Man is one with his work!

A while back, I shot a personal project of a friend of mine, Jim Mumford. Jim owns a business in San Diego called Good Earth Plants. Good Earth Plants is San Diego's largest provider of interior landscape design, installations and maintenance services. They also design living walls and roofs, which are plant beds and gardens located on walls and on roofs. 

This guy is super passionate about what he does and it shows in his work. I came up with an idea of photographing him immersed in his work. Literally, growing out of one of his projects. We met at his shop and looked at some ideas. He thought I was crazy but went along with my ideas. My original thought was squeezing him in a wall unit like the one pictured below.

This option had some issues like how were we going to fit Jim behind the wall. Also, we would have to take out some of the 18x18" crates that held the plants and then fill in the empty voids around Jim. On a vertical surface, that was tricky without strapping and taping plants on to the other crates and on Jim. There were some other vertical, wall options but each one was had its own obstacles. I left his shop that day and told Jim I had to rethink my plan.


A few days later Barbara and I were talking and she said "Why don't you just lay him down and bury him in plants?" Duh! That's why she makes the big bucks. Since part of Jim's business is plantscaping, or leasing plants to businesses and homes, he has a huge inventory of plants at his shop. We made up a plan to lay him down on the ground and surround him with plants making it look as if he were standing in one of his walls.


We started by putting down a tarp on the concrete pad. This made cleanup of all the spilled soil much, much easier. We then laid Jim down on the tarp and covered him in a dark brown sheet. The sheet was to keep the soil off of him and keep him clean. Since one of the shots called for him to be pruning the plants around him, we cut holes in the sheet so he could poke is arms out. 


Then came the fun part! We began stacking plants all around and over him. Placing plants on him proved tricky because they wouldn't stay upright and kept falling over whenever he moved the slightest. We chose to cover him in seedum with the intention of doing some retouching in post to fill in the voids with plants. 

We shot in the afternoon so the sun was present. The sun was not ideal for this situation because there was so much detail and layers with the plants. The sun and shadows would have made a very busy distracting photo. Fortunately, we were shooting underneath a shade enclosure that Jim stored all of his plants under. There was one strip between the shade scrim and the building where light was pouring in on Jim. We hung a big black sheet on light stands to block that out. 

You can see Jim's face to the right of the ladder

Now that we blocked out all of the undesirable light, it was time to create some good light! I set up a 7' Octodome of to one side of Jim as the main light. To create fill, I placed white panels at his feet and opposite the octobox. I initially set up a large softbox for fill but decided that the lite panels provided enough fill.  As you can see below, I shot from about 8-9' above Jim. I kept my aperture at f/16 to retain sharpness from top to bottom of frame. His feet were closer than his face, so I needed the extra depth of field.

Here a few of the final images along with the photo used for the San Diego Horticultural Society magazine.

Jim told us before he had an engagement that night so we had a limited timeframe. Thanks to the hard work from Barbara and Pari, Jim's office manager, we were able to stage and shoot everything in about 45 minutes. We pulled the plants and sheet off of Jim, he shook out a bit of soil out of his hair and he was off with time to spare! 

Studio Frank interiors project

In December, I was given the opportunity to photograph a project for Studio Frank. Studio Frank is an interior design firm in Telluride, CO. Recently, Catherine Frank invited me to photograph a remodel of an old cabin in Mountain Village, above Telluride. To call it a remodel is really an understatement. They took a cabin that was originally built in the 80s and transformed it into a modern piece of style and design.

 

Another cool day at work. Part II

A few weeks ago, I told a story about my fun shoot that included a flight in a 1929 Stearman biplane to photograph aerials of an architectural project. I thought it would be good to talk a little bit about the technique that was employed.

