Rockabilly Group: Voodoo Swing

At around sunset I went out to the desert near the San Tan mountains with a local Rockabilly group called Voodoo Swing. The bassist's son is a friend of mine and they needed some band photos so they can start a MySpace page...Apparently you can't get booked for gigs these days unless venues can check you out on MySpace.

Since Deanna asked...I shot this using two remote strobes on stands firing through white diffuser umbrellas. I had one midi strobe with a red gel inside the car, but it didn't fire with any sort of reliability so you can only catch it in a couple of frames. My camera was set to ISO100, shooting at 1/50 second at f/5.6. I'm not sure, but I think my main light was near full power or 1/2 power and my fill light was at 1/8-1/4 power.

Hotel San Carlos with Brenda Lee

Saturday I met up with a local Pin-Up model named Brenda Lee at the historic Hotel San Carlos in downtown Phoenix. She and her boyfriend rented the Carey Grant suite and booked a couple of photographers to shoot in the hotel.

I tried another multiple since she had a ton of wardrobe changes that she brought. We had full reign of the hotel. It was a lot of fun.






Brenda's boyfriend, Coz, had a style of his own, so I got a couple shots of him too.

Lightning!!!....Finally!

I have had the WORST time capturing lightning this season...I thought for a while that God didn't like me, or maybe he/she/it was just messing with me because I would spend hours at a time chasing, setting up, and waiting for lightning the past couple of weeks whenever I could find time. I would leave the shutter open for 20-30 seconds and just as it would close lightning would strike. It happened repeatedly, and I almost pulled my hair out.

I set up on the 4th floor outdoor stairwell next to a new hospital in Mesa to get this shot...The same thing kept happening where I would just miss a strike after a full 30-second exposure. And when I finally did capture some lightning, a MedEvac helicopter was landing just then and left a streak through the frame from its flashing lights. I was just going to give up because the lightning was getting more and more infrequent when this baby lit up the sky...What a pain in the ass! (Click to Enlarge)

Selling Out

Since the freelance gigs haven't exactly been rolling in lately, and I'm still doing modeling trade work on the side until I can build up a name for myself, I decided to try preying on my neighbors for extra cash...
Here's a flyer I recently fashioned (Click to Enlarge):

My Weekend

I had an interesting line up of assignments this past weekend...

Friday morning I found myself at the Mighty Mud Mania in Scottsdale. I was a mud-splattered mess at the end of it all, but it was fun to see the kids getting into the fun.





Then Saturday morning I headed down to the Salt River (AGAIN) for Halloween on the Salt River. Just like I figured, the only people dressing up for the event were the employees.


Saturday night was spent at The Sets in Tempe where they were putting on a qualifier for the World Series of Beer Pong Tournament.

Role Reversal

One of our writers is working on a feature about role reversals in modern relationships... The couple in this photo was great to work with. They did everything I told them to do for this shoot. They were a lot of fun.

Walking with Dinosaurs Press Conference

This morning I went to a press conference at the U.S. Airways Center that was hyping up the Walking with Dinosaurs Experience that will be coming to Phoenix in September. I realized when I got there that there weren't going to be any of the life-size dinosaur puppets set up like I had hoped, just a visually uninteresting stage and three speakers.

Luckily a group of kids from the Tempe YMCA showed up and got a little lesson about dinosaurs from a local paleontologist. Here the kids get a close look at a T-Rex tooth. (Click to Enlarge)

Branching Out On My Own

Since I've been shooting more covers in the past months I became a member of a modeling database website called Model Mayhem (www.modelmayhem.com) where I've been going to find cover models for the College Times.

Since I'm currently on a modeling freeze at work I decided to do some collaborative shoots with local models on the side and do some trade-for-portfolio work that I hope will eventually turn into paid work once I've built up more of a name for myself.

Yesterday I met up with a local model in Mesa named Ad'ee who is working on a themed collection pertaining to social issues (i.e. drug addiction, anorexia/bulimia, etc.). We tackled "Domestic Violence" at this session. Her best friend, Amanda (wearing my suit) helped out... Ad'ee's a little smiley in a couple pictures, but I think it makes it look more sinister and sadistic...

Cuatro de Julio

I know, I know...I'm a little behind.

But here are my requisite fireworks photos from the thing at Tempe Town Lake.

Phoenix Science Museum's Upgraded Planetarium

Today I headed over to the Phoenix Science Museum to get some shots of their newly improved planetarium. The Phoenix Planetarium now boasts the most technologically advanced system in the world and is much more than just a presentation of a few stars. It was really pretty fascinating.

Unfortunately, I was only allowed to take pictures when there weren't any people in the theater, so I tried to include the seats in the foreground to give the planetarium some sense of scale. If you get a chance to shoot there, I would say that this is one of those rare assignments that warrants using a fish-eye lens because of how huge and encompassing the ceiling screen is.

There were nebulae...

Our moon...

A close-up tour of Saturn's rings (notice the rows of seats and you'll get a feel for how immense this screen is)...

Lastly, the curators put every little extra the system had to offer up on the screen for me. They turned on all of the constellations, the cardinal directions, a scale showing the course of the earth through the solar system at each month, and a 3-dimensional grid of the universe...Really amazing.