Higher Education Admissions Photography Update

It's been quite a while since I posted up any of my College/University admissions recruitment photography.  Here's a few recent images from Shepherd University, St. Mary's College of Maryland,Stevenson University,  Salve Regina University, and University of West Georgia

Stevenson University - Owings Mills MD - Exterior Architectural Photography

Stevenson University - Owings Mills MD - Exterior Architectural Photography

Shepherd University - Shepherdstown WV

Shepherd University - Shepherdstown WV

Shepherd University - Shepherdstown WV

Shepherd University - Shepherdstown WV

Shepherdstown WV

Shepherd University - Shepherdstown WV

Shepherd University - Shepherdstown WV

Cliff Walk - Salve Regina University - Newport RI

Salve Regina University - Newport RI

Stevenson University - Owings Mills MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

St. Mary's College of Maryland - St. Mary's City MD

University of West Georgia - Carrollton GA

University of West Georgia - Carrollton GA

University of West Georgia - Carrollton GA

University of West Georgia - Carrollton GA

2 More Environmental Portraits for Advertising Client

Here are the latest images from my advertising portrait series for the State of Maryland... Tracy Tyler and Patrick Gallagher.  Tracy Tyler's company, Cambridge International, manufactures metal belts.  They have recently discovered another application for their products.  They are using them as architectural elements which help shade large windows while still allowing people to see out, and letting light in.  Patrick Gallagher is the Director of NIST which is an insane collection of laboratories in Gaithersburg, MD.  They are doing amazing research with million dollar machines.

Tracy Tyler, President and CEO of Cambridge International

Dr. Patrick Gallagher, Director of the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Outtake from today's shoot at NIST

Editorial Style Portrait of Paul Reed Smith for Advertising with the State of Maryland

I just finished another environmental portrait for the state of Maryland.  This one is of Mr. Paul Reed Smith.  It was shot in one of the production rooms of his guitar factory in Stevensville Md.

Interested to know what it looked like before post processing?  Here it is:

Not quite as exciting is it?

Environmental Portrait of Shepherd University Alumni

I just finished up a photoshoot for Shepherd University where I had the pleasure to meet and photograph Danielle Corsetto, creator & illustrator of Girls with Slingshots. She's a cool chick with a cool comic. Check it out.

Magazine Cover Portrait of Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy

The other job I shot in Atlanta in January was a portrait of Chick-fil-A president and COO Dan Cathy (son of founder Truett Cathy) and Mark Miller, CfA's VP for Training and Development. I originally wanted to do something involving cow costumes, but the magazine shot that down. I then came up with the idea of photoshopping them into a photo of a giant chicken. There's one of those right around the corner from me. That one got shot down as well. They ended up using a shot of the men inside one of their mock restaurants that they use for training. So here is the idea that I liked, and will use in my portfolio, and the image that the magazine used on their cover...

Corporate Executive Portrait for O-I Annual Report

In January I shot 2 jobs in Atlanta GA. This one is a portrait of 10 of the top executives from O-I. O-I (Owens-Illinois) is the worlds leading manufacturer of glass beverage bottles. Named after the company's founder Michael J. Owens (the same Owens from Owens Corning) who in 1903 invented the automatic bottle-making machine. So the folks at O-I wanted a portrait of these ten people to be shot while they were having a global leadership meeting at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in downtown Atlanta. My challenge was to figure out something interesting to do with them, so it wasn't just another boring group shot. I called the hotel and asked about photographing in their lobby or any place else they had that would be interesting, but I was informed that I was prohibited from shooting in any part of the hotel that O-I was not specifically renting. That meant, shooting them in a meeting room or dragging them outside somewhere. Neither of those ideas sounded like a good idea, so I proposed shooting them on white, in a loose confident, relaxed grouping. The marketing rep loved the idea. Since I couldn't drag all of these guys away from their meeting and stick them in a proper studio, I would have to make the studio in their meeting room. The only trouble is trying to shoot a loose grouping of 10 men on a 12 foot seamless backdrop! I decided to shoot 2 groups of 5 and piece them together in photoshop. That worked, and the client is ecstatic.

Advertising Portrait for Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

I recently wrapped up a portrait I did of Marin Alsop, the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The client called me saying she wanted to make a portrait of Marin for a circus themed program they were doing. We had originally talked about shooting in a prop warehouse with a bunch of circus props around her. After calling around to a few places, we found it would cost a minimum of $3000 to rent the props and space for shooting for the day. I proposed having me fabricate a backdrop for the portrait in photoshop. Of course I would have to charge the client for the extra computer time I was going to put in, but it still represented a huge savings to the client. I made a few quick sketches, got a little direction and approval from the client, and away we went. I hope you like the results...

Environmental Portraits for the State of Maryland part 2

Here are the last two environmental portraits I shot for the State of Maryland - Bryan Voltaggio & Claire Fraser-Liggett. Many of you may recognize Chef Bryan Voltaggio from his runner-up performance on Bravo's "Top Chef." He is currently Chef/Owner of Volt restaurant in Frederick MD. Claire is the head of the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore MD.

