Portraits, Parties, Punch Bowls and Playboys

This past week I've been getting back to doing things other than just making coffee and playing with photos from old shoots. But before I tell you about it, here's a re-edited photo from an old shoot!


I've been going back through this set of photos from last summer because the pup there, Dino, is no longer around and I'd like to try my hand at some printing. So I've been returning the photos to RAW files to edit them from scratch. Next I'll finally be teaching myself how to make quality prints of digital photos. That's something I ought to know. Now you must go to Flickr to see the rest.

Onto new business, the famous Mel Practice hired me to shoot some family portraits of herself and her daughter, Lydia. It was the warmest day this week and we had a great shoot. Lydia was a real champ at authentic smiles for the camera. I know I can't pretend to like to have my photo taken and not look like I'm grimacing. I haven't asked yet if I can post this lovely shoot on Flickr yet, but I will allow my favorite shot to sneak into the public eye for now.



Darling, no? I had a great time. At one point the puppy had goggles on! Anytime I'm doing work that involves goggles and puppies, I know my career is heading in the right direction. I really look forward to sharing the rest of these photos, but I will need to clear that with Mel and Lydia first. One photo I'm sure the world needs to see is a merchandise shot for Josh, a local seamster who is going to make it big in the world of wicked apparel.




Moving on to an entirely different photo gig, I was given the opportunity to do a catalog-style shoot for A Party Place Rentals. The proprietors of the business made my afternoon a breeze. Not only was everyone pleasant to work with, but a perfect black backdrop was prepared for me. All I needed was a clamp lamp, an umbrella light, my trusty tripod, and my D200. All of the finished photos (the color versions, b&w soon to come) can be seen when you click right here.
Certainly not as fun to look at as puppies or portraits, but check out this platter!



On another of our recent perfect-weather days in Pittsburgh (rare and beautiful), I did a snappy speed-shoot of my muse, Megan. These may never grace the photosets of my flickr page, but I may share this single morsel of the sunny, springtime Sossi.



With that, I leave you to wander over to Flickr to get a closer look at how I spent my week. Other new photos to look forward to include; "Lewis Lake '08", "Mt. Washington Demolition", and a new shoot from my other muse with a name that starts with m, "Monika and Elegy".

Undergroundies Unite!

It's been slow going on the photo front since my Mechanimal shoot. Duquesne University bought that batch of photos and put a few on their website. Scroll about halfway down the page and you'll see it. Notice the photo credit they gave me, how exciting! Last week Stephen Douglas, a local metalworker, hired me to shoot a couple of his pieces to determine if he'd like me to shoot all his work. He and I met last year when we both had work displayed in a Liquid Sunday gallery. I traded him a black and white portrait of my muse, megan, for a big metal bunny. I told him I'd love to light-paint his work. The deed is done!



The light-painting was actually just an afterthought. All the major shooting was done at the terminal building. To see the rest of his amazing work you'll have to jump over to my flickr account. It was a delight to work with Stephen for a few reasons. Firstly, he bought me a hot dog on the way to the shoot site. Second, he's a local self-taught artisan who's clearly bound for greatness. I can't wait to shoot the rest of his work! It wasn't quite the challenge that I've faced shooting portfolios of client's oil paintings (what a nightmare), but the two pieces that I shot were shiny, intricate, and loved to take all the light and suck it into some hidden black hole of no return. I thought light painting would be the way to go, but there were still spots of glare. Shooting in the soft, even light of the terminal building was better, but didn't quite do the trick. Next time I'm planning on building a big light tent like i did way back in the day for this shot. Then again, natural light is my friend, and I reckon that's going to be the best route for his work.

Today my friend Joel of Zombietown Productions gave me one of his t-shirts that he designed and I decided to do a self-portrait shoot a la zombie in the hopes that he will keep dumping his spare merchandise on me. Like with Stephen, I'm just keen to being a part of local artists' struggle to the big time. Maybe when all the bands I've photographed get signed to major labels, and zombietown prints are flying off the shelves of indie boutiques, they'll remember dear old me and ask me to stick with them as their camera girl.



