A Photographer's Life

Moving Blog

2009-02-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

My blog is moving. I have decided to move the blog so I have more creative control over the design.

You can find the new blog at blog.mccoryjames.com.

If you are a subscriber to this blog, you will need to resubscribe at the new blog.

Balistreri Winery

2009-01-21T10:07:00.000-08:00

I photographed John Balistreri, owner of Balistreri Vineyards, in Denver for Luxe Magazine. The location was kind of a crazy one in the middle of an industrial area, but I guess as long as you have a cellar you can make wine anywhere. They purchase their grapes from growers in the Grand Valley Viticultural Area located in Western Colorado. They are a small winery producing 4500 cases per year. One unique aspect to their wines is that they are fermented on their own yeast, unaltered by sulfites, unfiltered, and aged in American oak.

We set up the shoot in the cellar of the winery where many of the wine barrels were stored. It was rather challenging at times getting our lights to hit where we wanted them while you had huge stacks of barrels in the way. Luxe selected the first shot to be used in the magazine.

DoubleButter for Luxe

2009-01-13T10:38:00.001-08:00

I photographed two furniture designers, David Larabee & Dexter Thornton, that work together as DoubleButter for a story on them in an upcoming issue of Luxe Magazine. DoubleButter designs some great modern furniture with some very creative twists. You can see more of their work on their website at www.doublebutter.com.

The shoot was a fun one. I had Ryan and our new intern from the Art Institute of Colorado, Derek, assisting on the job which really allowed me to spend the time talking and getting to know David & Dexter. They both had great personalities and were easy to work with. They also had great exposed brick in their workshop, which worked well as a background.

Here are some of the best photos. The first photo is the one that was selected by Luxe for the story.

Another Day, Another Afro

2008-12-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

One of my recent afro shoots was with James, a 13 year old with a lot of hair.

Here is a little background on how a shoot like this goes and how I get what I want out of my subjects. With this shoot I photographed James for awhile and got some great laughing photos...

...but I wanted something a little more stoic. To give him a break for a few minutes I photographed him and his brother together.

In that photo, he gave me exactly the look I wanted but couldn't get earlier. I asked his brother to step aside for a second and asked him to keep that same look on his face. He held it perfectly and I got exactly what I wanted. I think one of the keys to being a good photographer is knowing what you want in a photo and know how to achieve it. I love the feeling of clicking the shutter and knowing that I just captured exactly what I wanted.

You can see that if you just remove his brother from the above photo, it is exactly the same as the one below. I love the peaceful but confident look on his face.

Here is a picture to give you an idea of our "huge" set for these afro photos. I bought the piece of metal from a scrap yard and it is pretty thick and heavy. It was also the largest we could fit in my Jeep Cherokee without tying it to the top. It can be somewhat limiting at times, but has been perfect in achieving the look I wanted with these photos.

New Orleans

2008-12-03T14:56:00.000-08:00

I recently traveled to New Orleans to capture the culture of this amazing city. From the graveyards to the jazz to the great cajun food, New Orleans has a lot to offer. You can view all the photos here. Below are a few of my favorites.

Bourbon Street at dusk with Maison Bourbon Jazz Club in foreground.

A local New Orleans artist, Reggie Ford, in front of one of his paintings.

Jazz band playing at the historic Maison Bourbon Jazz Club.

A musician, who goes by the name Sparrow, playing guitar on a city bench.

St. Louis Cathedral and Jackson Square with a colorful night sky.

A statue of a girl mourning on a grave at St. Louis Cemetery.

Detail of fence surrounding Jackson Square.

November

2008-11-26T10:56:00.001-08:00

Things slowed down a bit during November, but I still managed to stay pretty busy. The month was full with some new marketing campaigns (which are starting to pay off!) I will start blogging again regularly in December and you can see some of our latest projects. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Lucas' Afro

2008-09-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

My most recent afro project photo shoot was with Lucas, a high school freshman. Lucas had quite the ball of hair! Enjoy the photos below.

I have been working on marketing efforts recently and included this definition of an afro with some of my marketing, which I think is pretty funny.

Af·ro, [af-roh] –noun
1. A hairstyle in which the hair is allowed to grow naturally and to acquire a bushy appearance and extend out from the head like a halo, cloud or ball. Sometimes called a "natural" or shortened to "fro". An afro requires very curly hair and can grow to several times the diameter of the head.

