Last month I had the pleasure of working with Ryan Heward on expanding his portfolio. We shot for two days, in the heat, and created a lot of killer shots. These are a few of my favorites from the session.

Watch for Ryan’s work in the future. We wish him luck in his career!

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UPDATE: Congratulations to Ryan who just got signed with FORD/Robert Black Agency!

Back around the beginning of the year, a friend of mine introduced me to the Editor of Revista Amiga. Introduced in person, I should say… we all happened to be at the same nightclub that evening. Her and I had exchanged messages a few times previously about setting up a shoot for the magazine. A week and a half before my April trip to Hermosillo, we started chatting about setting up the shoot… and managed to figure out most of the details before I arrived in town.

The day, for me, started at 3am and a 5.5 hour drive from Tempe to Hermosillo. Once in town, I met up with Ana from Revista Amiga, and Alejandro Quintana, my assistant for the shoot. We headed over to Luz Maria Salon to join up with Alejandro Rodriguez of AR Agencia and our models for the shoot, Mayra Valerio and Michelle Montenegro, who were already in the middle of hair and makeup. A short stop at the boutique to select the clothing for the shoot and we were off to our shoot location, Blue Lounge, inside of Grill Station.

It was a long, hot, tiring day, but we all had a lot of fun and I enjoyed every minute of it. Plus, we got some killer photos. Check out the behind the scenes video from the shoot below. For more behind the scenes and updates, Become a Fan on Facebook!

During my trip to Hermosillo in February, I met up with model Alejandra Castillo Benavides for a shoot. We had been working on a concept for my January visit, though due to scheduling that never happened. This time though, we had an amazing location to work with, El Casino del Diablo, thanks to a suggestion by my friend Teresita.

We arrived on location and it was beyond my expectations. We initially had a bit of trouble actually getting past the gates, though once in, everything flowed quite smoothly. We walked the location, picking out our setups. Far in the back, up on top of the roof, I found my first setup. It was definitely my “IT” spot for this session and I knew it when I saw it. Up on the roof were these concrete benches that looked like they belonged at a bus stop rather than a rooftop, surrounded with debris and half dead shrubbery. We setup shop here and got things started.

Next up was the room pretty much directly below where we first setup. It was huge and empty with none of the windows intact and a ton of graffiti. I liked the way my test shots were turning out, using only the natural light to illuminate the room. I added a little pop of light for Alejandra and we were set.

The last setup of the day came together rather organically. Alejandra had one more outfit she wanted to shoot… and I had seen this square pattern from behind old tiles in a few rooms that I was liking. The rooms with the pattern I liked had so far been too small for what I wanted to shoot. We looked around the location a bit more and found another room with the pattern that was much larger and had some green graffiti that tied in well with her outfit.

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Lately I’ve had a strong craving for shooting in black and white. For last month’s trip to Hermosillo, Sonora I decided to satisfy that craving and shoot solely in black and white… the photo shoot, candids, everything. I think I started driving my friends crazy with all the black and white photos.

After a most tasty breakfast of fish tacos and orange juice over at my favorite restaurant Taco Fish, we returned to the hotel to meet up with Anna Rojo for the photo shoot. I can’t tell you how awesome it is to be staying within visual range of the shooting location. The first setup was on the staircase, merely five feet outside the hotel room door. Simplicity was the goal for this shoot. The first two photos were lit with a single speedlight, shot through the translucent portion of a circular reflector.

For the next two setups, we headed out to the pool area, a daunting fifty feet away from the first setup. These setups were shot completely with natural light and a bit of assistance from a silver reflector. Check out my Facebook fan page for some behind the scenes photos I posted from this shoot!

It took two different printers and many headaches, but the new promo cards to start off my 2010 promotional campaign have finally arrived. For this set of promo cards, I decided to keep the design simple and clean to reflect the branding in place on my website. I also chose to go with only two photos to keep their size large and to reflect the direction I’m taking my work over the next year. Now just to finish up the mailing list for 2010 and lick a bunch of envelopes!

This past month we took a trip to Hermosillo, Sonora for an extended weekend. It had been a few months since I had last been there. The weekend was mostly a vacation of sandboarding, clubs and the best fish tacos on the planet… but I did get some shooting in while I was there.

For this shoot I met up at the Centro Cultural Musas with my friend and photographer Fidel and model Anna Rojo. Anna modeled for the calendar we shot back in early 2009, though we were in Puerto Penasco different weekends and hadn’t crossed paths. This shoot was worth the wait. Anna was a pleasure to work with. We had a great time and created some solid photos. Here are some of my favorites from the shoot.

A trip is planned before the end of the month and another is in the works for February. Watch for more photos from my sessions in Mexico.

Aspiring Arizona model Alex Lasheen contacted me with an interest to update his portfolio with some lifestyle/commercial fashion type photography. After some hair and makeup, we met up just outside the entrance to Lake Pleasant. My favorite photos from our session were near the end when we wandered out into the marina area of the lake. The photo above is one of my favorites from this portion of our shoot.

This past year has seen a lot of location work and it was long over due for my good friend and makeup artist Lorri Mitchell and I to meet up and create something in studio. For this session we decided to go with a handfull of clean, simplistic beauty concepts and had the pleasure of working with Britnee Johnson from S.I.M. Agency. We started out with a list of conceptual ideas. Each concept based on a single element, from which we built the entire look of the the image.

As is in usual fashion when I get to shoot with Lorri, we rocked it out and had a blast! Watch for more beauty inspired concept sessions over the next couple winter months as we hide out in the studio from our chilling 50 degree Arizona winters!

This past month my good friend Aaron Matthew and I have started working on updating his portfolio. For this session I was going for a classy suit look, but with a bit of an edge. We went with a single outfit and changed it up with a variety of lighting techniques.

The initial concept was to shoot inside an elevator, so we took a trip to downtown Phoenix. After finding our elevator, we quickly learned it wanted to have nothing to do with us propping it open. Instead we timed this whole setup in the amount of time it would stay open from pressing the button. This was the only setup that used additional lighting. I attached a bare speedlight to the staircase behind the camera with a justin clamp to bring some hard light into this shaded area.

For the rest of our setups I worked with natural light, ranging from setups in the shade, sun flares and shadows cast by nearby objects. My new EF 50mm f/1.4 I purchased has been working amazing for shooting into the sun to get flares. It’ll allow me to virtually shoot straight into the sun.

After what was to be our last setup, we busted out a few crazier concepts on the way back to the car. The shoot is never over until the memory card gets plugged into my MacBook.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of working with Laura, a model from SIM Agency. Our shoot ended up being a bit of a road trip and the first stop was to meet up with Lorri Mitchell for some stellar makeup. Once the makeup was complete, we took a brief pitstop for some caffeine and headed up north in search of some tall grass for our shoot. What we found was visually what I had in mind, but it came with the added bonus of being sharp, scratchy and laced with thorns. Good times! Even so, we got the look I was going for.

To get more information on the lighting setup used in this shoot, check out my previous post Balancing Flash with Afternoon Sunlight.