Still want a copy of that sweet Super Moon Eclipse Photo? You're in luck! There are two sizes to pick from (10"w x 4"h or 30"w x 10"h) and they're both on sale until Friday at midnight.
Don't see the size you want, give me a shout here and let me know what you're looking for.
Happy National Coffee Day, everyone. And to celebrate, I'm sharing some photos from my trip to Henry's House of Coffee in San Francisco this past April.
I love traveling. Love it. Add in a photo shoot and I love it even more. Add hand roasted coffee and I'm pretty much in heaven. So, when friend and fellow designer Mike Sterner asked if I could hop a plane to San Francisco to get photos for Henry's House of Coffee, I jumped.
April was a busy month and the trip ended up being a really quick endeavor: fly in Tuesday evening, shoot all day Wednesday, then catch the red-eye home and wind up back in Wisconsin early Thursday morning– a bit of a whirlwind. But the shoot was amazing. And so was the coffee.
I've been a firm believer in coffee for a long time. I would even consider myself devout. But to be honest I didn't know that much about it, except for the simple truth that it makes me bearable to anyone that has to talk to me before noon. (Thank you, coffee; we are all grateful). Over the course of our shoot, Henry and his son, Hrag, gave me a crash course in coffee, and I seriously should have taken notes. We talked about everything from roasts to flavor profiles to the origins of different beans. I was even treated to a cupping of three of their coffees to compare. It was simply amazing.
But even more than the education in coffee, it was amazing to watch them at work. One of the things I love about assignment photography is getting to watch someone do what they do best. You never fly across the country to take pictures of someone who's mediocre at what they do, right? You go to see someone who's great, someone at the absolute top of their game.
Coffee roasting is a family tradition for the Kalebjians. Henry and Hrag are second- and third-generation roasters. They are masters of their craft. And, for a photographer, it doesn't hurt that the tools of their trade are pretty photogenic, too. The back room is filled with burlap bags and wooden barrels of green coffee from around the world. The walls are lined with handmade shelves filled with tins of freshly roasted coffee in every tone from lightest tan to the richest chocolate black.
And then there's the roaster. Planted right in the corner of their Noriega St. shop for all the world to see, it looks like something out of the 1800's: all black steel and brass knobs with a round glass portal into the roasting drum and a green enamel cooling pan.
To watch Henry at the helm of that magical machine is to watch an artist at work. He's constantly checking the sampling tube, smelling the roasting beans, listening for the "first crack"–the sound that indicates a change in the roasting beans. All with stopwatch in hand, tracking the minute details of each batch for his records. And at the precise moment, the hatch is lifted and Henry disappears in a blue swirl of smoke and steam as the beans tumble out into the cooling pan, stirred by mechanical arms as they come down to room temperature. Let me tell you, the smell in that room is absolutely incredible.
Great coffee, great photos, great trip.
Freshly roasted beans cool before being transferred to storage tins.
Single-estate Wallenford Jamaican Blue Mountain beans.
Sometime last week, there was a shift; a subtle, nearly imperceptible change. I can't say precisely when. But it happened. It definitely happened. One night (maybe Tuesday; it's really hard to tell) without great fanfare and witnessed only by the stars, summer softly became fall.
And now it's the season of harvest. The season of gathering back in all the hope of spring and canning it for winter. The season of collecting seeds and putting roots in the dry darkness of the cellar. The season of splitting wood.
To celebrate that season, I'm working on a new series of photos called Harvest. They are simple and clean, the plentiful symbols of the season on display. Stay tuned for more new images and a post on how they were shot. And watch for prints and greeting cards from the Harvest Series to be available soon in the HLP Gallery and Store.
Light is the key to photography. And controlling that light to tell the story you want to tell is the key to making the images you want. For Bones of the Land I wanted to tell a story about something really small. Which meant I had to take the same lighting concepts that I use when I shoot big things like people and cars and angry bears, and apply them to something really small, like minerals. And that turned out to be way harder than I thought it would be.
