Matty Blog

18 Apr

Posted at 11:56h in Gear, Tips & Techniques
I don't want to get too McGyver-ie on you guys, 'cause I'm sure we've all seen the countless disasters of DIY (Do It Yourself) projects, especially in the photography field. People making soft boxes out of cardboard and tinfoil, for example. Some of these contraptions make sense, some don't come close, some require just as much money making your own crappy version of the original item (not to mention a week's worth of hours constructing it), and even in the end, if the duct taped frankenstein of a project actually does what it's supposed to, it will never scream "professional" and you would have to be an idiot use it on a professional photo shoot in front of a paying client. However, every once in a while, a little savvy with mods to existing and legitimate photo gear can workout in your favor, save some money, and produce great results. My off-camera lighting journey started in overdrive. It was go big or go home when it came to integrating lights in my shoots, meaning I started out and exclusively used larger studio strobes for my work (as opposed to using speedlites, also called hot shoes). Not that it was a regrettable choice, I love the big lights and I still use them for 75% of my work, but I invested heavily and exclusively into those lights and light modifiers. When it came to that other 25% of the time, when I'm not shooting commercial work or I don't need the horsepower from big lights, I wanted to use the way more convenient, smaller, and lighter speedlites. So I bought a handful of speedlites a couple years back for just those occasions. Aside from the initial expense of the speedlites, I also had to take into account all of the light modifiers. If I wanted the same type of control that I have with my strobe lighting set, would I have to go all out and purchase the speedlite variation of all the strobe medication gear to accomplish this? I owned like... 12+ light modifiers specifically to fit my studio strobes. I initially had no problem shelling out money for the strobe light modifiers, as big lights and big modifiers gave me awesome light, and I was willing to pay for it. Once I started researching speedlite specific light modifiers, my jaw dropped to find they cost just as much, if not more, money for them! I couldn't believe it. I knew that speedlites were very popular, but man, the photo market is all to wise to that fact, and all of us photogs are paying for it. Markup on small light gear for those tiny little speedlites is out of control.

03 Apr

Posted at 13:05h in Shoots
I thought I'd post some more work I've recently done for London Couture. Along with doing their marketing photography, I also do their graphic design. This is an ideal situation for a photographer if they are capable graphic designers as well. It really helps marriage a complete, polished look when it comes to the final product. It's so important going into a photo shoot that I have my head wrapped around the final concept. Sure, someone can ask me to photograph a person or a situation, or... a person in a certain situation, however, unless I know what the photographs will ultimately be used for, I have no idea how to shoot it. I can shoot something that looks amazing, but could really fail to translate for a particular idea or even dimension of a graphic design. At that point, no matter how amazing your photos look, they could create a headache in the end when design comes into play. All the way down the the simple things, like knowing whether the photos will be used for a magazine ad or a website or both, which will determine whether the majority of my photographs will be a landscape or portrait layout (verticals are obviously conducive to magazine ads, and horizontals for web/digital display). So whether I'm doing the graphic design or I'm handing the photos off to another designer, you better believe I'm asking all kinds of questions so that everyone in the loop of production is very happy with what they have to work with. This make life SO much easier on the designer, and leaves my paying client with a very clean, professional product that didn't have to get hacked together with a digital chainsaw. A lot of commercial photography is shot on either a white or black background, reason being it's VERY easy to add more space to a design canvas if needed. Ex - shooting a model on white seamless will allow a designer to plop the image onto a white canvas any where they want, and no one is the wiser. You can add or subtract designing real-estate until the cows come home. With that said, you really don't have to shoot as consciously with your composition (you don't have to worry about leaving any negative space in the image for the addition of graphics and text). You can shoot nice and close, providing maximum resolution and detail, and giving a graphic designer one more reason to love working with you. Shooting on a true  solid color is ideal for this editing flexibility, however, sometimes you want something different (even in the studio), or often times commercial photogs find themselves out in the wild shooting on-location. For these situations, it's key that the final concept be well-understood. And again, it's always a great thing if you are the designer and the photographer, as the layout is floating around in your head, and you can at times improvise even while shooting, as new design ideas pop up in your head and you can then shoot and frame for those ideas on the fly. A great luxury. Of course, if you are shooting for Nike or some huge name, the concept is concrete, which has been reviewed and ok'd by corporate big wigs. But if you are a smaller operation, you can get away with some... "creative flexibility" up until you shoot the last frame of the day.