Rock the Vote

2008-08-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

I was hired to photograph the Rock the Vote concert during the Democratic Nation Convention on Monday night. It was a star studded event and I had complete access to get photos for the promotional company that organized the event.

The event featured DJ Skee, Jakob Dylan, N.E.R.D. and Fall Out Boy. It was also attended by Daughtry and other various celebs. It was great being able to get on the red carpet and backstage to get all kinds of great photos.

I had many aspects of the event I had to photograph, but my favorite was definitely the concert photography. It's fun to shoot with the stage lights because of the great colors and drama it creates. I did learn that it is almost impossible to get a shot when strobes are being used! Here are some of the photos. You can view more here.

The red carpet

Daughtry on the red carpet

Pharrell Williams, lead singer for N.E.R.D.

Jakob Dylan

Jakob Dylan's guitarist with "vote" signage

Jakob Dylan smiling on stage, probably my favorite photo of the night. It was the only smile I saw during his set.

DJ Skee keeping the music going between sets

Pharrell Williams of N.E.R.D.

Pharrell Williams of N.E.R.D.

Pharrell Williams of N.E.R.D.

Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy bassist

Patrick Stump, lead singer of Fall Out Boy

Patrick Stump, lead singer of Fall Out Boy

Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy bassist

Joe Trohman, Fall Out Boy guitarist

Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy bassist

Teenage Afro

2008-08-19T15:11:00.003-07:00

Joey was my fifth afro subject. He was actually found by a friend of mine at a lacrosse match. Thanks Ron! If you come across anybody that you think would be a good subject for the portrait series, please let me know.

Joey came with his mom and a couple of friends to the studio. He had a great smile and was having a lot of fun with the shoot, so the shoot went very easy. Having someone with friends and/or family on set can either be great or make things a lot more challenging. Many times it helps them relax and you can make use of the people watching to help loosen your subject up.

On the flip side, it can also make things difficult if the person you are photographing is self-conscience and doesn't feel comfortable with people watching. The best way to overcome this is to get your subject alone. If that isn't possible, it is best to start slow and work up to the crazy stuff. Like yelling at the camera! (see photo #3)

Harvard Alum

2008-08-18T14:49:00.000-07:00

Last month we photographed an alumni of Harvard's School of Government for an article in their alumni magazine. I was excited to be shooting for such a respected client and was really looking forward to the shoot. Unexpectedly it turned out to be a rather challenging shoot.

Our subject, Melanie Roe, is the Director of Hall Management for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Our assignment was to photographer her with the "bowl" of the Pepsi Center behind her. We were also planning on getting a shot outside with the Pepsi Center and the Denver skyline behind her.

Well the difficulty began with the inside of the Pepsi Center. I had photographed in their a few times before for Kroenke Sports and for Xcel Energy, so I thought it would be a breeze. Unfortunately they only had about 30% of the lights on. This created issues because we couldn't get a properly exposed background and a good shot of Melanie without blurring her. I found that in these situations about 1/15th of a second is the farthest I can push it before I start getting motion blur in my subject. To try an make it easier to combine the final two photos, I even pushed my exposure to 1/6th of a second.

My only option was to take an exposure for the background and an exposure for Melanie. This biggest pain about doing it this way is it really limits your flow while you are shooting. I have to make sure that I take an exposure for the background for each position I put the camera in. This really breaks up my ability to move around and work with the subject because I am tied to the tripod. Obviously this also adds to our amount of post-production work too.

After shooting inside, we went out for the skyline shot. This also proved to be a challenge due to a cloudless sky and the wind. Ryan set up a scrim for me to block the sunlight, but the wind wouldn't stop blowing. It threatened to constantly blow over our scrim (we had 4 25lb sand bags on the stand) and unfortunately the only direction we could face to get the Pepsi Center and skyline in the shot was blowing her hair back into Melanie's face.

We had to just give up on that one and pray that the inside shot was good enough for the client. It was! They loved the photo and were happy with the flexibility of having Melanie in a separate exposure allowed them in their layout.

Here is the exposure of Melanie with the dark background. You can see she stands out a little too much.

This is the correct exposure for the "bowl" of the Pepsi Center.

