Oh no! I’m posting shoots out of order. I’m only slightly an order freak when it comes to shoots, so this is definitely throwing me off my groove. However! I’m saving some shoots up and I’ll post em all awesomely soon! Here is an Amazing shoot I had with Kelsey. Out wandering the sweet Malibu forests for some epic edge. This is definitely a new step in my direction. I just want to ooze emotion. Out of pictures at least.

Also, my vagabond barely works any more. Like 30 pops and it starts frowning. It’s ok though! I been doin it all with a mirror and/or a reflector. Diggin it. What do you guys think?

The web versions of these look too saturated to me. Way different than what I’m looking at in photoshop. Sort of upsetting, but what can I do? They change from monitor to monitor and I don’t have the $$ yet for one of those supposedly super awesome color monitors.

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Sometimes, the best thing you can do it jump in your car and drive. And when can bring an amazing model with you, well thats pretty much like awesome to the 100th power. But where to go? I’m not so much of a plan it all out kind of person. I like just going out and doing it, see what happens. But the desert is a big target to go out and your pretty likely to go out and find nothing. Sometimes nothing is cool, love big empty landscapes! But when you want to see something cool, thats when I narrow the target. Find out how after the jump!

Ok, there actually isn’t a super secret way to go find these places easily. I just thought it sounded cool. So how do I aim when heading out and about? I spend an unhealthy amount of time on google maps with the satelite turned on. Like, seriously, a lot of time. I love maps. They’re just a list of possibilities and I want to go everywhere. But if I happen to find some rough looking imagery of the remnants of a jet, or some awkward look rocks, well thats just fuel to the fire.

I could seriously live in my car for a month driving around and checking out all the deserty goodness just down here in SoCal alone. Maybe next month.

But anywho enough about maps and desert and who’s its. I was able to trick slyly convince Alison to come on my latest desert adventure. Which worked out fantastic for me! Go out in the desert, get a little dirty, get poked by a couple cactus, I live for it! Problem is, I’ll most the time end up somewhere awesome with no one pretty enough to shoot, except me and I’m stuck on the other side of the camera. So were off! first to a cool little spot pretty remote with some dry lake beds and a bunch of abandoned buildings. Very cool, I then attempted to take us down a road, that turned into something very much not a road. Mostly just a sand patch. Good times people! Also, cars don’t like sand, for future reference.

Next stop was to hunt down this killer location. Well it would have been killer. Would have been the king of all locations found in the desert. I found it on google maps. It was an old closed down solar power plant. Like the kind you see in movies, (That one scene from Gattica!) mirrors everywhere. Desert scenery. Oh man, just thinking about it makes me drool slightly. But after a bit of research I found it had been demolished a year or 2 ago. It was such an emotional trip, I had to go see for myself. And yep, it’s gone. Totalled. There is another one out there, but it’s still in use, so I hardly think I could go roaming around without someone having something to say to me.

And then the dunes. I love dunes. I love them a lot. And this was the first time I had really gotten to see those dunes in everyones head that define what a dune is. Yah, michigan has some dunes. I saw one, but it was covered grass. Lack lustre to say the least. There are some up in central Cali that I need to scope yet, and theres some way down south that appear to be over run with dune buggies. Not that I blame the buggies, if I had one I’d be cruising it out there hard every day I could.

So I found these, pretty close to an old town called Kelso. Like the last city to ever get TV. They had to wait for satelite, because no one was going to run a cable line out there. It’s remote, man. Like why would anyone have a town there? Used to be a mining town, but thats all gone and now it has a visitor center, but that was about the only real building there.

Beyond just exploring, photographically speaking, it was fricken awesome. I had borrowed a mirror from a couple friends of mine. Just a simple 1 foot by 3 foot wall mirror. (5.99 at target) and that was going to be light. Plugging in flashes is just so inconvenient in the desert, and my battery is pretty much a POS now. And of course, the first place I really stopped to use the mirror, the wind decided it should be smashed in the ground instead. So, whats a photog to do? clamp a piece to a stand and roll with it. In it to win it people.

So yah, enough jibber jabber. Pictures are mo’ better anyway.

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I’ve pretty much completely reinvented my work over the past few months. Shooting things with a different point of view and working towards a style I can be content with. I’m not sure I’ll ever be content, but maybe theres hope. But I do owe quite a bit to my favorite make up artist ever. Steph found me when I was about a week into this whole LA experience and we started shooting like mad. Of course I always want to shoot and then theres the whole wishing there was paying work but if you ever are in need a great make up artist call her immediately. She’s helped me with styling, hair, holding reflectors, some make up here and there too, like the best shooting buddy ever.

