San Diego high-rise at dusk

In the past, I've shot a lot of residential architecture. Coming from Durango and Telluride, there are a lot of residential projects but not much in the way of large scale commercial projects. This is something I've been eager to get into but haven't really been able to develop a portfolio of this kind of work. Being in San Diego, I really hope to expand on my large scale architectural work more.

On Sunday, I needed to take my friend Brian down to the airport at 7am. I figured since I was already down in the area, I would take a couple hours and explore the downtown district. A nice mellow stroll developed into an obsessive hunt for parking garages that I could get on top of so I could get cleaner views of the high-rises around me. I did find one garage on Market and 6th that had an open parking area on the roof. I shot a few HDR shots of a building but felt that I could come back for excellent dusk shot. Here's the scouting shot.

I returned last night and drove up to the top level to set up. The tripod I use for archtecture is one that my friend Scott gave me. It is a tank of a tripod that is beaten, broken, needs to be tightened all the time, sticks when trying to pull the legs out, is heavy as hell and basically would work really well with 50 cal rifle mounted on it. But it was free, has geared movements and holds my camera steady, so I like it. Either way, when I was seting up, I think I was getting skeptical looks from tenants of nearby apartment buildings wondering what I was doing. My friend Randy called while I was shooting and I got to multitask some wedding business while shooting this highrise. I shot for about 15 minutes capturing the waning light of day and then packed up to go home. Right as I finished a security guard walked up and towards me. Since I was done, I smiled, waved and drove out of there to avoid confrontation.

Techy talk. The shot was fairly simple. I shot with a 24mm TS lens. Originally I planned on shooting it vertically. The building was a wee bit too tall to shoot it with a 45mm TS so I had to use a 24mm. Vertically, the 24mm made the building way to small and included too much sky and street so I went to a horizontal composition. In the end, I really like how the horizontal compostition placed the building in its environment of the downtown area. Even the stadium is showing on the far right.
The exposure was 15 seconds at f11. A small note on determining exposure for this type of shot. Figure out what are your fixed variables and base exposures on that. Then let nature fall into line with your fixed variables. In this situation, the street lights are going to be a fixed brightness and I can't do anything to change their exposure values. My only other light source is the sun and I know that as it goes down, it will obviously get darker. So if I am set up early and determine exposure for the street and window lights, its just a matter of time before the ambient light will match that of the street lights and we have a balanced exposure.
I did very little post process on this shot. At the bottom of the frame, there is an empty lot with a track hoe sitting in it. Not very aesthetic. I chose to darken that area to take the emphasis off of it rather than doing PS and adding a building or something.

So, there you go. Shooting a building in 18 minutes from setup to tear down. I love doing this stuff!

Photos I took while I sit on my ass and eat fish tacos

Last night, I was part of a screening committee for the upcoming Wild & Scenic film festival in San Diego on March 23-25. We basically watched a bunch of trailers and figured out what films we would show. There are quite a few good ones and it was tough to choose which one we had to cut out. I'll be posting more info and tweets in the next few days.

Barbara was already downtown at a conference and I decided to ride the train down, we would meet and then go to the screening. I figured it would be fun to take my bike and explore Old Town with my camera. Well, the train was fun and mellow.  Here's some observations from the train.

I kinda got lost on the west side of the 5 and almost rode onto the on-ramp to the freeway. Crazy traffic! It took me longer than expected to get to where I was going and when I finally got there, I was starving.  I pulled up to a little cantina, ordered up some fish tacos and a beer and clicked off some shots from my table.

CCY Architects project

Here is a project I photographed for CCY Architects last fall. This project is up on the mesa above Ridgway, CO. Its site is subdued as it is tucked into the pines and gamble oaks. The space inside is fairly modest. The living spaces are small but very bright due to the light colors and clarestory windows that run along the ridge beam throughout the house.

I always like when I get a call from Larry at CCY to photograph a project. I know that it is going to be a stimulating piece of design. Larry is also great to shoot with because he has a strong interest in photography and loves to be part of the process. It looks like I will be shooting another one of his creations in Telluride this summer. Can't wait!

Balboa Park

This last weekend Barbara and I went down to Balboa Park for Valentine's day. It was fun to ride bikes around the park and explore the attractions and architecture. I've been playing around with HDR photography recently and I thought this would be a great chance to play around with some technique on cool subjects. Barb was a trooper as I squeezed myself into corners and shot multiple exposures over and over so I was assured a steady shot. It was a really fun day and I'm totally psyched to go back a shoot more when I have a real tripod (not a pocket tripod) and more time to shoot. Either way, here are some examples I put together from the day.

Fort Lewis College freshmen shoot

I shoot a lot of projects for my alma mater Fort Lewis College. Most of my work with them is environmental portraits of students and professors. Recently, I've been doing larger portrait shoots on white seamless. Fort Lewis asked me if it was possible to set up a studio on campus so it would convenient for students on campus to come by for a portrait between their classes. This type of shoot would not have worked if I required everyone to come to my studio downtown. Its funny because I do more of these types of shoots on location than actually shooting in my own studio. My clients find it to be very valuable.

These shoots are interesting because I am typically shooting 25-50 people in 2-3 hours. I have to impart some creativity to each photo to make it unique but we are on a tight schedule so it my time with each subject is pretty limited.  The objective is to show an aspect of each student's personality and/or focus at FLC.  The students were asked to bring a prop or clothing that showed illustrated their personality.

Here is a shot of my setup. The shoot was held in a big dance studio in the athletic department.

The main light is a a large soft box upper right. There are two strobes pointed at the backdrop to blow it out pure white. One is visible on the right and another strobe is behind the black panels on the left. There is also another strobe with a shoot through umbrella down low camera left to create a little fill. (its right outside of the bottom left corner)

Here are a few shots.

 

 

 

 

Mitra

This is a fun little shoot I did with my friend Mitra. We shot this in her bedroom and fortunately she a with poster bed with red curtains on all sides. It made for a decent set. I don't do these shoots often but this one was a lot of fun and the photos came out pretty good. The lighting was simple, two strobes shot into 40" reflective white umbrellas. They were positioned opposite from each other.

 

 

Durango Public Library

Here's a few shots of the Durango Library that I photographed this last fall. We are starting a new edu-marketing project and are using the library as our pilot project. As we complete some collateral, we'll post it. Very excited!