These are a couple of the proofs (we showed about 12 total) that we provided to Harvard with Melanie dropped in roughly to show what it would look like. We don't drop her in perfectly at this point so we don't spend a bunch of time working on photos that will never be used. We still want to give the client a good idea of how the final will look though. I would normally provide more like 40-50 if the large amount of post wasn't involved.

Here is the final photo we provided with Melanie dropped in exactly where they wanted her.

Fro Sisters

2008-08-05T12:39:00.000-07:00

As part of the 'Afro Project' I photographed two sisters, Patrice & Phyllis, in the studio. They were a pleasure to work with and it turned into a great shoot. Here are a few of the images...

Soaping It Up

2008-07-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, Adam Deets, is a soap salesman and he is both proud of what he does and good at it. Adam also has a great sense of humor. I thought it would be fun to try and capture all of these elements in a photo.

The photo took quite a bit of work to pull everything together. The most difficult challenge was finding a retro bathroom that worked. I wanted a bathroom with great retro tile and one that was oriented the right way so I had room to shoot. After posting on craigslist and scouting a couple, I found the perfect bathroom. We had to get pretty creative with the placement of our lighting (we used 3 large strobes in about 6'x9' room) to make the shot work, but I'm happy with how it all came together.

Here are the results...

Afro Project #2

2008-07-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

I photographed the second person for my "Afro Project". Rob Drabkin is a local musician that recently was selected as the "Singer/Songwriter of the Year" by Westword. I had Rob bring in his guitar and we were able to get some great photos while he sang and played.

Furniture Maker

2008-07-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

I photographed a shoot last week for a lifestyle piece in Luxe Magazine. My subject was Ethan Hutchinson, a local furniture maker. We photographed Ethan in his beautiful wood shop in Denver. Ethan does beautiful work and a large part of his process is by hand. One of his rocking chairs goes for about $2500. Here are some photos from the shoot.

Ethan sitting in one of his chairs. His sketches for his chairs are in chalk on the floor behind him. Most furniture builders design on the computer, but he likes doing it by hand.

Ethan surrounded by chairs in various stages of construction.

These last two shots are of Ethan filing down his chairs by hand. It is amazing the amount of labor that goes into a chair. At one point I asked him if he needed a break because he had been going for some time while I took pictures. He responded, "I do this all day".

The Afro Project

2008-06-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

I am starting a new series of portraits that I am calling "The Afro Project". It is will be a series of portraits of people of all ethnicities and ages with 'fros'. We are going for an urban vibe and everything will be shot with the same lighting and steel background for the series.

Our first shoot was yesterday. As a photographer you have a vision in your head of what you want to capture when you set up a shoot. Yesterday was a perfect example of the photographer and subject working together to go beyond what was initially envisioned and getting some even better photos. My subject, Greg, is a skater and showed up for the shoot with his headphones on, aviator glasses and a skateboard. We went through my intial ideas for the shoot and then started having fun with his "props". Here are some of the results...

PhotoShelter & Stock

2008-06-05T14:32:00.001-07:00

Over the last few years a lot of my photographs have been collecting dust on hard drives. I've shot a lot of travel and other photography with stock in mind, but had the constant challenge of workload. I have always been too busy with "real work" to do the little things to get those photos ready to sell. This included image selection, post-production, titling, captioning and keywording the images. With a lot of help from Stephanie and Ryan and some more time to dedicate to it, we finally made it happen.

The first big step to get my images out there for sale was to put them up on PhotoShelter. PhotoShelter is a stock site that allows photographers to submit images for their review. Those that are accepted are then sold through their site.

Take a look at my page and you can see around 1,000 images that I have taken from 2003-2008. Since they had to go through a review process, you are seeing the best of the best. Here are a couple of photos that are on the site.

My most viewed photo so far on the site.

A photo that was recently selected as an "editor's choice".

Next step is going to be to start submitting to other stock agencies to try and get them to represent some of my work. Wish me luck!

Spain Photos

2008-05-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

I returned earlier this week from Spain. It was a great trip filled with some amazing sites (I fell in love with Valencia & Segovia) and local culture (we went to a FC Barcelona soccer match, a flamenco show and a bullfight in Madrid). Below is a sampling of photos from the trip. Look for many more to come!

