The Dark Side

Atmosphere in Boulder hosted a fashion show a little while back.  I was there.  I took some photos.  It was awesome.  You can see more pictures on the Facebook Gallery Page.

Last Friday there was a cool little fashion show at the prAna store on Pearl Street in Boulder.  There was free beer from Oskar Blues, appetizers from The Rio Grande mexian restaurant, vodka from Leopold Brothers mixed with Izze, styling by Urban Pearl Salon, and tunes by DJ Red Lion.  There were lots of pretty people as well, so I snapped some photos.  You can the full set on my Facebook page HERE and have a big ol’ tagging party.  :>)

And now for something completely different but exactly the same thing.  The last shots I posted super colorful and posed, while these shots are close up and arty.  I like these better.

As promised, I’m digging out some unedited content from the archives.  Back by popular demand, pictures of girls.  Hopefully soon to be followed by pictures of bikes.  It sure is nice outside.  I have 2 distinctly different flavors of photos, so I’ll break them into two different posts.  Which do you get first?  Arty and moody, or colorful and glammy?  Ok colorful and glammy it is.  Glammy, not to be confused with clammy.

It has come to my attention that there are still people who read my blog despite the fact that I haven’t been updating it with cool photos of mountain bikes and cute girls very much lately.  I’ve been soooo busy with September weddings, things have gotten away from me a bit.  And it’s hard to post fun stuff when you aren’t doing fun stuff.  Not that weddings aren’t fun, but those images go on the other blog.  But, I realize that it is not an excuse for leaving such an exceptionally un-Steve-Z post at the top of the blog for so long.  I have a plan in the works to further specialize my websites, in the future the corporate stuff is going to show up elsewhere.  In the meantime, I’ve dug up some photos of Julie that I haven’t posted yet.  And even better I have more swimsuit shots of her that I took way back in January on the beach that I have been saving for a rainy day.  I’m thinking it will probably be pouring on Tuesday.

My friends at Green Guru Gear/Ecologic Designs hosted a smokin’ fashion show and a rippin’ party to celebrate the expansion of their facilities in eco-friendly Boulder, CO. You may recall that last summer I headed out the Outdoor Retailer Trade Show with these guys in their vegetable oil powered Sport Utility Ambulance.

Green Guru makes groovy cool products out of all kinds of stuff that we normally throw away. Bike tubes, fabric from Coke bottles, climbing rope, and lots and lots of vinyl billboards. The bag you see above, the runway, the backdrop, and even the outfit you see below once clogged up the landscape with marketing slogans trying to make us buy stuff. Personally I’d rather have ladies acting as billboards trying to make me buy stuff.

The finale featured a contortionist wearing an outfit made from recycled inner tubes. Can you figure out how she has gotten her leg up there? Yeah, me neither!

I volunteered to take some photos for the Boulder International Film Festival’s KidsFringe Teen Fashion Show. Uncharacteristically for Boulder, we got rained out of our outdoor location at the Bandshell. So we had to move indoors at the last minute to Zing Salon. This wasn’t the ideal backdrop, but we made due with the small space.

I’m hoping that the kids will help me network my way into some senior portrait photo sessions. I want to do more really creative and fun photo shoots. I think that there is a big market in Boulder for high end portrait sessions where kids get really custom and artistic photos that will really make them stand out in the yearbook. I see so many senior pictures where the pro photographer takes them out and stands them next to that same tree on campus and takes a portrait. How boring! Boulder is the perfect place to find some seniors who want to do some really fun shots.

OK so I did another modeling photo shoot. I’ve been working on improving my lighting and I’ve been interested in combine mountain scenery nature shots with a fashion style of lighting. I was able to get Arianna to model for me at the last minute one morning when I awoke to great clouds (again). She did such a great job; I think she’s super photogenic. I used an assistant and 1 softbox for all these shots. I don’t have too much else to say so just enjoy the gallery!

