New limited edition prints

Updated the print shop ya'll. Modified many of the products. No longer matting these. It's taking too long to fulfill orders due in part to the mattes. All 11"x 16" image size but finished on 17"x 22" paper. Limited editions of 50, initialed and numbered. Giclée printed on a high quality professional Epson printer, with pigment-based, Epson UltraChrome K3 inks, that will last up to 100 years. Printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth, 308gsm, 100% cotton archival fine art paper.

Photoshop work

Airshow (2009)

Series graphic made in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Airshow photos revisited

From a post I made on August 7, 2009:

Airshow (2008-present) is an examination of magnificent aircraft, death defying aeronautical stunts and awed spectators. Airshows hold a special place in my memory. I recall dusty, remote single runway airports suddenly transformed into a colorful, smoky and barnstorming flying circus. The shows have changed considerably over the years. Now wing walkers share airspace with stealth fighters and carbon fiber super jumbo jets. Yet the same feelings of awe and inspiration flow now as they did twenty-five years ago. Some images have undergone extensive compositing and retouching to match my childhood memory to modern reality. I did not, however, use any CGI. All compositing was done with images I captured from actual airshows and copious amounts of masking.

Airshow is an ongoing personal project that began in 2008.

Well, I am revisiting the series and have began applying a post-processing technique I have been working on to the images. I originally put the photos from the series through a punchy, contrasty post-process. Very colorful and looking at them now after many months, I realized they deviate from my original intent, which was to create a sense of old and new.

I decided to re-color each with a vintage, cross processed feel with stepped up contrast in some areas and pulled back elsewhere. First, I built up layers in Photoshop, progressively adding or subtracting contrast in certain areas using masks. Next added a few layers of NIC color efx cross processing (E6-L41 L05), adjusted those. Then added a few texture layers of scanned copier paper and paper bags, adjusted those and set to soft light, pulled opacity way back to under 15%. If anyone is wondering, I didn't build an action, just a loose formula. The reason is each image has different characteristics, saturation, hues, exposures, etc. so it's impossible to get a consistent look across each.

Overall, I think they better capture what I was originally looking for. An old look of new machines.

A few are on my site in a hidden gallery here

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Inspired by:
An interview on the BBC with Richard Tait, inventor of the board game Cranium. They initially ordered 27,000 sets but had nowhere to sell them. Plus they missed Toy Fair, where many retailers decide which games to order for the year, so they now had an inventory of 27,000 sets and no storage or customers. As they were lamenting in a Starbucks in Seattle, they decided they needed to bring the games to the people. They climbed the ladder and started selling the sets in Starbucks retail stores.

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Listened to:
BBC World Service

Color grading

Spent a few hours working on color grading skills. I did this on photos in Photoshop and applied a 16:9 letterbox preset to them to get an idea of what the grading would like in real life. Just some R&D, becoming accustomed to grading images and working on different feels for video grading.

Photo promotional postcards

A few prototype promo photo cards (try saying that 3X). The dimensions are entirely wrong but the idea is there. I need to squeeze these more horizontal to fit a better mailing size of 4.25"x 6". Going whimsical with copy overlays on my landscape and adventure photos.

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Inspired by:
Solid collection of vintage ski photos from the University of Washington.

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Listened to:
NPR, Hawaii Public Radio, KIPO, Honolulu

Photographer promotional emailer II

Here's another photo emailer promo I did today. Tailored this to potential clients in the landscape, agriculture and industry sectors.

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Found a cool site that lets you diagram your portrait set up. Beats my sketch in a Moleskine or a sloppy quick photograph. I like to document each set up for future reference since none of mine are the same for one reason or another. www.professionalsnapshots.com

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Inspired by:
Cool ass vintage tailor E.TAUTZ, London.

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Listened to:
Our Love To Admire, Interpol

Photographer promotional emailer

Spent the day laying out and emailing my monthly propaganda ha ha. This month, I am sending the below photography email out my "select" group of art directors and photo buyers. This is one of three images I will be using this month. I particularly like this image, maybe because the color palette matches my firm colors? Orange #F69321. Also because it exemplifies the three specialities I am currently pitching, adventure, landscape and travel, i.e. it's relevant to a larger audience. Plus, it's seasonally correct. I will be starting to shelve the winter sport photos in the next few months, so now is the time to roll this out.

Design wise, I always try to mirror the feel of my website and collateral with these html email photo promos.

Tomorrow, I will post a few prototype postcards that are also planned.

Aspen photos

Spent some time this past weekend sifting and sorting thru the Lightroom photo catalog and found a few more overlooked photos from Colorado.

"Gretl's", Aspen Mountain, Aspen, Colorado 2010

"Cloud 9", Aspen Highlands, Aspen, Colorado 2010

"Bonnie's", Aspen Mountain, Aspen, Colorado 2010

Updated bio page and seo

Finally updated the bio on my site here. I limped along for quite awhile without a proper biography page. Packed with info, more than anyone other than me cares about I'm sure.