The Conditions
I was working in an open cockpit and the pilot was in a cockpit right behind me. Any equipment that wasn't clipped in or tied down could have the potential of flying out and hitting the the pilot. I chose to shoot with a Canon 5D mkII and 24-105mm lens, which I could really only use about 50-105mm of range. One parameter was the angle of view that I could shoot through. As you can see in the photo below, I was positioned right in the middle of the bi-wings . This forced me to turn around and essentially shoot backwards, which was difficult due to the deep cockpit and the harness.

I could open up to about 50mm before catching the wing on the right of my frame and the tail on the left.

Settings
When determining my settings, I knew I needed a high shutter speed because I was shooting a moving subject. Since the subject was so far away, I could set my focus at near infinity and shoot with a bigger aperture. Shooting shutter priority at f5.6, my shutter speed resulted in about 1/1200 sec at ISO 200. This would be plenty to stop motion and get a clear shot.


Other Stuff
As I mentioned earlier, I had to shoot behind me. This was tricky because I was held in by my harness that made me feel quite secure in that open cockpit. The problem was, I couldn't turn around to shoot with the harness tight. After making a few flyovers, I began to feel comfortable with Tom's flying. I decided to loosen up the harness a bit and slide the right arm strap off so I could get turned around to shoot. Since we were doing flyovers, I only needed to shoot off short bursts and then slide back down in my seat and harness.

Communication with the pilot is fairly paramount. Its always good to use landmarks when providing instructions on where to fly instead of just saying "go a little wider" or "fly up a bit". Landmarks give the pilot more definitive objects to fly towards or over.

Other than that, try to get a little more time up high so you can shoot some personal photos that you can use for other stuff. ...and just have fun!

Mountain Bike magazine article

Here is a job I shot for Mountain Bike magazine. It was a feature on Cotez, Colo and the mountain biking scene there. It originally printed in a subscribers issue and then reprinted with different photos in the newsstand issue. The cover image is unfortunately not mine, but I did get the opportunity to photograph Willow Koerber a couple of months later. See the photo in a previous blog post here.

 

For the same issue, I shot one of the Mountain Bike mag testers riding an Ibis Mojo HD. We photographed it up on Raider Ridge above Durango.

The newsstand issue

Another cool day at work.

Earlier this year, I got the opportunity to photograph a very cool home. I first discovered the home 3 years ago when Randy and I photographed a wedding on the property of the home. The wedding was pretty unique in that the ceremony was located on a grass runway on the property and the bride was flown in on a antique biplane piloted by the homeowner. The wedding reception was held in the airplane hanger. During the wedding, I saw the home from the runway and hanger but never got the opportunity to check it out. It looked to be a contemporary design and I was very intrigued.

A few weeks after the wedding, I followed up with the homeowner, Tom, to discuss photographing the house. At first, he was a little reluctant because the interior finishes were not complete but he did invite me to call him the following year. A year later, I called him to see if he was interested in doing photography. Unfortunately, the interior was complete but there was no landscaping yet. Tom was in no hurry and is a bit of a perfectionist himself, so it was on hold for yet another year. This past spring, I called Tom to see what was possible. He thought everything looked good and that we were ready to shoot.

Alrighty, persistence does pay off. I waited for three years to photograph this project and it finally happened.

The shoot was really fun! Since I waited so long to shoot this place, I put some days aside to put some extra time into it. Tom was very gracious and allowed me to spend several nights at the property so I could take advantage of the gorgeous light in southwest Colorado. It paid off and I got some incredible evenings and mornings to play with.

On one of the final days, Tom mentioned that he wanted some aerial shots of the property. My eyes lit up and a smile spread across my face. Tom had two antique biplanes and I was going to get to fly in one of them to shoot photos! He chose the 1929 Stearman which was the same plane he flew the bride in a few years earlier. We decided to shoot at dawn because the winds were light and the light would be sweet.  The next morning, Tom out fitted me in a classic leather cap radio headset, gave me a rundown of the rules and we were off.

Here's the view from the side right after takeoff

Control panel

View of Mancos, Colorado with the La Plata mountains in the background

Some days are a little better than others. This was one that I'll remember for a long time.