For each diptych, the photo on white (like the one below) was shot by placing the rock sample on a piece of plexiglass suspended 2 inches above a white background and lighting from slightly above the plain of the plexi with one mono block firing into a 36x48 softbox. That created big soft even light across the whole sample and I could use the feathered edge of the light to control the slightly offset shadow and gradient that I wanted on the white below the rock. It took a little tinkering with each sample, but, all in all, pretty simple. (These photos were shot with a 70-200mm f/2.8L, mostly around f/20 handheld standing above the samples).
The second photo of each sample (like the one at the top of the page) was more difficult. Like, a lot more. And here's why: when I diagrammed my lighting concepts, it was based on the idea that I could put my light source anywhere in the hemisphere of space from the plain of the plexi up into open space. Which I could, but I forgot one thing: the camera. Which, as you may know, is kind of important. Critical, in fact. And shooting with a 5d MKII with a stacked 2x teleconverter, an extension tube, and a 16-35 f/2.8L or 70-200 f/2.8L on a ball head tripod perched over the sample, not small.
But regardless of the bulkiness of the camera setup, the real problem is all about apparent size. Apparent size? Okay. Say you're shooting a portrait of a person. You stand 10 feet away and even with the biggest, most ridiculous lens you can find, the camera blocks out only a tiny percentage of the hemisphere of space around that person. Its apparent size compared to the subject is relatively small. That leaves a huge range of options for where to place the light source. If your working with a large light source, you can even put the camera between the light and subject with minimal impact on the final image.
Next, try to photograph something from less than an inch away from the subject, and the camera now blocks out a massive portion of the hemisphere of available space. The exact same camera now has a huge apparent size. In fact, most of the angles from which you could light the subject are now eliminated because of the shadow cast by the camera and lens.
Still a little fuzzy on apparent size? Okay, here's an even simpler description. Hold your hand out at arms length. It takes up a tiny portion of your field of view, right? Now hold it one inch from tip of your nose. Now it takes up a huge part of your field of view. Same hand, different apparent size. Got it? Good.
This is a pretty basic photo concept (it applies to light sources too), but I'll be honest, the impact it would have on my lighting setup for this particular project didn't really occur to me until I looked at my first test shot for macro portion of the series. My work flow at that point went something like this: take photo > review photo > face palm > return to drawing board.
But after that trip back to the drawing board I came up with something that worked fairly well. I ended up putting the light source next the camera, very close at roughly a 90 degree angle to the lens axis, so that it could pitch light into the small gap between the end lens element and the sample. This would result in a fairly severe look for a portrait, but for the relatively flat surface of the samples it accentuated the texture of the surface. Then, by adding white reflectors on two sides very close to the sample (or perched on top of the larger samples, just outside the frame) I could lighten the stronger shadows cast by the very steep angle of the light. And there you go: directional light, controlled shadow, texture; all the stuff your looking for in a good macro image. All it took was a little trial and error.
**Don't forget to join us on Friday, January 17 from 4-6 pm in the Dexter Library on the Northland College campus for the opening reception of Bones of the Land. And stay tuned for more.
Sure, there's still some snow on the ground, but summer is just around the bend. I promise. So, let's brush up on a key summer photo skill:
There are a few things as iconically estival (Yes, estival is actually a word. For God's sake look it up, people.) as the great American past time of finding something sort of tall-ish and then jumping off of it into something sort of cold and wettish. It's tradition. And more than that, it's frickin' awesome. Ideally, the distance to the water will be greater than or equal to the height at which you feel slightly uncomfortable. And the water will be less than or equal to the temperature at which you gasp slightly upon entry. If either of these factors is not in the optimal range, the equation can still be balanced by attempting to invert one's self in the distance between the take off and landing. All complex math aside, jumping off of stuff is neat. And so is having good photographic evidence of said act. So here's a few summer photo tips for capturing the perfect cliff jump.