27 Mar

Posted at 17:02h in Behind the Scenes, Gear
Ok, here's a post for the photogs out there. This is the rig I decided to go with for my hiking trip to photograph the landslide project. Click here if you don't know what I'm talking about. It's super important that when you know a day of shooting will be a little out of the ordinary that you ask as many questions as possible so that you can as prepared as possible. For this specific photo task, I knew the following:
  • I will be shooting both ground level and aerial shots, aerials from a helicopter.
  • The location is only reachable by foot, requiring a 15-minute hike.
  • The location will be focused around a giant landslide.
  • My focus for ground level shots will be the people working in the environment.
  • My focus while shooting from the air will be a mile-long landslide.

26 Mar

Posted at 13:58h in Shoots
Oh boy, where to start with this one... I guess we can begin with the original premise for this whole shebang that you'll see unravel on the blog in the next half year or so. I was approached a few months ago by fellow video creative and good friend, Andy Lahmann, to work on a large scale project with him. Western Washington University has a number of interesting and front-of-the-field type programs students are currently working within. The kind of programs and results that are definitely worth bragging about to some degree. WWU's idea is to generate a website bundled with video and photographic content that we be used to present these various programs to the public, alumni, and future university donors. Along with the website, they'll present the media via iPads while out and about talking to people of interest. One problem lay in their way - they need eye catching video and photos. Solution - Andy and myself. So, we've been assigned to make this stuff happen for them. Four of these programs are going to be our focus for the launch of this showcasing project. They range from out-in-nature geological to in-the-labs highly technical, and will place us in some interesting locations and situations to produce our visual work. First up to bat was a program centered around a geological phenomenon. Back in the 1930's, just outside the town of Bellingham, a large landslide started to take place. I say "started," because it's still going on, it's still sliding. Yes, this is a slow-motion, mile-long landslide 80 years in the making. But that isn't the weird part. It starts to get a bit odd when you analyze the water runoff that is flowing through the giant thing. Turns out that the sediment laden water contains amazingly high levels of asbestos. You know... that poisonous crap that was wildly popular in the groovy 1970's home construction, touted for it's fire resistance and insulating properties (among others). A rushing creek of water flows through the slide, picking up the asbestos and carrying it down to the surrounding valley. The contents of the creek are so dangerous that it's playing a large roll in the destruction/contamination of the farm lands below the hillside. So the earth mass keeps sliding, grinding-up and producing ample loose poisonous sediment (yummy), feeding the water, and playing a continual negative roll on the community. It's much like a glacier as it slowly moves across the earth. This is why the WWU geologist are out there, in fact, people from around the world have travelled there to study this anomaly, as it's apparently confusing the crap out of everyone as to why here and why not everywhere else. I guess this type of event is only happening in a couple spots in the world. And who said Bellingham is just a college town...

19 Mar

Posted at 00:05h in Shoots
I conduct many shoots for London Couture, a rising vintage couture fashion business in Tacoma. We hold some type of photo shoot once week on average, so... they keep me pretty busy. They sell many styles of clothing, each speaking to fashion-minded people in varying ways. As described by my client, the designer of the clothing line for this particular shoot was by definition dark, utilizing the spectrum of colors that can be summed-up as dull and muted. It definitely wasn't a happy and warm clothing line. To meet client's needs I will often start off by asking them, "so, what does this look like in your head, what do you see, what 'hits home' as far as an environment for these items you are selling?" All feedback I received for this shoot pointed to an industrial look. To the shadiest part of town we go!

14 Mar

Posted at 18:17h in Gear
Since the announcement of the Canon 5DmkIII, there have been a lot of bloggers out there chomping at the bit to denounce the idea of spending the $3,500 to upgrade their current 5D2 to the new 5D3. It's as if they couldn't wait to say that the new 5D3 isn't even close to being considered for their own business. I hope you are not running a serious business, guys. Anyone who has used the 5D2 for a substantial amount of time would be happy to hand you a laundry list of faults where the 5D2 has disappointed over and over throughout the years. There may be a few people out there who work in ideal, happy, well-lit, never rushed, never found in challenged environments who may be looking at me like I'm crazy, but I'm sorry... if you think that the 5D2 is without any issues, you are the crazy one, and I challenge you to step out of your perfect world and shoot a couple weddings and tell me you have the same opinion. I know a lot of naysayers out there are looking at the megapixel count (the 5D2 with 21 and the 5D3 with 22) and going, "I don't get it, what's with the only one MP jump?" I think this is why a lot of people are shaking their heads at Canon when they were expecting something more when asked for 3500 clams. People, it's not about megapixel counts, and don't say that's not your reason for bitchin' because if the new 5D3 touted a 36MP spec, you'd have reserved your copy of the 5D3 faster than I can say the word "sucker." Simply put, for those with the adequate experience with the 5D2, I think that the 5D3 is the camera you always wanted in the mkII. Once you can look past the megapixel spec, you'll find that the 5D3 truly is a new camera from the ground up.