More images after the page break!!!! (more…)

I’m imagining that I’m sitting on the beach, squishing the warm sand in between my toes. Mmmmmmmm.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Welcome to Part 2 of the Crystal Fashion Shoot. Chronicalogically this was Part 1, but never mind that! Crystal needed a photo to run in her local La Junta newspaper in an ad for Cinco de Mayo festivities. I could have taken one good shoot and have been finished . . . but that wouldn’t be my style. I have a way of going overboard when it comes to getting “1 more good shot . . . ” Things are busy busy these days, so I’m not going to jabber on, and I’ll leave you to the gallery.

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I have been on the lookout for interesting locations to shoot in Boulder.  I keep whining that Boulder doesn’t have much interesting architecture to shoot in front of.  It seems that everywhere you turn there are more brick buildings.  I was determined to find somewhere urban and edgy to shoot downtown.  In the end, I would up being somewhat foiled by the monotany, and I shot in front of bricks.  Again.  Oh well, I brought out the Strobist gear to add some hard light to give an edgy feel to some of the shots.

I was able to find a narrow alley that looked somewhat city-like. The whole scene was pretty funny, as we were getting quite a few inquizative looks from Boulderites.  People are used to seeing engagement and wedding shoots, but this fashion stuff is pretty radical for 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon in The Republic.

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Here is Part 2 of the Steve and Bobbie studio experience. If you missed the story, Part 1 is HERE. I’m going to keep this one short since it’s midnight, I’m off to Europe in the morning, and I haven’t started packing. Stay tuned for European adventures!!!

In the past I haven’t taken my fashion photography very seriously. I’ve done a few shoots here and there to practice my lighting, and to have a little fun. Then I did those swimsuit shoots when I was down in Florida. Once again, those were mostly to practice in some different shooting conditions than I normally get in Colorado. Now it seems that I’m getting some recognition for my efforts, and I’ve started to get paying requests for my work.

I thought that the only purpose has been to improve my portraiture, and maybe work on some fashion bridal type shoots. I’ve been a bit reluctant to invest too much time into an area of the business where there are tons of guys who will do this stuff for free.

Personally, I find that shooting and editing these photos are no fun at all. No, I won’t do any more. Stop twisting my arm. Ow, ow, ow, quit it!

Welllllllllllll . . . mmmmm . . . OK. Maybe just one or two more bikini shoots. But only because I need the money. I don’t enjoy it at all.  Wherefore art thou cubicle?

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One of my photographer friends who I share my studio space with is Bobbie Turner. He has a picture of himself attached to the bottom of his email signature that I really didn’t like. Since I’m not one to hold back, I told him that he needed a new one! And actually I needed some of myself as well, so we planned a day in the studio to play with lighting and to each get pictures of ourselves for our own promotion.

You can check out Bobbie’s website and blog by clicking the links.

Bobbie’s cool, he used to race BMX back in the 80’s like me hee-ha!!! As a result, he has hit his head many times just like me.

We couldn’t be serious for too long in there. We were coming up with wild lighting scenarios and busting out some moves. Listing to Kid Rock does these things to you, honest. Look for the sequel to this post with my inverted aerial maneuvers coming soon!

No, I’m not back in some warm tropical locale, I’m just pretending. I still have a lot of the photos that I took on my trip to Florida yet to edit. I’m intentionally spacing out the warm weather photos. Like Homer would say, “Mmmmmmm, bikinis.” Or something like that.

I did this shoot right after watching an informational seminar on shooting in bright sunlight. Bright sun can be challenging to shoot in because it is going to create blown out highlights and dark shadows. A camera cannot record the full range of light and shadows that we can see with our eyes. So the trick to shooting out in bright sun is to plan where you want the light to blow out in the photos.

Well, yeah, you could always go under a tree in the shade somewhere. But I’ve found that pure shade can lead to photos that are kindof boring and flat.

I found that bright sun can really produce dramatic effects in your photos. I find these images intriguing where I intentionally blew out parts of the photos. Some of the other photos that I took where everything was exposed properly seem boring in comparison!