***WARNING: Jumping off stuff is dangerous. Always make sure you have a safe landing zone clear of obstacles and with enough water to cushion any fall. Also, try not to be dumb. You have been warned. Anything you do now is your own fault.***
Choose an angle- Pick a location from which to shoot that gives your audience some context information. Let us see the jumper, the water and the rock. Also keep in mind where the light is coming from. A jumper silhouetted against a bright sky can be cool, but it may not convey much information about what's going on. Try changing your angle to show us more of the scene.
Set your exposure- The key here is to choose an accurate exposure that has the capacity to freeze fast motion (which means you need a high shutter speed) and enough depth of field to accommodate a moving subject. Based on the standard principles of gravity and acceleration the average person will fall at a rate of...um...hang on a second, carry the 2...fast. They'll be going fast. So you're going to need a shutter speed in the range of at least 1/1000 of a second to truly freeze their rapid downward motion. Not to mention capturing the epic curtain of water caused by their often less than graceful entry into the drink. This is one of those activities where a faster shutter speed will never fail you. Aim high.
Lock the Focus- The auto focus system on most cameras will struggle to lock onto a moving subject and fire off a frame in the time that it takes a person to exit a cliff top and enter the water. That means you'll miss the shot. So you're better off switching over to manual and focusing on something that will be the same distance from you as the jumper at the optimal location in their descending arc. With the camera pre-focused, you can fire off frames with no delays. Now you're ready.
Time your shot- Don't just set your camera to rapid fire and machine gun frames as your screaming friend careens towards the water. Even high frame rate bodies miss moments in between the frames. Instead of trying to capture every moment, watch for the perfect moment, and try to capture just that. One great image will always be better than 10 mediocre ones. After all, how many are you really going to hang on your wall? This kind of timing takes practice. But with a little work you can start to anticipate when the greatest moments will happen. Combine that with good composition and you'll have a great photo.
Now get out there and try not to hurt anybody!
Just a quick photo from last week before we head off to New Mexico (where, apparently, there is no water) for Thanksgiving with my brother, sister-in-law, and new nephew, Simon. This photo was taken in the little building around the artesian on the west side of Ashland, where clean potable water flows out of the ground twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Incredible. A few years back, when we lived in a little house with no running water, this is where our water came from. No need to boil or filter or anything. Just fill a jug and take it home. Shooting this photo reminded me that I am thankful for many things: for family and friends that love and care for me, for being a working photographer in a tough economy, and for living in a place where clean drinking water just flows out of the ground. Not everyone has that. Not by a long shot. So, to whom it may concern: thank you.
P.S. Lots of people have asked how I got this photo to turn out the way it did, so watch for a tutorial on how it was done (a.k.a. how to freeze motion with flash), sometime later this month. In the mean time, have a happy holiday, everyone.
I've been doing a lot of portrait work in the last couple months and I've been noticing a common thread that runs through almost every session. This is certainly not new, but I've just been paying closer attention. And I've found that almost every shoot seems to contain a conversation that goes something like this:
Subject: Okay, make sure to get my good side.
Me: Okay, no problem...which one is your good side?
-OR-
Subject: Okay, just don't get my scar in this.
Me: Yeah, of course not...so, where exactly is your scar?
-OR-
Subject: You can photo-shop this, right?
Me: Sure...but what would you like me to change?
And let me follow that up by saying that I haven't been out documenting a herd of Ug-o's. It's been normal, attractive, real people. To my eyes none of them have had anything to be embarrassed about. It's all an issue of confidence.
As a photographer, it's also interesting that everyone has entrusted to me, a relative stranger, their insecurity; the part of themselves about which they feel the most self conscious. They obviously feel the need to bring it up, as if I have clearly seen their hideous deformity, but am too polite to mention it. To them it's the elephant in the room. I take this as a compliment; that my subjects feel comfortable enough to divulge these nagging self doubts. But I am often left wondering why they feel this way in the first place. In almost all of these situations, I have not noticed what they perceive to be their biggest flaw until they point it out. And even then, it has never stood out to me as an issue. It's not as if anyone has come in and said "Okay, let's do these photos, just don't get this third hairy, ear growing out of the middle of my forehead."
