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...

Super Baby Digital Composite Photo Illustration

Here is the "behind the scenes" I said I would do on my FaceBook page.

I had attended a seminar given by Blake Discher (carefull - browser hijack) a few months ago, and he mentioned something about an editorial assignment he was given where he was asked to shoot a baby in a heroic pose. He knew he couldn't do it the way the art director had in mind and talked him/her into doing something else. I instantly thought, "I can do that! No problem!"

So when my wife's cousin came to visit with her baby, I asked her to bring an appropriate wardrobe. We set up a tabletop with a blue seamless (I know, I should have used green, it would have saved a lot of time masking!) and two strobes. One head with a grid behind the baby and camera left, the other with a large softbox slightly camera right. I had his mother hold him by the waist for a few shots, then by the hands with his arms raised for a few. This way I could have shots of his upper body that I could merge with his lower body. Turns out, one shot was a nearly perfect pose, All I need to do was photoshop in his mid section from one of the raised arm shots.

With everything masked out it was time to make his backwards bib into a cape. I searched Flickr for an image of a red flag with a creative commons license. This one was perfect. Then I did the same thing with the grass. I had to modify the grass by duplicating it, enlarging it, blurring it and adding it back to the original. I did this several times to give it more depth.

The sky is from another shot of mine that I did for Brandweek Magazine of Ted Ward.

Everything was masked out, merged together, retouched and color-adjusted to make the final image. I hope you like it.

University Admissions Photoshoot Off The Grid!

This past Spring I was able to do a college viewbook photoshoot using all solar power! I had my doubts that the small setup they had at Shepherd University in West Virginia would be able to handle the draw from my lights, but I shot for several hours and not once had a bit of trouble. And I felt good that I didn't burn one bit of hydrocarbon in the process. It was definitely a first for me, but I'm sure it won't be the last.