Calendar Previews; Update Seven – Final

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For my last and final calendar preview I would like to introduce Rita von Riot!
This was one of my favorite shoots that we put together. The concept was to do something a bit 50’s or pinup-ish. Since we had rented out an air museum for the day we were able to book two different shoots that day – Rita was the second one after Lana.

Rita was a blast to work with. Take a look at the image above, first off… she did her own pinup style hair. Second, she put together and made all her own outfits for this shoot. The dress she’s wearing she actually bought and dyed to get it the right shade for the rest of the outfit. And she put together a number of other pinup-era costumes from things she found at the surplus store or already owned! I love creative models!

We tried a few different outfits and a few different styles. I also tweaked my processing of each image a bit to see what I thought looked best. This particular lingerie outfit with thigh-highs was great for a sexy shot without being over the top. The one thing that the pinup era still proves, is that you can be hot without having to show tons of skin.

Some of you guys may actually recognize Rita from her work in Lowrider magazine, MTV, etc..
Rita and I will actually be shooting again in the next month – which should be a lot of fun. We’re going to stick with a 50’s theme again, so whatever we come up with will rock I’m sure.

So, that’s my final update on this entire calendar. Again, it should be printed later in 2010 for distribution for 2011. I know LOTS of you guys have been asking me about it and I’ll be excited to update everyone as soon as I receive my copies in the mail. However, it’s a limited production that’s not available to the public… so, you’ll just have to stop by my place to check it out. Haha.

I’ve already had a few potential clients interested in my work for other calendars… with a little luck, I may be able to say that I have two 2011 calendars coming out. And hey, if you’re a vendor of some kind, please feel free to email (contact available in my portfolio on the link at the top of this page) and get in touch with me regarding my rates!

Good night everyone! I will have updates on my trip to the Bay Area later this weekend sometime.

Calendar Previews; Update Six

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Yes.. We really are in a graveyard.
This was definitely one of the most unique locations we had access to for this calendar. Night time at the graveyard. Originally conceived as a dusk shoot/low light photo, we quickly had no other option besides full on night-time photography. I, of course, love shooting in the dark. But, with only four lights at my disposal (and problems with our generators) it made things a bit trickier.

Suzy was a great model and a lot of fun to work with; and she definitely had a lot of fun playing around on set. I won’t lie, we were there wayyyy too long. This shoot went much longer than intended, but, we came back with a lot of stuff that would work. And check out the hearse that we had… how badass is that? Honestly.

I’m going to keep this post fairly short. I have a lot of photos from this shoot, but they’re all very similar styling, and I don’t want to bore you guys.

My last post will be coming later this weekend – it will feature Rita from our second air base shoot… 50’s themed… it rocks.

Hope you guys all had a rockin week. I’m heading up to San Francisco tomorrow for the Wekfest car show. See you there.

Calendar Previews; Update Five

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Blowtorches, Boots, Babe… oh, and a dirty garage…
We had a very simple concept for this shoot. Actually, there is an ooooold photograph that we did a newer version of. But, still pretty much an emulation of the old image… girl… boots… blowtorch.
Jenny is actually an old friend of mine that models in fashion shows. And by old friend I mean I met her when I was shooting those fashion shows shortly after moving to Socal. She was a great sport during this whole shoot.
This image was created in the summer, in a garage, in what was quickly turning into a very hot day. Plus, holding a blowtorch a foot away from you get’s fairly warm..

This was us goofing off in between poses. But, I actually really liked her expression even though it’s not the pose we wanted. The main light source during this shoot is, actually, just the torch. I used a second hot lamp to throw a bit of light on the car, and to give just a bit of rim light to her body.
The fun part of working with Jenny is we always laugh and have a great time. I actually had to go shopping with her to find her outfit and boots. I could only imagine what the girls at Fredricks and Victoria’s Secret were thinking when she walked out in different outfits and said “What do you think!?”

Here’s me and Jenny after the shoot was wrapped. I probably need to start trying to look a little bit nicer when I shoot… or at least not leave my hair so shaggy lookin’. hahaha!