Ultimately, I feel a little bad for everyone, knowing that they have this thing about themselves that is always hanging around in the background, undercutting their confidence. And the great irony is that, for the most part, it doesn't even register for the other people around them.
All cards on the table, I will admit to not being fond of having my own photo taken. I have a weird tendency to let my left eye lid sag, and I often adopt an awkward grin that makes me look slightly creepy and dim-witted. It's hard to describe, but let's just say that it's not all together flattering. It is my great and sincere hope that I only make this face for photos, because if I'm walking around like that all the time...I don't even want to think about it. I am also not impressed by images that in anyway capture the back of my head, where apparently the ratio of hair coverage to vacant scalp is rapidly becoming 1:1. I do not like this. So to my subjects, let me say this: I'm with you. You're not alone. I get it.
But I would like to propose that we start to change the way we think about ourselves, taking comfort in the fact that, for the most part, others don't even see the flaws that we each obsess over. What if we started to see ourselves as others do? What if our scars and wrinkles could be marks of a life well lived instead of blemishes to hide from the world? What if we flaunted what we were most proud of or rather than trying to conceal our insecurities? What if we loved ourselves?
Let's do that instead.
Some still life shots for a new photo installation project. More to come. Stay tuned.
I was up at Spirit Creek Farm near Cornucopia, Wisconsin, this morning for what will probably be the last farm photo expedition of the fall. The main part of the growing season is fairly well behind us now and the possible snow fall this evening seems like a good end-cap for the year. This has been a great fall of learning about our local food producers and how they're working to feed our community. Thanks to the Sauter-Sargent's and everyone who found the time to make these photos possible.
Like every farm visit, this morning was educational. I learned about what it takes to grow cabbage, and what it takes to turn that cabbage into sauerkraut, and what it takes to build a certified kitchen. But the real stand out lesson of the day was this: the personal habits of male goats are appalling. Appalling. I'll just leave it at that.
I made it out to a couple more farms at the end of last week and the beginning of this week to get the a few more images in the series I'm shooting for Northland College on local food producers (see a couple posts down for some of the earlier shoots in the series). Above are Steve and Landis at Hermit Creek Farm and below are two shots of their beautiful produce. Below that are the McCutchens at Angle Acres Farm and some of their heritage breed livestock. Thanks again to all the farmers who have taken time out of their busy schedules during a critical part of the growing season to help me get these photos. You folks are all amazing. Keep up the great work.
Okay, I couldn't resist: one more cow photo. I shot this right before she blew a big snot rocket all over the camera. Turns out that stuff is a lot harder to get off of a camera than I thought. So it goes.
It's a been a crazy week, but I managed to fit in an engagement session on Tuesday evening for Lincoln and Elise at Houghton Falls. This is one of my favorites from that afternoon. Great place to shoot and, of course, great people. Gotta love that combination. Congratulations, you crazy kids.
These are the first in a series of photos I'm shooting for Northland College of the local farms and farmers who are providing sustainable foods for the campus cafeteria. This project has been amazing. Great people, beautiful places, and, of course, amazing food. Before I get too far, I want to give a special thanks to all the farmers who have a made time during a really busy season to help with this. You guys are a amazing. Above are Todd and Kelsey from River Road Farm. And below is the lettuce they're growing.
This is Chris Duke of Great Oak Farm with his laying hens, and below are his bees.
And then, the two photos below are a soy bean field I passed along the way. I'll probably get sued by Cargill or Monsanto for even photographing these genetic mutants. In fact, there's probably a man in a Monsanto cap slashing the tires on my car right now.
While it still makes for an interesting photo, this is text book monoculture: massive fields of the same subsidized crop devoid of ecological balance and nutritional value. It's crazy that we call all three of these things farms. They are not the same. Not even remotely. After walking around at River Road Farm and Great Oak Farm constantly surrounded by a diversity of life, this field of soy feels like the surface of the moon. Even stranger is the fact that we as a society have decided to aid and abed this version of agriculture that serves us least while we place nearly insurmountable road blocks in the path of the others. Agribusiness has played us all for fools. And, sadly, it worked. Time to open your eyes, everyone. Time to change.
