Love Theatre, Will Travel

December 8, 2015

Detail of a mural in one of ACT's classrooms

We're deep into the holiday season, which is the best time to reconnect with family and friends. Especially for me, since I have the bad habit of getting lost in my work and and not spending the time I should with the people I care about. That's why it was so awesome to be able to triple-dip last month with a business/friends/family trip back to my hometown.

I grew up in the Tri-Cities area of Washington State, which is about a four hour drive away from my home in Seattle. The region is famous for it's nuclear weapons, hydro-electric dams, sagebrush, and The Academy of Children's Theatre. I can't overstate how important ACT is to this community. It brings the gift of childhood theatre education to Eastern Washington, and by doing so it provides immeasurable benefits to the community. This can mean anything from teaching the professional skills needed to become a performer to providing a safe place for kids to exercise their imagination and make new friends. As a teenager in the Tri-Cities with few friends and even fewer artistic outlets, ACT gave me a place to be and taught me skills that I still carry with me. I'm really proud to remain involved with this organization. I continue to work with them as an occasional Graphic Designer, and in November I was happy to travel across the state to work with them as a photographer.

Wren came with me to serve as a second shooter, and between the two of us we were able to go from room to room, capturing the awesome work that ACT was doing with kids from 3-18 years old. There was something for everyone, storytelling, choreography, vocal coaching, set building, costumed rehearsal, and so much more. And all this was just part of a typical Saturday. We were blown away, and I can't remember smiling so much during a shoot.

The trip was made even better by the chance to catch up with ACT's Artistic Director, Josh Darby. You can see another adventure we had with Josh in an earlier post H ERE. Since we live far apart right now, it's my favorite thing to wander through Hastings talking about everything and nothing. This weekend was a chance to do just that. Last, but definitely not least, it was great to see my family. It'd been about six months since I'd been able to sit down with my parents and my brother Eian, so going out for Chinese food was more than called for.

I'll be working with ACT on some upcoming projects, so having a wealth of fresh photography will be a fantastic resource. I'm so happy when life and work can overlap so well. It was the perfect combination of adventure and friendship, which made for a really great trip. Check out some more samples below taken by me and Wren, and look out for my next post, which will be the unveiling of our family Christmas card.

Happy Thanksgiving

November 28, 2015

Mr. Milo Kittysbee. The best turkey thief in Cap Hill.

Ms. Delta Bentley. Appreciator of the finer things.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!

This was a wonderful holiday. Here are some of my highlights:

The cats of Thanksgiving: I'm the reluctant Stepfather to two cats, Milo and Delta. It was nice to cease hostilities and lift a glass with these two, even if it meant that as soon as the Tryptophan wore off they were back at each other's (and my) throats. Milo especially used all of his cuteness and, well, cat-like reflexes to steal off of my plate. Delta was a bit classier, preferring a vantage point from the window sill and a glass of Chardonnay.

I made a turkey!: Ok, a turkey breast, which is 100% more turkey than I've ever cooked before. I am a novice chef, meaning anything that isn't microwaved is new territory to me. It went beyond that though. For the first time, I made a Thanksgiving feast from start to finish. Dip, asparagus, turkey, potatoes, gravy, biscuits, little smokies, and more. Since I am by default the one person in the apartment that can cook, I'm trying to live up to the responsibility.

Eating in our underwear: It's true. Wren and I share a VERY small one-bedroom in Capitol Hill. One downside to this is that our only table and chairs are in storage. Also, for at least the first meal of the day we were alone, sooo.... we dined in comfort.

Black Friday Shopping: It doesn't make us bad people that the part of the day we were looking forward to most was going to Target. My prize was a sackful of movies on Blu Ray and DVD, Wren's was a purse and some new outfits. It was a late night, but a great finish.

From my home to yours, I hope it was a great day with the people you care about, and a great weekend after!

Whatchoo Been Up To?

September 27, 2015

It's been too long since I posted here. Where to start?

It seems like I hardly put my camera down this summer, and that the summer was over in a flash. Since my last post I've worked with tons of theatres around Seattle, started shooting with fun new clients like The Seattle Symphony, picked up a few new bits for my kit, taken ten steps forward on the business side, shot a beautiful wedding, and (best of all) Wren and I traveled around the northwest and moved in together. So, I guess I do have something to show for summer 2015.

Probably the easiest way to hit some highlights is to break this up into sections, so first let's try...

