Amy and Eli

Amy and Eli were married in Palm Desert on May 9 at the Desert Falls Country Club. The ceremony was on the golf course with reception following inside. There is an expanse of fairways around the wedding site and i was surprised at how beautiful the enviroment was (I grew up here and have seen alot of golf courses). They were a lot of fun to photograph and prioritized the celebration of their marriage. I felt great freedom to be creative and enjoy my interactions with the bride, groom, and loved ones. These are a few images from the day.

From the rehearsal:


Getting ready:

First sight of the bride:

Ceremony with pictures of the pair:

Reception:

We had a great time.

These and others available at www.joelcmmins.com

Agriculture and Photography

When people think of Palm Springs they don't often think farming, but the Coachella Valley is a major player in western states agriculture. I have to admit I felt like I had traveled to another place to photograph a bell pepper harvest, but in reality I was only 20 minutes from my home in Palm Desert. This assignment gave me the chance to take a more photojournalistic approach to my imagery. Being out in the fields at sunrise and hearing the low hum of the tractors as they idle along receiving bucket after bucket of hand picked bell peppers gave me lots of great compositions and the sense of being immersed in an environment. I had fantastic natural light all morning, even at the packing shed where the peppers travel by conveyor to be washed, sorted and packed within minutes (literally less than one hour)of being picked. The following are a few favorite images.

OK that was fun shooting, time to get back to work. Here's a nice report portrait.

This is shot with two tungsten gelled flashes and a WB of 3200K (warms the tones just a bit over the 2950K tungsten balance). The flash for the subject is diffused through a 43" shoot-through umbrella and the background flash is grid-spotted onto the conveyor. The light blue cast in the frame is daylight.

Environmental Portraits Strike Back

This week has been very busy and I will probably spread my posts out as I get time. This series is from the Palm Desert Chamber of Commerce. These are a few "candid" Staff shots (I use the term candid very loosely).

The image below was shot mid morning with a lot of competing natural light as the building was designed with massive glass elements on both sides. I elected to use a single SB-800 flash fired through a 6ft by 8ft white muslin which provided a giant key light source off camera left. the muslin was parallel to my lens and in front of me enough that the infra-red master would trigger the flash. I also uses a small flag to prevent lens flare as the flash was basically perpendicular to me.There is nothing but daylight here in the next frame but I liked the composition and I admit that I abandoned a three light setup after fighting the sun and loosing to get this shot at near mid-day just out of the direct desert sunlight. Lastly, this portrait employed three flashes all gelled to tungsten. the first and closest (to camera) flash was bounced off a white muslin that both shielded the subject from daylight and diffused the source enough to get a soft and even glow. The second flash was fired through a grid spot onto the old photo next to her to add interest and give continuity to the warmth of the gel. the last flash is subtly fired into the etched glass down the hall- again for interest and continuity. This was a fun and challenging shoot with highly mixed light great architecture.

Environmental Portraits

I had an opportunity today to photograph a series of portraits for a local Remodel contractor. I had to move quickly and get nine different settings for nine different people. This requires fast thinking, light weight gear and a strategy for environmental portraiture (thanks again David Tejada).

I used two Nikon SB-900's with an SU-800 commander for almost all of them. I balanced for ambient light and created the effects where I wanted them. I really like the SB-900's for their expanded versatility over the tried and true SB-800's, the fuctions for the SB-900 are very easy to change quickly and that is awesome when working without an assistant.

I wanted to capture sincerity in their expressions and give each person a distinct setting.
These kind of images can do wonders to create a sense of humanity within a corporate setting.
It's a great way to put a face (or series of faces) on a business.

Creating Sunlight for Interiors

I recently photographed a beautiful home in which I was posed with an interesting challenge. How do you convey that there is a great big window in the room when it is not in the frame? Second, how do you add romance to a small room that is really nothing more than a bed and some end tables? the answer came from a technique I saw Joe McNally use in a Nikon video.

With a single SB-900 flash and tungsten gel on a 13' stand. I was able to mimic the golden glow of the sun through the big arched window. Adding some interest to the shot and giving the viewer that sense of romance that makes an image so inviting. I used pocket wizards to trigger the flash at full power for the effect.

Lastly, I just experienced a lighting workshop with David Tejada called Small Strobes Big Results in Orange County. It was dynamite! A great class and really cool people. I strongly recommend it to anyone pursuing this kind of photography. I can't wait to put some of these new techniques to use.

Thanks to all who were in the class.

San Diego Harbor

San Diego is one of my favorite cities in the United States, I always enjoy the chance to go there for work and what's more I love the harbor most of all. So this wedding was a particularly good time for me.

However, With a late afternoon ceremony, we had very little time for photos with the cityscape in the background after the ceremony ended. This dilemma gave me an oppertunity to employ a quick lighting set-up to bring our night skyline and our bride and groom together for some really fun shots. In fact, it worked so well that we shot several couples in this manner.

More wedding imagery at joelcummins.com

New Website

Well, after lot's of deliberation I have finally hammered out all the details of the new website. Regrettably, my blog has suffered quite a bit but I am now ready to resume posting. this photo is a recent addition from an architectural shoot. this and many others are available for viewing on the new site.

If for some reason you are reading this and didn't get here by way of the website, the address is http://www.joelcummins.com/