I know I promised you guys Crystal for this update… but you’ll have to wait. I’m going to save her shoot for last because it was one of my favorites. Next up I will have a couple images from Suzy’s shoot in the graveyard!

Also, I’m heading up to the Bay Area this weekend to attend Wekfest (import car show) and support our crew Topdown with the S2ki (Honda S2000 owners) forum. So, if you’re there, come say hi!

Calendar Previews; Update Four

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“Wow, she’s hot” followed by “Wait, how’d you do that?!” is typically the response I get when people see this image. Haha, I’ll take credit for the image, but you can compliment Lana yourself.

During our round table meetings in the planning phases of this project I pitched a couple times that it would be cool do something on an airbase… After about a month suddenly everyone else thought “How cool would a shoot be on an airbase!?” Yep, you can bet I gave them a hard time since I was trying to pitch that idea from the beginning, hahaha!

Those of you with a sharp eye will also notice that we’re shooting with one of Jesse Rooke’s custom bikes. I had the pleasure of meeting Jesse a few times at K&N. He’s an incredibly nice guy and was ready to hook us up with a bike for this project – Thanks Jesse! The RatRod is privately owned; and you’d be amazed at how much traffic slowed down to look at it while we were on the highway.

Lana, our gorgeous model, came to us directly from another audition that day. Due to issues with the other models we were left scrambling to find a girl with 24hrs notice – Lana was available and ROCKED the shoot. As soon as I was ready to take photos she was on, posing, and hitting everything we wanted to try.
I can’t say enough about what a great model she was to work with.

We shot many different looks, styles, and poses with Lana that afternoon.
I’ve toyed around with different versions of how I saw this image coming together in a final image. Again, I have no idea how the final printed version will look. I really like my HDR mixed image (first one) but I also think the “washed out old photo” look fits well, too. The client is editing in-house, so, I’ll see what they did when it’s printed.

Lana was  great to work with and I definitely would shoot with her in the future should I ever have the chance.

Directly after this shoot we went indoors for another shoot, with Rita von Riot. But, you’ll have to wait til later this weekend for those to be posted. For those who don’t remember Rita…

Thanks for following everyone! Check back soon for more shots from the calendar!

Peace.

Calendar Previews; Update Three

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For this calendar preview I want to introduce the stunning Melissa Miko – or in this image… her legs. Haha!

Melissa and I met through my casting listing when I was casting for a completely different image. But, we were able to shoot with her on two different shoots since she had the figure, and the legs, for it. The image above I’m particularly proud of as it’s one of the cleanest and most vibrant shots from the project. It’s also eye catching and very sexy yet simple.
The idea I was hoping to show was classy with sex appeal. I’ve heard mixed opinions on Melissa’s tattoos as part of the finished image. I honestly go back and forth, and I may remove them completely before larger versions are uploaded to my portfolio. What do you guys think? The final version of this shot will be different; different wardrobe, different pose I believe, and different editing. But, this version is my favorite.

My other shoot with Melissa was on the beach – this was actually my first shoot with her.
This concept was simple: Let’s take a girl with a great figure, a vehicle that screams “Beach!” and do a sunset/surf theme. I felt terrible for Melissa though, we basically said “here, hold this board for the sunset”. I’m sure it had to be tiring after a while. And as always, we gathered a crowd pretty quickly. And that Woodie is a ’47 Buick Estate Wagon – a very rare classic.

I liked the colors and pose of this a lot, but we wanted to try something different too. I thought of a pose I shot of a girl I dated a while back (no joke) and figured we’d emulate that style shot.

Again, Melissa has an incredible figure and we wanted to take advantage of her silhouette. Yes, she has her bikini on. No, she is not naked. And, No, I didn’t enhance any part of her.

Here’s me (far left) and Melissa (center) and the rest of the team after the Ferrari shoot.

Melissa was a great model to work with, and hopefully when our schedules match up again at some point we’ll be able to do a shoot again.
I’ll be doing another update here in a couple days. I know I promised Lana’s shoot was coming soon, but I might share Suzy’s or Jenny’s first. Lana’s shoot went great, I’ll be honest, but I want to further edit her shoot and Crystal’s before sharing those here.

