We had a rain storm today and I was bummed. Then I looked to the West and saw that it was going to clear up reallllll nice after a heavy downpour. It's great weather for photographs.
My best friends moved downtown and I'm stoked. We were at Kyle's doing HW and then the storm broke. We walked out his front door and shot a few of these.
Working this graveyard shift has been getting to me lately. Not necessarily in a bad way, I'm just...adjusting.
Anyhow I've been noticing how different life has been for me while I'm adjusting. Its crazy to think that people make careers out of working these hours!
The other day I noticed my sleep schedule and yesterday I noticed that I'm always driving home from work while people are going to work.
I noticed so much I drove around snapping pictures. This was my favorite.
I've been trying to move out of my usual box of people and light setups and trying to find the usual. The rain brought some nice textures and I was just snapping away. This was my favorite!
So have you locked your keys in the car before? I have. Lately more than ever, in fact I've done it twice already this year. The first time I did it, I happened to be at Autozone helping my roomate get a new car battery.
When I had realized what, the guy behind the counter told me to get a brake line for $5 and bend it so I could fish it out.
Well it worked.
Last night our friend Paul called and asked us to help out his sister who had locked her keys in the car.
The photo shows the end result.
The weather has been incredible for the last few days here in Sacramento, and to celebrate, I headed out with Kris and my new friend Glenn for a nice ride on the bike trail.
I can't believe I've never ridden this before, it's beautiful out there and it's a nice smooth ride.This one was taken with my Droid with the FXCamera app. I'm stoked.
As you've probably noticed, I've been working on building up my fashion work lately. I've never shot a lot before and so I've been learning lately by trial and error. Last night I went out with my old friend Monica and shot some photos. This was actually the first, and I'm stoked on the look, and stoked on the shot.
My formula is simple, but I'm going to start trying more natural light work. I feel like I have this look down, what do you think?
I spent last weekend in the beautiful city of San Fransisco visiting my buddy Andrew. Gnarly weekend of skating and fun. I can't say that I could live in SF, it's TOO busy. It's crazy man, hustle,bustle all day.. all night. But I love, love,love.... the lights.
This photo's gotten a lot of love on my Flickr already. Let me know what you think.
I also took the time to put together this panorama while I was up there. You'll definitely want to click on this one and see the full size.
So it's been girls, girls, girls the past few days and I though I needed to change it up a bit. Enter Tien.
I went to high school with him and he's been a good friend ever since. I've been working on my "fashion" portfolio and I thought a fresh face might help. Pretty simple setup here, a beauty dish to the right and a snooted, grid spot left and behind him.
Lately I've been trying to shoot more and more fashion (oriented) stuff. I've always been interested in the field, but have never really had a drive to do much about it until lately. I'm on a project for a little boutique here in Sacramento and have been working on my fashion photography.
Aly here, I've know for a little while. She's pursuing a career in acting and is working on a degree in Journalism. She stuck this one out in the cold with me so I bought here a nice cup of coffee from the fine folks over at Temple.
I borrowed this spotlight technique from street photographer Nick Turpin. You can read about that little idea here on strobist.
Both of these photos result from my job. I work the graveyard most weekends, therefore I'm up at crazy hours. The first resulted, because I had just gotten off and had to meet a friend at Temple to exchange some gear and talk over a few ideas.I normally would have been home sleeping at 8am, but I had already procrastinated for awhile in giving this guy back his camera.
Anyhow while we were sitting, shooting the poop, I caught this guy and thought, "Wow, photographers wait for stuff like this all the time, I should photograph him." So I did. First with my Mamiya, then with my 5D, so soon we'll be able to compare and see which came out better.
The second shot is a result of my job. I have a lunch break at like 4am and nothing is open, so I thought well i have the streets to myself. So i headed out and found an open intersection (2 blocks away). I used my headlights to light me and shot this.
Meghan is a trooper. Probably one the coolest girls I know, she'll go out and pretty much try any crazy idea; this one was hers and I'm stoked on the way it came out. I've been working on some fashion stuff for a show coming up in March and Meg has been a huge help, we were out shooting some stuff for that and then it started pouring. She was still stoked to shoot and I didn't care, so this is what we came out with.
I broke a rule, and didn't shoot a film version of this, but I loved this one too much to pass it up.
Creepiest Day Ever. So Kris and I roll out with my buddy Wade to check out this abandoned hotel, tunnels and office buildings (shot of Kris). We thought it'd be some underground city thing.
It wasn't.
We go down to this hole in the wall under the building, climb into it, then crawl around following Wade as we spelunk under a sidewalk. We then crawl up and into this hotel and it's just creepier than ever. Pigeon's apparently roost in there over the summer and just poop everywhere, there's all kinds of clothes, beds, and who knows what in all of the rooms. It seriously looks like everyone just up and left one day.
After that Wade climbs over to the office building and opens the front door for us. We go in and ride.
Creep all day.
Day 3 with Sister Crayon at the Hangar studios. Pretty rad stuff going on, and I cannot wait to actually hear this full length album. Watching process and seeing all the work that goes into production really makes me appreciate recording artists.
Jules from Sea of Bees and I forget the other lovely lady's name were there to help out on this part. Pretty cool experience all together, look out for an interview with them this month.
Taken very early on Feb 2nd, 12:30am ish as I got off work. I've seen this building pulsate light (at the top) for the past few years. Don't know what exactly is going on there, but its always looked like a rave is going on up there. I took this exact same shot with my Mamiya as well. Later this month, we'll come back to this shot and compare it to the film shot as well.
I'm fortunate enough to spend a few days with Sister Crayon as they record at the Hangar this week in Sacramento.
If you haven't heard or heard of Sister Crayon I highly recommend heading over to their myspace music page and checking it out.
This photo obviously doesn't show them. Instead it's Scott and I forget the other guys name (sorry) the sound engineers. From what I could hear in the monitors, these guys are gooooooood.
This photo is also the start of Film February in which I'm taking an exact shot of each 365 photo on one of my film cameras as well. We'll start comparing in about three weeks.
The reason I'm allowing for a stop difference with aperture and shutter speed is because film can hold a tonal range of about 7 or 8 stops (well-process B&W) and the most a digital SLR can hold is about 6 stops of light. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'd suggest starting here.
I already know this project is going to be meticulous (why I picked the shortest month of the year) but that's one of the advantages of doing this. It's going to slow me down right before the busiest 3 months of my life and really force to me at least brush up on my film understanding and probably my understanding of using a camera in general. If you're keen on trying this shoot me an email , find me on facebook or folllow me on twitter , I'd love to hear about how you're tackling this and see your results.
So when are you going to process, print, scan, and upload your film?
The third week of February. I figure that I would at least have my first two weeks of film done by then and then can start sorting through it. Here's the coolest part. We're going to compare them side by side (as best as we can) and we're going to vote on it. This polling system is statistically flawed, pretty insignificant, and downright biased because a lot of my readers are into film and it's all coming from one photographer, but anywho I wanted you to get involved. Who knows where this will go.
So get ready.
