It was our 33rd wedding anniversary last Saturday.  Lorie and I decided to get out of the Phoenix heat (107 degrees) and head North to the mountains two hours away.  We brought our dog Kona and we had a relaxing day under the pine trees near Flagstaff.  

We eventually ended up on Schnebly Hill Road.  We got there by way of interstate 17 and eventually descended into Sedona from the North.   It’s a rough 13 mile road that is pretty smooth until you descend into Sedona.  From the Schnebly Vista Point you need a high clearance vehicle to make the final descent into Sedona.  You would bottom out if you drive it in a car.  The road is no longer maintained and is heavily traveled by Jeep tours and other four wheel drive recreational vehicles.  It’s a rough road these days no doubt.

I took these pictures with a Polaroid SE600 camera.  It’s a big camera but it’s fun to get instant pictures.  The Polaroids are 3.5 by 4.5 inches.  To get the pictures posted onto the Transformations Blog I scanned them with an Epson Perfection V750 Pro flatbed scanner. 

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.