Good night all!
See you Thursday!

Calendar Previews; Update Two

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That’s hot.
No, it’s ok. You can say it out loud. I think so, too. Besides, I was there…

So welcome to preview number three – update number two – on the Calendar preview series I’m doing. The above shoot was with Megan Black, and it was definitely a hot shoot. Megan does sexy very well, and she definitely has the body for it too.
The car we had for this shoot, a 383 two-year-restoration one-family-owned Chevy Camaro. It was gorgeous. I’ve always appreciated American Muscle… even being a huge import guy myself, I would love to call a vehicle like this mine.
Now, you might say “Sexy girl against a candy-apple-red car… how cliche”. But you know what, IT WORKS. In this shot, in this location, Megan, the Camaro.. it works.

Megan had multiple outfits, as many of our models did on our shoots. We tried a lot of different looks, styles and poses. Which one exactly will be printed I can’t say… you’ll just have to wait til SEMA when it’s released! Also, as I’ve said, these edits, touch ups, and processing styles are mine and do not reflect what may be used by the client. They are, rather, just how I see the image through my styling.

Check out this engine bay… clean and shiny. And yes, it sounds amazing when it fired up.

Another thing that I appreciated about this shoot… Nick took photos of me working! I typically only allow a handful of photos to be taken on my shoots, and never for very long. But in the case with Nick, he was part of our team and able to capture some shots of me doing what I do – and I NEVER have photos of myself!

Me with my face smashed against my 1D’s viewfinder. On the right is Adam who I had the pleasure working for most of last year.

It’s a rough life I live sometimes… hahaha
Adam was always right there with me during our shoots. It helped to have another creative eye there seeing close to what I was shooting through my camera.

Changing up the pose, deciding if I want to try and light that engine bay, and Megan waiting for more directions.

Some of our setup. Quite low-tech in many ways. I work very light, travel light, and do high-output shoots. I will admit though that as the calendar moved along our shoots became larger and more intensive. Megan is front and center, you can see me on the right going through photos with Adam. The rest of our team and staff in the background.

So that’s it for this update. I had a lot of photos from this shoot that I wanted to share and I decided not to lump two shoots into one post like last time. Look for another update early next week with images from my shoots with the gorgeous Melissa Miko.

Oh, and how many of you recognized Megan from past blog updates and in my portfolio? Megan and I shot in Laguna a week or so after this shoot… I’m sure you remember those photos now, right? No?

How about now?

Alright. That’s all for tonight everyone. Check back in a few days for the next preview!

Peace.

Calendar Previews; update One.

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Remember that calendar I shot?
Of course you do… I had to make very vague posts about what exactly I spent two months working on and shooting… couldn’t really show you anything, could barely talk about it..

Well, I can finally show you guys a few preview images from my work!
A bit of a refresher – I was contracted by a major automotive company to shoot their 2010 calendar. Each shoot was unique in style, concept, era, theme, and location. I was given full creativity with the creative department to come up with many ideas for the 12 months. In the end, I was contracted to shoot 9 of the 12 months and have recently received permission to share some of those preview shots with you guys! Note: the calendar has been put on hold til 2011. It will still be amazing when it’s printed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the images are swapped out by that point.

The image above is with the lovely Kassandra Kiremit. Kassandra and I met over a year ago and had planned on doing a shoot like this from day one. It took forever for things to finally happen, but, to be able to shoot for a major project like this was worth the wait.

During this shoot we had an incredible ’32 Buick and long tree-lined driveway at a mansion as our backdrop. I’ve spent some time giving these images an old, weathered, and beat-up effect. I don’t know how the final product will look, as I am not handling their editing. Also, the shots I am sharing are not the shots that will be printed either. These are some of my favorites, though.

Editing this photo I used the same technique as the image above. However I quickly realized that having more dark/black areas in the image made the weathered-look much harder to manipulate. Oh well, I honestly think I like the first image more.

Kassandra and I will hopefully be shooting again in the near future. We’ve talked about a few concepts, but, as usual, it’s a matter of when our schedules match up. Haha.

