Striking Spaces. Stunning Places. Killer Pictures.

Salk Institute

Rick — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:59:52 +0000

Salk Institute

Taking this shot was a bit of an ordeal. First let me say, the Salk Institute has an awesome photography policy... Take as many pictures as you want so long as you don't use models, props, flashes or cand don't interfere with any of the ongoing research or other Institute functions. They also open the gates relatively early (6am). With that being said, when I arrived it was completely empty except for a random researcher flying by with an armful of important looking papers. However, just when I was ready to set up the cleaning lady showed up and plopped her mop and bucket right in front of me (can't have a dirty plaza!). Then another photog showed up. With a model. Then a jogger. Then some random lady on her phone. All of them walking in front of the camera. All while the light was perfect. So I waited. Jogger left, cell phone lady could be cloned out, cleaner finished (finally... She was thorough!). Photographer and model? Security swept in and gave them the boot after his first shutter click. Very efficient.

Arch Cove – Laguna Beach

Rick — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 21:19:53 +0000

Arch Cove at Laguna Beach, CA

It's been a fairly busy Summer, but I did manage to carve out some time for my 10th wedding anniversary (otherwise I may not have had an 11th!). My wonderful wife and I packed up and headed for 4 days of kid free relaxation in fantastic Laguna Beach. I only took 4 real photos the entire trip, and this is one of them from Arch Cove near the Pearl a Street beach. 10 stop exposure with a few tweaks in Lightroom, Nik Color Efex, and Viveza. 145 seconds at f11, ISO 100

The Devil’s Golf Course – Death Valley

Rick — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 16:59:51 +0000

Sunrise at The Devil's Golf Course just north of the main salt flats of Badwater, was much warmer than it was at RaceTrack Playa... to the tune of 20 degrees. The sunrise was a bit of a dud, but we managed to still get a few decent pics between us (Mike Olbinski and Chris Frailey). The best part? We only had to walk about 20 feet from our "camp" (if you can call 3 dudes sleeping in a rental Suburban a camp) to get to where we wanted to go. Here is another 10 stop ND filter image. I tend to favor these when shooting landscapes with any type of natural movement such as clouds or water. I am completely convinced these rock salt formations are alien and not from Earth.

Devil's Golf Course

The Grandstand – Death Valley Landscape

Rick — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 21:42:10 +0000

Everyone says Death Valley is the hottest place on the plant. I beg to differ. On the morning when Mike Olbinski, Chris Frailey and I made the mile or so trek out to the Grandstand at Racetrack Playa it was a smooth 28 degrees with 30 mph winds blowing cold air down from the tops of the nearby 10,000' mountains. Nevertheless, we had a great time and managed to even grab a few decent pictures. Here is one from the north end of the playa looking south toward the Grandstand with a 10 stop ND filter at sunrise.

The Grandstand at Racetrack Playa

Merry Christmas 2013

Rick — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 16:27:57 +0000

Merry Christmas!

First Annual epic Christmas Card shoot

PS - I will do a full behind the scenes post in a few days. In the interim here are two of the many shots (all in front of our house in Scottsdale) that make the card.

Long Exposure Tutorial

Rick — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 15:16:24 +0000

I had a plan for this shot... super long exposure with the storm clouds and the pier. Only problem was that the sun was brighter than ... well than the sun. Best I could get with my 10 stop ND filter was 5 seconds at f11 and ISO 50. I could have gone to f22 and that would have taken me to 20 seconds, but then I have diffraction to deal with and I am still not at a long enough exposure. I wanted something like 3 or 4 minutes of exposure.What do you do? Easy, take 40 5 second exposures and stack them in Photoshop. That's how I got the shot above at Cocoa Beach. Here is the 5 second exposure:

Not too exciting for water and cloud movement. But keep shooting until you reach your desired shutter time. In my case 40 shots at 5 seconds equaled 200 seconds or 3 minutes and 20 seconds. That should work. Get them into Lightroom, make your crops and other adjustments, sync the settings and Edit, Open in Photoshop as Layers. Then go take a shower because even with my 2.93ghz quad core iMac with 24G of Ram my 40 D800 16 bit Tiff files took a solid 10 minutes to load.

