Hayley and The Crushers | Live Music Photography | Ventura, CA

Hayley Cain and her Crushers destroyed The Garage in Ventura the other night, and my camera just happened to be there snag the proof.  The photos speak for themselves, so I'm going to shut up and let you enjoy the show!

Justin + Alyssa | Couples Photography | Montana de Oro, California

If you have been following my photography at all, you've undoubtedly seen miss Alyssa gracing the pages of my Instagram, my blog, and my website.  I've worked with her often in the past because she is beautiful, talented, but most of all, she's good people.  So I was so happy when she asked me to come out to Hazards Canyon at Montana de Oro to take couple portraits for her and her boyfriend Justin.  I got to escape the Paso Robles heat (I may be a tad late posting these photos) and spend the morning climbing the dunes and looking out over God's great ocean with these two.  I've had so many shoots out here the last few months that MDO is starting to feel like my office - the perks of being a photographer : )

My Life In Cameras

Okay, let me make something clear up front so I don't waste anyone's time here. What follows is not a photography tutorial or anything educational or informative in any way. It is basically just a look back at how photography has been with me my entire life. It's funny that it never occurred to me that this could be a profession until so recently, but looking back it all makes so much sense.

When I was a kid, my mother's parents lived a few hours away. My favorite part about visiting my grandpa and grandma's house was that my grandpa would sometimes let me use his polaroid camera. I didn't really understand why at the time, but I was never allowed to use it for long, and sometimes we would drive the several hours to visit and I wouldn't get to use it the whole time I was there, and all of that just made me want my own camera so badly.

I fell in love with this thing at a very young age.

One birthday (or was it Christmas?), I was given a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Camera. It was the best thing I had ever received! It was a totally TUBULAR shade of green, it imprinted a turtle on every shot, but most importantly it was mine, and I could use it whenever I wanted.

No kidding, this was my very first camera :D

Turtle imprint on every photo!

My mom was really encouraging and bought me rolls of film regularly, and took me to the photo center of the local drug store to get them developed. I don't know if I lost/broke/grew out of my turtle camera, but my mom eventually started letting my brother and I buy those disposable Kodak cameras whenever we went to the drug store.

I blew through a lot of these babies.

I imagine my brother and I would obnoxiously blow through the film before we even got home, so it became less regular of a thing until I suppose I found other more immediately available interests. I used to love drawing, creating comics, and making claymation movies with our family's Hi-8 video camera. I had to resort to working with clay because my little brothers were all three terrible actors with no attention span. To think I expected so much from them...

We had some good times.

When high school came around, I got sucked into a variety of extra-curricular activities such as playing guitar for my rock band, constantly practicing with my rock band, and recording music with my rock band. I was a real renaissance man.

Though I really enjoyed writing, so I thought writing songs could probably translate into writing articles for the high school paper. I became the editor of the "Investigations" page, but my journalism class was last period of the day and I found myself making every excuse I could think of to run some kind of errand so I could wander campus with one of the journalism department's digital cameras. I got to photograph my fellow students, teachers, and even photographed and did a feature story on a popular hardcore band made up of fellow high schoolers called "Velvet Dawn".

Can't quite remember which camera we were using in journalism, but I want to say it was this guy.

After high school, I went to work in film production in Hollywood.  I was newly married and optimistic, but looking back, I was destined for failure.  I was beyond unprepared for freelance work.  I was super shy, awkward and unsure of myself, and worst of all I didn't understand what networking even meant.  I felt like I was thrown to the sharks, but I just kept treading water as long as I could, which was about two years before I was exhausted and nobody was really calling me with work anymore.  About that time, my friends and I were getting really serious about the indie record label we had started called "Real Love Records".  We had five bands signed, one of which consisted of my wife and I.  Our act was called Kapiano, and we would travel up and down the west coast playing shows with other indie bands.  In 2008, Andrea and I traveled across nearly the entire country over 40 days playing in the band "Candle".  I played guitar, banjo, and waling angsty background vocals.  While on tour, someone brought a cam-corder, and I took a lot of pointless video in the van because there was nothing else to do, and we were usually hauling way too much equipment to film whenever we were out of the van.  Needless to say, it's pretty painful to go back and watch.  I took a lot of photos as well with my point and shoot.

Proof we had our camera with us here in the pit of hell that was Hot Springs, Arkansas.
You can literally see our souls sweating out our near lifeless bodies.

