Matty Blog

[embed width="720"] http://mattyphotography.smugmug.com/Clients/2014/2014-Video/i-N7W7H9c/A [/embed] Mobile Viewers - Click here for Video I've thoroughly enjoyed shooting for Emergency Food Network for many years now. In the beginning, I shot exclusively photography, then progressively shot video here and there while I was shooting stills at events. We used the stills...

[caption id="attachment_8631" align="alignnone" width="800"] Photo of a current Provari 2.5 model.[/caption] As my commercial photography client base grows, so do the number of them who ask me to produce short videos. The video side of the biz has been growing very steadily though it's not something...

[embed width="720"] http://mattyphotography.smugmug.com/Clients/2014/2014-Video/i-nXccDqc/A[/embed] Mobile viewers - click here I recently started shooting for a PNW based company, Pacific Mountain Products. They grow and harvest a number of products here in the PNW and distribute them around the world. Up until recently, it was studio and location photography,...

I was hired for the second year in a row to produce a film to present at Community Health Care's yearly fundraising luncheon here in Tacoma. I like working with CHC, diving into the medical field for more insight into their services. The part I...

[embed width="720"] http://mattyphotography.smugmug.com/Clients/2013/Matty-videos/i-mkw6Vj7/A[/embed] MOBILE VIEWERS CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO Wow. What a fun shoot. In anticipation of the awesomeness, we went ahead and shot a ton of behind the scenes footage of this particular shoot and took the opportunity to use it to showcase what we do...

Here are the Mercedes Of Seattle Grand Opening photo booth images! Click the link below to view/download your photo booth image. Please use our 'contact' page to inquire about any further assistant or additional services from us! CLICK TO VIEW PHOTO BOOTH GALLERY  ...

I want to thank everyone who came to the studio opening night. I know many of you traveled a ways and I really appreciate all the great support. I saw a lot of faces that I hadn't in quite a while, it was so nice catching...

Below is a video I tossed together for one of my newest clients, Mercedes-Benz of Tacoma. I'd recently completed a production photo shoot for them and was invited to capture their grand opening event at the newly constructed dealership building. It was a fun event...

It was the third annual event for Ryan's fundraising weekend and my third go as the photographer. It truly is a great weekend, three days of generating awareness and funds for the Burned Children Recovery Foundation. Every Summer, the BCRF's founder holds a week-long camp for the burned children community in the Bellingham area. I've had a chance to personally visit the summer camp to see the amazing, brave survivors Ryan's fundraiser benefits.

I don't know about you other photographers, but the vast majority of my photo shoot time is spent setting up and configuring lighting. There is a reason for that, right? Good lighting = good photograph. Carelessness = crappy light = crappy photo. It's simple math, really, but that math adds up fast in the form of a lot of pacing back and forth from shooting position to light. Unfortunately, this back and forth dance is necessary in order to get all the lights and their powers set correctly. It seems with the addition of each extra light that the overall setup time increases exponentially. What if there was a device that could control your speedlites and your studio strobes right from your camera? Good news for the PocketWizard shooters, there is. It's called the PocketWizard AC3 ZoneController. It works with MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 radio trigger system. Below is a video that goes into detail about the system and briefly discusses the power and convenience the AC3 will bring by adding it to the existing PocketWizard system. I'm sure after watching the video, you'll have all kinds of ideas on how this could improve your photo shoots. From my own experience I can tell you that the AC3 has doubled my shooting efficiency. If you shoot with the MiniTT1/FlexTT5 system, you are out of your mind if you don't integrate the AC3 into gear set... like now. It will make that big of a difference, I promise. [jwplayer mediaid="5161" width=700 height=418]

The Emergency Food Network organization has been a client for... three years now. I've really enjoyed working on a number of projects for them, some which have opened my own eyes to the really great contribution they make in the Tacoma and surrounding area communities. My favorite and most in-depth work so far with EFN was the video I created a couple years ago, you can check that out HERE.

Phew, just finished editing some videos to advertise the photography workshops. Next batch of workshops are in February. For more info on that, click the 'workshops' link at the top of the page.

The 2012 Smokin' Hot Espresso calendar is complete. You'd think my job is done when I put the camera away from the final photo shoot. Not even close. A huge portion of work follows. Rewind a couple years ago, when I created the first calendar with the business, I also created a behind the scenes video. The video played at the calendar release party, online, etc. Everyone really loved the video addition to the project, so this time around, it was specifically asked for (to be included). Every photo shoot we had video cameras rolling too. What that equated to was over 20 hours of footage for me to rummage through after we were done shooting the calendar. It was a rush to finish the production of the calendar, then the design of the calendar, and then... with a week before the release party, a BTS video. To the editing room I go... a pile of footage awaiting. Can you get a tan from a computer screen? If so, I should have a really nice "glow" right about now.

Here is a video Q & A for those of you photogs who want to start flirting with off-camera flash. This isn't a video about how to use lighting and everything that goes with it. It's a simple recommendation on the starting block gear to acquire to start your lighting journey. The good news is that TTL will help you ease into this journey (if you are using hot shoe lights), so you don't have to be an absolute lighting wizard to pull of simple lighting execution.

Below is a video I shot and cut together for London Couture. They hold an event every Friday evening at their store in downtown Tacoma - Glam Power Happy Hour. They provide salon services, photos, champagne, food, and styling services. It's a pretty cool little event. The video is a little teaser to show the basic idea of the event and the environment of London Couture.

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.

archivingScreenShot Ok, so here we go, the first video Q & A segment. I hope this kind of catches on and people use me to help "fill in the gaps" of all the standard information they can't seem to find on the web. It's just one of those things - you can have a really good grasp on a piece of software, while also having a really solid plan for the business end of things, however, there is the cross-section, where the creative/making side intersects the business side. There is this murky middle area where a lot of things are left-up to interpretation and personal preference. Essentially this gray area cannot be spelled out by software makers, and a business teacher definitely doesn't have any input on these kinds of specifics. You know there are a practices that need to be done in your business to ensure efficiency, redundancy, and so on, but I (and as it seems many others) are left to figure out all the gray area stuff themselves. Sometimes self-discovery of these processes are the best course of action, other times you are left thinking "it'd save me a bunch of time and a handful of headaches if I got a little nugget of knowledge from someone who has been doing this gray area stuff for awhile in my same career field." This gray area are the things I would like to focus on in these sessions, because I feel it's worth my time to address them. The simple, easy stuff that software vendors spell out on countless websites where you can get a lot of information doesn't need to be beaten to death one more time by me in a video. Rarely, it also seems that tutorials spell out the BIG things and leave these little gaps that desperately need explanation. You also do not need me giving you a lecture on how important is it to ensure you have backups of every inch of your business, how to interact with your clients, etc. It's that middle part, and how they come together. So let's piece this stuff together.

matty_7.15.11_ 609 In my opinion, there is no better way to spend an evening than to be laughing the whole time. Life is just way too short to not enjoy it and make the most out of it. Laughter makes us feel good, brings people together, and on this particular evening, laughter raised a boat load of money for a great cause. In front of a sold-out crowd, Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie played in the beautiful Mt. Baker theatre. The quick-witted duo even had me laughing as I was capturing the action. The show's proceeds went towards the Burned Children Recovery Foundation. This show was the first of three days of fundraising for the organization, thanks to Ryan and his team. The theatre itself was fun to photograph, the interior lighting design was well-thoughtout.