Will Spring Ever Arrive??

This has been the coldest, wettest April I can remember since moving to Oregon in 1996. The ivy that covers the wooden fence around my house should be covered in fresh green leaves, but is instead only just now budding. The Japanese maple should full of color, but is bare and covered with moss.

Although this weekend has been nice with dry weather and relatively warm temperatures, it has been nothing like our normal April. We're all hoping that May will be better and we'll actually get more than two days of nice weather in a row.

The long term forecast calls for a hot dry summer. One can only hope, and I certainly do, as I have a number of outdoor photographic projects I plan to shoot with various models this summer. I'm giving up some of my normal faire and festival events to concentrate on expanding my portfolio to complete at least three more shoots in my fairly project. I've lined up at least three models already, including a lovely Asian girl, a Latino beauty, and blond-haired, blue-eyed lovely who will be my Winter Fairy (you've seen her in my portfolio already as I've done a couple of shoots with her).

So, although the weather has been less than conducive to photography, I've been working on planning for these projects (gather costume material, visualizing the images in my head, and getting the locations planned out for the shoot). I do need to find someone interested in being my photographer's assistant for the shoots, but I don't think that will be too difficult.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to post-process the images from my last few shoots. The model above, Lisa, has a very natural look, is very fun to work with, and when we finished our shoot, left me with over a 1000 images to sort through. Of course, not every image will be used or processed, but they still need to be reviewed and the best poses tagged for use. That should keep me busy until the weather gets better.

Exxageration

Back a few years ago, a Harley Davidson Drag Racing team came to me with the idea of creating a t-shirt they could sell at their drag meets. They lined up the girls, the graphic artist that would convert the photos into the final t-shirt graphic, as well as the t-shirt printing company. So early one Saturday morning in July, a big trailer pulled up in front of my house, and this very interesting bike was rolled out of the back and into my garage where I had set up a back drop and some studio lights.

The backdrop didn't matter a great deal since it was going to be cut from the final photos when the images were turned into the t-shirt graphics. The interesting part was that the bike, with it's extended front rails was much, much longer than I had anticipated, and though I thought that I had more than enough room in my garage studio, the front end of the bike stuck out of the garage and into the driveway a bit - which prevented closing the garage door.

This really wasn't a problem until the models showed up, and I realized that what the team had envisioned was a couple of nude girls on the bike with their "bits" to be covered by the team banners when the graphic artist did the final work later. To top it off, my 13 year old niece and my 65 year old mother were visiting from their small hometown in Georgia. I wasn't too worried about my mom and my niece, though they were quite curious about what was going on in the garage, but I didn't think it was the best idea to be shooting nudes in my wide open garage on a Saturday morning in the summer.

So, I got the bike team to help me rig another set of backdrops over the garage door to add some privacy and we started shooting. The team had several ideas, and we tried a number of variations, which did include some bikini shots. The rider had to dress up in full leathers and a helmet, and this meant we had to take several breaks to let him cool off (both physically and mentally).

At one point, my niece eluded my wife and manged to get out to the garage to get a drink from the beverage refrigerator, and her eyes got quite wide when she saw the shooting activity. She just had to run back inside to tell my mother that "Uncle Mark has a bunch of naked women and a biker gang in the garage."

Of course, that meant Mom had to come out for a look herself. She just chuckled at the site, and then she started chatting up one of the bike team members. Soon enough the shoot was over, the models hung around to get a few shots for their own portfolios, and the bike team loaded up the equipment in the trailer and got ready to leave. While I was burning the raw images to a disk for the team, the girls got dressed, the team finished their loading and my mom invited them all out to the back deck for a cold beer. She must have kept them out there talking for the better part of an hour, and when she got back to Georgia she bragged about how she had beers out on my deck with a biker gang and a bunch of naked women.

An Old Favorite

I don't know what it exactly it is with this photo that makes me love it so - well, besides the beautifully obvious - but it's always been one of my favorites, despite being shot with a simple point and shoot camera. I took this over eight years ago during a shoot with a very close and lovely friend of mine. We spent a day at a riverside park shooting all different kinds of photos. Her husband brought his motorcycle along, and we decided to do a lingerie and leather shoot utilizing the bike as the main prop. I also shot the images in medium format film, but actually the digital photos were much better. I can't say why, exactly, but it may simply be the way the film was scanned. This shot, however, just captured the whole set quite nicely. It's sexy and erotic without being over the top, and it shows off the models best (and favorite) asset. As I recall, she was quite pleased with the shot as well. Sometimes, everything just comes together and we get the one picture that exemplifies the whole shoot.