THEATRE

Let start with Jesus Christ Superstar for Seattle Musical Theatre. I did two shoots for this production: pre-production publicity shots and production photos. It's always fun to do a pre-production shoot because the photographer can bring more creativity to bear. For production photos, the challenge is to be ready to capture a show and think on your feet. For pre-production the challenge is to work with the client to come up with a concept, and then to make that show in the photos. With more control of the lighting and location, you have the opportunity to shape the image and tell a story. This July we used the bare stage of Seattle Musical Theatre's venue in Magnusen Park, and two of my lights to create a fun, rock-show look. I also had the chance to break out some craft skills, and make my own crown of thornes for the actor to wear.

Jesus Christ Superstar, Seattle Musical Theatre — *Jesus Christ Superstar*, Seattle Musical Theatre

Once the show was on its feet in September, I got to see the final vision and try to capture that as well. It was a very fun production to shoot, with really interesting lighting effects and use of haze. The haze and directional light made for really striking images as well as a challenge for me to stay on top of. I enjoyed the show, which is still playing until October 4. More information on the show HERE.

Orpheus Descending, Intiman Theatre — *Orpheus Descending*, Intiman Theatre

Bootycandy, Intiman Theatre — *Bootycandy,* Intiman Theatre

Over the end of summer I also worked with Renton Civic Theatre on The Addams Family, and three times with Intiman Theatre Festival. First on Orpheus Descending for production photos, then to capture the fun of the John Baxter is a Switch Hitter Opening Night party, and most recently again shooting production photos for Bootycandy. I'd really recommend Bootycandy, which made me laugh out loud and is still playing until October 3. More info HERE.

All this time I've been continuing to shoot video (instead of photographs) with The 5th Avenue Theatre. Aside from being my day job, The 5th has been cranking out amazing work, and I was busy for more than a month shooting interviews with many of the special artists who were in town working on brand-new musicals during NextFest. Aside from that, I've been tracking the journey of the Von Trapp children through the child audition process. Those kids work hard, and the competition was a lot scarier than when I used to go out for roles in college. Both sets of footage will be fun to sort through and will present a new challenge when it comes to editing.

OOPS!

So, accidents happen. On my very last day shooting video for The 5th's NextFest, I was packing up my lights and someone kindly asked if they could help me take my things back upstairs. I said they could carry my bag for me, not thinking they would pick it up until I was packed. They went for the bag, which was unzipped, and my camera fell from the open side, crashing to the ground. Luckily it didn't fall far and when it hit, it fell squarely on the lens, which was my trusty little 50mm prime. My "Nifty Fifty" bit it. It shattered on impact. But due to it's sacrifice, the camera escaped unscathed. Luckily, even though I use this lens all the time, it's still the cheapest in my bag. It was a good chance to upgrade to the newest model of the f1.8 50mm, which is working like a charm.

BRIDGET & JED

I shot another wedding! I've been working with Bridget for more than three years, and for a good chunk of that time she was my boss. It was my pleasure to be her photographer for the occasion, and it was double the fun because it was spread over two shoots. In August we went to Scenic Beach State Park, where we took a variety of couple photos. It was a chance to do a dry-run for the wedding, and to get some more casual shots of the couple together. Plus: Bubbles.

Then two weeks ago in September, the wedding day came. It was a long day of work, but Wren came out as both my date and second-shooter. Between the two of us we managed to be everywhere and were hopefully a help to all the friends and family putting the event together.

SAN JUAN ISLAND

And finally, just for fun Wren and I planned a trip out the San Juan Island. Like I said, the end of summer has flown by, so this was our chance to slow down and soak a little more up. We'd never been there before, so we took the cameras with us and used it as a chance to see as much nature as we could. The highlight was taking a whale tour, where we suited up and went out for an afternoon on a Zodiak. The pilot was in contact with all the other tours in the area, so he new exactly where to find the Orca pods. He zoomed us around to see groups of Harbor Seals, J-Pod (the local family of Orcas, and even a Humpback Whale. We'd rented telephoto lenses, which really helped us get a good view. Especially since the tours don't go within 200 yards of the whales, which keeps them from being crowded or scared by tourists.

Keep a look out for a sister blog that's coming soon. Wren's a great designer and creative eye, so she'll be taking off on her own set of adventures. She'll still appear here regularly as we take images together, but she'll have lots of fun projects that go beyond photography, along with thoughts about creativity that she'll expand on in her own website. More on that to come.

Calvin (and Lucy) and Hobbes

July 22, 2015

Hi there!

