Rob

My buddy Rob and I were having a drink in a high rise overlooking Portland when I was suddenly inspired to make this nice portrait of him. :)

Alexis

Alexis is another graduate we are highlighting in a publication and video.  Photographing younger people should be easy because they are so used to the camera having been photographed millions of times by the time they are 18.   However,  I often find it tricky to get past their pose and into something real.  

Alexis is pretty, poised and eloquent.  I think I caught some of that in these two images but I kept looking for that extra  spark.  She was helpful and wanted to work with me but I just didn't quite find what I wanted.  Maybe I'm being too picky.

My favorite of the two is the lower one.  It felt a little more natural, plus when I saw her shirt I moved her over by that artwork which compliments the same type of pattern. 

(as always, you can click on the images to see them larger)

Jo

I showed my wife the picture I took of Jackie and she said, why don't you take a nice picture of me? I said, are you kidding, with you as my subject that's easy! I grabbed her camera as we were talking and tada!! :)

**click on image to see it larger

Jackie

On Monday I was tasked to photograph a student for a high gloss publication. I was a little uncomfortable with this because I hadn't taken portraits in awhile and never was all that good setting up posed lighting shots (one of my least favorite types of photography).

Getting her picture taken made her understandably nervous too so to loosen up we walked around the campus with me occasionally putting the camera in her face (the equivalent of me saying...cheese! ).

An hour before I scoped out the places I thought would make good backgrounds so was just casually leading her to each of those spots, including one room all set up with studio lighting. We both talked and started loosening up and I was getting some passable images, but by the time I needed to bring her back for her video interview, I still wasn't feeling like I really had an image that would do her proper justice.

She did a great job with the interview and when it was over I could tell she felt good about it all and was finally able to relax. She was standing near the window, I loved the natural lighting, so I walked up to her thanking her for everything and asked her to give me one last look of satisfaction. I used a fill flash to get some catchlight in her eyes and lighten her face a bit. It only took a matter of seconds to shoot and was by far the best image I got of her that day.

ps- you can click on the image to see a larger version.

The Yakima

I carried my little waterproof point and shoot in my pocket yesterday while out fly fishing on the Yakima River. Off and on throughout the day I used it as a video camera. Late in the afternoon when the sun was just minutes from hiding behind the hillside I saw this image and thought, 'damn, I wish I had a still camera'. Then I remembered that I actually did and switched it from video to photo mode and made this image. The power comes from the contrast of the hillside in the shadows and the light illuminating my buddy Rob in the foreground. Keeping this as a color image would have just weakened it.

Here's the little video I took too. I dropped them into a simple editing program and added some music.

Rolling along

My niece and I broke away for about an hour to see what we could see. We spent most of our time taking pics at an old grange hall. Coming back I saw this old tire store and couldn't resist. It was the repetition of form and texture that pulled me in. They say to avoid photographing at noon because the light is boring but the straight up light is what made this work.

To HDR or not ....

I took this image last Fall thinking I should HDR (high dynamic range) it and make it into a card for work. The only problem, I was on the run with no tripod and no students to fill the scene. But I took several hand-held bracketed images anyway. Using Photomatix I dropped in the bracketed images, pushed the 'align' button, messed with the tonal mapping, dropped it into Photoshop, bumped up the contrast, cropped it and tada........ another surreal, overdone image! But I don't care, I still kind of like it! :)