11 Mar

Posted at 18:11h in Info/News
A few weeks ago marked the completion of the first Matty Photography advanced workshop. Unlike it's sister program, the beginner workshop, which has 3 runs under it's belt, the advanced class just completed it's maiden voyage. As with everything educational, going through a huge chuck of learning material for the first time with a class is like running the gauntlet. Is the material arranged in the best possible order, is it structured in a way that makes sense with easy to understand vocabulary, how much time should be allotted for each lesson and photo adventure, how many student questions will result from the material and how much time will that eat, etc. There is a lot to estimate into the timing, which will then drive the overall structure and amount of material. As all experienced photographers know, the more you stick your head down the rabbit hole of knowledge, the more you discover it goes on forever. You have to draw the curriculum line somewhere in the sand, decide what takes priority, and ensure that whatever you decide to cover will be properly addressed in class. For those who are in the dark about my workshops and are into photography, you should definitely out the workshop page by clicking on the 'workshops' button at the top of the page. This advanced workshop focuses on off-camera lighting. It teaches students about lighting, how it works, how to trouble shoot it, how to shift and mold qualities of light, etc. As far as the material goes, I think it went great. The photo shoot adventures... well, we will all want more time to shoot. I could set aside a whole day of just shooting and students would want more time. But you gotta draw the line somewhere, make sure concepts are grasped and demonstrated, and then move on. That's what the courses are for, creating a foundation of understanding, getting the gears greased, and then releasing them off into the wild so that they can begin their growth as a photographer. Sure, the courses will offer some opportunities for good photo taking, but by no means are the in-class shooting adventures designed to revamp someone's portfolio. After running through all of the shoots, I will be making some tweaks to make them run a little better and a bit more focused/goal oriented.

07 Mar

Posted at 16:30h in Shoots
February was a happenin' month here at Matty Photography, like every month I guess. Aside from the usual photographic operations, February was the "month of knowledge," for both workshop students and myself. Two weekends out of the month went to a pair of Matty Workshops, one beginner and one advanced. More new photographers were released into the wild  with a newfound understanding of how to capture light, and a couple experienced photographers left with a larger skill set in off-camera lighting. I'll get around to writing another detailed post about those here soon. The other two weekends were for my own enlightenment, with workshops focused more on the business side of operations, yuck! A lot of good things came out of though, and I'll have a lot of big news for you coming soon on all of that stuff. I thought I'd also share a couple photos that came out of February as well. Pictured above is baby Bruno with his proud parents. A fun little family, we shot a set of photos in the surrounding caverns in which my current studio resides (hint towards future news...), and then we did another quick round inside the studio. The kid shoots always have to go fast, they are a blur of entertaining clients, kids, and shuffling lighting gear. In the end, you hope you managed to capture a couple frames where the kids are looking in your general direction sans the all-too-popular confused face, and the parents are managing to be smiling and not blinking. The second subject you see here is Kayla, a senior in high school. I did roughly the same thing with this shoot - a few in the studio, a few outside the studio. I like to give my clients some variety.

