Jan
01
Last June, I headed down to Toledo, WA, my old stompin’ grounds where I attended high school. It would be the first of a couple trips down to Toledo, working on a newly birthed project I formed alongside good friend and video talent, Andy Lahmann. It was a project focused on the community, with a lot of the attention going towards the high school students. To get caught up on the story, here are a couple posts to read. Here (click), here (click), and here (click). Now, if you are up to speed…
I spent a day capturing high school students in a number of activities (this series of photos called the “Pride Series”), the photos turned out very well, especially considering the day was a complete run-and-gun operation. I think we teed-up 8 photo shoots during one school day. We’d walk into a new room or sporting location, with never having worked on the photo ideas prior to that moment. Just show up, come up with something real quick, setup lights, pop the photo, pack-up and move on to do it again at another location. The photos received a great response, we made large prints and banners of the photos and hung them in the school. It was predictable that the photos would peak the interests of the high school students, as the photos were of them, however, there was a surprisingly positive response from both the middle and elementary schools. Prints were made for the other schools as well, and the kids loved them. Simply put, the photos did exactly what we wanted them to – generate interest, and ultimately getting the students online, where the website and forum we setup for this project awaited them, and get them talking and involved. You gotta take your information where the eyes are if you want it to be seen, and we all know that today that’s online.
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Dec
30
I have really mixed feelings writing a post that is all about things you should NOT do, as if I know everything that is right and wrong with photography, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The more I learn, the more I gain an understanding of how much I do not know. But that is one of the main purposes of this blog – a tool for myself and other photographers who read it, a journal of sorts of my photography shoots, pitfalls, lessons learned. I do my best to share a lot of my photographic experiences, in hopes of providing: entertainment, inspiration, reflection, learning, and a pile of other things to my readers. Sure, life is a “live and learn” scenario, always, but there are positive and healthy… “shortcuts,” I guess we’ll call them, that may help to you along your photographic journey as well, whether that is a camera or lighting tip, gear awareness, inspiration, or even a little different perspective that may prove to better your own work/life or help you progress quicker over challenges.
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Dec
08
Rewind about two months ago, I was in the middle of photographing the 2012 Smokin’ Hot Espresso calendar. Before you roll your eyes, “oh boy, another bikini barista calendar, how lame,” you might wanna look into this one. I’d agree with you about nine times out of ten that the “normal” creation for such ideas (skimpily-clad women calendars) are poorly conceived, produced, and constructed, however… that’s not how the folks at Smokin’ Hot Espresso do business. Fortunately, they are the one out of the ten that want to do things right, and not produce something that was all shot in one day, and in a studio no-less. For some reason, the pattern of recent years has gone something like this with these kind of productions – take girl, prop said girl with minimal clothing, toss her on some random/boring background, run her through the same standard poses we’ve seen since the beginning of time, and photoshop the crap out of the photos in post production. Rinse and repeat. After all, it’s ALL about the girl, and production value doesn’t REALLY mean anything… right? A picture of a girl is a picture of a girl… Um, no. 12 months, of girls, in boring, unimaginative poses and situations, in a studio… yuck. Who would want to buy that? Luckily, Smokin’ Hot and myself are on the same page. It’s beyond making a buck. It’s about making something that is fresh, fun, and a treat for your customers. Our calendar is more of a end-of-the-year thank-you gift to the customers for their business. ROI (return on investment) wasn’t the driving factor, not one bit, and that’s why I really like working on this project. This calendar is full of the same baristas who have made the customers coffee every day. How cool would it be to hand those same customers a calendar with the baristas in fun outfits and situations? We wanted to produce something on a level that would leave us knowing that no other similar business in the area would come close to matching.
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Dec
02
The commercial side of the photog biz has been consuming most of my time for the last few months, but I did find some time to squeak-in some personal portrait sessions. Most of these photos were taken in or around my studio in downtown Tacoma during Oct and Nov. “My studio” is actually the building space in which my studio space is in. I don’t mind shooting classic studio photos, but if I get the chance, I take every opportunity to shoot outside of the studio, really try to make something new with each shoot, and the studio isn’t exactly conducive to that mission. Especially with personal portrait photography, it’s not for a magazine or design, and I think most people will be looking for a little more flavor in the background of their photos. That is where the indoor space around the outside of my studio comes in handy, especially this time of the year, when the last thing you want to do is spend prolonged amounts of time outside in the wet and cold.
