Making Maternity an Enjoyable Time

Maternity photos... Either you love them or you despise them. It's a trend that is nothing new, but becoming more and more popular as looking pregnant is "in".
Just a few years ago, women tended to wear loose, baggy, and concealing clothes to disguise that bundle of joy maturing within them. Nowadays, I see more women wearing tighter fitting, almost what is deemed "fashionable" outfits to celebrate and show-off their current state.
Whether you feel it is appalling or amazing, I enjoy shooting maternity photos for these reasons:
-Just as any photograph does, it captures "that" moment in your life in "that" state.
-It gives me great joy watching the expectant mother and father react, pose, and share a special bond in front of the camera.
-Wouldn't be great to have the child see those memories of their parents once they are all grown and an adult?
-It allows the parents celebrate the miracle of birth in a different and fun way.

Let's face it, pregnancy is a challenge and trying time for any women. Even for us men acting in a support role, it has it's challenges. Create an enjoyable time during your 9 months of love, happiness, and hell and get some images taken.

One Light Can Work Wonders

A couple of weeks ago I set out to do some test shots of Emily, a lovely and outgoing local who is considering getting into modeling. I was asked to do some "test shots" too assist her in finding her own level of comfort while being in front of the lens as well as gauge what type of photography and modeling she would be most suited for.
We started the session in the studio with some simple head shots. We later ended up taking a short 10 minute drive to a small field and rural back-road for some more charismatic themed shots during the last minutes of daylight.
All that was used was a single speedlight coupled to an 43" relflective umbrella placed at various axis around the Emily and the camera. Once in post processing, I gave the images a bit of lomographic curve (which I tend to do lot) and crushed the blacks a tiny bit. Here are the results...

Getting Cultural

I recently did a collaboration with a fellow photographer and artist Kelsey Beacco of Kel Z photography. I met Kelsey last winter during a benefit for Haiti at a local art gallery. I became an instant fan of her work as well as her personality and abilities to exhibit creativity both in front of and behind the camera. We had been wanting to collaborate for a while and finally a day came where both our schedules were congruent enough to hit the streets of Ogden for an afternoon.

The concept and credit goes to her on this one, for she came up with the entire concept and theme of this shoot. All I did was pick the locations, capture the frames, and make the edits.

Kelsey was cool enough to help me step out of my comfort zone and go for a complete natural light setup... If you know me, I always drag my flashes and umbrellas around with me no matter where I shoot. The sky happened to be completely overcast, eliminating all harsh shadows and creating the perfect "natural softbox" to utilize at our discretion. Cloudy days are great for shooting natural light portraits, as long as we are careful not to show the gray sky itself, since it is so flat and boring.

I love the end images from this shoot and I am glad to have been able to collaborate with someone as talented as Kelsey.

Rock Bottom

Many of you have seen the film, but here it is in case you haven't... For some reason, it's cutting off the right side of the video pane, so please click on the video itself to open it in a new window :)

The 48 Hour Film Project

I just wrapped on our third production for the 48 Hour Film Project's stop here in Salt Lake City. I feel we created our best short film yet. And with our new hardware, we were able to create a true cinema feel with amazing color grading and a nice shallow Depth of Field.

The 48 Hour Film Project is an international competition which takes place in many cities throughout the world, Salt Lake being one of them. It's primary competitors range from beginning amateurs all the way to SAG talent and professional indie film makers. It's basically a run and gun fly by the seat of your pants deal where you have only 48 hours to write, film, edit, and produce a completed original 4-7 minute short film. And when I state original, that includes all music and dialog too. To make the competition official and prevent any pre-production, you have no idea what your film's subject matter is going to be until the Friday night kickoff where each team draws a genre out of a hat. From there, you are given a prop, line of dialog, character name and their career which must be implemented into the film.

This year, our team had the following:
-Genre: Film Noir
-Prop: Egg
-Line of Dialog: "that's what I'm here for."
-Character: Ed or Edna Keegan who is a reporter

We made a great film and it will premiere on the Big Screen tomorrow night. We are excited and anticipate winning something this year. We had an excellent crew. I love making indie films as much as I love photography! The film will be loaded to YouTube and Vimeo later this week following the premiere.

Street Bridals

Theses were taken earlier this spring during a cold sunny day in March. I love when a bride has an open mind for some non-traditional concepts when we get to ditch the normal "bride in front of the flowers" or staircase shots.
Karina was one of those brides who placed her complete faith in my hands and said "do whatever you think will look good..."
I decided to shoot a urban concept where we explored some of the older industrial areas of Salt Lake City. Despite the cold March weather, we captured some great frames. Most of these images were accomplished by using only a single off camera flash coupled to an umbrella in one way or another.

Going Green

Since we are all out of college and no longer have access to the professional fancy video and studio equipment we once did, we have slowly had to save (or should I say spend) our own bucks to purchase our own. We started with a nice camcorder and lighting. To test it out, we made a spoof public service announcement on going Green and saving water. Enjoy.

See it HERE on Vimeo HD