We were an odd group of characters

Pretty soon after we got back, we got pregnant with Sophia, and I went to work as an EMT on the ambulance because play time was over and it was time to put a roof over that kid's head.  I was there for five years until I left to go to the fire academy.  Unfortunately I injured my knee a week before fire academy started, so I found myself out of a job, unable to pursue the course I had set for myself, and quickly needing money, so I started working for Birch fabrics where I would design fabrics in Adobe Illustrator and take photos of our products with my Nikon J1, among other tasks.  This was the camera I learned how to really shoot with.  I buckled down and learned the basics of completely manual exposure and I was shooting every day.  This camera is where my photography career started.

This camera was truly so much fun to shoot with!

Eventually, I convinced the crew at Birch that we needed to step into the DSLR realm if we wanted to get a beautiful soft bokeh to show off their beautiful soft fabric (considering the 5.6 max aperture on the more useful focal lengths), and Birch fabrics bought a Canon EOS Rebel T5 body with a couple decent lenses.  I had a lot of fun with this camera as well, although right off the bat I was longing for a full-frame.

I shot with my J1 and borrowed the T5 from Birch on occasion and started taking outside jobs.  It didn't take long at all before I had saved up enough for a Canon 5D Mark iii as well as couple L Series lenses to go with it.

So this is the camera I started my business with, and I've yet to upgrade, although I've made a few more lens upgrades since then that have made a world of difference.  I am still learning every single day, and my latest education has been on film.  I found a Pentax ME Super SE at an antique store a few years back for next to nothing because it was "broken".

I finally got around to learning about how these cameras work and I realized that all it needed was a new rewind knob.  It was stuck closed because the rewind shaft had fallen into the body and the back wouldn't open unless you pull up on said shaft.  Eventually I got in and I put the shaft back into place with the help of a paperclip and a straight pin.  I found and ordered the rewind knob on eBay, and I purchased some Kodak Portra 400.

And today, I am proud to say I shot my first roll of film in probably 20 years.  I am so excited to see how my shots turned out, and even more excited for the knowledge and experience that will surely come hand in hand with it.  I am looking forward to seeing how I can eventually integrate film into my professional work.  Most of my photography mentors shot and still do shoot film, and I am thrilled that I took my first step today into a whole new realm of photography that is sure to be challenging and fulfilling!

(1/12/17) backdated for blog aesthetics

Commercial Beauty Shoot | Vana Body | San Francisco, California

Commercial Beauty Shoot for Bay Area beauty co. Vana Body

Creative Director: Andrea Patton

Model: Lachlan McKenzie

Makeup: Anna Grimes

Hair: Jordy Galindo

Okay, I have to admit I had a lot of fun on this shoot!  I am a bit of a nerd at heart, so getting the lighting perfect for this beauty shoot was a delightfully satisfying challenge.

My setup was simple and utilized only three Yongnuo speedlites, a Westcott Rapid Box, two Meking portable softboxes, and one 5-in-1 Etekcity reflector.

To get that even light with the perfect amount of shine, I set up a basic clamshell look using the Rapid Box above and the reflector on a stand below to bounce light back up under her chin and into her eyes.  You can see both light sources in the model's eyes in the image below.  I placed the other two speedlites behind the model and off to each side with the portable softboxes on them to give a fairly strong accent on the hair and cheeks with a soft fall-off.

We shot a variety of images.  Some with the model using the product, and others without the product. This gives the company the option to show their product in use or to sell the feeling of using their product, and it also allows them to write text, add their logo, or even add an image of the product into the corner like you see in some magazine ads.

Helpful Hint: Before the shoot, make sure to pay for the model to get a professional manicure and pick out a color that will work for your shoot.

For this shoot, we weren't shooting clothing, so it might be easy to overlook accessories like rings, earrings, etc. which can add so much to a beauty shoot if you have a stylist with a good eye.

My stylist and I went shopping for brushes and small dishes that would work for this shoot.  I think that getting these little details right really makes a big difference in the final image.  You can also see how the rings and bracelet make the shot above a little more interesting.  I feel like this shot would have felt too empty, like it was missing something if it weren't for those details... and can you imagine this shot if we forgot to get the model a manicure?  It just wouldn't work!

Don't ever forget to have fun!

If you have any questions or comments about this shoot, the setup, or about gear, just leave a comment below!