We planned to shoot out by The Great Salt Lake, but the weather didn’t cooperate. Instead, we headed to Salt Lake City’s best looking club: Jam. It’s such a pretty club that I could spend days there shooting models in various locations - and then stay for the talented DJ’s and great micro brews.

Special thanks to Vincent at Jagged Edge Retreat for the terrific hair style, and Nicole for her excellent makeup work!

Tip - Improvise - Our original location didn’t pan out, but after calling the owners of Jam, we came up with an even better shoot than the one we had planned! Sometimes you just have to wing it.

Tip - Network - If I didn’t have a great rolodex with some of Salt Lake City’s hippest scene-makers, we never would have scored such a great location for our shoot. Network with EVERYBODY. You never know who can help you out in a pinch!

Tip - Incorporate Background Contrasts - Those great backgrounds aren’t PhotoShop, peeps. That’s the real deal. In the close-up head shot I used a closely placed strobe to create the high contrast background that makes the photo pop. The dark stripe down the side of the body shot is a corner on the DJ booth. The dark / bright gradient on the seated photo is an angled corner at the front of the DJ booth. Take advantage of changes in the background to add interest and enhance the composition - but be careful that it draws attention to your subject!

Equipment List:

1x 6′ oval reflector - Gold side out.
3x Nikon SB-600 strobes.
1x Nikon D90.
1x Nikkor 50mm f1.8D lens.
2x 9′ light stands.
1x Boom stand.

One last tip: Whatever you’re doing - remember to have a blast!

Babylon was the biggest and baddest gay pride party in Salt Lake City. Hosted by Miss Jeffree Star and attended by some of Salt Lake City’s hippest socialites. If you missed this one, you missed one of the best parties of the year!

Before the crowds got too crazy, I had a couple trusty SB-600 flashes and a hand-held 32″ umbrella with me. I captured some great shots with those, and then I slapped on my Gary Fong cloud diffuser for the rest of the night. Things got pretty tight in the club. Dancefloors hopping upstairs, downstairs, and outside, so the bulky umbrella didn’t fly after it picked up.

Check out the full set on PartyUtah.com!

No time for a big post today, so I’ll just leave you with a quick tip. There’s a time and a place to be a control freak and a director. When people are having fun and looking great naturally, just go with the flow and shoot what you see. Don’t forget to have fun!

Full Set

When you’re out shooting, it’s important to understand how the technical choices you make effect the look and style of your photography. All of these photos carry my general style signature - light that sculpts and defines as opposed to flattens, well defined subject isolation, strong contrast and color saturation. These are all elements that can be found in a lot of my photos, but there are still big style differences from one photo to the next, depending on the subject and the mood I’m trying to capture. My friend Keldwud said it best: “The Lens sees what the heart sees.”

Soft Light for Soft Features - Most professional studio photographers use soft light to shoot portraits, because it creates a smoother look. It’s more flattering to skin than hard light, which can emphasize skin textures a little too much at times. I pulled out a small umbrella for some of the shots above. I was particularly interested in using it for the shots of Julliette, to emphasize her femininity.

Hard Light for Drama - I used hard light for the male DJs to create dramatic contrast. Hard light casts sharper shadow edges, and I used it here to create excitement.

Paint With Light - I used a couple different light painting techniques to incorporate the neon lights in the background of the photos and make them an integral part of the composition, rather than a distraction. To reproduce this technique, you’ll need to use a long exposure (my times were hovering around 1/8th - 1/15th), and combine it with flash to freeze the features of the photo you want to be clear. Once you get playing with this technique, you’ll see you can create many styles with it, as well. For Julliette, I used smooth, directional camera strokes for the light painted elements. For the male DJ’s, I created sharper lines by moving the camera in more jerky motions - twisting and zooming the lens with jerky stops.

Change Focal Length - As you can see in some of the DJ photos, I got in really close with a short focal length in order to create perspective distortion - like Scott Evol’s long arm in the bottom photograph. With Julliette, I did the opposite. I used long focal lengths to keep her facial features looking natural and elegant. I wanted to emphasize her beauty and femininity. She’s all woman, playing in a male-dominated playground. I wanted to tell the story visually that she brings a special vibe to the mix.

There are a million ways to shoot any subject. Let your heart and your moods guide you to select the right composition, the right light, the right focal length, and the right style. Don’t bother trying to be objective. There’s no such thing. We all see the world differently. Don’t be afraid to show us what you see.