More importantly, I am now 100% html. It took me a few years to come to grips with this, but it's true, flash based sites seriously hamper any respectable seo attempt. They look tight as hell, but just kill your seo. I spent entirely too much time looking starry eyed obsessing at the sites over at the FWA. So I commissioned a fantastic full screen flash site but was really hurt by the fact search engines couldn't read the damn thing.

After six months of using a straight up html standards compliant site I have noticed cleaner analytics stats and and steady seo traffic.

Untitled, 2010

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Inspired by:
Kalle Gustafsson

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Listened to:
Jim Rome, AM570 KLAC Los Angeles

Madison Magazine outtake

An outtake image from a portrait session of Rich Bartley, golf pro at Hawk's Landing, near Verona, Wisconsin for Madison Magazine. After shooting the needed posed images, I had him go through a few swing sequences and I fired off a few frames. Thanks Rich!

Lighting: two Profoto heads on the right at max and one head left with a 10° grid at 1/2 power on white muslin.

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Also updated my website with some western photos from the last month. Stop by.


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Listened to:
Sklar Brothers, AM570 KLAC Los Angeles

Monona Terrace

Had a little time today to shoot up the Madison skyline from the middle of Lake Monona. Used a 90mm on this shot.

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Inspired by:
It's the middle of winter. I like the efx in this piece plus it reminds me of spring. Gucci ad.

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Listened to:
Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt

Bucky Badger

Went to what was supposed to an excellent Big 10 basketball game tonight at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wisconsin. UW Bagders v. Fighting Illini. Not the case. It was an Illini rout. Brought the rig to the game though. So at least I had fun! A friend provided me with a fantastic vantage point from a suite. I attached a few below.

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Inspired by:
Straight up cool collection of design related goods. A daily read for me. designworklife.

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Listened to:
NPR KIPO, Honolulu

Eastbound and down.

We are outta here. Shot my ass off. Good times. Now back to 887' msl.

Road Report #10

Super Bowl Sunday. We hauled our asses back to Aspen Mountain for one last day of skiing. Crummy shooting weather again today. My take was limited. Since nobody was on the mountain today, due to the Super Bowl I presume, we had the Gondola to ourselves. So I took advantage and was able to stand next to the door, open the window all the way and use the live view on the 5d M2 to compose some shots of the terrain below.

We cut the day short for beers at the Ajax Tavern then the Super Bowl at the Belly Up bar. Giddy up!

Road Report #9

Today I decided to tackle the Highland Bowl again. Terrible weather this time. Low vis and snow. But we did it. I took the same route off the peak as the other day. Was too damn fun last time not to.

Road Report #8

We hit Aspen Mountain today. I'll be dammed, the sun came out (kind of) for an hour. Finally got some contrast to work with.

Check out bottom image with Aspen airport way the hell down there!

Road Report #7

Skiied Snowmass today. Odd day weather wise. 3/4 of the mountain was in the clouds with heavy snow on the top 1/4. Kinda starting to wonder if the sun will reveal itself this trip. Anyway, these kind of days force creativity.

Road Report #6

Got up this morning hell bent on snapping some frames of the Maroon Bells. What better way to do that than from 12,392'. We hiked up the Highland Bowl at the Aspen Highlands, about a :45 hike after a snowcat ride. Weather was moving in so respectable images of the Bells were hard to come by. Snapped a bunch on the way up and at the top as well. One hell of a ski down. Dropped in on Be One and cut across to Ozone. Both steep as hell. 45° pitch in fact. Had to be extra careful with a Canon 5dII and a couple L lenses in my backpack.

Middle image is of the Maroon Bells and Pyramid Peak, both over 14,000'.

Bottom image... yours truly.

Road Report #5

Hooked up with the fellas. Didn't get much shooting in today. Mostly took advantage of a down day, pushed a few hundred frames from the past weekend through Lightroom, did selects and took advantage of a decent wifi.

Did walk around Snowmass a bit. Ghost town.

Road Report #4

Checkout day. Moving ops up valley to Snowmass for the week. Figured I would canvas the area of Glenwood Springs in search of landscapes and what not before leaving the area. Not really knowing this region of Colorado all that well, I hit up a souvenir shop to get some ideas of where the hell to go in lieu of aimlessly driving around. Judging by the postcards, Glenwood Canyon and the Glenwood Hot Springs is where it's at. Hopped into the car and drove east on I-70 for 20 miles and saw some sweet landscapes but figured out quickly that there is nowhere to f*cking stop and behold the surroundings. Finally pulled over at the Hanging Lake rest stop, grabbed a few frames and took off back to Glenwood Springs.

Swung by the Hot Springs, shot a few frames of a gigantic natural hot spring pool before swinging the whip up valley to Snowmass. Found an interesting mountain along the way that looked like it was made of dirt. (Bottom frame)