Matty Blog

16 Oct

Posted at 12:13h in Shoots
IMG_6090 You may recognize Tiffani from another shoot not too long ago. She accompanied Spencer for his senior pictures, and was in a couple of the shots. She loved Spencer's turned out and asked me to capture her as well. She made the drive up from Olympia, and we shot her around the Museum of History in Tacoma. I really love this place. There tons of cool walls, all kinds of different shaped and style staircases, ramps, handrails, all coming together to make a large number of shooting locations in a very small area.

14 Oct

Posted at 21:44h in Info/News
IMG_6273 For all you travelers, especially those Bellinghamers, if you'll be flying Allegiant Airlines in the next couple months... take a peak at that in-flight magazine located in that pouch in front of you. You know, that spot where your knees are already pushing into due to lack of leg room, yeah, that pouch. Inside that you can find an article about the Fairhaven Village Inn, a great hotel located in Bellingham, and of who I shot photos for a couple months back. Shortly after the shooting the hotel I received a call from the editor of Sunseeker Magazine, the in-flight magazine. The hotel put them in contact with me to provide some of the hotel photos for the mag. I picked a couple, sent them their way, and about a month later I received a couple fresh copies of the magazine, the edition with the article in it.

13 Oct

Posted at 09:17h in Info/News

Yes, if you've been to the site before, you are in the right place, and no, you didn't accidentally eat some bad mushrooms. I spent yesterday evening porting my site over to new theme, one that I feel is much more visual. Being a photography...

09 Oct

Posted at 12:08h in Shoots

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Squeaked in a sunny morning shoot with Myrriah and Rhiannon the other day, ya know... before the weather here in the PNW will make something like this impossible for a good six months. It was a Saturday morning, the sun was out, and the light was behaving fairly well in my friend's backyard. We had mom and daughter come over and pose with the apple trees.

08 Oct

Posted at 00:07h in Events
IMG_5612 "Antique Quest & Wine Fest" was the event put on by the Tacoma Community House last Saturday at the Museum of Glass. Hana, a great gal who works for the organization, asked if I would come capture the event. Free booze and really old stuff?! Count me in!

05 Oct

Posted at 11:02h in Shoots

The senior pic season is starting to wind down, at least that's what I've been hearing from some of the students. Some schools are requiring seniors to have their photo turned in by the beginning of October. It's been a while, but I wanna say...

29 Sep

Posted at 16:09h in Shoots

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What a fun shoot. Despite the fact that we had to get up at 5:30am to do this one, everything else was awesome. The Lakeway Best Western in Bellingham, WA, was very nice in letting us do this in their indoor pool. The only catch is we had to be out by 9am. As in hair/makeup prep, light setup, troubleshooting, shooting, and teardown by 9.... aka early morning.

22 Sep

Posted at 10:39h in Info/News

Purchase a Matty Photography gift card for a friend or family member and give the gift that not only lasts a lifetime, but generations. Gift cards can be bought in any dollar amount, and then applied to your special person's photo shoot. They are the perfect...

21 Sep

Posted at 12:14h in Info/News, Tips & Techniques

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Remember the days when you saw a really awesome photograph that was visually engaging say... 10 years ago? The comment that inevitably seeped from your mouth was something along the lines of "this is so good, it looks fake," yet full well knowing it was most likely the real deal, cause at that point in time digital photography and photoshop artists were just really starting to go mainstream and it was uncommon for a photograph to undergo complete and utter manipulation by the knife of a photochopper. Today it's the exact opposite, if the photo looks awesome it's gotta be fake. Something has been tweaked, thinned, trimmed, cut and pasted, filtered, and/or drawn. Which brings me into the meat of the discussion...

What has photography become? How unrealistic have we become, how have our expectations lost every little scrap of perspective on the real world? As I browse thousands of model and photographer portfolios I'm overwhelmed by the amount of doctored photographs, neither providing true representation of themselves or work. A model with so much post work done to her she looks like a barbie doll (no exaggeration), and photographers claiming work as "photography" after a picture has spent a good few hours getting "tweaked" in photochop (yes, chop). Hell, the only ones being honest are the photochoppers showing their work, cause that is their true work.

17 Sep

Posted at 21:33h in Info/News

I'm happy to announce that the Matty Photography website and all other internet services are powered 100% by wind energy. The page you are reading right now is being powered by good ol' mother nature, just a blowin' away. And to think, of all those...

14 Sep

Posted at 21:05h in Shoots

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Meet Spencer, a senior in high school this year. He'd been on the books for about a month and our date was all set for the first weekend in September for an outdoor shoot (the type you can typically plan far in advance for in the summer). The day before an outdoor shoot I'll use good ol' weather.com for hourly reports for the coming 24 hours, the thing is pretty darn accurate. It wasn't looking good, the chances of rain happened to peak the same hour we scheduled to shoot, awesome... A backup location was selected and we would reroute to it last minute if needed, and boy did we. Though we are not officially in the Fall season yet it certainly felt that way. Rain coming down in sheets, hardest I'd seen since the Spring. Wind blowing in gusts, so even if we got lucky and had a dry window, a good puff from the Gods would use my softboxes like sails and toss my lights to the ground, most likely shattering the bulbs. While shooting in an old garage the wind still found one of my lights and tried it's darndest to trash it before I could get a sandbag on the base, but Spencer was heads-up enough to catch the thing to lessen the blow on the way to the ground (thanks, bud ;)).