Her site:

Anywho people. Keepin it real on the left coast.

I’ve been basically glued to my computer for past week. I mean look, at all these posts! But here it is. The desert story. A big thanks out to all involved. Especially my cousin Chris, who drove that Rambler through the snow with the top down to get out here with us. I mean how could you not want to shoot a Rambler convertible and make it awesome?

I had scoped out this spot a couple weeks before. Picked a promising spot on google maps and hit the road. It’s kind of like awesome mini road trips. I love the adventure and you really do have to go see a place before you can reliably shoot there if you want to fulfill a concept in your head. Plus as a photographer, you see things that most people think are lame and get all excited to shoot by it. Weirdest little things I see and mark down in my head. I may come back to this spot sooner or later. There was an epic little couch sitting out there that I didn’t use for this. Also, I saw all kindsa cool stuff on the way!

So after a good amount of organization and luck, we all got out there to make this little story.

Two posts in a week! Count em! TWO! It’s like I’m a blogger or something. So here we have the amazing Alison. Firstly, shes from Minnesota. Not that I overly like Minnesota, but us midwesterners just know whats what down here in SoCal. We were the ones smart enough to leave.

Again at this shoot, I was stopped by the police and questioned. It’s sort of like if you’re not sitting there smoking, you’re doing some illegal. It was a fairly weird situation too. First, the cops had to stop and open a giant gate to get onto a fire road to drive up the trail we were on. He saw Alison and Stephanie, my amazing make up artist, standing there. Alison not looking awkward at all standing in high heels on a trail dressed in a leather skirt of course and they casually asked if everything was ok. Then he saw me and immediately jumped out the car, whipped out his mag lite as he was basically prepared to beat me and started questioning me. After running my license, checking out my gear and the shoot location and question Alison about her age he finally left. Did I have a permit? Nah, but I don’t even think the area I was in was a park, pretty sure it was just nothing. So dear police, it’s LA county. You’re hassling the photographers who are one of the forces that fuel the entertainment businesses that run this town. And you want to beat me with a mag lite. Thats cool, I guess, just let all those murders and crack deals going on downtown fly so you can cruise a dirt road and find a photoshoot. Ok, not my typical humorous about nothing rant, but something that really honestly bothers me.

Sigh.

But anyway, we took a hike through some hills and got some pretty fantasical shots. Here they are!

Alison was awesome and just straight out of the camera looked like a Guess ad. How can you go wrong with that?!

Well I’ve been shooting. And shooting, Then I did some shooting. But I don’t know. These blog posts are always a lot of formating and writing! But I figure it’s time, since the last one was from forever ago. So here we have Angela.

I was out cuising. Checking a location for another shoot when my GPS re-routed me off of the interstate to go around some traffic and I ended up finding this little gem. It’s a bit of the old Route 66. Wish I could have driven it in it’s prime but now it’s in so many bits and pieces. So I found and I knew I had to go shoot there.

In other news, I’ve met a very talented photographer recently and we ended up talking. He claims that if you shoot in color but preview it in black and white. You get the best ability to judge the pictures. I was like, yeah ok, how can you take color pictures and not see them in color? Well when you look at it in black and white you see truly in simple light. You see where light is hitting and where it’s not way better than when you see it in color. So what ended up happening? Now I shoot in black and white for the most part, but then you end up liking it in black and white! So probably a lot more B/W’s comin from me from now on. Hope thats cool. No? GO FIND ANOTHER BLOG THAT IS NEVER UPDATED! Hahaha No I’m kidding, come back. We’ll should hang out.

And heres the pics!

And so I’m back! From outerspace! I just walked in to…. Nevermind

I got the chance to shoot Vanessa one more time before I left the Bay area. And low and behold. Came out pretty damn awesome. Its been a pretty long time since I’ve been able to shoot in any kind of studio. Hopefully that will change sooner or later now that I’m down in LA.

I seem to spend quite a bit of time “crashing” places, so this shoot was no different when I crashed a friend of mines garage to make this awesome studio. It’s cool though, shes a photog. She knows whats up. (Thanks Emma!)

Anywho, pictures speak louder than words. And tonight, I am lacking my normal jibber jabber abilities due to a long day out amongst the studios. So Firstly check out this awesome behind the scenes video Daamun, of Daamun.com was able to put together for me. We may have to hold out on any more of these videos for a bit as my trusty video counterpart did not follow me south. But it’s a good flick, and I’ll be testing you on the contents at the end of this post, so watch it!

Oh yah, heres the pictures. ALMOST FORGOT!

Ok The quiz: How awesome is my beard? Best answer gets a cookie.