Velonews shoot

I got a call from Velonews magazine to photograph a couple of pro mountain bikers for the December 2010 Cyclist of the Year issue. My assignment was to photograph Willow Koerber and Todd Wells, who were both the award recipients for mountain biking. The weather worked out perfectly and Willow and Todd were great to work with. I wish them both an even better 2011 season.

Below is a proof of the published shot.

One light architectural shot

Its been a while since I've posted new blogs. Its been busy and I guess I didn't feel like I had anything to say. I also had a little social media burnout. Like all things technological, the depths of social media can swallow you whole if you let it. One thing I've learned in the last few years of the digital revolution is that there is always way more stuff out there than any of us can take on. There are gazillions of apps, programs, photo doodads, methods, professional requirements, and other cool stuff that demands our time, money and energy. Personally, I love technology and toys. But being a photographer is both a blessing and a curse. As photographers (and now film makers), we are blessed to play with the coolest toys....BUT...we are also required to buy all the coolest toys all the time. Any old guy will tell you about when you bought your film camera and lenses and that lasted you 5-10 years. Now we are required to buy new camera bodies every 2 years. With that, we must buy new computer hardware and software on the same timeline.

The same goes for social media and information. When I first discovered the Twitter world, I was amazed at all the information that was streaming onto my computer. I was learning about new photographers, seeing incredible work, reading blogs and Oh, all the BTS videos! God, I couldn't get enough of all the incredible information falling in my lap. But over time, the load started to get a little heavy in my lap and I had a hard time getting up to do my own stuff. So I turned off my Tweetdeck for a little while. Its been a nice break and now I'm coming back with a little more moderation. I do really love it and it just requires me to self monitor a little tighter.

I've got some new material and have learned quite a bit in the last few months. Today, I wanted to share a new technique that isn't new per-se but it is new to me. It is the concept of building an architectural from a composite of a bunch photos. I've always tried to light up my spaces as much as possible so I would have to do minimal photoshop work.  Due to time constraints, I was forced to step outside of my little box and try something new. I used one VAL(voice activated lightstand) to light up a whole room.

I recently shot a very cool residence near Durango. I will blog about the project in further detail in the near future. One day our shooting got somewhat delayed for several reasons and I found myself having to get two fairly critical shots in the waining light of late afternoon. The two shots were the master bedroom and the great room. We had a couple of issues in the master bedroom but got them fixed and were able to get the shot. We only had about 30 minutes to move into the great room, set up and get the shot before the sun set and lost our light. Normally I like to budget a good hour for set up, styling and shooting. One other factor against us was that the homeowners were coming home and they were bringing guests back to the house. I wanted to be done and out of the home so they could entertain their guests.

Knowing that there was no way that I was going to get this shot conventionally, I gave my assistant Hailey one of my WL 1600 strobes outfitted with a full CTO and a 30 degree grid and powered with a Vagabond battery. I then set up the camera, tethered to the MBP. Once I got a couple base images of the exterior and overall exposure, I then directed Hailey to move to different areas around the room and light stuff up. Here are a series of the RAW images of Hailey doing her magic.

And here is the final result once I put all of the pieces together.

Most of my masking was done by lasso tooling around the elements that I wanted to add. I worked at 300-500% magnification on making my selections. Other elements were added as a layer and then I simply erased the unwanted elements with a very soft brush to blend the layers naturally. Total time retouching was about 3 hours.

I could pick this photo to death on things that I wish were done better. But considering that this shot was made in 20 minutes (first shot was a 7:56 and the last shot was 8:16)while the homeowners were walking through the room giving their guests a tour of their home, I'll take it. I was pretty stoked to be forced to try something new and experiment with new techniques. I've shot like this a couple of times since then and gotten excellent results. Also, my post time decreased by about 40% on the other shots that I did. This little exercise gave me a whole new bundle of confidence in shooting spaces that I really struggled with in the past.