02 Mar

Posted at 13:05h in Gear, Shoots
Hot shoe lighting has its moments, good and bad. There is no denying the convenience and mobility of speedlites over studio strobes, especially when a photographer spends the bulk of their shooting time on-location. Ditching the strobes and running with speedlites for a shoot literally empties out what is usually a gear-packed car. I can actually see out my back window! Hot shoe lighting is significantly smaller in size, lighter in weight, faster to setup and teardown, and usually translates to a quicker shoot. These are the things I love about speedlites. The other side of the coin are the dislikes, the things that can drive me nuts. Lack of power, misfires, and slow recycle times can get downright ugly at times when you start asking these lights to start doing some real work. My mentality on this may be a bit distorted, as I was spoiled by having the opportunity to start my lighting journey with studio strobes. I used AlienBees for years before ever even feeling the desire to want to use speedlites for my shoots. It was always a "go big or go home" situation for me. I wanted the power the strobes could give me if I needed it. This meant a car stuffed with 200 lbs of lights, cables, power packs, stands, and big light modifiers. It was a game of Tetris to get everything to fit in my car, literally. Big power came with the price of numerous trips back and fourth to the car to fetch bulky, heavy gear, cables running all over the place on-location, gear bags everywhere, and all of that had to be done in the reverse order when it came time to pack it all back up. It sucks, but it's worth it. In fact, it's "worth it" to still continue the same song and dance with all the strobe downsides to use them for 80% of my shoots. Ironically, even though I use my strobes on most location shoots, I call all of my strobe gear my "studio gear" and I call my speedlite gear my "mobile gear." So when I ask Alice, my amazing assistant, for a mobile light, it's kind of like a moment where I know she goes, "oh crap, he needs to pump out a photograph super quick," and urgency is automatically applied to the situation. It's funny but true, as most of my speedlite setups are very much run and gun. Seriously... most of the time when using hot shoes we don't even take the time to put the light on a stand, and Alice hand-holds as we continually move and reposition.

29 Feb

Posted at 12:26h in Gear, Info/News
There are countless photo apps popping up for phones, each one bragging about the addition of the now oh-so-played-out vintage filters you can apply. The last thing we need is another excuse for someone to think they are a creative photographer via one-click edit buttons. Ya know... the same edits even your 1-year-old can manage to accidentally apply while teething on the corner of your phone. They are all the same mindless app, driving the false sense of creativeness. News flash, if you have that app so do like... 100 million other people, and they have that same "creative" vintage button. Now don't you feel special. To be honest, at this point your phone photography would probably be more appealing and eye-catching on Facebook if you just stuck to standard photo edits, as everyone and their grandma are robotically mass producing the same EXACT edits as you. You'll practically be the only one with vibrant contrast and colors in your images if you go against the grain on this one. But let's get past these boring one-button edit "features," shall we? After all, in the end, you are still dealing with a point and shoot camera on your phone. It's the other end of the mindless droning of "photography" these days. Of course PnS cameras have the ability to focus, expose, and judge the rest of the variables in order to create a borderline tolerable image. Sure, PnS's have the ABILITY to do all of this stuff for us, but hardware and software developers of phone cameras decided that the cameras WILL do all of the deciding for you, and you don't get a say in the photo-taking affair. Just point and click, you get what you get, and you're stuck with the computer in the driver seat 100% of the time. No surprises, this approach left us with 100 images with maybe a couple falling under the category of "acceptable," the rest being a joke, and proof that computers are not good photographers.

21 Feb

Posted at 15:37h in Shoots
High resolution sensors and unbelievable lens optics, they are the last thing you want getting dirty. When we bring up the topic of dust, it's usually in a manner of how to get rid of it and keep it from being a factor in the first place. Lots of attention is given to minimize any encounters with the pesky stuff, and there is a huge market for sensor and lens cleaning tools. It's true, the last thing I want to see is dust covering my photo equipment. There are times that... well, all of that dust in the air, constantly finding it's way to thwart your quest for optical perfection, can actually come in handy. In fact, sometimes this stuff we've grown to curse at can have a power influence in our imagery. It may, if I dare mention, occasionally take a photo destined for failure into a successful capture. Light, it's an elusive medium. Unless it's bouncing off of something (and reflecting into our eyes), we just don't see it. Light travels in a straight line, so unless there is something to redirect it into your peepers it'll continue on it's merry way, and your retina are none the wiser. It fails to translate into something we or our cameras can see unless it's got a medium to collide into. It's the reason you can walk into an old barn or other location where there is an abundance of particles in the air and you can see these beautiful beams of light entering from a window or other light source. Light is rocketing through the air and impacting with dust, reflecting light into your eye. There are of course other mediums the light can be flying through that can reveal it's path, like fog or clouds, etc. You gotta have something in the air to allow this light to be clearly visible. Specialty light, like some lasers are a completely different topic, so what we are talking about here are the types of light photographers are usually dealing with (the sun, other typical ambient sources, and flash lighting).

15 Feb

Posted at 12:03h in Just for Fun

A quick little post on some photos I took during the winter storm we had here in the PNW a couple weeks ago. With significant snow fall (for this area anyway) for a number of days, coupled with temps that yo-yo'd above and below freezing,...