I teased it a little in my previous post “Lost in Iowa,” but a good chunk of my recent trip to the Midwest was spent in Minneapolis. This served two awesome purposes. First, my brother and his family have lived there for years, and I’ve never had a chance to visit them there. Second, Wren lived there for 10 years and it was cool to see her old stomping ground.

My brother and sister-in-law have two children, Lucy and Calvin. Calvin takes his name from the comic book character created by Bill Watterson, which makes me very happy. This, along with some of the creative portrait workshops I sat in on during Seattle’s PhotoFest in June really inspired me to do some kind of creative portrait involving both children, and to make some nod toward the comic Calvin took his name from. After some thought, I really wanted to do something with the iconic image of Calvin and Hobbes flying around in their cardboard box, which acted as spaceship, time machine, transmogrifier, duplicator, or really anything depending on which way it was positioned and what you wrote on it.

The other iconic ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ image I wanted to use was the huge vistas that Watterson painted for the adventures of Spaceman Spiff, Calvin’s astronaut character. So I figured, why not have Calvin and Lucy, along with their buddy Hobbes (since they have awesome parents OF COURSE they have a stuffed tiger named Hobbes), in a cardboard box flying through space on some adventure?

The first step, come up with the fantasy background. I wanted the environment to look like the comic, so no worries about realism. My first thought was to paint a drop, but since my time and budget were limited, this wasn’t a good option. I eventually decided to make a background out of construction paper and posterboard that I could lay in behind the kids in post, so for an afternoon before our visit, I lay out with scissors, sharpies, and paper and put it together.

Next I wanted the stars to have some dimension to them, so we cut real ones out of paper that could be placed into the photograph. Wren was the master star-maker, and she made them all while I worked on the background. Finally, some loose cotton batting would work great as the clouds of exhaust behind the ship. Now we were ready to go.

Of course, taking posed photos of a two year old and two month old together isn't the easiest thing in the world, as you can tell from this picture. To make this fun and easy for everyone, I took care of as much in advance as possible. I would have loved to have had studio lights, so that I would have had much more control, but since we were travelling light, I just set up in the sunlight outside. I spread out a large black cloth to shoot the kids on top of, so I could easy trim them out to match the outer space sky later. then carefully chose my angle and shot a bunch of reference photos of the empty box. Then, only when everything was completely ready, we brought the kids out. Mom and Dad did a great job keeping them focused, but I still knew I only had about 5 minutes before the whole scene became chaos. Luckily, since I had so much reference already, we didn't need both children to pose perfectly together. As long as I had a few good options of each, I knew I could match them later. So after a few short minutes of shooting, we sent Lucy and Calvin inside, no worse for the wear. Then it was easy to snap a few angles of the pre-made stars and cotton batting against the black drop and pack up.

We had a lot of other adventures in Minneapolis, and didn't give the photos another thought until coming home. On the computer at home I combined the elements, paper background (which stayed behind as wall art for the kids - no way to pack that in a carry-on!), paper stars, cotton puffs, and most importantly, the kids. Luckily there was enough of everything to put it all together.

I hope to do more projects like this, and to try and push toward creating more fun composite portraits. In the meantime it was a really fun project for me and a cool keepsake of the visit for my brother's family.

Just to show that Lucy and Calvin are really super rad kids all on their own, without any fantasy elements, here are a couple shots from the trip that I really liked. Calvin has a killer smile and Lucy came along with us to the sculpture garden.

STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT POST! A lot has happened in the last few weeks and I'll have more adventures to share soon!

Lost in Iowa

July 7, 2015

Last week was an adventure far outside of Seattle, ranging all over the Midwest. This included Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. I’ve been to Chicago a couple of times, but really this was my first chance to see a giant chunk of the country that I’ve previously only flown over. Wren is a native Iowan and was my guide. The reason for our trip was really unfortunate, and I won’t go into it here since it concerns family. However, it still turned out to be a chance for me to experience what Iowa had to offer. Also, Minneapolis, where Wren went to school and where my brother and sister-in-law live with their two children.

So, not going to shock anyone here, but Iowa has a lot of corn.

Driving around endless cornfields, I couldn’t help but think about how cool it would be to use it for some kind of photo. It’s a sight we just don’t have here, and though I didn’t have any particular ideas, I wanted to play off of how endless the fields were. The only thing I could think of doing was some kind of portrait of Wren, since it’s her home, though she’s now a lot more comfortable as a city girl.