The staff at Sun Printing isn't just any old staff, so theyre not getting just any old staff photos. I love companies that have the stones to do something a little different. Here's a little peek at a couple of the portraits coming out of the photo-shoot today in beautiful Wausau, Wisconsin. These are for their new website, which let me tell you is going to be sweet (they showed me the top secret files, I can't say more or they'd have to kill me). Needless to say, it's going to be a little more light hearted than the previous version. It's been awesome to work with the folks in their creative department to plan and pull off this shoot. Lots of great ideas bouncing around the room. Watch for more in the next couple days.
Last Friday's post was an intriguing view into the actual interests of you, the devoted readership of the Hired Lens Blog. The post, containing a photo of me with a black eye and a bloody nose (both of which were produced in a little program called Photoshop, sorry to disappoint), was far and away the most visited page in the history of this site. I always thought the "most popular" title would fall to some other page, but no. It is clear that cute babies and striking portraits and photography tips (or just great life advice) are not what you come here to find. Not at all. I've discovered that what you, my beloved readers, truly want to see is photographic evidence that I have indeed received the savage beating so many of you apparently think I deserve. I also found it enlightening that no one (including my loving partner, Sarah) cried "photoshop!" but instead assumed that yes, of course Bob got mercilessly pummelled by someone. That just makes sense, when you think about it. Thanks, everybody. Your confidence is overwhelming.
While surprising, this new information is ultimately very useful in plotting the course of this blog into the foreseeable future. Give the people what they want, right? Therefore, when I'm in Wausau later this week for a photo shoot with Sun Printing, I'll tell the man pictured below (creative director/rugby aficionado Craig Bieri) that his massive and intricate tattoo makes him look like a little pansie. Should be interesting.
Wish me luck. Please keep reading, I'll post photos. I swear.
I don't shoot a lot of weddings anymore. There are a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which is the amount of time it takes to do it really well. The actual wedding, while still a lot of work, is really kind of the easy part. Then comes hours in front of a computer processing and sorting images, doing touch ups, ordering prints. It's a lot.
But every once in a while a wedding comes along that's just too interesting to pass up. That's how I ended up in the parking lot at Anglers All at 4:30 a.m. last Friday morning standing next to a man named "Big Jim" when he looked out at the lake and said, "It's a little lumpy out there."
That was accurate; it was lumpy out there. And at 5:10 a.m. we were scooting around the break wall at Second Landing and bashing our way through those exact lumps out to the light at the tip of Long Island for Jake & Bridget's wedding.
It was still cloudy when we left the landing and there was a pretty stiff breeze, but at the island, with the anchor down, and the bride and groom standing on the front deck, the sun poked through the clouds for a perfect dawn wedding followed by a little champagne on the beach. Congratulations, Jake and Bridget, not only on your recent nuptials, but also on having one of the most memorable weddings I've ever shot. Well done.
Special thanks also go out to Katie and Dave Gellatly of Solstice Outdoors for the use of their boat, which, for the record, I have re-christened the H.M.S. Awesome. You'd have been proud of me, Dave; I didn't even crash it into anything. Nothing big, anyway.
Listen up people: if you're interested in booking a senior portrait session (or any portrait session for that matter) with Hired Lens Photography, contact us soon because the calendar is getting pretty darn full. July has been packed, August is almost all booked (I only have two openings left towards the end of the month), and September is already filling up fast. And for anyone interested in doing something really different, I've got a couple new locations in the old bag of tricks for this season. Where are they? I'm not going to ruin the surprise, but trust me when I say that they're cool. Call 262.305.9187 or go to the contact page to book your shoot.
P.S. Last year, we had a couple people who went for the underwater senior portrait challenge but due to some bad weather, some bad luck, and some super cloudy water, we had to scrap the idea. So it goes. But I haven't given up. I'm reissuing the challenge and offering a 15% discount again for anyone that uses one of their portrait settings to do an underwater photo. If we have to abandon the plan because of bad conditions, you still get the discount. Any takers?