Overlooking the town of Segovia and the Cathedral.

Matador and bull at Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid.

Gran Via at dusk in Madrid.

Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias in Valencia.

Bell Tower on the Valencia Cathedral.

Travel Photography

2008-05-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

I truly feel blessed to do what I do for a living. I was able to find my passion in life and turn it into my career. It has allowed me to get to know some great people, spend the amount of time I want with my family, show people the world through my eyes and so much more. Being able to travel is definitely one of the greatest benefits.

My wife and I leave tomorrow for vacation in Spain. I will be photographing as we go to Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid. I plan on having a show at the studio (with some great Sangria) sometime in the late summer or early fall. Watch for details.

One of my goals is to make people wish they were there when they look at my photos. I couple years ago my wife and I traveled to Italy and I did my best to capture the essence of that amazing country (you can see a few of my favorites below). I'm hoping to do the same with Spain. Watch this space for Spain photos in the coming weeks.

Real Estate Photography

2008-04-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

I photograph a combination of commercial and residential listings. Many times listing agents & owners question the value of hiring a quality photographer to come in and photograph a property. My goal in this blog entry is to show what I do and why it can be so valuable to selling the property. I'll show the difference in value between the standard four options for photographing a building. I'll be focusing on residential for the sake of simplicity.

Option 1) A real estate agent or owner chooses to take images on their own. Interiors are lit by the flash on the camera or shot with available light if it is a bright room and not much thought given to composition to make a room look the best. Exteriors are photographed while the agent is there taking pictures. Usually without consideration given to time of day and direction of sunlight. Here are some samples from an actual listing for a $837,000 house that I found online.

Option 2) A photographer is hired that comes in with a tripod and a digital camera and shoots available light photos of the space. Some consideration is given to composition, but the room is very rarely arranged to make the best photo. Everything is still shot with available light. This causes windows, light fixtures and lamps to be blown out and not be very visually appealing. Exteriors are usually shot without consideration given to time of day. Very little time, if any is given to post-production to make the image look its best. These photographers are usually hired for anywhere from $75 to $150 per listing. Because of this they are shooting multiple listings in a day and running from job to job. Here are some samples from an actual listing for a $830,000 house that I found online.

Option 3) A photographer is hired to come in with some lighting (1-2 lights), a tripod, a digital SLR camera and usually an assistant. Listings take about one to one and half hours to photograph. The room is set up and organized to make the space look its best. Exteriors are photographed based on the time of day and the direction of sunlight to get the best lit photos of the facade of the building. After the photos have been taken, another 5-10 minutes of work is put into each photo in post-production to make it look its best. The cost for the photographer and assistant usually ranges from $250-$500 per listing. These are listings that I shot that range from $500,000 to $1.5 million.

Option 4) A photographer is hired to come in with a full lighting set up (4-8 lights), a tripod, a digital SLR camera and an assistant. Listings take four to eight hours depending on desired photos. All rooms are set up and fully lit. Exteriors are shot at the perfect time of day on multiple sides of the building (if shooting for eight hours). "Money shots", such as dawn or dusk can be taken of interiors and/or exteriors. After the photos have been taken, another 15-30 minutes of work is put into each photo in post-production to make it look its best. The cost for the photographer and assistant usually ranges from $500-$1000 for four hours and $1000-$2000 for eight hours. These images are also from homes that I have photographed.

Now let's look at the cost of the investment in photography.

The estimated monthly payment on a $837,000 home (from above) that had 20% down and a 6% interest rate is over $4,500 (including taxes and insurance). Let's assume that the home has been owned for 10 years, so at this point a little over $4,000/month is going towards interest, taxes and insurance. Spending money on quality photography could quickly be recouped if it helps the home sell just a week or 2 earlier.

For the agent, the sooner a property sells, the quicker they can deposit the money and spend time on other properties and their own marketing. Another major bonus for the agent is the higher quality photos have a great use for the agent to show the quality of homes that they sell in their marketing pieces.

All the listings that I photograph fall in the category of options 3 and 4. See more of my work at www.mccoryjamesphotography.com

Satellite Room

2008-04-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

One of my shoots last week wasn't your typical architecture job. I photographed the interiors of a Ball Aerospace building for H+L Architecture & GH Phipps Construction this past week. The room will be used to build a 3-4 BILLION dollar satellite!