When you see Sports Illustrated type model shoots, the images are shot at the perfect light time of day, or there is a gaggle of assistants holding light blocking screens or auxiliary lighting. Sure I could have done that here, but when you are shooting weddings you don’t always get the chance to shoot when the light is perfect. A great photographer can produce solid images in any kind of light.

Another thing that I learned in some of the seminars is that I really liked a lot of the images that were blatantly (to me) manipulated in Photoshop. So I went a little crazier than normal on these photos with the color tweaking. But no, I didn’t  Photoshop her eyes to be different colors in the above photo.  That’s just how the picture came out.  We’ll see how I like my editing style three months from now. In the past when I’ve picked a strong editing style I’ve found myself changing my mind on what I like later.

More images after the page break . . . (more…)

I’m still catching up with all of the photo shoots that I did while I was down in Florida. I’m almost through with 2007, can I get a ‘Hell Yeah’? These pictures were taken at Fort Desoto which is at the very southern tip of the St. Petersburg peninsula. This day was so damn cold. It was 45 degrees and windy. Rachel was so cold that she had to go back to the car for a while and warm up. I was OK with it, because goosebumps aren’t fun to Photoshop! Luckily there were these cool old cement pieces of fort left poking out of the sand. We did a lot of shooting hiding behind them, using them as wind breaks.

I found one thing out for sure when I was in Tampa, there is not a shortage of girls who have aspiring modeling careers. A single Craigslist ad resulted in over a dozen responses. So it worked out really well for me. I was on ‘vacation’, I had free time, and my usual strong desire to practice practice practice. And what better way to practice than taking pictures of beautiful women? I knew you’d see my point.

The purpose of today’s exercise was to see what kind of images I could get without any auxiliary lighting or reflectors. My last Strobist flash style sunset beach shoot that I did gave me some great results. I was confident that I could do the exact same thing again, but how fun would that be? I’m only really enjoying myself when I’m risking failure. Is that really true? I don’t know, I’m just making stuff up to fill in the gaps between these photos.  Anyway, I wanted to work on my shooting in pure bright sunlight.

My main goal was to create some arty black and white images, as opposed to another Sports Illustrated style swimsuit shoot. I took a lot of weird pictures. I’m not sure if I like them yet. I will post them later after I take care of more important things first. In the meantime, Rachel was anxious for some pictures for booking some gigs, so I edited these ones, which are a bit more conventional. They are still pretty contrast-y though. I probably will use a reflector next time.

A funny thing about being a photographer is that when you go on vacation it’s easy to just keep on working. New scenery is inspiring, and leads to more and more shooting. Usually there is not enough time to edit all the photos that you take while traveling, so when you get home you have even more work than when you left! But when you have the opportunity to take pictures like the one above … a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!

I am doing a beach engagement shoot while I’m here for a very big wedding that I booked at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach Florida in December 2008. Being from Colorado, I’ve never actually shot on the beach before, so I wanted to do a practice run before this important client. So I found Eugenia to help me out with some modeling. She’s never actually done any modeling before, so she should be happy with the way these came out!

Eugenia brought a friend along with her to the shoot at Honeymoon Island Beach. As it turns out, her friend Amber is in need of some engagement pictures, but her fiance is in the military and was only going to be in town for 2 more days. Luckily I was free, and was able to shoot them the next day for some extra vacation spending money! Sweet!

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Last week I attended my second Poise Meetup for models and photographers. It was held at the Denver Space Gallery. Here are some of the photos.

I had been planning a portfolio shoot with Crystal for over a week. By Saturday it was pretty clear that Sunday was going to be a washout. But Crystal has a busy schedule, and we weren’t sure when we were going to be able to shoot again. So we persevered, and despite almost running out of daylight, intrusions on our desired locations, and other setbacks, we made it happen. Lingerie photos in the 40 degree rain! Despite that it was getting dark and she has the tendency to ‘get cold easily’, we came out with some fun stuff.

And yes, I actually do think it is perfectly realistic for a woman to be walking along the railroad tracks, in an industrial area, in the rain, wearing pink lingerie and white high heeled boots, thank you very much. It happens all the time when I’m sleeping!