Modeling by the Bay

Amanda is a promising young model. She hasn't done any modeling before but as you can see from these images she seems to have a natural flare for it. We met on a beautiful Sunday afternoon down by a dry dock amongst the hulks of boats both new and old, large and small. She had a couple of friends with her who helped a lot by carrying her changes of clothes and generally encouraging her.
The whole shoot lasted a little over an hour and probably could have gone a lot longer if we hadn't begun to lose light. So next she'll be getting prints and hopefully moving on to bright things in the future! If you would be interested in a similar shoot for yourself or someone you know do please get in touch.
For the nerds amongst you, the equipment used was a Pentax K20d (15mp), a Pentax 16-45mm f4, Pentax 50-135 f2.8 and a Metz Mecablitz flash plus a reflector.

Cleo. My youngest portrait subject.

I was asked to go down to Seattle last weekend to photograph a new arrival. Cleo is only four months old and was not too impressed by the big rig set up of studio flash that I brought with me. I hope I won't be accused of cruelty to children if I admit that the shoot went something like 'flash...cry...sooth...flash...cry...sooth...' Still, I guess we must all suffer for art! Her response to the flashes was so speedy I thought it might beat the flash' 1/1000th second response time and register on the images!

Still, Cleo was not the only one to suffer at my hands that day. The family dogs also got their turn under the spotlight as you can see. They absolutely refused to join Cleo but still, pretty cute, I think!

Exhibition currently running

I managed to get a three month show at the new spot on State Street, New York Pizza and Bar for my long running show, Shadows and Lines. This is a three month engagement running until the end of December. The prints are large, dark and imposing. I hope that people can get down to see them and enjoy the excellent food served there. I particularly recommend the bread sticks and marinara sauce. They're a steal!

Please, do try to see these images as I am very proud of them and I'm excited for people to enjoy them too.

The return of Family Photo Day!

After a few month's hiatus it's the return of The Family Photo Day!

So come join in the fun! On the first and third Tuesday of every month from four till seven I’m at the Public Market on Cornwall Avenue (the Public market, not the Farmers’ Market!)

Come on down and sit for a portrait in only ten minutes. It’s always free to sit and you only pay for prints if you like what I come up with. If you don’t like what you see then you walk away owing nothing. If you do like the results then pay for a set of prints and pick them up in a week from the checkout at the Market.

Jinx Water Fight

I had a wonderful experience last week. It was July 3rd, the day before the Big Day and also Gallery Walk night. Jinx were holding a fund raiser picnic come band night come dance cabaret come 'Belebrity' dunk tank. At least, the dunk tank was promised but unfortunately never materialised. Apparently all the dunk tanks in Washington State were already booked up for the 4th July celebrations. So, after a scramble, Michelle and crew changed the water element to water balloons with 'Belebrities as targets.

So Lola, Ally and I all turned up with our picnic, blanket etc only to find we were the only picnickers. Boo! I guess everyone else was insufficiently nerdy to enjoy a good butty on the street. Anyway, before we knew where we were I had been roped into being one of the targets and some rather wonderful photo opportunities ensued. You can see all the resultant images by clicking here.

New Lessons at Semiahoo

August 12th brought a large scale wedding shoot at Semiahmoo, up by the Canadian Border. Boy, was that a hectic day? I took an assistant for company and off we went for eight hours of fun in the rainy and overcast day.

Jesse and Mandy could not be nicer people and their dauighter Bailey-Mae and English Bulldog Lucy were just adorable. But the day was rushed. Never was there a moment to pause as we flew from one place to another, shooting shooting, always shooting. At the end of the day, when finally we left at 11pm I had 650 shots on five cards. Normally I like to shoot in what is called RAW format. For those who enjoy technical knowledge, RAW is a format that allows a great deal more flexibility in post processing. Most cameras shoot JPGs. When a camera shoots JPGs it looks at each shot and makes decisions about what it thinks are important in terms of exposure and it throws an awful lot of information away once it has made up its mind. Well, I don't trust my camera to make that kind of decision, thank you very much! So I shoot RAW which allows me to bring in details that might have been lost in shadow or highlight. It also means 16mb images.


So what did I learn? I learned that the very next day I must sit down at my computer, go to Buy.com (tip for Washington residents, Buy.com is just like Amazon (it's actually almost a carbon copy) but they have no 'bricks and mortar' in Washington state, hence no sales tax. Save yourself a buck or two that way!) and order a couple more cards. I now travel to shoots with ten gigabytes in my bag and a few more about my person I can raid if the going gets tough.



So anyway, back with Jesse and Mandy. I think this was head and shoulders the best wedding gig I've done. A first edit only allowed me to weed out a little under a hundred images. So many great images and where to start with choosing the ones to turn into prints, books, slideshows and who knows what else? We'll see once the dust settles and we get a chance to meet.