View the Full Set

Don’t miss my location portrait workshop in Southern Utah June 25th-28th

With the economy looking bleak for a while I’ve decided to expand my horizons a bit and get into personal fine art portraits - particularly bridals and boudoir. With that in mind, I’ll be shooting a lot of both for a while. If you’re interested, contact me to schedule your shoot!

For the Photographers

Don’t be afraid to use your flash outside, even on sunny days. For these shots, we used two flashes and a reflector to supplement the plentiful sunlight.

Get creative with the reflector - On a typical outdoor shoot, you’ll often see photographers using reflectors to bounce light straight back into the model’s face. For these shots, we had the reflector back and to the side, to create the golden highlights on her cheekbones, and in her hair.

Use hotspots to emphasize features - In the bottom frame, I used a snooted strobe to highlight the bride’s eyes and cheeks.

Mix hard and soft light - In all of the photos, I mixed soft light from the reflector and umbrella with hard light from the sun and the extra flash I used to create hot spots.

Have an assistant on hand - Shooting outdoors with large reflectors and umbrellas can get unwieldy. Take an assistant to help battle the random gusts of wind - and don’t forget to weigh down those stands so the lights don’t tip over!

Here’s the setup from the last shot:

Full Set

I had a couple private parties to shoot Friday night, but they weren’t enough to satisfy my shutterbug cravings, so I decided to go out bar hopping for a while. I ran into some good friends, and generally had a blast. You know you’ve picked the right job when your idea of relaxing after a hard day of work is to go do more of the same!

Full Set

A horde of pole-dancing, hula-hooping, record spinning zombies descended on Basecamp in Salt Lake City, Utah Saturday evening. Very few Basecamp patrons survived the ensuing carnage to see the sun rise in the morning.

Here are some techniques that came in handy for this event:

Use loooong shutter speeds - Try 1/2 - 1/25th of a second. In dark rooms, light is hard to come by. Keep the shutter open to let ambient light saturate the frame. When using flash as the key-light, the quick-firing flash strobe will freeze the action for you, so don’t worry too much about motion blur.

Use LOW ISO - I know it seems logical that you’d want to bump the ISO up in low-light, but doing so will introduce ugly digital noise - and when you’re in a dark environment that requires a flash key-light anyway, high ISO settings serve no purpose whatsoever. After all, you’re creating the main light source. You can set the ISO as low as it goes.

Get the flash off the camera - I know it’s more convenient to pop your flash in your hot-shoe when you’re running and gunning at an event, but trust me - pulling the flash off the camera gives you more creative opportunities for controlling the angle of the light. You can achieve many unique looks, rather than the same flat look you see all the time from less adventurous nightlife photographers.

For larger groups, get the flash farther back - The farther back the light is, the more evenly it will be distributed.

Use a zoom lens - In tight quarters (such as a packed crowd), you’re going to have to get in close, and that means using a wide angle lens - but sometimes you’ll want to zoom in for close-ups of the action.

Find an interesting event to photograph - What’s better than sexy zombies? You tell me! Whatever it is, go find it.

View Full Set

One of the promo shots I did for DJ:K was featured on the cover of In Utah This Week yesterday. I love shooting promo photos on location. I’m teaching a location portrait workshop in Southern Utah June 11th - 14th. In’s Amanda Chamberlain wrote a nice blurb about the workshop on their blog. Thanks, Amanda! Come join us for fun in the sun, Southern Utah style. It’s gonna be a blast.

In most cases, when you put a person in front of a camera that they’re aware of, they don’t automatically open up and reveal their soul for you. Many are harboring deep-rooted insecurities, or they simply lack the experience to understand how to pose and how to smile naturally. When I asked my long-time friend Annie to model for me, her initial reaction was skeptical. “I’m not photogenic!” I told her I’d make the best photos of her she’s ever seen or I’d eat my shoe, so she reluctantly agreed.

Annie can be a bit of a tom boy. She has spent her recent days digging around the guts of her car. She doesn’t have a huge wardrobe, rarely wears dresses, and owns very little makeup. She’s about as far from the model world as it gets. I wanted to expose her feminine side. I think we found it.

When you’re working with a model who isn’t a model, be prepared to put some real time into the shoot, and make sure that you don’t bury yourself in the camera and forget to engage with them. Here are some tips to get you started:

Avoid criticism - Nothing can shut down a model faster than criticsm. Instead of being critical of what they’re doing, give them direction. Ask them to do something new. Change things up.