I’ll be honest and say this shoot was the most frustrating for me.
Our original ideas and concept was great. We had a huge, blacked out, lifted extended cab courtesy of Taylor – who I had shot previously for some K&N Filters ads.
Our model, is a dancer, so therefor small and bendy.
Our location was the Caterpillar/CAT facility. So the ideas around “Big truck, big machines, small girl” were a lot of fun to play around with. But in the end I was very frustrated with my lack of lighting options, and after nightfall the area became pitch black.

We were able to get some good shots, but for me, personally, I left frustrated and felt that it was not a great example of my abilities and skill with photography.

Next up I will post images from another two shoots. I’ve decided to break up the posts because each shoot was so unique that I could honestly write nine very long and detailed blogs about them all. However, most of you may not come back to read each and every one! Haha!

So, check back here in a few days. Subscribe if you haven’t already, and you’ll see more of my work on this project.
In the mean time I’m currently working on some side projects, and looking at fabricating some specialized gear for some specific shoots I would like to do.

February is shaping up to be a very busy month for me. Hope you all are doing as well, too!

Vijay Singh, my golf-Monday

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Monday evening I had the pleasure of meeting professional golfer Vijay Singh.
I was photographing a private event for one of his sponsors – Vijay was the guest the speaker. I’ll be honest that it was really cool to be part of a small private event where Vijay sat around and just chatted about his career, golf, life, etc.

Vijay opened up the floor to questions from the people attending. Having watched golf for at least 10 years, I would have liked to ask him one or two things myself. However, I was there to shoot, it would have been hugely unprofessional of me to do so.

But, afterward I had the opportunity to introduce myself and take a quick photo.
If you ever have the opportunity to meet him, he’s an incredibly nice person.

So far February is off to a good start. I’m catchin up on editing wedding images from last month. I’m also going to be booking a couple TF/trade shoots this month. If you have a unique look, or awesome idea, contact me.

Meet the Machallisters…

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If it rains on your wedding day… have some fun with it!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of shooting Will and Nicole’s wedding in San Jose, Calif. A completely different contrast to the week prior that I spent in Michigan with the Gerhardt-DeLand wedding.
Will and Nicole were actually in town from Colorado – leaving the snow for what turned out to be a rainy, El Nino, weekend in the Bay Area. The first thing I thought of doing with the bride and groom? Galoshes and an umbrella… and figured we’d throw the Maid of Honor and Best Man in there for good measure.

Nicole and Will were both open to any ideas when it came to dealing with the weather. The ceremony was indoors, so we didn’t have that to worry about. We were even able to do a first-look outdoors before the rain started really coming down. The photo above was actually shot during the rain… you can tell by the wet bricks and small puddles forming. Nicole got a bit of mud on her dress prior to the ceremony, but didn’t mind at all since she had fun with the photos – I love brides that are in such great spirits with everything.

The whole weekend that I spent with the families was great. I was welcomed in as one of the family, and ended up spending the entire rehearsal evening, and all day during the wedding festivities with them. I have many, many, photos below that I wish to share with all of you. So, I won’t say much more here but instead comment on a few of the shots ahead.

Check back middle of next week for another update on some other things I’ve been shooting, too!

The morning started out like so many wedding mornings… breakfast, mimosas, and cell phones.. haha!

Nicole… starting her primping.

Achilles was so GQ right then and didn’t even know it…

We did a first-look that way we could knock out the family and wedding party portraits before the wedding. It worked out really well since there ended up being no time to do photos after the ceremony.

Will, lookin good.

Nicole seemed worried about getting her photo taken. I think she looked quite beautiful.

If you look really close, my sister and her fiance are center on these place cards, haha.

Sometimes you gotta drag the guy down the aisle…Paige is gettin her practice in early.

This was incredibly touching. Will had to turn around to get through his vows because looking at his bride at the same time was too much to handle.

Achilles was hanging out with me… front and center, lol!

Paige was definitely one of my favorite subjects that night.

I love shooting the first dance. Always beautiful…

See! See!! Could she have made it any easier to take overly cutesy photos of her?