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Nov
15
Holy smokes, September and October were busy months, and November is panning out to follow in-suit. A lot of catchup to play here on the blog. Why not start with a wedding post. I had a wedding gig up in Whidbey Island last September. Whidbey is a beautiful place, great wooded and beach areas. As you drive along the winding roads (aching for a motorcycle), you never know when the next scenic visual delight will be around the corner to surprise you, going from dense woods to wide beach vistas.
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Oct
02
I’ve been working with London Couture, a vintage fashion clothing business, for a few months now. So far it’s been a great experience, and owner, Tina London, is largely responsible for the enjoyable experience. She’s a lady who doesn’t mess around, knows what she wants, and wants every aspect of her business done right. Our very similar work ethics makes us a good match for working professionals. I love her business for a number of reasons, but probably the most exciting is the fact that our opportunities in working together to create awesome imagery and marketing materials for London Couture are pretty much endless. The business has a lot of things going for it, and has a lot to offer as far as merchandise in the store. Over the last couple months I’ve been getting aquatinted with the business, and the style which they represent. It’s a tricky thing, being in-charge of the creative design for a business, their visual marketing person, but only knowing a business for a short period of time. Much like a tiny snowball starting at the top of the hill (where I started with LC), and gaining size and speed on it’s way down the hill, our relationship will grow and speed up giving us the ability to produce more and better work at time goes on. With a more intimate working knowledge of the business, my ideas for photo concepts are coming much more freely and often, not having to worry if the idea would be a good or bad fit for their style.
It’s that time of year to start pushing bridal marketing. All those brides looking to secure the biggest and best of everything to ensure their wedding is a great experience. LC has been attending bridal expos to help get the word out that they too provide bridal garb, but not just any kind of attire, really cool vintage dresses. A large part of Tina’s time is invested in literally traveling around to fashion hot spots in the world and hand-picking all of the one-of-a-kind designer clothing you see in the store. No steps are skipped through the entire process, as stylists are at the store to help you navigate, select, and fit clothing to best work with your particular shape. It’s definitely not an experience you get in many places, and it’s a completely unexpected surprise in downtown Tacoma. New found customers are often delighted to come across the store, always saying they can’t wait to get back into the store and shop more. Now that’s a business I want to work for. In my mind, the hard part is done, Tina has established and invested into a great store and business, now all I have to do is make sure that the photography can keep up with level of professionalism Tina has set. I’m not having to make anything look better than it really is, fib here or there, cause London Couture doesn’t need it.
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Oct
01
Round two of the mini sessions, as I continue to knockout all of the LivingSocial deals. This time around, I selected the studio and the Ruston Way waterfront area for my locations. If you missed the first round of mini session photos, and a more in-depth explanation of what these are all about, click here for that post. A lot of variety here with some senior photos, family shots, and a couple headshots. In efforts to not repeating myself, I’ll let you read the aforementioned post if you need to catchup, otherwise, I’m going to let the photos do the rest one the talking on this post. Lots coming, per usual.
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Sep
18
It was a solid start to the LivingSocial mini sessions. For those who are unaware, I was featured on LivingSocial last month, and it was a scary week. I was left wondering how many photo deals I’d be selling. My goal was to get my name out there via marketing by LivingSocial. The cost – having to practically give away my photo services to anyone who bought the deal. The cap for the deal was 1,000 purchases… ouch. I kept my fingers crossed that I’d be able to get my name out while only selling a reasonable amount of deals, so in the end everyone is happy. Thankfully, I sold almost he exact amount of deals I wanted to sell, and that was 50. Still… 50 deals are a LOT of deals to have to toss in the mix of my work load, especially considering the small return on them (all evident if you’ve noticed my absence from the blog lately). I eventually made this economically feasible for myself by structuring them into mini sessions. That way I can just set aside a couple days a month, dedicate them to the LivingSoical deals, and knock them out an orderly fashion.
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Aug
20
My work is starting to ramp-up with London Couture, one of my large commercial clients. One of the first photo shoots we had was for marketing a fundraising event they are hosting, Strutt For A Mutt (yes, it’s intentionally spelled wrong). The owner, a giant dog lover and overall kind person, is holding this event with 100% of proceeds going to the metro animal shelter. This is the second annual for this event, which I was not around for the first one. When the event was brought up in a meeting, we mentioned how ads and marketing were going to made. Prior to my being a part of the team, London Couture was left with scavenging the internet for passable images to use for their graphic design. With me around now, we can take idea from concept, to photo shoot, to graphic design without depending on any other resources. This is the real fun part for me. They showed me last year’s logo, which like I said, had a random image off of the internet. The key part of the imagery, a fashionably savvy woman carrying a shopping bad with dog leading her on a leashed (all silhouetted). Bad habits had them going to the internet once again, looking for a “better” image to use for this year’s design, and that is where I grabbed the wheel on the operation. “Why not just grab a model, some clothes out of the store, a couple of your dogs, and head down to my studio and do this right,” were the words out of my mouth. Not only should we use our photographic resources for the big things, but everything, big or small. All of the suggested items were very easy to reach and doing the shoot ourselves would ensure it’s done right, and most importantly, the image is OURS, and we can continue to use it or other work we produce marketing material.