Environmental Portraits for the State of Maryland

I've recently been hired to make several environmental portraits of different people throughout the State of Maryland for ads for the MD Dept. of Business and Economic Development. It's a great opportunity to meet some interesting and prominent people in the state. The 1st 2 completed are Mario Armstrong and Mei Xu. Mario hosts and syndicates his own technology talk shows on XM/Sirius radio, USTalkNetwork.com, WYPR & WEAA. On TV, his segments air weekly on NBC WBAL-TV, and Small Business Television.com. He has appeared on CNBC, TV-One, PBS, C-Span and CNN. Mei is the owner and creator of Chesapeake Bay Candle and Blissliving Home.

Portrait of Matt Gilman

I recently had the opportunity to photograph Matt Gilman for my editorial portfolio. He's an incredible person and I was extremely excited to get to meet and shoot him. For those of you that don't know about Matt already and are wondering what's so amazing about him: Well, he's a fairly accomplished Bike Trials rider who regularly gives demos on the sport, and is getting better every time he rides. "Yeah, so what?"... So, he also just happens to be legally blind! Next time you're on your bike, try jumping off a few rocks with your eyes closed. Here's what he has to say about himself from his website...

I became blind due to diabetes at the age of 24. I have been riding bikes for most of my life and when I had lost my vision I thought that I would never be able to ride again. I couldn’t ride for 2 years between 2004 to 2006.

One day I decided to grab my trials bike and go out to the curb to just hop around and do the most basic moves. I quickly realized that I couldn’t even trackstand. I put my bike away in disappointment. A few days later I decided to learn how to trackstand again without vision. After a long uphill battle I have gotten back to, or near, the level of riding that I used to be at.

Now I ride almost everything that I could have ridden with sight but, I just had to figure out how to do it in my own way. There was no one to tell me how to go about it; I needed to figure it out on my own.

I'm happy to help Matt by providing him with some quality images for his website and other promotional efforts. If you find his story to be as inspirational as I do and would like him to speak to your group, I'm sure he would be happy to hear from you.

Here are some shots I took of Matt riding:

Behind the Scenes - Independent School's Admissions Photography

I just got back from shooting at Shore Country Day School in Beverly MA. This was my second trip to the school. This time they had me up to create the cover image to their viewbook. Every year the Head of School takes a group of 9th grade boys and girls on a 2 night camping trip to Squam Lake in Holderness NH. The idea was to have a photograph of the Head of School with several students having fun around a camp fire. I've shot campfires before, and I know they can be disastrous. The heat rising from the fire will cause light to bend and anyone behind that bending light will be out of focus. So my plan was to eliminate the fire from the equation. (more on that in a second)

Here's the result:

My idea was to shoot the Head and students having fun around a fake fire that I would make from a portable flash with a diffuser and an amber gel. That way they would all be crisp and clean and still look like the light was coming from where it was supposed to be coming from. No blur, no smoke in their eyes, and no weird shapes coming from the flames. I would then photograph the fire separately and shoot a lot of flames so I could pick the one that looks the best, and put it in later. I would also photograph the background and a tent separately so each element could be controlled to the exact look I was after.

It was a beautiful New Hampshire day. Thank goodness the weather cooperated with us.

Here's my gear packed onto the boat, ready to go to the island campsite:

Once on the island we surveyed the location and decided that big fire pit needed to be moved about 10 feet to the left... Have fun guys!

Oh, yeah... this was my 1st 18 hour day on my feet since I shattered my heel. The crutch didn't slow me down too much.

So here I am adding the amber gel to the Gary Fong diffuser for my SB800 flash unit. I also put some black foil in it to try to keep the light from shooting back to my camera. It did anyway, but the flare wasn't bad. I didn't want to flag it because I wanted to be able to use the rocks that were lit from this light as well.

Here is my SB800 "fire"... Setting it on the ground proved to be too low and cast shadows from the rocks on the students, so I eventually got out a floor stand and mounted it to that.

The craziest part of the day was after the shoot, getting the equipment packed up in the dark, and put on the boat to get back to the mainland. The moon wasn't even up, so it was pitch black dark. I wasn't sure we were going to make it back to the right dock! To give you an idea about just how dark it was, this image was shot at ISO 6400, f2.8 at a 20th of a second... Dark!

Here are the images that I used for the composite:

I started with image 1, the background. We weren't blessed with a very colorful sunset so I had to make due in post. I also noticed that if I aligned the image with the trees, the horizon was not level... oh well, I cant straighten the trees, so the horizon would be straightened later. I added the campers, image 2, shot with my portable flash. Then I added the image of the fire, #3. The final image actually contains 3 fire shots combined. Image 4... this is an image I shot using real studio strobes on stands powered by a generator. I brought these just in case I had trouble with the portable flash. I didn't have any trouble, but thought I should shoot it this way anyway, just to cover all the bases. I ended up using it to add detail in the foreground. And finally the tent shot, #5, was added. You can really see the difference in exposures between #1 and # 5, it was dark in the woods!

And here is how it all came together...