So we found a promising stretch of cornfield on our second to last day and started taking some pictures. The first problem was: corn grows really fast. What I’d thought was just over waist high corn early in the week was now over Wren’s head. This got in the way of the idea of her waist deep in an endless field, which was really all that I’d thought of. We took a nice photo of her and her mom (who had come along for the adventure, and then helpfully went over to explain to the confused farmer what we were doing in his crop) but then I was sort of stumped.

The only other idea I’d had before we got there was a sort of joke photo of me with a map in the middle of the field looking as alien as I felt all week. We’d brought sunglasses and a map to prep for that, so after I took a few unsuccessful and uninspired glamour shots of Wren, I handed her the camera and asked her to grab the shot of me. We had our first bit of fun at this point, with her yelling direction, and me doing what I do best: look mildly confused and irritated.

This gave me the notion to get a similar pose with Wren, which made her come up with a MUCH better idea. Why not pose us together? If we’re both in the photo, it can actually tell a story about both of us and visually represent our feelings about where we were and what we were doing that week. Also, it would hopefully be a lot funnier.

With this in mind, we talked quickly about how we could do it. We found a stretch of corn, marked where I would be and where she would be. Then she took my picture, making sure I was looking in the right direction. Then, after matching her camera angle and lighting, and giving a few directions, I took hers. We were pretty sure then that it would work, but we’d have to find out when we got home.

I was lucky enough to have some time off work when we got back to Seattle, so one of the first things I did was pull up the photos and see if they fit. They did, perfectly. A quick polish and the finished combined photo was ready to go. I’m really proud of it for a few reasons. First: it tells a good story. Though it’s heightened for comedy, I think it shows us off and how we felt after this week of roaming around together. Second: it was a good use of just a little time and basic equipment. We shot this with just my little speedlight as a fill and it came out really well. And finally, it makes me happy because it’s a real collaboration. It came from both of us having ideas and playing off of each other. We were also both behind the camera and giving direction. That’s why both of our signatures are on the final shot. I’m going to be doing a lot more solo shooting this week, but a joint project was really fun and hopefully something we’ll do more of.

NEXT POST: Working with babies on a creative family portrait – the photo to the right is a preview of their first reaction...

Shooting Together (For Business and Pleasure)

June 7, 2015

Unfortunately due to a heavy workload, I haven’t had time to finish Spider-Ken. That will have to be the subject of a future post. However, here’s something I've been meaning to post about for a while.

For most of the adventures I've posted about in this blog, I've had a silent partner. During each shoot that I've done purely for fun this month, I've had Wren Bentley with me. This has been great for two reasons. First, she’s my girlfriend and is great eye-candy. Second, and probably more important in this context, she’s been a great artistic eye with her own experience and perspective. After mostly shooting solo for the last three years, it’s been really fun to have someone else behind the camera for a few adventures.

In my first post, about purchasing my new camera and gear (READ BELOW), there are photos of me with my 5d. These didn't magically appear. Wren and I went to a park near my house, and while I was screwing around taking pictures of birds and whatnot, she was doing what we came there for-taking great action shots with my 60d. She has her own set of photo experience to draw from, including graduating from the Art Institute where she took photography classes and worked in the camera equipment cage. From her time there she already knows what each piece of gear is and what it does. And since she’s also a professional Graphic Designer (www.wrenbentley.com), she knows what to look for with light and composition. Now that I have two cameras in my professional kit, one is in her custody to give her the chance to get a little more hands-on time, and to turn her tech knowledge into photos of her own.

Wren, feeding a goat and matching it's expression.

I've already talked about our day at the Zoo together, but I didn't really talk about what a fun date it was. Not only were we able to point out shots to each other and help with any glitches, it was really cool to do something together that’s usually so singular. I’m used to working alone when I work creatively. I paint alone, I design alone at a computer, and so far I've shot alone. I've always gotten a charge out of shooting, and to get that charge while you’re with someone else who is obviously getting it too is kind of addicting. I hope we can do more of this together.

Also sometimes you just need a hand. In all of the Super-Josh photos, Wren is just out of frame shaking Josh’s cape or holding a reflector. Or a creative voice. During the Spider-Ken shoot, time was a factor. We had to shoot it right and we had to shoot it FAST. It’s easy to get tunnel-visioned. That’s when it’s most valuable to have someone discreetly whisper in your ear “I like what you’re doing, but what if we tried…” We got some good angles and compositions out of that shoot because of that. It’s great to have collaboration, and it can only make the work better.

