Another Day, Another Afro

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy bassist

Joe Trohman, Fall Out Boy guitarist

Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy bassist

Teenage Afro

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

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

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

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

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.