The Process

Being a photographer means using your equipment regularly.  You have to stay in shape physically and creatively.  Know your equipment.  Learn the menus backwards and forwards.  The goal is to be in control of your gear and not the other way around.  Practice makes better!


These portraits are from a practice session with my assistant Zak.  Both are one light set-ups.  The guitar portrait is made with a large umbrella while the biker portrait is with a silver reflector with a 25 degree spot grid attached.  In both portraits the f stops were wide open creating a shallow depth of field.  Balancing studio strobe with ambient can be tricky at times but in natural light this situation was ideal.  Both shots have a two to one lighting ratio meaning the subject is twice as bright as the background.  Both shots are ISO 100 using an 85 millimeter lens.  The biker shot 160 @ f 2.5 and the guitar shot is f 2.2.
Enjoy and have fun.

I was invited to go to Grand Falls, Arizona back in March with friends Pete Pallagi and Nate Pallace. Pete and Nate are staff photographers at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ. 

Pete was the tour guide since Nate and I have never been to Grand Falls before.  I’ve seen tons of pictures of the place but I had no idea where it is or how to get there.  Pete’s been there many times and guided us right to the spot in spite of the fact theirs know signs guiding you in.  For the most part, this is a primitive area deep into the Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona.

It was great for several reasons!  It was completely void of government intervention.  No park service, therefore no entry fee’s, no designated parking lots, no fences, no maintained trails, no signs, no rules.  Imagine that, leaving it up to us to leave the place as we found it.  Refreshing!

It’s been a while since I’ve been on a photo trip so I greatly appreciated the opportunity.  I’ve been so focused on my photography business that my personal work has been reduced to practically zero.  So this was a little photo vacation for me in a way.  Interestingly this was a day trip.  From Phoenix we were there in maybe three and half hours.  

About the photo’s.  These are all digital.  My camera was a Canon 5D Mark III.  I used a 24 to 70 f-2.8 zoom lens for most of it. I also used a neutral density filter to get the water slightly blurred.  The ND filter allowed me to shoot; ISO100 shutter speed of 1/8 of a second with an aperture of f-22.  For me, I like the water slightly blurred.  It gives the a sense of motion. 

  

Abandoned

Film 6 X 6 Kodak Portra 160VC Below:















I’ve been itching to get out and do some photography of my own lately.

I remember coming back from a photo shoot in Tucson when we passed an interesting area about a half mile long. It’s on I-10, east of Eloy, AZ.

It’s very close to the road so you can’t miss it. All the buildings are abandoned awaiting demolition and redevelopment. Since we were on our way home, I thought I'd come back when I could.

A few weeks went buy when I finally took the afternoon off and drove down there. It’s 45 minutes south of here on the freeway, so not so bad for me.

I took a medium format film camera and a DSLR.

Things left behind, like old buildings are really cool to photograph but I got to tell you it kind of gives me the creeps. You’re out there exposed in an isolated area with your gear and it’s unsettling when someone drives up and say’s, you own the property? I reply, no just taken a break and they drive off. In many ways Arizona is still a territory. You never know who’s armed and why. So it's a good idea to be prepared.

When I look at these pictures I see each photograph as a time capsule recording the place as it stands now. For me, I’m pulling from my own memory or visual library so to imagine what this must have looked like with people working or guests checking in. Now it’s left to you to complete your own narrative.

Here are some of the pictures I thought were interesting.

*******  I wanted to update this post.  I shot these pictures back in May of 2012.  It's now October 2012 and I went back to shoot more photo's with a friend.  To my surprise all the buildings were completely gone.  Nothing remains but smooth dirt.  Not even a concrete slab was left behind.  You would never know there was a commercial community that once occupied this area. 

Polaroid Type 55 Mishap

Triathlete Portrait: I was looking through some of my older pictures when I came across this old 4 X 5 Polaroid I shot back in 2003. I can't remember what happened to this image but I thought from a creative view point is pretty interesting. It looks solarized and I have no idea how or why it happened.

Testing lights with a Titanic theme

The painting reminds people of the Titanic's grand stairway and lobby. The light source is a strobe head pointed into a large umbrella.

Kona

Something a little different.

This is our dog Kona sitting at the front window. She’s a female boxer pit bull mix. We got her a couple of years ago when she was two and half years old from Boxer love rescue. In spite of her scary muscular appearance she’s a very sweet dog. Their is one problem though, she hates the UPS truck and anyone that comes to the front door. Everyday she sits and looks out the front window waiting for the UPS truck to come by. If the UPS truck is on my block it’s "game on" and she goes absolutely nuts.

Polaroids Oak Creek, Arizona

For these pictures the camera I used was a Polaroid 600SE which is a lot of fun to shoot. The lens is the 127mm f-4.7 which is the longer of the two lenses available for this camera. For me, this lens is a little long for landscape but conversely it's a great lens for portraits and general shooting. Here are a couple shots I took last week. I used a tripod and cable release with no filters.

To critique myself on these pictures I'm a little pissed at myself for putting in a lack luster effort. I concentrated much more on the digital images in the previous post. The top image the camera needs to tilted upward slightly to include the entire rock in the middle of the frame and in both images a stronger composition would have improved the end result.