Honestly, this shot probably better represents Will and Nicole’s personalities and mood that night! They were so much fun!

The cake was awesome. They had two flavors… I had both.

Michelle dived… Seriously, that’s why she’s on the floor…

Well.Will was supposed to pull off the garter.. but..
And look at Michelle (left side) laughing in the background!

Cutest Father-Daughter moment. Ever.

One last slow dance of the evening…

Again, I had a great time with Will, Nicole and both their families over the weekend. I can’t wait to finish more of their photos and see what all I was able to capture for them.
Hopefully you guys made it through all of these. Check back soon for more updates. Or follow my fan page on Facebook, too!

The Gerhardt’s Michigan Winter Wedding

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Snow.
That was the first thing I thought of when I was asked by Tara about shooting her January wedding in Michigan. Well, it was probably a mix of “Damn, that’s going to be cold” and “there’s going to be a lot of snow on the ground”.
Tara is Todd’s older sister – my friend who flew me to Michigan last summer to photograph his wedding. Tara and Matt loved my work on Todd and Jessica’s wedding so much, that they contacted me about a month after Todd’s wedding and booked me for theirs.

So, I prepped myself for a cold Michigan winter wedding. I was trying to think of as many different ideas to do with the snow as I could. But, unfortunately a sudden change in the weather melted most of the snow before the wedding. However we were able to do a few winter-y shots. And honestly, having this shot above works perfectly to say “snowy wedding”.

I had another fun weekend with the DeLand family – and the Gerhardt’s were tons of fun as well. It felt like going to see my own family members the way that I was welcomed back and everyone excited that I was there. Matt’s family had heard a lot about me and were all very interested to see how I would handle his wedding images.

I’m very happy with how everything turned out. It was cold (for me), I’m not going to lie. It’s been three years since I’ve been through a Michigan winter – and it was a warm 34 degrees while I was there, too! I’m going to share quite a few images below… so be ready for a very large update.

I leave home again tomorrow, this time to the Bay Area to shoot Nicole and Will’s wedding in Santa Clara. So I’m currently prepping for another trip, packing, and gettin my gear ready… and I’ve only been home 24 hours. Check back in another week for an update on their wedding!

Even the rehearsal dinner was beautifully laid out.

I try not to over use black and white in wedding photos. But moments like this seem to look better unsaturated.

The first kiss… Such an important shot, and the priest almost made me stand to the side during the ceremony “and just redo the shots afterward”. It took a few minutes of talking to convince him to let me kneel front-and-center like I always do. Shot actually looks pretty good for not being allowed to use flash, too.

This was a shot that Matt and Tara already had in mind and asked me about. I was shocked because I just had talked about this same shot with good friend, and incredible wedding photographer, David Esquire a few days before I left for Michigan.

The standard dip shot I do with a lot of my clients. It was under 30 degrees out while we shot these. Matt and Tara did great with braving the cold weather for shots.

First dance as husband and wife. Tara looked so happy.

The Daddy-Daughter dance.. both Tara and her father got a bit emotional at the end.

And speaking of dancing… that’s Grandma Gerhardt gettin down to Cha-Cha slide…

After 57 years of marriage, you still see so much love in Grandma Gerhardt’s eyes when she looks at her husband.

I think I may have confused Tara when I asked her for her rings. But she was pretty happy with the results when I gave them back.

Matt barelyyyy stopped dancing the whole night.

One last dance of the night, and a last kiss on the dance floor before the party ended.

Tara, Me, and Matt

Todd, Me, and Jessica – can’t believe it’s been six months since their wedding already

The end of the night, walking back to the hotel after making a short appearance at the after-party when everyone went to the bar to keep the party going.

Todd, Kent, and me the next day.
Kent was mine and Todd’s Photojournalism professor at Central Michigan University. I’ve been lucky enough to see Kent a few times since moving home to California and even had the pleasure of speaking in one of his classes during one of my trips.

Thanks for reading this far if you made it through the whole post! More images will be on my blog and portfolio later. Now, time to keep packing for my trip to the Bay Area tomorrow!

Peace!