Now once in Photoshop, we need to blend them. There are a number of ways and even mathematical formulas for doing this. I do it by feel. Base layer is 100% (duh) and then depending on how many layers I have, I start reducing the opacity for each layer by a slightly larger amount, say 100%, 30%, 20%, 10%, 7%,etc... For this pic, because I had so many layers I did 7% across the board. Note my memory usage (multi color pie thingy on the dock). Green is free memory... I have something like 200meg left out of 24 gig. Ouch!

Then I started blending in my slightly darker sky (exposure slider in Lightroom). For these I placed them into a group, reduced the opacity of each layer to 10%, and then composed the mask on the group. Why? Because each sky layer will have the same mask and I didn't want to have to option-drag the mask to each layer a bunch of times. Some call it lazy, I call it efficiency. Masking tip for skies: Use luminosity masking... makes it much easier to only select the brightest parts (which is what we want for a sky exposure... the sky will be the brightest part). Select a sky layer, hit Option-Command-2 to make your selection, click the group layer, click the mask button and voila. Now you can tweak it with curves, levels, and good old fashioned coloring.

Now, after taking a "snapshot", I made my color and contrast adjustments, dodging and burning, sharpening, removed people, removed dust spots, and did my final tweaking. Viola! I had my 3 minute plus exposure.

Scottsdale Commercial Photography – Affinity Kitchens

Rick — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 17:31:52 +0000

One thing I like about commercial shoots is comparing the original, unlit set-up shot with the final ad. I think it’s cool to see the progress, the steps involved, and how the creative process comes together by all involved. Take this commercial shoot for Affinity Kitchens as an example. Affinity does very high end remodeling and design work in Scottsdale. I met Jeremy with We Are True, Affinity’s ad firm, and Affinity’s designer Tim out at the home in North Scottsdale. Once inside we met the homeowner, here cleaning crew and her interior designer who would help stage the shots. We quickly formulated a game plan, mapped out our desired shots and got to work. I set up gear, the interior designer staged, the cleaning crew tidied and Jeremy and Tim interviewed the homeowner for a future article on the experience with the remodel. At one point in the shoot, the principals of Affinity and their sister company Legacy (out of Canada) stopped by to see how things were going, which I thought was very cool. Here is an ambient light only shot exposed for the windows in the background to be about 2/3 of a stop hot. I like this starting point as the windows still appear brighter than the interior (which they should during the day) but they still retain some detail and do not blow out the sills. Then I started to layer in the lights. I did not do a diagram, but I think I used a grand total of 7 lights (2 PCB Einstein, and 5 Nikon Speedlights). The Einsteins went through 60” umbrellas, one camera left and one above and behind. I then sprinkled the speedlights here and there to fill in any unnatural shadows. I usually stick one PocketWizard MC2 on an Einstein and then rely on the optical slaves to trigger the rest. Once complete, I correct color and contrast and make any needed clean up (correct distortion, healing brush, clone out “issues”, and dodge/burn) in Photoshop. Then I send Jeremy a full resolution TIFF File (70+ megs out of the Nikon D800). Then Jeremy does his magic, and drops it into a super cool ad. This one ran in Southwest Style Magazine, among others, I believe. Here they are side by side: start, finish.

Salton Sea Pier

Rick — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:45:58 +0000

Salton Sea

After seeing a recent pic of Heath O’Fee’s here on Facebook, I thought I should dust off one of my old photos from our trip last year to the Salton Sea. For those of you who haven’t been: don’t let all the cool looking pictures fool you. Salton is not that good. Killer compositions of water, beach, pilings and urbex are mostly overrated and rarely, if ever make decent, let alone good pictures. Seriously, stay away. As a matter of fact, I am being “forced” to shoot a commercial advertising project here in a few weeks. I plan to drag all my lighting gear all the way from Scottsdale, just to take some pictures. /sarcasm off. Salton Sea rocks! If you are ever making the drive between LA and Phoenix, take a few hours and check it out. It is 20 miles or so off the I-10. It will be worth it.

