Hallmark Cabin
I was asked by a client to go up to Winter Park in Colorado to photograph a project that she had done all of the interior design on. What a wonderful opportunity! Not only did I get to stay in this beautiful 10,000 sq ft home, I got to bring my wife along to do all the styling AND we got to stay an extra few days so we could go snow boarding! It’s times like these that I love my job. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all fun and games. We definitely had to work hard two days to get all of these images. This is the largest houst that I personally have photographed, and it was a bit intimidating at first. But once you get into the environment and start to see and know what the ambient light is doing to the house at certain times of the day, you start to get into a flow of things and it all begins to work it self out. The client is a super talented local Austin interior designer, Bulhon Design Associates.
HDR
HDR
HDR
1/10 - f/7.1 - 20mm - iso200
1/2 - f/7.1 - 14mm - iso200
1/2 - f/7.1 - 22mm - iso200
1/2 - f/7.1 - 16mm - iso200
i/4 - f/7.1 - 35mm - iso200
1sec - f/7.1 - 40mm - iso200
2.5 sec - f/8 - 24mm - iso200
1/30 - f/5.6 - 16mm - iso200
1/13 - f/5.6 - 18mm - iso200
0.6sec - f/8 - 20mm - iso200
1/8 - f/7.1 - 20mm - iso200
1/10 - f/6.3 - 22mm - iso200
1/25 - f/6.3 - 38mm - iso200
1/13 - f/5.6 - 18mm - iso200
1/13 - f/7.1 - 35mm - iso200
So that should give you a pretty good walk through of this wonderful home in Winter Park, CO. Now some of you may be looking at some of the interior images and wondering “How the heck (or whatever other word you want to use here) is he shooting 1/10 of a second, and still getting proper exposure on the windows?!?! I guess it’s time (since I’m blogging) to let you in on one of my interior photography secrets….. Sometimes it does work out that you have exterior and interior ambient light balance, but that does not happen that often. Generally in these situations, I will shoot twice on a tripod, one for the ambient light for the interior firing off strobes to get a nice fill, and shoot again for the exterior ambient. The trick is to make sure that the camera doesn’t move at all, then layer the two in Photoshop and use layer masks to bring in that outside light (there are plenty of layer mask tutorials on the web, I would suggest googling those if you aren’t sure what they are. They are a photoshop must know). So that’s pretty much all I really do to my images. The rest is shot in camera. Let me know if you have any questions or would like to know a bit more about anything. Hope you enjoyed!
Carly and Brandon Engagement
First off, I’d like to start this post with a big congratulations to Carly and Brandon! My wife’s younger sister got engaged the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We had traveled up to Fort Worth to hang-out with the inlaws this year, and since I had my camera, and since they just got engaged, it seemed appropriate to get some engagement portraits done. This was a two part shoot. On the first day, since the inlaws live in the back of a developing subdivion, there is some nice country landscaping that I thought would be a great back drop. The two met through a mutual passion for cheerleading, so I thought it would be cool to implement some of that into the photographs. On the second day, the whole family hiked back to the location of where Brandon did the proposal. They are into geo-cacheing, so that is how he got her to go on this hike for the big surprise, even though she’s a psychologist and already knew 
Just to confuse you a bit, I am going to post my selects from the second day first so I can exit the blog out with my favorite images from the two day series. Without further ado, I give you the newly engaged couple Brandon and Carly:
1/250 - f/2.8 - 100mm - iso400
1/200 - f/2.8 - 170mm - iso400
1/200 - f/2.8 - 110mm - iso400
1/250 - f/18 - 50mm - iso100
1/250 - f/3.2 - 100mm - iso100
1/250 - f/3.2 - 135mm - iso100
1/125 - f/11 - 28mm - iso200
Fine Homebuilding Magazine Cover Shot
I got a call from Fine Homebuilding Magazine to take a photo of a kitchen counter top for the cover of their next magazine. The counter top was made out of teak wood which is why it got so much attention. Not the first time it’s been done, but not a super popular thing here in the US. I am not 100% sure that this is the image that they are going to use for the cover, but it’s one of my favorites from the shoot. The process was definitely an enjoyable one. The art director sent me over a template of the cover with the text, so I was able to shoot, edit, and place the image into the template then email him to get his thoughts. I believe this made it a lot more simple for me to try to get exactly what the art director was looking for. As an added bonus, I got to work with my wonderful wife who was the stylist on the shoot. We were in and out in a few hours, the art director was happy and so was I. Here’s the cover of the next Fine Homebuilding Magazine:
Colorado Porch View
Not trying to brag or nothing…. but this is the view from the back porch of where I am at right now:
1/2000 - f/11 - 45mm - iso200
Susan, Hank and a couple of Dachshunds
Thanksgiving holiday was a busy photo taking time for me. Documenting that ridiculous plump and juicy 26 lb turkey, taking photos of the newly engaged couple and I was also asked to shoot some portraits of my mother in-law’s boss and his wife. Susan had a wonderful idea of bringing some chairs out to their new lot that they are going to be building a house on soon. She told me the lot had some nice green grass growing and a lot of big oak trees as well. I didn’t even have to scout the location to know that this was going to be an awesome photo op. I’ve really been enjoying that set up that I mentioned in the Rachel Lynn Blog, so I figured I’d go for that again. I think it worked out well. So let’s talk about hurdles on the job and how to overcome them to get the shot that you need to get. First off, shooting pets, unless they are super well behaved, is not an easy task. Throw in two dogs, and you’ve got a handful. These dogs as a whole were well behaved, but how do you get them to pay attention to you? It’s definitely good to have an assistant that is able to stand behind you, clap their hands, shake some keys, dance around like a fool, whatever it takes to get the pets looking in your general direction. But none of this is going to work if the clients are worried about their animals and paying attention to them rather then you. So inform them that they need to bet looking at the camera, smiling and being beautiful and that you’ll take care of the pets. Second hurdle – The weather. When we got to the location we set up in the best spot for a backdrop. I got my light set up, dialed in exposure, snap, snap, snap Oh No! The wind was b-l-o-w-i-n-g hard which means her hair isn’t looking good which means I’m going to have an unhappy client. Panic starts to set in. Quickly scanning the scene again, I noticed a brick wall that separated the lot from the neighbors house. Perfect wind blocker, and there’s still an opportunity to get a good angle of the lot. I probably should have thought about that first, but it was a quick move, and I think the light just may have got a little bit better 
1/259 - f/6.3 - 50mm - iso200
- 1/160 – f/5.0 – 85mm – iso200
1/125 - f/5.0 - 85mm - iso200