I do have many pictures from my life on the road. And I do want to make a post, which hopefully I will do soon. Got quite a bit of busy happening at this point.

Alright peoples, Signing off. Good night and good luck.

But this post is actually about a few shots I did for my good friend Taylor Hansen, who just rocked her way out of portfolio school in Chicago. If I have any super cool creative directors in ad agencies with plenty of crazy going on and in need of a copywriter, you should check her out!

These shots were done for Baby Einstein and the goal was to just give you the feeling, those kids are rocking. Taylor talked to me about her ideas for these and I immidiately started painting the pre-photo picture in my head thinking how the hell I was going to make it real. The first task, was just finding some youngin to shoot, without that whole creeptacular “Hey I’m a photographer, let me shoot your kid!” kind of thing. Beyond that it was just shooting for the edit.

The room was lit in a way leaving plenty of blank space to throw the ticker in up top and dark enough that the lettering would really shine through and really give the most pop to it.

Regarding the lighting, I typically like to do more work with lighting and less work for them in photoshop. I don’t necessarily like having to go in and take things out, when it would take an extra 20 min. of playing around during the actual shoot to get it looking good. But seeing as how I had one softbox perched on a stand on a bed. And a boom held up by stacked books. I knew this was a battle better left for after the shot.

So I took out the light, as well as the mobile (which cost me hours in photoshop that a 3 second unclamping of it during the shoot would have saved me). The toys are also strategically scattered to read out, Baby Einstien. Ok that part is a lie, but we did spend a good 15 min. going through different placements of them to give that random but still centrally focused look. Totally useful when in the end, I decided to cover most of them with the banner.

Anyway, enough jib jab on this. Heres the pic!

And the before and after to go along with all that other nonsense I was talking about.

For these shots, I also enlisted the help of a man with the plan in Cinema 4D. He created the entire stock ticker out of sheer pixie dust and glued it into the picture, only taking a mere 8 hours of work on his end alone. He is fresh on the market and ready to come make pretty things move around for you! (Also directed to those amazing creative directors that I’m assume all read this blog) Check out his new site at www.daamun.com

Here is another shot in the baby room. This one also has Daamun’s 3d models floating in it. I wont post the before and afters for this because frankly those are trade secrets!

More stuff soon!

Also for those you keeping weird tabs on my movements. I’m actually moving to LA next week. I love the bay, it’s probably the coolest place, at least in the states. But there are some pulls for me going down there, hopefully to get some cool new shooting gigs and basically run amuck. Next week I’m also driving a car From Fort Atkinson, Wi to San Fran, coming through LA on the way there (it’s totally on the route, shut up, I will turn this car around!). I’m toying with the idea of blogging from the road! Gotta be some cool sights on my way. So You’ll know if I’ve committed to this idea if you see something new and nomadish next week!

Keep it classy, world.

So I was out doing some urban exploring ’round the bay and ended up finding this incredible old abandoned navy base with warehouses and all kinds of goodies. Like a kids in candy stores, we went adventuring through these buildings checking out everything we could, and then security came. Security being one old man in a pick up truck who happened to see our car parked. We climbed out of the 2 foot hole that was our entrance to the warehouse and greeted him as if it was completely normal for people to be in and out of these buildings through holes in the wall. He seemed ok once he saw my camera and I tried to ask him how I could get actual permission to shoot in the buildings. His response was somewhat mumbled, but my interpretation was “don’t get caught”

SO of course we were back within the week with the lovely Vanessa Rae to do some industrial fashion/awesome shooting. Doing the smart thing we parked the cars behind the warehouse as to not be completely obvious we’re chillin inside, hoping no crack dealers are squatting around us. And we get to shooting.

I could not have asked for anything better, I started to shoot into the warehouse when we found this incredible window with almost cartoonish beams of light blasting through, making things all purty. Everything was great! We shot for a few hours and got to the end, (when here was not enough clothes left to shred) and started to pack it up, when who shows up? Mr Security man! Not sure if it was through a random chance of him finding us, but we broke the cardinal rule (don’t get caught) I promptly informed him that we’re all taken care of here and we walked by him to start packing up the car. I find the best thing to do in these situations is to play it cool and act like you know what you’re doing. He again mumbled something and walked away. Whew!

But even more awesome than normal, I have a behind the scenes video! So heres how my shoots normally go down:

Yep, they’re normally just about that epic. A big thanks to Daamun for making the video and Brian for taking the vid and all the help on the shoot.

I’m in a bit of a Photoshop identity crisis. I don’t know if I liked highly processed pics right now or just naturally awesome ones. So heres a bunch of both, let me know what you think!

And in case you missed it, heres a link to Brian’s behind the scenes pics, check em out!