New Fashion Sneakers

I went on a little shoe shopping spree today and bought three new pair of shoes.  Two pair of fashion sneakers, and one pair of dress shoes.  Now, since I'm a photographer (and I had today off), I couldn't just snap a few iphone pictures to show off my new shoes.  I should do it better, so I decided to set them up for a shoot.

I saw a picture on flickr recently that was sort of inspiration for this, so I went out and bought some fishing line and spent the next several hours setting them up.

Here's the final images along with a few setup shots.

This last image is a screen shot from Capture One showing what the file looks like straight from the camera with no post.  The only thing done in Photoshop was cloning out all the string and adding the spot gradient (thanks to Jeremy for the advice).  Three strobes were used for lighting.

This was a fun, albeit time consuming shoot.  I haven't done this type of "hover" shoot before and although the images aren't perfect, it was a fun afternoon.

Advertising Shoot for Travis Training

I had the recent opportunity to photograph a small ad for Travis Training.  Travis Training is a division of Travis Industries, that factory trains service technicians from all across the globe.  They have a awesome state-of-the-art factory training facility, as well as video programs on line.  The goal of the photo shoot was to create a poster ad to help promote their programs in a edgy, but light-hearted way.

The shoot was really a lot of fun because the vibe for the ad was serious, but also poking fun at the same time.  I scouted several locations within their manufacturing facility and they decided on two that were close to each other so we could shoot both options quickly and easily.

The first location was near a stack of metal frames.  I had a pretty good idea of the look they were going for and ended up using six strobes for the shot (you can see three of them :)).  This is how it looked when we arrived, and when we finished.

The next location was in front of a giant metal press.  Again, I used six lights on this shot, and it's the one they chose for their advertisement.  The shot below will be blown up large and mounted inside their training facility.

Seattle Headshot Photographer - Session with John Q.

I had the great pleasure of shooting headshots for John Q Smith the other day.  John is a experienced long-time actor currently based here in Seattle.  He needed new, updated headshots and I was happy to help out.  We talked beforehand about creating range for him during the shoot.  Since he can be cast as a scruffy outdoors-man or villain with a beard, we scheduled our shoot so he could come in with some growth.  Once we had different looks with the beard, he shaved and we shot a whole different range of looks.