11 Feb

Posted at 21:55h in Shoots

Amerawcan Bistro has a lot of different things going on, one of those being classes to educate the public on the benefits of raw food nutrition. The goal was to photograph just the basic, common elements of what goes into a lot of the meals....

07 Feb

Posted at 11:15h in Info/News

The PNW has been seeing some amazingly nice weather, and the timing couldn't have worked out better. Last weekend was another Beginner Workshop, held down at my studio. As we always do for workshops, we spend a little bit of time covering new material in-class...

22 Jan

Posted at 15:28h in Gear
Conducting a lot of my work on-location, I need to pack my lighting gear around to some very random, very remote locations. I also shoot the majority of my work with larger studio strobes (I use AlienBees), rather than the smaller hot shoe lights. As much as I'd like to utilize my set of speedlites more often, especially on shoots where I'm left packing gear over a long distance, they just don't pack the power I'm usually demanding from my lights. You might be thinking, "hey, if you have both sets of gear and have the choice, well... that's easy, go with the AlienBees." Contrary to AA battery-powered, convenient, lighter, fit-in-your-bag speedlites, packing and deploying AlienBee lights on a location shoot can quickly become a pain in the ass. With speedlites, you have the small light, a stand, and maybe a light modifier. With Alienbees (and all studio strobes for that matter), you've got power cables, reflector dishes, carrying cases, larger/heavier light modifiers, and power packs (to power the lights). By default, AlienBees want wall power to keep them happy and firing. If you want to take these things out in the middle of nowhere you gotta bring big power with ya.

21 Jan

Posted at 16:11h in Gear, Tips & Techniques
It's easy to forget about. You use it for just about everything in life, you rely on it more than you know, but might not even know how inaccurately you are viewing and editing the digital world. Out of all of the gear photographers lust over, camera bodies, lenses, and the thousands of dollars spent to acquire these light capturing tools, most forget about one of the cheapest and most important pieces of gear they need. If you are a photographer and have not properly calibrated your computer monitor, you need to stop editing photos and get on this. I repeat, do not edit another photo before taking the steps to ensure proper monitor calibration.

14 Jan

Posted at 15:28h in Info/News

Another round of Matty Photography workshops are coming this February, both beginner and advanced workshops. More information and registration can be had at http://mattyworkshops.com These workshops are great for just about anyone interested in photography, a little something for everyone. Learn how to master your camera...

12 Jan

Posted at 22:40h in Gear, Tips & Techniques
Reflectors and diffusers are typically the first modifiers photographers buy when they start experimenting with light manipulation. It's a great thing... you've taken the step to start playing with light, rather than just throwing your arms up in defeat when you can't seem to achieve favorable light conditions in a given shooting situation. A reflector/diffuser combo is a very wise choice, regardless of your existing gear status, as they are useful all the time and in combination with other lighting tools. I think that at times people feel that "controlling light" translates to blasting a flash in someone's face and calling it a day. Adding flash lighting or redirecting ambient light with a reflector is a way more delicate process than you might think. It doesn't have to be a huge, dramatic change in the overall exposure. Just adding a little of spark to your main light, or filling-in shadows to bring some more detail into the composition can make a night and day difference. It's not a game of miles or even feet, we are talking about inches. Small increments of addition/subtraction of light to make all the world of difference in your portrait work. Here are a couple thoughts, more of a checklist, to keep in-mind when you go out to make this purchase.

03 Jan

Posted at 19:45h in Tips & Techniques
Every photo gig has it's own requirements when it comes to clothing. Sometimes the choice on what to wear boils down to simple logistics. No-brainers like warm clothes for shooting wildlife, night, or winter photography. Maybe swimsuits and sandals for beach and water shooting so you don't have to worry about soaking nice clothes and shoes. But most of us photographers spend our time photographing people. Those people hold events they need captured by us, and that is where the major gray area is, as far as selecting attire for these events. So, this article will focus on portrait photographers and my perspective on what makes sense for a few different situations you may find yourself in while working for various clients. That is key... "what makes sense." Dress to impress, dress to perform, or somewhere in the middle. Does the event even call for you to fret over this? What's the weather like? What's your gear situation? What's expect of you? Know your client. It always helps asking the client some details about the event just to get your head wrapped around the basics, get the feel for things, and you can more confidently make a call. There are a lot of other questions that you need to ask yourself from the perspective of your job tasks which will drive your attire as well.

01 Jan

Posted at 15:17h in Shoots
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.