The space is over 40 feet tall and is a clean room to limit the amount of dust and particulates that can interfere with the satellite's components. You first put on a "rabbit suit" and enter through an air shower that blows all the dust off. There are large semi-clean anterooms to clean equipment off before it is brought into the room.

Here are a couple images of the space.

The room with two "models" to give a sense of scale.

The air shower used to blow off all dust.

Camera Phones

2008-04-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

For the most part I hated camera phones. The quality has been pretty bad and there is that annoying delay. Worst of all are all the people at concerts holding their camera in your view trying to take pictures of the band that are going to come out blurry 99% of the time.

I have recently been converted though. I have had an iPhone for a few months and the quality is better (but there is still that stupid delay.) But I am finding that it is great for documenting my life (and especially my son) at times I normally wouldn't have a camera.

I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorites over the past couple weeks. I'm sure you'll see plenty more here in the future.

Landon kicking a soccer ball in the park for the first time and making dad very proud.

Kelly swinging Landon in the park.

Going for a walk with his broom. He loves to clean and walk around the block.

Playing with dad's hat.

Asleep in the back seat after church with Larry the Lobster.

The first Colorado Rapids game of the year against the Los Angeles Galaxy and David Beckham (see below).

Photographing the Neighborhood

2008-04-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

Over the past year we have been taking photographs of the owners or employees at various businesses in the the neighborhood around our studio. It has been a fun way to get to know our neighbors and give them a better understanding of what we do. It has also been a great way to increase my portfolio of environmental portraits. I plan on continuing the series for some time and hope to some day have a show from all of the different portraits.

Yesterday we photographed DJ, who manages Little's Liquors across the street. I thought it would be fun to show the process that goes into the final photo for a shoot like this.

First is the getting the exposure correct with my assistant (Stephanie helped on this shoot). We also use these test shots to get our composition and set exactly how we want it.

Next is taking the photograph of our main subject. We work on getting his body position correct and getting the lighting exactly how we want it. We are constantly making minor adjustments as we go. Then the goal is to get the look we want from our subject. Since this is the fourth photo in the series we have a good idea of what we want. We still took 65 shots if DJ to get what we wanted.

The next step is to get the exposure for our background. This shoot proved to be a little more challenging because of the bright flourescent bulbs, but I also like the feel they gave to the background. I took a shot for the bulbs (so they don't look blown out) and one for the overall space.

The final piece is the getting the blurred figure in the background. We have put a blurred figure in the background of each shot in the series. I think it makes the main subject stand out more and have more importance in the photo. Stephanie hasn't been in any of my photos before, so she got to be the blur. Getting the blur exactly right with the correct timing of firing the shutter and her speed of movement is challenging. We took 23 photos to get it just right.

The next step is to put it all of it together in the computer. The images are all put on layers and then carefully masked out to see what we want. The final step in post production is to get the exposure and feel we want exact. We shoot in RAW format, so we can do color correction as we pull all the images together. Their are a total of 12 layers in this photo to get our finished product.

Here is the final image once everything comes together.

You can see more of our neighborhood shots at www.mccoryjames.com.

The Blogging Begins

2008-03-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

I have been debating for awhile on whether or not to do a blog. I wasn't sure about the commitment, especially with this thing called life going on daily. I have also been nervous about putting photos out there that may be more personal and not as refined as what I give to clients.

I have already created my own little corner of the web with my web sites, but it is in a much more controlled way with only the best really being shown. I decided that by committing to a blog (and updating it weekly) it would push me to take more photos and keep my creative juices going. As my business has grown I find myself shooting on a regular, sometimes daily basis, but it is almost always for clients. The plan is that this blog will make me take a camera with me more and just document the world around me as I see it. So this will be a place for you to see both my professional work as I create it for clients, but also to see what moves me to spend my life behind a camera.

With that being said, I'll post a photo a couple client photos and a personal one.

I photographed this penthouse last week at dusk in downtown Denver for an architectural client. The condo had wrap-around views of both the city skyline and the mountains. It was amazing!

This was the view from the deck of Denver's skyline. Not bad.

Here is recent photo of my favorite subject, my son Landon.

Hopefully some of you will enjoy going on this journey with me!