Rig Shot Tutorial – Scottsdale Commercial Photography

Rick — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:43:37 +0000

Rig Shot Tutorial

I came across a great article on FStoppers.com about rig shots (Doug Sonders should have a cool behind the scenes video coming any day now on his blog with the Green Hornet car). What is a rig shot you ask? Well, this is: Along with most of the covers on automotive magazines showing a car seemingly driving a million miles an hour with a blurred background and wheels while the body is razor sharp. I was hooked on the technique and had to try it ASAP. But first I had to buy some needed gear.

Rig Shot Equipment

Basically you need to attach your camera to a long pole (boom) that mounts to the car. Boom – I went with 1 ¾” 6061 T6 aluminum from Speedymetals.com. I ended up with an 8’ length and a 6’ length with a 2’ 1 ¼” piece as a coupler. I did not think upgrading to aircraft quality 7075 was worth the price premium. Clamps – I went with Kupo Convi clamps (4 total). Some folks choose to go with Manfrotto Superclamps. In my experience they are essentially the same, although the Superclamps open about 1/8” wider. The Convi clamps will attach to the boom. Suction Cups – Avenger makes 2 very good and strong suction cups. I grabbed 2 F1000 with swivel pins and 1 F1100 with a static pin. You attach the cups to a flat spot on the car, prime the suction pump and by the magic of physics these puppies become FIRMLY attached. Articulating Arm – You will also need a way to attach the camera to the boom. I went with the Kupo articulating arm. Manfrotto’s Magic Arm is also a good choice. Camera/Lens – Wide angle lens is best. Try to aim for at least 17mm equivalent on FX (12mm on crop sensor). Depending on time of day, you will also need some type of ND filter. Remember, we need to induce motion blur which equates to longer shutter speeds.

Rig Shot Setup

The setup is not too terribly difficult. Attach $5k plus of camera and lens to the end of a 14’ long pole secured to the hood of an expensive car with nothing but suction cups. Piece of cake. Like a kid on Christmas with a new bike, I grabbed all my new gear and headed outside to the cul-de-sac for an initial test shoot. The steps:

Attach the first suction cup to the far side of vehicle on a flat surface, preferably along an edge of a panel. Prime the pump until the red line is no longer visible. Attach a clamp to the suction cup’s pin.
Attach the articulating arm to end of boom with another clamp.
Place the second suction cup on the near side of the car’s panel, but don’t prime the pump yet. Attach another clamp. CAREFULLY place the boom into far clamp first and then adjust the location of the second clamp/pump to match. Tighten far clamp onto boom. Tighten the near clamp onto the boom. Prime the near suction cup. The boom is now cantilevered out over the car. If all goes well (and it should) then you are almost there. If not, then you just scratched the crap out of the car’s paint job. Nice going.
The weight of the boom will want to pull off the first cup. To combat this, attach the third suction cup about 1/3 of the way between first and second cup, staying closer to the first. Tighten the clamp first, then prime the pump.

At this point, your setup should look something like this:

Adjust camera settings. I shot manual, 8s shutter at f/8, ISO 1600 with a 10 stop B+W ND filter. (I need to buy a 4 or 6 stop filter so I do not have to pump ISO).
CAREFULLY attach your camera with remote release and wide angle lens (I used Nikon 17-35 f/2.8 with a B+W 10 stop filter on Nikon D800) to the mounting plate of the articulating arm. You will notice the rougher you are, the more bounce you induce in the boom. (I have since installed a guy wire system in my boom to greatly reduce any flex.)
Check the pump primes, if you see a red line re-pump. I had to re-pump my far cup a few times during my first shoot. Better be safe than sorry.