I'm just finishing the editing on a new batch of photos I shot for Wood Spirit Gallery a couple weeks ago. April and Jarrod are making some really beautiful things using some very traditional methods. As always, the really fun part of this job is talking to people and learning about what they do. I learned a ton during this shoot just by watching them work. For example, Jarrod uses a pole lathe to make bowls. It's an ancient technique that dates back to the 9th century (maybe earlier) when the Vikings were using it to make ale bowls. I understood the basic concept of this tool before this shoot, but this was the first time I'd actually seen one in use. And let me say it's a cool system. Very simple, but effective, especially with an artisan like Jarrod at the treadle. Check out their site for more info about what they make. And stay tuned for some more interesting photos in the next couple weeks.
The first real car I ever drove was a race car. I was ten or eleven and my cousin Jason was racing dirt track stock cars at the time. His car was pretty much exactly like the one in the last photo in this post. What possessed a man who spent all his free time working on his car to then allow that car to be driven by a ten year old, I will never know. But he boosted me in through the window, clipped me into the five point harness and crouched on the passenger side holding onto the roll cage while I drove for the first time. It was incredible. I'm not what you would call a stock car fan, but from that day on there has always been a little soft spot in my heart for dirt track racing. It's not like the big NASCAR events. It's all little teams of two or three guys working in garages and little shops and backyards, building a car on nickels and dimes, and giving it hell every Saturday night because its fun. And you can tell they're loving it.
Jason stopped racing a long time ago and I hadn't been to a track since he hung up his driving gloves, but yesterday I had a free night and Sarah was out of town, so I grabbed a camera and went to ABC Raceway in Ashland. If you've never been before, let me say that short track dirt racing is a quintessentially American past time: It's loud. It's dirty. And it's not quite like anything else I've ever seen. Like any new sporting experience, the key to really enjoying it is to pick someone to cheer for. I was rooting for the guys from Lakeshore Sales and Service since they replaced the brakes in my truck last week. Whoever you cheer for, win or lose, the fun is in the drama.
Since this kind of racing is so classic, I decided to shoot it in black and white with a heavy film grain to give it a more timeless look. These shots could be from any one of a thousand tracks on any summer Saturday night in the last 50 years. That effect, which roughly approximates a classic black and white film called Tri-X, also helps to cover the need for high ISO and cancels out the weird color combinations that come from a mix of halogen, tungsten, and sodium vapor stadium lighting. It's a very different feel than the rich colors and smooth gradients I usually try to get. It's not the right look for everything, but for this, I think it's perfect.
Over the past couple weeks, I've been working on some new photography for Spirit Creek Farm in Cornucopia, Wisconsin. If you're not familiar with their products, Spirit Creek specializes in lacto-fermented foods (read this if you're not sure what lacto-fermented means). They're also making really delicious garlic scape pesto now, too. Great stuff. I've been a huge fan of their curtido for a while and, beyond being a brat-grilling must at our house, their kraut was also a Good Food Award winner in 2011 and 2012. That's no small achievement.
I love food photography like this. Partly I think, because I love prepping and plating the food for the shoot (real chef's are probably cringing at what I've done with these, but I'm still proud of them). There's a little part of me that thinks I should have been a chef. Maybe in my next life.
Wow. It has been a busy frickin' week. Awesome, but busy. I was all over the map, thematically and literally, and next week shows no signs of slowing down. Plus, summer is now, beyond the shadow of a doubt, in full swing. I can tell because my forearms and the tops of my feet are a deep, swarthy tan. My legs, however, are still the delicate lily white of a man who wears long pants to work every day. If I wear shorts right now it looks like I'm still sporting a snug pair of freshly bleached thermals. The contrast is astounding, maybe even appalling. In photographic terms, I'd estimate the variation to be somewhere in the range of 8 full stops. Yikes. I need to find a little time to get some daylight on those puppies. Now that I've over-shared, here is a random smattering of this weeks photographic highlights. Rock the weekend. You've earned it, people.