Praise them - If you get a great shot, smile at your model - let it show that you like how things are going. They’ll be excited about the pictures, and they’ll relax and open up more.

Keep them engaged - Don’t loose yourself in the camera. Keep your eyes on your model as much as possible. Maintain eye contact. Let them feel like a collaborator. It has to be more about them than you.

Spend time with them - I spend a lot of time talking to the models before the shoot. I’m involved in the makeup, styling, and wardrobe phase of the photo shoot, and if I’ve never met the model before, this is the time I spend getting to know who she is. You can gain valuable insights about the model’s personality and interest that will help your creative process. I like to spend a lot of time shooting, too. The shoots themselves generally last at least a couple hours once the model gets in front of the camera. Eventually they forget the camera is there, and you get to see glimpses of real personality.

Watch for key moments - Keeping up your guard is hard work. Everybody drops their guard now and then - sometimes only for a split second. If your camera isn’t ready or you’re spending all your time looking at your previous shots, you’ll miss them. Capturing unguarded moments is what portraiture is all about.

Once you get your lights right, it’s time to stop thinking about technical issues, and start thinking about the person in front of you. In the end, it’s not about the light, or composition. These are just the tools we use to capture the subject.

Come learn more about portraiture at the Southern Utah Location Portrait Workshop June 11th-14th near Zion National Park.

More portrait tips. I’m going to keep these coming as I work up curriculum for the upcoming Southern Utah Location Portrait Workshop and the University of Utah Life Long Learning Flash Photography course I’m teaching in the fall.

Aside from being a beautiful model, Ruth is a promising young photographer who interned with me for a semester. She is building a studio in her house. One of the questions she had for me was how to prevent wrinkles in the black sheets she uses from ruining her photos. You don’t have to have a fancy studio seamless setup to get beautiful black backgrounds. Any dark colored fabric, paper, or wall will do. The less reflective the material is, the less you’ll have to worry about wrinkles or other imperfections showing up in your photo.

It’s all about light control. What you want to do is get the light on your subject, and not on the background. There are many ways to do just that. In these examples, I used a bounce umbrella with a black backing, tilted away from the background, towards the camera. This creates a narrow pool of soft light for the model, so light placement becomes even more critical than it usually is (and it’s always important).

Every lighting setup has a sweet spot where the model should stand - all the lights are directed to make sure that whatever is in that sweet spot looks its best. The more controlled your lighting is, the smaller that sweet spot becomes. Keep that in mind and remember to direct the model accordingly.

Point the light where you want it, away from where you don’t. - If you want a dark background, you don’t want to be pointing a light at it. This sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget.

Mind reflections - During our shoot Ruth wanted to look in a mirror to help her pose. Without thinking I agreed. Of course, the mirror reflected the light back and destroyed the test shot. Make sure you’re aware of anything that might reflect light back where you don’t want it to be. It’s easy to forget that wearing a white shirt can fill shadows that you really want black if there’s light aimed towards the camera position.

Use a snoot - In these shots I used a snooted strobe to create highlights without casting light on the background. A snoot is any conical shaped tunnel to confine the light beam for a narrow point of focus. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I use the velcro pocket separators from my camera bag. I know photographers who use cardboard cereal boxes to make DIY snoots.

Use grids and honeycombs - Grids and honeycombs are another method to control the directionality of your light.

Hang a flag - I often use strips of fabric to cast shadows and prevent light from spilling to where I don’t want it.

Use a cookie - A cookie refers to anything intentionally placed between the flash and the subject to cast shadows. I’ve used house plants, blinds, grids, etc… You can focus or blur the edges of the shadows by moving the cookie closer to or farther from the light source.

Control light colors - In the reclining shots above, I used a low-powered flash to fill shadows on the left of the frame with a red glow by shooting the flash through transparent red fabric. You can use strips of plastic called gels for the same purpose.

Strobist Info (First shot only) - SB-600 bounced off small black-backed umbrella camera right, positioned just behind model and aimed away from background to control light spill. SB-600, snooted, behind and above model, for edge highlights and fabric definition. SB-600 gelled using transparent red fabric, camera left, slightly behind model, for red glow effect, doubles as the light source for the background.

Click through the photos to see additional strobist info and EXIF data on Flickr. I recently started including Adobe Lightroom development settings in the EXIF. Feel free to take a look.