If you purchased quality grip equipment, your camera is reasonably safe assuming you installed everything properly, you are ready to shoot. Do you have your safety crew in place?

Getting the Shot

Once set up, double check your exposure and adjust as necessary. Place the car in neutral (flat ground helps), and begin slowly pushing the car. While the car is moving, have your helper (in this case, my 7 year old on roller blades no less), hit the remote. During the 8 seconds the shutter remains open, the car travels about 10 feet or so. Here is the shot from the camera (1x1 format) pre-Photoshop.

After 20 minutes of cloning, patch-tool, content aware move, healing brush, and some good old fashioned painting, you have the finished shot. Heck, you can even throw in some headlight effects.

While this isn’t the best location for a rig shot, I was pleased with the outcome of my little test. Next up, some REAL cars at a REAL location.

Fender Guitar Ad Shoot

Rick — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:28:59 +0000

Last year I was fortunate enough to shoot an ad campaign for Fender, maker of the world’s finest guitars. For those of you who don’t know, Fender is a local company here in Scottsdale, Arizona. Their new(ish) office is one of the coolest spaces I’ve been in. Massive ceiling heights with ginormous ceilings and massive guitars along with a list of virtually every hit song ever played on a Fender. From the Ramones to Clapton to Hendrix to the Beatles to Green Day to Taylor Swift. At any rate, part of shooting commercial ads is finding a location. The concept for this ad was to show a musician carrying his gear to the show, and then the show itself. The featured gear was the Passport Pro, a cool portable all in one solution for amp, mixer, and speakers. The ad would run in a number of national guitar magazines, like Acoustic Guitar. After scouting a number of locations in old town Scottsdale, the good folks at The Venue Scottsdale offered up their space. Let’s break down the two shots, starting with the one on the bottom first. Here is a quick iPhone grab of the space.

Bar area along one side and open area opposite. We were going for the look of a musician playing in a smaller, more intimate venue. The concept was to shoot from both behind and in front of the musician. I wanted a lighting setup that would accommodate both, while looking like stage lights and not studio lights. On the bar side I stuck my Einstein in a Westcott Apollo 28” softbox slightly in front and to the direct right of the musician. This produced a relatively soft light without spilling too much onto the other areas. To add some back light to simulate stage lighting, I plopped my SB600 on an 8’ stand about 12 feet behind our player. We also had to light our “crowd” (which consisted of about 15-20 Fender employees as our extras. The Fender marketing guys then took us all out to lunch afterwards at Dos Gringos… score!). For that, I chose an Alien Bees 1600 through a Westcott 60” umbrella. This put a nice soft light over the “crowd” giving them some separation from the musician, but so much light to look unnatural or overpowering. To add to the ambiance, our musician played the entire time and one of the “extras” played bartender passing out soft drinks to the extras (water colored in post to look more “beer-like” by Jon Stolarski, the man in charge of the ad at the time and now the driving force over at One 7 Studios). I shot this with my old Nikon D90 and a Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 lens. Here is the diagram: The second shot, the one on the top was more difficult simply due to space constraints. The stairwell was very narrow and VERY dark. There was not much room for lights so that meant we had to rely on ambient to a large extent. To get my shutter speed in the 1/30^th range (about my limit for razor sharp hand holding at 15mm… no room for a tripod), I had to go to ISO 2000, which on the D90 is really further than you should go… especially for commercial work. To get some light on our musician and the Passport, Jon quickly became my VAL (voice activated lightstand) and boomed my SB600 behind and above the musician while standing on a very narrow ledge. I ended up laying down on the stairs shooting from behind and below. I was bitching the whole time that I was not happy with the angle, the lights, or the fact that I had to pump the ISO. Shows what I know. The shots turned out to be very cool. Here are a few more excerpts from the shoot. Thanks again to Rich and Joe over at Fender and thanks to Jon for helping out during the shoot and putting together a cool ad.