Shooting The Police (with camera)

SDHS junior Adam Lacey

On Monday I had the privilege of working with the San Diego Police Department's Star/Pal Team hosting a youth basketball clinic. As Defined in their own words: "STAR/PAL (Sports Training, Academics, Recreation/Police Athletic League) is a nonprofit organization that provides over 10,000 youth services annually in inner-city neighborhoods throughout the city and county of San Diego. STAR/PAL offers free educational, athletic, and recreational programs which focus on promoting youth safety, positive life choices, and academic success. All STAR/PAL program directors are full-time law enforcement officers who coordinate unique programs and recruit additional law enforcement and community volunteers to work directly with underserved youth. By bringing youth & law enforcement officers together in this manner, STAR/PAL helps build safer communities in the long run."

This is the second sports event I have photographed for Star/Pal and it was equally rewarding. About Seventy kids from the greater San Diego area attended, They warmed up with drills and stretching, experienced six different skill building stations and competed against Volunteers in a series of scrimmage games.

 To learn more about the Star/Pal program got to www.starpal.org

Mind and Body Meets Lights and Camera

On location for Club Intrawest to capture the story of a remarkable yoga retreat designed to bring its guests into a state of balance, peace and well-being. The goals for this assignment are to convey a sense of tranquility, and enjoyment; showcase an amazing property; and allow the viewer to relate to the experience. After a pre-shoot scouting trip, the creative director and I selected three locations for our morning shoot, giving the client a wide selection of imagery that compliments the landscape and architecture as well as the yoga vacation. With careful planning and a clear objective we are able to capture these (my favorite) images and many more in two hours.

hand painted, hand photographed

One question I often ask of myself is "how can I keep the integrity of a subject in a commercial environment?" In other words, how can I maintain a product's individuality while giving it a professional feel? Shooting the hand painted pieces from Metolius Ridge Tile posed this quandary. From my home town Eugene, Oregon (by coincidence) Metolius Ridge Tile hand paints individual pieces and mosaic murals on ceramic tile. You will have to decide for yourself if the pictures do the art any justice. I'm just glad to be a part of the process. These images were taken in mixed light at a home in the Hideaway Club.

See these images and more soon at: http://www.metoliusridgetile.com 

Seeing Intensity, Seeing Red

Last week at the Festival of Life I shot Red who opened for Third Day. Red is one of the most energetic bands I have ever seen with driving rock rhythms you can feel in your chest. I had unfettered access to them during their set and I walked away supercharged.  

Clean Sweep

One thing I often hear from small business clients is, "We want people to know that we are big enough to handle their needs and small enough to offer personal attention to their needs." The challenge for me is to portray that in pictures. One day shooting for Cleanovations, a cunningly successful service business, gave me the perfect opportunity to demonstrate just how BIG a small business can be. With very little prompting on my part, I was able to follow them for the day and capture them hard at work for some pretty noteworthy customers.  I have a new-found appreciation for these pristine buildings now that I know how much work goes into keeping them nice and shiny.

Having Fun -as always...
-J

The Daylight-Only Fashion Shoot

O.K. The truth is, I love lighting, I love strobes and softboxes, gridspots, gels, I love wireless technology that triggers all my lights in synchronous perfection. And most of all- I love creating environments and moods with lighting. But sometimes the conditions are just right for what you want- and to add anything would be overkill. The following couple of images were shot under completely ambient light and the last one is what I call a target of opportunity- One of those moments when you see something in a moment and grab it before it's gone.  

That's a lot of fun for me.

-J

The Whole Shooting Match

I Just Completed a week of shooting for a Colorado-based action sports company where we photographed a host of images for their 2010 product line (a bit late I know- but it's a summer sport). The shoot began with studio stills of components and accessories, moved into soft goods on models and culminated with an exciting hunt for lifestyle images on barren desert roads in Southern California. Here are some samples from the assignment.

 

The project was a tremendous success.

Check out all the results at www.streetswell.com

-J

Portrait in a Box: Part 2 (Lightroom Retouching)

Quick Lightroom fixes for portraits. I touched on some of these techniques in an earlier post but I wanted to talk a bit about building presets for your retouching to make the process simple and fast.

This post is dedicated to quick Lightroom fixes. Using the photo from the part 1 post; These are the presets that I like to use when gently retouching a portrait. We start by building the presets. There are three that see the most use. They are: Brighten Eyes, Soften Skin, and Whiten Teeth. these seem to cover the bulk of fixes aside from cloning blemishes.

Here are the settings that I like.

Brighten Eyes

    Exposure +.25

    Brightness + 5

Soften Skin

    Clarity -50

    Sharpness-25

Whiten Teeth

    Brighten +5

    Saturation -30

After each of these choose: "Save Current Settings as preset" and name them accordingly.

You have a lot of latitude to increase the individual sliders after you have brushed over the affected area. I like to keep things natural and try not to make the changes too obvious. the teeth have a huge impact as digital cameras seem to yellow them badly. this is a fast way to clean up a few things and greatly improve your finished product.

 

These are the before and after for my purposes. gentle teeth whitening, blemish removal, eye brightening and skin softening. I also vignetted the image a little bit to center the focus on the subject.

Portrait in a Box: Part 1 (The Shoot)

   So the phone rings and there is someone who wants to have some pictures taken for their website. "How about a nice environmental portrait?" I ask- armed with all the cool "strobist" ideas and always hoping for additions to my portfolio. "No thanks, I just want a professional portrait for my work." responds the caller. "Dang" I think to myself.

This is a two-part post on shooting a studio style portrait on location. The second post will be about the post production in Lightroom.

Part 1: A Portrait Studio in a Box. For this type of shot you need only a few lights and some space to work. The picture below was photographed in the Client's front entry.

One trip from the car brings in the gear: here is the list.

3- Nikon SB-800 flashes
3- light stands
1- Botero collapsible background

1- Photoflex 42" Silver/White collapsible reflector

1- 48" Paul C. Buff white umbrella

1- 43" Wescott silver Umbrella

2- Pocket Wizards

There are a lot of ways to build a portrait lighting setup. A simple Key/Fill combination with subtle rim light and background light were used here.
I used the PW's to fire the Key light and slaved (optical) the other two flashes. this will work with almost any flash and trigger combination.
I placed the background light on the floor and used the third stand to hold the fill reflector.
In the next post we'll talk about the lightroom work.