Their undead camera girl.

Horse Feet

For the last few months I've been in front of the camera way more than behind it. It's just not right. I totally understand why people don't like being photographed. I like to think that most of the people I photograph are comfortable with the shooting process but I sure do get nervous with someone looking down a lens at me. I've found mustaches and umbrellas both easy to hide behind.

I have still been working for Mechanimal which I'm very grateful for. Lately people just don't have money for creative photography. Working with the small crew of nerds/artists there has kept me from being completely stagnant with my photography. Too cold to take my camera out for a stroll at night to shoot icicles and football riots; so I let the giant office and varying light conditions challenge me.


They're working in a big space with dim natural light half the day and a handful of odd lamps casting varying degrees of brightness and hue. Fun! Every different viewpoint was a new arrangement of lights and tones. Like in the photo above, there's a cool toned light hitting the foreground and warm hitting the background. It makes them look like they're on different planes instead of right across each other at a table.


Later that day at the same table, a light quality that seems considerably different to me. I've been documenting each step in the creation of some life-size prehistoric horse feet. I'll leave it at that so I don't explain any of it incorrectly and make anyone sound stupid. Here's one more, then I'll move on.



More to come when the project is complete. Keep an eye on flickr!

Oh! You Pretty Things

Now that I've got your attention, I can tell you what I've been up to since my post oh so long ago. I've had a few shoots and other art-related gigs in the last month. I shot Mariage Blanc again for their CD release of "Broken Record". Reviews for the album appeared in the Pittsburgh City Paper as well as the Post-Gazette alongside my photo of them. This is my first publication, so to speak, so you can bet I'll have some scans for you to drool on soon enough.

My Dad comissioned me to photograph a girl with a banjo for his annual mix CD's album cover "Banjo Pickin Girl". This was a very thrown together shoot with basically no planning, which is why it went so well. My lovely coworker from the Beehive, Monika, allowed me to steal her from her home and shoot her with a borrowed banjo. We shot it in East Liberty which is a part of town with much color and aesthetically pleasing decay. You can see all of those right here. Monika is a great model, she's modest but not camera shy. I've shot her before in one of my first attempts at light painting with her late cat, Nibbler, may he rest in peace. Here's an example. I'm very glad that I have her available for any fun ideas I might get that require a pretty gal.

I also shot a fellow named Jay who is a musician. He also manages a few musicians and bands, so that makes him a valuable customer. My shoot with him was also rather unplanned because I had just gotten a wicked cold and was too busy blowing my nose to think about the shoot. Despite the snot, it was a quick, spotless success. I took him to the top floor of the Terminal Building, which is a big warehouse. Most of the floors are renovated for offices but floor six is open space, columns, concrete, and windows. Every time I go there I notice how beautiful the light is. Jay played a song on his guitar by a window and we were done shooting after one song. He looks very natural and comfortable, I think, because he wasn't paying attention to me as he played his song. The light was soft and just about perfect. Have a look!

A couple days ago I shot a model that I've worked with before. Her name is Mallory. The last time to worked together things looked a little like this, this, and this. For the new shoot we stayed indoors and played with candy. A while ago I had an idea to cover someone in rainbow jimmies but I've been told it's already been done. Of course! So she heard about the idea and decided that she wanted to be covered in icing and candy. It didn't quite go as perfectly as we imagined. The lights made the icing melty and most of the candy wouldn't stay put. We have learned important lessons for next time, that's for sure. We wanted to get glamour shots of her entire person but due to my lack of a studio, decent lights, and flair for glamour, all we mostly got were head shots. They turned out yummy anyway, so why don't you have a gander.




What a doll, eh? The mini spree's stuck the best. Nerds are 2nd on the list, followed by sour patch kids, followed by nothing. Everything else plopped right off. We shot this in my kitchen with two umbrella lights, two clamp lamps, a desk lamp, and the overhead light. The lamps each had one orange light and one blue light. I know that's an awful lighting setup, but you work with what you've got. So that is that.