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Aug
05
I have the pleasure of working with a brand-new restaurant, even before it’s open the doors for business. It goes without saying that there is a lot of time, effort, and money that goes into getting a business like this launched, but it’s critical it is done right, and thankfully this owner understands that. It’s always going to be way harder to just slap something together real quick for the sake of speeding up processes, and then coming back around and tackling things all over again once the dust settles. Aside from this being a super unprofessional approach, it’s a killer on the business’ branding momentum. Right out of the gates, the day a business opens up, people will associate things with that place. The food, the menus, the music playing, the signage, the customer service, and even the color of the paint on the walls. You start changing all that stuff up a couple months after opening for business, changing your own consistency and branding, I think that you’ll loose a lot of consistency in your customers, especially your recognizability. Besides, you wanna blow the socks off of your customers from day one, give them a true reason to keep coming back. You don’t cut corners to quickly open your doors only to tell your customers things will get better here soon, so hang tight.
In meeting with Darrin, the owner of Amerawcan Bistro, I knew right away that he wanted to make his place truly unique. Aside from him already offering a rare style of food and a great menu, he wanted the entire customer experience to be something people talk about after they eat there. We sat down and mapped out a branding style and message we wanted to send, in a visual sense, to accomplish this goal. I LOVE working with businesses in creating a branding image. Whether I am helping them with more than just photography or not, it’s important that I fully understand what the end product needs to look like, as it’s critical for properly executed photography. Photography produced with the final branding goal in-mind is clutch. Understanding what styles and colors menus, logos, and websites use will influence how the photography is executed. When done right, the photos are dropped right into the marketing material seamlessly, and looks flat-out impressive. You look like you got your shit together, and the truth is, when it looks like that, you probably do. It speaks volumes from the rest of your business, “come eat here, we care, we are professionals, what can we do to make this a better place for you.” Honestly, I was super excited about being a part of this project from the beginning, and not having to worry about transitioning the business out of an old marketing image. A clean slate.
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Jul
31
Another round of punch card photo shoots for Smokin’ Hot Espresso, one of my regular clients. Bikini baristas have been around for a while now, kinda almost old news, right? Everyone went the extra mile to dress up and keep their customers guessing with fun outfits when the bikini barista stands hit and were all the talk. As the controversy over the coffee stands slowly fades to a mild “eh, whatever,” the girls themselves who work the stands slip into lack luster effort with their themed “costumes,” giving away to simple swim suits most of the time. This is not the case any longer with Smokin’ Hot Espresso. They are bringing themes back AND sexy back (take that Justin Timberlake). This means your nurses, maids, cowgirls, cops… the list goes on of sexed-up outfits, you’ll see them all at Smokin’ Hot. This is one thing that there is not a lack of at this business, they really like to keep there customers happy with the themes, the punch cards, the calendars. They understand it’s more than just an eye candy experience for a lot of their customers, and they want to make it fun by doing the little things for everyone who stops by. I’d imagine it is quite the expense for a business to keep a team of baristas in coordinated costumes so that they have copies of every costume and are in unison.
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Jul
10
During my stay in Arizona, I spent time in both Flagstaff and Phoenix. I spent the first couple days catching-up with some distant family who live in Flagstaff. The McKone family were a big help for me, as I wanted to photograph some of the surrounding area, but aside from the Grand Canyon, I didn’t have a clue on what was around, so I didn’t know where to start. Luckily, Rod and Ann Marie, along with their two sons, Richie and Mike, knew plenty of locations to take me.
First thing was first, we wanted to make a new family portrait for the troupe. So, after shortly after pulling into flagstaff after a 21-hour drive, we were back in the car headed for Sedona. I travel a quite a bit for my work, but the bulk is done all in Washington, so my environmental equilibrium never gets too rattled. Extreme environment, weather, temperature, altitude changes, and even sunrise and sunset times were all way off from the norm for me. Predictability of the photographic outcome was kinda non-existent, and it being my first day in the place, taking a family portrait, I had no idea what kind of photos we were going to walk away with. I didn’t even know what the final location for the photos would be, what the background was going to be composed of, if the sun was going to be in front or behind the subjects. We packed the car up with people and gear and hit the road
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