That isn't to say that the shot wasn't planned. In fact, the light was metered using a handheld incident light meter, the camera was set to those readings, and the model was posed specifically for this shot. But everything just seemed to coalesce to provide an excellent result.

There are a few things I would do differently if I could recapture the image, but given the limitations of the camera I was using, it was the best, I think, that could be done. I wish there was a bit more background blur, but with the very small sensor of a digital point and shoot camera, that wasn't really an option. I'd also have the model lift her chin a bit more to provide more separation between her face and her shoulder. I'd probably lower the visor on the helmet to remove the distracting reflections, and I might (but I'm not sure) have the model twist her body just a little less, but only if I could keep her hips in the same position.

By the way, the model is a wonderful lady, beautiful in body, face and personality, and loads of fun to work with, and  she is willing to try just about any pose suggested. I think we both had a great time shooting that day. I certainly know that I did.

Favorite Models

I'm writing a series of articles for my personal website. The articles include lens reviews, places to shoot, tutorials for photographic techniques, and other subjects photographic. I finished a couple of articles yesterday; one on the Canon 85 f/1.2 L lens and another on the Canon 135 f/2 L lens.

I illustrate my reviews, of course, with photos taken with the lenses or at the places of which I'm writing. In the case of the two lenses I wrote about yesterday, the model here was used prominently to illustrate the lenses capabilities and to provide example shots to draw the readers' attention. As you can see, Christine would draw anyone's eye.

Christine is an aspiring model, and I worked with her for a couple of years assisting her with some shots she needed for her portfolio and for some modeling applications. She works hard, shows up on time, and really contributes to the creative endeavor. I really miss working with her. It has been over a year now, and I do hope she is doing well with her career.

The last time we worked together was in August of 2006. We were working on getting her a portfolio established on one of the major online modeling publications. We had gotten several shoots completed for her outdoor glamour portfolio and were about to start working on some more generalized fashion and activity shots when she abruptly told me she wouldn't be modeling anymore for very well thought-out personal reasons. It's really a shame, because she was truly my favorite model and I do miss working with her.

When I was writing yesterday, I found the photos of her best illustrated the particular concepts forwarded by the articles, and that got me to thinking about Christine and how she was doing and how much fun it was to shoot with her. I miss her energy and her willingness to try new poses and concepts, as well as her ability to look at the positive.

Christine, wherever you are, I hope you're doing well and that you've taken up modeling again.

Back to Work

I made it back to the office today. It was actually nice to be sitting at my desk, fielding phone calls, running meetings, and preparing for the intellectual challenges of the new business year. Today wasn’t terribly busy. My department usually ramps up slowly after the Christmas holidays, simply due to the nature of our business (training). So I had plenty of time to collect my thoughts and ponder the changes I want to make in my programs in the near future.

I also thought about changes I wanted to make in my personal life as well. I didn’t make any formal resolutions, but there are things I would like to do differently this year, such as:

1. Get out more during the winter. Normally when the days are short and it’s wet and windy outside, we hibernate. By that I mean, once we get home from work, we turn on the tv and basically vegetate for the rest of the evening. I just hate that. So, I want to get out more. We can still go out for coffee, or to the bookstore, or to the gym. There’s no need to just come inside and hide.
2. I want to take more, better and varied photographs this year. I want to do more that just go to the fairs and festivals. We do have a trip to Hawaii planned, and I’m sure I’ll get lots of photos then, but more importantly, I want to be a more frequent photographer. I want to get out twice or thrice a week with camera in hand to photograph scenery, people, places, and nature. I need to expand my skills and challenge myself with new assignments.
3. I want to complete at least two photo expeditions this year (not including Hawaii). One of those will be to return to Crater Lake National Park and to travel around the rim photographing the sites from several angles. I’m not sure what the other expedition will be, but I’m thinking it will be to photograph at least 6 new waterfalls somewhere in the state (not any of the falls in the Columbia River Gorge or in Silver Falls State park).
4. I want to complete at least two significant hikes - Dog Mountain and Eagle Creek come to mind, but Saddle Mountain in the Coastal Range would be nice too.
5. I want to photograph in the following areas this year: The Columbia River Gorge, Silver Falls State Park, Ecola Point, Cannon Beach, Seaside, Astoria, Brandon Beach, Munsie Falls, and the Mt Hood Wilderness area.

So, I think my expectations are reasonable. Maybe at the end of the year I’ll post a review to see how well I did against the list.