Last night I had another lovely lady over to my place and we had a session that was just about the opposite of Mallory's shoot. Nikki, who is the star of my very first blog here, wanted me to get some head shots for her next album (Prometheus Burning). I am very pleased with how these turned out. I knew from the start that they'd look great because the idea was very simple. White face, black tongue, black backdrop. The success of this shoot was totally in her hands. She dressed amazing and was very confident in front of the camera. All I had to do was toss some lights up around her and snap away. We tossed Bessy, my giant african black millipede, in the mix, which can never ever be a bad thing. We also shot a few light painting images in my hallway for funsies. I don't have these shots on flickr yet as I'm converting the files right now. Here, however, is a sneak peak. Lucky you!


There are a lot of gems from this shoot, so be sure to look out for the whole set on flickr. I have a roast in the oven, so I bid you good day.

catching up

I thought I'd start this post with my favorite photo from a shoot that I did for my friends Jason and Robin. Their son Elliot turned 2 so they asked me to capture the whole adorable event. Which I did. It was a sunny summers day and the yard was filled with jolly children, so it wasn't a challenge to get a multitude of good photos. Do have a look at them here. By the way, he's not a battered child, he got some sunblock in his eye.

I've also finally gotten around to posting my photos of Five Days Pending, my friend Jason's (not the same Jason, another one) cover band. They played at the Rex Theater and he asked me to shoot it because one of the members of the band was leaving for Iraq shortly. It was a tough shoot. The lighting guy at the Rex really kept me on my toes. The lights were constantly changing so I was always moving around and adjusting my exposure. I used a really high ISO so the photos all look rather grainy. I used it to my advantage and made the photos look high-contrast and grungy. It's like I told them in my letter to the client (which comes FREE with every completed photo job)

"I shoot in a digital format called RAW which is a very large file so that you can use these for making fairly large prints if you’d like. I use an editing program that’s similar to photoshop but without the gimmicks. Any editing that I do on the computer are processes which could be achieved in a color darkroom. I edit for exposure, highlight contrast, shadow contrast, and hue. Your photos appear very grainy. You might not be too happy about all the grain but this will happen even if I had shot with film. The grain happens for a few reasons. A low light situation where there is a lot of movement requires both a fast shutter speed (to reduce blur) and a wide lens aperture (to capture all available light). To achieve both of these qualities, I needed to set my camera’s ISO very high. The ISO rating determines the camera’s sensitivity to light. This is true for both film and digital. Think of newspaper photos of something in motion or at night."

And so on. Here's an example for your eyeballs. The other forty-six that I've chosen to share can be seen on my flickr site when you click on these highlighted words right here.


Last night I shot what seemed to be a rather popular yearly party in Bloomfield called Roller Boogie. It was utter madness and I cannot say with any confidence yet how the photos turned out as I have yet to look at them. The party entailed booze, roller skates, costumes, VIP rooms, and live music. Nearly all the light came from disco balls and christmas lights. As far as I can recall the first rule of Roller Boogie was "hooray roller boogie", the second rule of Roller Boogie was "if it's your first roller boogie, you must skate" and the third rule seemed to be "no standing still or pausing under decent light". Getting a clear shot of anyone was a struggle and keeping my camera safe from flailing bodies was a challange. I don't quite understand why Sneaky (the host) hired a photographer, but I did my best and tried to capture the feel of the party, if not too many clear images of people's smiling faces. The experience left me frustrated, but now that I've given the images 24 hours to stew in their memory cards, I'm looking forward to editing. I'm sure I'll find some diamonds in the rough.

But that is a blog for another day. Keep on the lookout this Wednesday for the Pittsburgh City Paper.Mariage Blanc has a review on the way of their new album Broken Record. The article with be accompanied by a stunning photo of the band by yours truly. While your waiting for the city paper, be sure to keep an eye on my deviantart and flickr sites. Also, be sure to enjoy this here website as much as possible. You can never have too much lomo in your life!

On that note, I say goodbye.

the thursday afternoon slack-off

No photo jobs to work on today, so I got to just enjoy my camera. I took a handful of photos of my quail's eggs (and some chicken eggs for funsies) in the nice, soft light of my kitchen window. I love the quality of light that my apartment gets in the late afternoon.

