The Dark Side

I spend some time the last two weekends up in Estes Park.  My friend Io lives there so I stopped by. She has a porch.  And a dog named Amber. I have an 85mm Perspective Control Lens. And a photography problem. This is what happened.

Greetings sports fans! While some of you might not follow all of the happenings over on Steve Z’s Light Side, here is a post that you don’t want to miss! Sport The Dress™ session up at Arapahoe Basin. Check out the full post HERE.

I had a lot of fun taking pictures of my nephews. I’m still enthusiastic enough with photography that I’m always shooting when I have willing subjects. It doesn’t get any more willing than this! Look at these poses!

The playground in Frenchtown NJ is classic. It has lots of old-school playground features. You know, the kind that kids can get seriously injured on, lik merry-go-rounds and see-saws! It was like being in the 70s again!

After the playground we got smoothies near the Frenchtown Bridge which crosses over the Delaware River.

So far all my images from this trip have been in color, and fairly ‘normal’ to boot. We are going to rectify that situation for the last photo.

On the second day, the sun came out and we were able to go play in the yard. Grammy’s house is a cabin in the woods.  So we headed out to take some family pics for the photo album. Things started out a little slowly at first.  Travis wasn’t super exited for the posed shot at first.  Evi is just a big ham and was ready to go from the get-go!

I didn’t want to burn the kids out with too much posing, so I decided not to set up strobes, even though I really wanted to! The sun was bright and it was mid-day, but I just wanted the boys to have some fun.  So I pointed them at some small trees that they could climb and shot away!  These next shots are with the 85mm 1.4 shot wide open.  I love the background blur!  Well, other than the crazy mad adorableness of the nephews.  Can you believe that spell-check says that ‘adorableness’ is a real word?

After I ran out of ideas of how to trick the boys into doing things that I thought would make great photos, we headed back onto the porch. Next I decided to trick them into smelling the flowers so I could take ridiculously cute photos of young boys stiffing flowers. You might think that I would be beyond that level of cheesiness, but clearly I’m not! Can you believe that spell-check says that ‘cheesiness’ is a real word?

Last up we have some extreme close up eye photos! I love these! The Nikon tilt shift is also a macro lens. Handy. :>)

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One byproduct of all this crazy Colorado spring weather has been lots of cool clouds to shoot under. Last week I woke up early one morning to notice a cool, moody overcast sky. I was itching to overpower the sun with some of my Strobist gear so I tried rounding up a model at the last minute. I wasn’t successful, but I did convince my fellow photographer Bobby Turner to bust out a business suit and some pomade and head out to the country.  Later that day I ironically came across a story in The Onion about Guys With Slicked Back Hair!

By the time we started shooting the clouds were just breaking up, and gave way to beautiful puffy clouds and blue sky. I’m really happy with the wrap around lighting that I used. I think the images have a nice 3-D look to them. If you are interested in more of the details of the shoot and the technical, how-to, Strobist info, you can check out my post on the Boulder Strobist website HERE.

I’m getting more and more requests for cool, edgy, and fun business portraits. It seems a lot of professionals are tired of having their photos taken in front of boring blue studio backgrounds.  Which is of course great news for me!  I just had a great photo session in Denver yesterday for a paid client, so this type of shoot is becoming more common for me.  Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

I was hired to shoot some portraits of Robin Peglow from Signs of Life Health. Robin is a certified Holistic Health Counselor, as was looking for some updated photos to promote her business. She wanted photos that evoke a feeling of positivity and health for individual clients, as well as portray an image of maturity and professionalism for her corporate clients. She knew that she wouldn’t be satisfied with a boring corporate headshot, so we headed down near Commons Park in Denver for some creative shooting.

Robin is psyched at her photos, and wrote: “I’ve never considered myself photogenic. Despite being pretty animated in my life, I get oddly shy in front of the camera. I needed some photos for my business that felt confident, professional, approachable and peaceful, a tall order for me while feeling wildly photo-awkward. You helped me relax and have fun with it, and were terrific at capturing those real moments where my personality actually came through. I got exactly the photos I needed! Thank you!”