRefrigerator and iRangetop with double broiler craze, I’ve been on the hunt for a solution to keep my calendars accessible while on the road.

So upon searching, I came up with Google Calendar and followed the instructions for syncing with Outlook calendar (shockingly, it did not mention email at all in Google’s instructions!).  It worked beautifully, however I began losing emails.  Gmail must have decided that my Outlook emails were far to cool to leave on Outlook or something and whenever Google would sync my appointments with Outlook, it would also grab a few inbound emails as well.  Not all of them mind you, but just a few; enough that I didn’t notice the problem until I began setting up calendar sync on my new notebook workstation and found a couple dozen emails waiting for me in Gmail.  Urgh!

Needless to say, the problem has been rectified and I’ll be replying to everyone’s emails today

This was our second shoot with Brock and Ashley and Sarah and I are absolutely in love with them!  They're one of those couples where you can just look at them and can immediately tell that not only will they be together forever, but that their love and admiration will be entirely undiminished.

These were taken in our new studio and I went for a different approach in terms of lighting; I'm somewhat of a comic book movie geek and love the edgy lighting that's become so popular in comic book movie posters (a la Iron Man, Jonah Hex, Walking Dead, etc), so for many of these shots, we used a somewhat complex four light setup with a large softbox as our main, a snooted (snoot is a long cone that acts as a spotlight) strobe as fill, a hairlight with a loose 20 degree grid and a fourth light with a blue lighting gel for a few of the shots.

We're having an amazing time in our studio so far and it's made all the better with great clients like Brock and Ashley.  During the shoot, we told them both how having them there brightened up our entire day (we were recently hit by a drunk driver, so the time leading up to our shoot with Brock and Ashley was a tiny bit stressful) and their very presence put giant smiles on both of our faces.

While we had unfortunately booked their wedding date before meeting them, we've enjoyed our time with Brock and Ashley more than words can describe and we can't wait to have the opportunity to provide them with a family shoot as well!

Remember how, on the old Warner Brothers cartoons, hot weather was depicted by a thermometer exploding?  When the weather spiked somewhere around 113 in Las Vegas, that's a bit what it felt like.  My origin state is Wisconsin, so you might think that the Mojave Desert heat would get to me, especially while carrying so much camera gear.  While it's not the most pleasant feeling in the world, I never realized how much we've acclimated to the heat until meeting Allen and Lisa, who almost literally melted.

I'm so glad that they mentioned their discomfort to us though, as we later found out that they actually became ill from the heat!  A couple of important tips when shooting outdoors in Las Vegas is to always remain hydrated.  In the morning, try to drink an entire bottle of water before leaving your home or hotel room and bring along several bottles of water to drink along the way.  When you sweat, you not only lose water, but salt as well, so while it may seem counterintuitive, also bring along a slightly salty snack like peanuts (which has the added benefit of protein).  But most importantly, stay away from alcoholic beverages the day before and the day of your shoot (especially any shoot in hot weather!).  Strong drinks can dehydrate you and not only leave you feeling too sluggish to get into the shoot, but leave you with bloodshot eyes, saggy or lined skin and puffy eyes. 

Our plan was to do a couple of hours on Fremont Street with the wedding couple and party, but after around 40 minutes or so, these poor folks had nearly passed out from heat exhaustion and we decided to reconvene at our new studio the next day.  Allen and Lisa are not only a great looking couple, but once they got into the shoot, they were on FIRE and while our time together was short, I liked them quite a bit and I hope that they come see us again (in slightly cooler weather, 'natch )

“…and the flowers are still standing!”
-Bill Murray, Ghostbusters

I’d like to thank everyone for all of the kind words on Facebook, email and telephone!  As some of you have heard, as I was stopped behind vehicles at a traffic signal, my vehicle was hit by a drunk driver on Friday evening (who was driving a massive Chevy Tahoe truck and rammed into us going around 45mph) and my partner Sarah and I sustained a few minor injuries.  Below are a few images I took right after the accident (my apologies for the poor exposure and uncreative angles but…well, I was just in an accident, so I blame that for my lack of artistic edge in these photos.  I was also terrified of getting hit again, so I worked quickly, but the photos do not convey how bad the damage was.  The entire frame of the Impala was squeezed a couple of feet inwards like an empty soda pop can that someone stepped on, the floorboards buckled, the force shattered the rear window and sent glass flying so hard that a tiny piece embedded itself into my partner’s hand and the panel was torn off of the back of the passenger seat.

But on the bright side (and remember: there is ALWAYS a bright side), the car needed a fresh coat of paint and an accident also gets me out of having to wash it for a little while!

P.S. – On the bright side (and there is ALWAYS a bright side!), I may move a little slower for the next two days, but I am still working.  For all of my fashion, wedding and boudoir clients, Sarah and I will still be there with bells on!  I should also have photos of the completed studio sometime this week.  The paint job in the reception area turned out just beautiful, the shooting room is for the most part set up, but the wardrobe room may be a few more weeks to set up the makeup station (due to yesterday’s events), but we’ll have something makeshift for our makeup artists to use in the meantime.

The official grand opening is likewise delayed for a few days, but we are currently taking shoots for the new studio!  While we’re going to have specials running from now until the end of the year for fashion and boudoir, we’ve had a great time exchanging free in studio photo sessions for cool vintage items and furniture that we can use as props! A list of much needed items are:

1. Old timey mirrors of all shapes and sizes
2. Beat up vintage furniture (and yes, it is a bonus if it’s beaten up a bit)
3. Quirky furniture.  This is stuff like weird lime green vinyl chairs from the 1970s, or oddly shaped transparent stool/chair/things
4. Folding screens (either opaque or semi transparent)
5. Large trunks, big enough to sit on
6. Unique curtains, bamboo shades, horizontal blinds
7. SHAG RUGS! 
8. Authentic bead curtains.  I was alive in the late 70s, so I’ll know if it could pass as the real deal
9. Guitars (acoustic, electric, beaten up, working, non working, you name it)
10. Rotary telephones!! 
11. Prop camera equipment – busted OLD cameras, OLD studio hot lights, etc.  The older the better
12. Anything that looks unique, oddball or follows some sort of theme from vintage WWI/WWII, to 1970s or 1980s

In exchange for your donation, we’ll give you a free in studio session (hopefully with the item that you donated!)  More details will follow soon!