02 Sep

Posted at 12:11h in Just for Fun, Shoots, Tips & Techniques

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Summer is coming to an end, days are getting shorter, and I have still only gotten out to ride my motorcycle a handful of times during our 4 good months of riding weather here in Washington. While looking at this set of photos it occurred to me, I think I've photographed my bike more times this year than I have ridden it. But at the same time, I like looking at the machine almost as much as I like riding it, it's a piece of art all by itself.

I wanted to shoot something extremely simple yet visually engaging, and this shoot provided just that. I've recently been playing with a lot of color gels, creating vivid backgrounds on the seamless. I posed the bike in front of the seamless, threw a single strobe behind the bike with a color gel, and popped the picture. I wanted a nice gradient light falloff, which the single light did perfectly, while also keeping to our "simple" theme for the shoot. Lisa stood in as my shadow rider (I wouldn't recommend following her riding technique out on the streets ;) ).

31 Aug

Posted at 10:59h in Gear, Just for Fun, Shoots, Tips & Techniques
IMG_2913 So I ponied up some dough and bought the AlienBee RingFlash system a couple weeks ago. Just got out in the studio to finally play around with if for the first time. Lisa, the brave soul for most of my lighting testing, stepped in to let me blind her at point-blank range for an hour or so. I will feel fully responsible if this poor girl looses her sight by the ripe old age of 30, cause at the current rate, it's totally a possibility.

27 Aug

Posted at 10:21h in Info/News

Attention all you B-hamers, I'll be up and shooting the weekend of September 26th and 27th. Some stuff is already in the works, so contact me to check for availability. The first week into the Fall season, would be a great time for senior pictures,...

17 Aug

Posted at 17:24h in Just for Fun

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There is something about the leisurely walk-around shoot that usually makes me feel like one of those dorks in the tourist herd. You know... THAT guy, who drops a grand on an entry level DSLR (only to use it in full automatic mode) to compliment his pleated shorts, nurse-white sneakers, knee-high socks, completing the ensemble with the all-important fanny pack. Wandering without a mission, just taking pictures of anything that catches my fancy, I could see how I could appear like a lost soul, taking pictures of walls, flowers, and architecture from awkward angles like I have an equilibrium problem. Well, minus the heinous outfit and plus a decent amount of camera knowledge, that's what I looked like last Sunday afternoon. On second thought, a hefty fanny pack that could lug a 3lb lens around without too much of a fuss wouldn't be a bad idea for a quick lens change... or maybe I could market something like that and put my stamp on it. The "matty fanny" does have a good ring, right? Anywho, I really don't mind blending in with the other joe's with DSLRs in-hand, it's a nice change of pace from my normal shoots with all the lights and equipment (and sometimes a half-clothed model) that tend to gather onlookers.

04 Aug

Posted at 13:35h in Events, Shoots, Video

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A couple weeks ago I posted a blog about nurse camp, an event I covered at Tacoma General Hospital, along with a few pictures. As I mentioned in that post (click here to view it), I shot video as well. I mainly shot the video as a little afterthought, thinking it would be nice if the hospital staff would want some rough, stock video of the event. Well, one thing led to another and I ended up editing a video piece unexpectedly after I got the idea in my head. Working close with the nursing staff, I cut together a video in hopes that it will help promote the nurse camp and generate further interest for the hospital.

02 Aug

Posted at 12:22h in Shoots
IMG_3906 The Fairhaven Village Inn, located in Bellingham, WA, was in need of some new promotional material, and I was happy to help. Another early morning, 3:30 am I believe. I was shooting in tandem with video producers from P-51 Pictures, as they were shooting a commercial for the Inn as well. Our first scene called for an early morning breakfast look, and the only way to accomplish a real early morning sunrise look on video in the summer means a really really early morning for us!

31 Jul

Posted at 15:23h in Just for Fun

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It's been one hot friggin' week all around the Tacoma area, and it wasn't any different in Sunriver, OR, where I took a few days to relax earlier this week. How did you beat the heat? Hit the water slides, the beach, grab a slushie? I decided to explore the lava river cave just outside Bend, OR. You'd think it being a lava cave, it wouldn't be the best idea to escape the 95 degree temps, however, this mile-long cave stays a constant 42 degrees year-round. The second I hit the mouth of this baby it was already time to breakout the hooded sweatshirt.

Venturing the unknown, cold, dark cave, I wasn't about to haul thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment with me to document the trip, and that's where the good 'ol point 'n shoot came in. So, the shots aren't anything to write home about, just something fun to look at. All of these shots are longer shots and handheld, so there have a unsteady look to them, but can give a cool effect at times.

13 Jul

Posted at 12:15h in Events, Shoots
IMG_0410 Tacoma General Hospital put on Nurse Camp last week. An event where high school students get the rare opportunity to shadow working nurses in the hospital, as well as learn much of what nurses do and are responsible for at the facility. Hundreds of students applied and only one hundred were accepted after the selection process was all done. However, before even the selected were allowed to partake, they had to fill out gobs of paperwork, attend orientations, and get their immunizations up-to-date. Having to put in all that work before even getting to experience nurse camp lets you know that these students really wanted to be there, learn, and find out if nursing was a profession they'd be interested in pursuing. The nursing crew, wanting some quality photos of the event, asked if I would be available to capture it for them. Granted I'm that last one who wants to be in a hospital and be reminded of sickness and death on a regular basis, not to mention I can't watch a needle go into my own skin without passing out, I was relieved to find out that the event would just be exercises on dummies and pig parts.

30 Jun

Posted at 09:27h in Gear, Info/News

The blog has been quiet for a week or so, and for good reason. I'm currently conceptualizing a large-scale photography project. It will involve the community, creating inspiring pictures, and best of all, it'll cost you, the ones getting your photo taken, absolutely nothing. More...