Dog Love

Nothing Better than your own backyard

Golden Gate Park

Light Modifiers.

The question I am most asked by photographers. "Have you seen any new/creative light modifications while out there assisting?"

There are the typical standbys. The Beauty Dish is an effective constant in many photographers bag of tricks. Of course the medium softbox is another perfect standby. A few that I see a bit less of are medium strips with grids, I highly recommend anyone who does portraits to give those inserts a try. Pro Camera and Calumet rent them but quantities are limited in the SF rental market so reserve them in advance.


My new favorite is the elinchrome system. Not the generic octabank you see at every corporate set from here to New York but some of their smaller modifiers. The rotalox spot is my new favorite. It gives detail in the shadows but still has that directional softness we have all come to love.....and over use! Plus they are easy to travel with and come with the case! TAKE THAT BEAUTY DISH!

This will help you!

Want to keep canon utility on your computer, but hate that it keeps auto loading,and slowing down/sometimes crashing Capture One? Make your digital tech, assistant, yourself happy and do the following!

Go to Application>Image Capture>Preferences>Camera>then select NO APPLICATION!

The Moose

Love the natural light studios, can't resist them.

Cupertino & Berkeley

Had a wonderful time working with the New Yorkers. Nice to have some east coast snobbery to keep me from going completely N. Cal Hippie. Sad to have busted up the cube truck, but hey sometimes things just don't go as planned. Check out Marco's website, his agency is the same as Herb Ritts.....Perhaps another legend in the making. He also has a great assistant, Tara.

My Dusty Canon 50mm Macro

This old lens has served me well. I bought it on my 18th birthday, along with my EOS 3. The poor little thing just can't hold focus any longer. Hard to let the thing go but the repair man says it can't be salvaged. 12 years isn't bad for a lens. Time to get the 100mm and say farewell to over a decade of use. This photo was taken with the addition of an extension tube, that luckily doesn't need replacing.

Mavis

Thanks to Caren Alpert for the use of her beautiful studio. Rentals are available and the space has a huge freight elevator! I used the Profoto Umbrella for this shot and I love the soft wrap around light. Cant believe this was a F11.

Montara

Nice long hike up the Montara hillside, this is a view towards Pacifica. It's a long 11 miles with a 2200 elevation gain. It's the best time of year to enjoy some vibrant green outdoors! Also a dog friendly hike. The Mavis was in heaven.

Fun Photo "Editing" Solutions

Seems like everyone has their favorite lately and we have all seen the pictures on facebook of the people using them, but I was wondering what some of the photographers I work with are using for their snapshots.

Poladroids are really cute and are now supported outside of just the mac native platform. Plus they always have that great muted color.

Photoshop lite made the list but many said it bogged down their Iphone.

The mill from the UK is really cool and allows for a lot of individual color tweeks. Thanks to Mike Sugrue for that one.

Camera bag is one of the most useful for catchy fun pics of about anything. It is very user friendly.

My Personal favorite is the best camera You can frame,vignette, and send everything to all the popular social networking sites out there. It is also great for quickly converting to Black and White It's easy to use and you have probably already seen its effects all over!

Hunters Point

Simplify

I have long been an admirer of her work and have seen exhbits in LA,New York, San Francisco. This looks like a great opportunity to see some of her lesser known photographs.

Diane Arbus: Christ in a lobby and other Uknown or Almost Known Works

Check it Out!

Gift of Growing

The Project is complete. Everyone linked to the project was incredibly patient and creative as we overcame some pretty extreme technical glitches. We learned a lot regarding the capacaties of Capture One 5 Pro edition with both Canon and Nikon cameras. My advice in the end. NO TIME LAPSE WITH CAPTURE EVER AGAIN! It's back end file setup is a nightmare for even the most patient DP. Additionaly the PC version is not very stable due to problems with Windows .NET programming. Any Canon owner would do much better using DPP with a interverlometer. Lesson learned.....on to the next project.

Apostrophe Appreciates

Currently working with a great group of people including the amazing Tim Nackashi, and Caspian Michalowski for the community garden project Gift of Growing. Here is a video of the initial setup.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/19082299@N00/4153960276

I can't wait for this wheatgrass to start growing so I can see what Tim creates in post production.

Batteling the new Macbook Monitors

I just bought the Color Munki from X-Rite. Since it is a spectrometer it is working much better with the LED technology. Most of the pesky red is out of the skintones. It definitly works much better than the X-rite display tool. There is a definite lack of contrast after calibration that is still being worked out. Another concern is that it appears 2 stops brighter than it appears on a standard monitor. The new driver for Snow Leopard is great improvement but still has some kinks. Here's hoping that everyone will get on the same page soon so we can all stop worrying about it and shoot!

APA Something Personal

I am really excited to exhibit a piece from the project I have been working on most of this year. The APA something personal exhibit is one of my favorite holiday parties. There are plenty of industry professionals, and talented artists around during this great holiday party. Click on the link for instructions to download an invitation. Again this is a great event for photographers at any level in their career. http://www.apanational.com/i4a/pages/Index.cfm?pageID=3960

Wedding Post Production

Ever get the post production blues? I do. During the down time I always miss shooting. Hours in front of the computer retouching, designing, struggling with the ancient dilemma of woman vs. machine. Luckily there is always a payoff.

Because everyone loves film!

Jose Villa is giving a few of these little guys away on his wedding blog. Leave a message and he will randomly pick a few winners. http://josevillablog.com/2009/11/win-2-instax-mini-7s-came This is a great way to capture all the upcoming holidays. Who says Polaroid is dead? Well maybe Polaroid is but Fuji is living on and capturing images the Old School Way.