They all looked so lovely when I uploaded them that I decided to leave them completely unedited. I'll be posting them to flickr shortly for you to enjoy.

Eggs are a lovely subject. With the right light, it's not hard to get an aesthetically pleasing image, I think. Anyway, also got some more photos of the animals and a few new Mariage Blanc photos.
The Mariage Blanc shoot was a little tricky since it was at night and my subjects were a little drunk. That made it tough to get clear long exposures like I had planned. Also forgot to bring along my wide angle lens so shooting in the basement where the light was decent was also tough. Had to do quite a bit of maneuvering just to fit them all in the frame. This one is probably my favorite as far as what I think would look good in the City Paper, which is where it is going to end up. I hope they pick this one, too.


I'll have the rest of these sets and more shortly on flickr and deviantart. In the meantime, have a look at this nice website about Duane Michaels, just because he's great. You can see one of my favorite sequences of his on there called "Chance Meeting". I leave you with the only photo that I got of the fireworks that I found to be in any way interesting.

opening up the vault

Good day to you, blog-shaped readers! Just thought I'd let you know what I've been up to. A few days ago Pittsburgh celebrated it's 250th anniversary so all the rich folk threw a fireworks party. I haven't had a chance to look at the photos yet, but if any turned out well, you have that to look forward to. Tomorrow I'll be shooting my co-worker's band Mariage Blanc
in the dead of night which means I get to play with streetlights and flashes. I think my photo for them will end up in the City Paper, which will definitely make my day.
I've shot them before, and I just recently posted that entire shoot to flickr. I enjoyed that project for a few reasons. First, it taught me to assume nothing about a shoot. They told me that they wanted me to document them recording their album. So in my head I had a picture of what I thought all recording studios looked like. Last year I took some (not very good) photos of my friend's recording studio The Church Recording Studio which is an incredible space. Were I to shoot a band there, I'd have lots of space to prance about with my tripod and do as I please. Mariage Blanc's place was not this way. There was no room to move and the few small spaces for me to crouch on the floor were always in the way of important microphones. My ninja photographer skills were put to the test that evening, for sure. I had to be as little of a distraction as possible, while still snapping.
Another assumption I made had to do with the lighting situation. I was told that the studio had big windows to let lots of soft, natural light in. However, I didn't think to ask what way the windows faced. So as the sun set and the music began, my subject become silhouettes. I had already decided not to use flash, as I don't have a remote, off-camera flash yet and anything I tried to do with my on-camera flash would look less than amateur. I took a few hundred shots that night, despairing that none of them looked any good. Later that night while editing I was pleasantly surprised at the mood I captured. I think the final product really suits the band and the kind of music they make. Subdued, simple, and just a tiny bit rockstar. Why not see for yourself!
I've also begun posting some of my other older projects, including these photos of Cyco Mike of Angry Moon tattoo working on an aquatic-themed sleeve. That night I had gone to just snap a couple quick ones for a portrait assignment for a digital photo class. I ended up staying for hours because I love the sound of a tattoo machine. This was one of the first shoots that I discovered how much I love to boost the highlight contrast. Looking back at it now, I can see that I had been adding way too much yellow to my photos on my old monitor. Now I've got a Samsung SyncMaster with her colors calibrated and her pixels in working order. Someday I'd like to re-edit all my old photos to see just how much better I can make them look.
Which brings me to my next project. I call it the Pip photo documentary. Last year I spend a few months documenting the creation of a robot. It's been a very big secret because my friend's company, Mechanimal, has been trying to sell it. So I've been sitting on these photos for ages without the permission to show a single living soul. The end may be in sight, but first I have to go back though all of them and pick the ones I'd like to display online, then get permission. I imagine once I start picking them out, I'll want to do a lot of re-editing as well.
Also new to check out on flickr are my photos of Prometheus Burning live at club Diesel, and the entire PAPA product shoot. That's all for now, hopefully you'll be hearing from me soon about these robot photos.