And I know for myself, there are nights like last night. I was shooting a commercial event by myself and was getting really frustrated. I had to rush around to be in three places at once, and as a result, didn't initially feel like I was doing my best work at any of them. During a quick break I texted Wren my frustrations and the reply was:

Most helpful text I could have gotten, and even better because I knew she knew what she was talking about. The rest of the night went really well, with the reminder to slow down a little, and get the shots done right. Thanks again, Wren.

What do you guys think? Do you have a collaborator that pushes you to make you better and that you support in return? More adventures soon.

Super Josh

May 28, 2015

Hello again! This weekend was great for a lot of reasons. I got to road trip across the state to my hometown (showing off my girlfriend at each stop), I got to catch up with my mentor at Realife Photograpy, I got to do a TON of fun, artistic, shooting, and most of all, got to spend some time with my honest-to-goodness superhero – Josh Darby.

I’m willing to bet that everyone reading this knows all about Josh already. As a refresher though, he’s the Artistic Director and one of the lead teachers for The Academy of Children’s Theatre in Richland, Washington. ACT is tireless in making awesome programs for the kids of that region. They’re also the main way many kids (myself included) are introduced the arts in a region that is art deprived. They’re a HUGE service to the community, and I’ll stop now instead of raving on and on about all the good they do. Josh has been there for more than a decade, and in that time he’s had a huge impact. I’m sad that I don’t get to see much of him anymore, but I know that he’s where he’s doing the most good right now.

Last summer I started a photo series where I asked friends to say what super power suited them best, and then I tried to photograph them demonstrating that power in a way that told a story. It’s been a great way to challenge myself artistically and to celebrate what’s special about my friends. I wanted to do something like this for Josh. The others have been a little darker and grittier, but based on Josh’s personality and his work with children, it was more appropriate to do something fun and colorful and all about imagination. So we safety pinned a red cape on him and went to Richland’s Howard Amon Park to play.

The idea was to shoot him roaming around in character, with the final goal of shooting him flying. To make the shots more active, both Wren and Josh’s fiancé Ann helped by shaking his cape out behind him and reflecting additional light onto his face. For our main shot, Josh flying, he actually laid down on top of a sculpture and stretched out his arms and legs into a Superman position while I shot him from below. To fill in the light on his face, chest, and hands, he’s lying over the top of my reflector, which is bouncing the bright sunlight back up at him.

To take this photo all the way to the final image, I simply masked out most of the scenery behind Josh, and replaced it with a sunny cloudscape. Then I added more cape from a few of the other shots in the series for a fuller look, and added motion blurs here and there to give him some movement. It’s totally okay to me that the result isn’t completely photo-realistic. A guy flying around wouldn’t look like this, and his baseball hat would have fallen off long ago… but I want this to look like it’s in Josh’s imagination. So it’s brightly colored and full of fun.

Since Josh and Ann were both there, and have been living far apart for a long time, we took an extra couple minutes to take a few photos of them by the water. Wren was on reflector and I stood above them on a slope, so that I could even out their heights a little bit - Josh is kind of a giant.

We actually shot another superhuman this weekend...

Next post will be about Memorial Day, when got creative to shoot someone actually web-slinging through downtown Seattle.

Animal Adventures ("Here, Kitty...")

May 17, 2015

Wren and I at Woodland Park Zoo. — Wren and I at Woodland Park Zoo.

Yesterday was a really fun, though exhausting day. Wren and I took part in the annual ‘Day at the Zoo with Glazer’s Camera.’ This meant that we were able to spend an entire day in Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, learning by shooting with great equipment while being mentored by professional wildlife photographers.

The day started at 9am with a two-hour lecture from professional safari and travel photographer, Randy Hanna. After that we were invited to borrow all kinds of equipment from Glazer’s and the photo suppliers that had turned out for the event, including Sony, Tamron, Manfrotto, Nikon, and Canon. We borrowed two Monopods from Manfrotto and two Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lenses from Glazer’s. It was a good thing we did too; because once we got out to the park those telephoto lenses were essential.

The main problem, at least at first, was the other people. The park was in full operation, and since it was a busy Saturday morning every viewpoint was packed. Especially crowded was the first display of the day, where everyone was pushing and shoving to see the three lion cubs. Wren had her camera full-out kicked by an unruly child, and I was forced back into a crevice where I hurriedly tried to change the lenses on our cameras to get better range. In the process I somehow got a speck of dirt on the mirror inside the smaller camera, which fortunately doesn’t affect the photographs, but was annoying for Wren to see in the viewfinder for the rest of the day. With the longer 70-200mm lenses securely in place, it became at lot easier to shoot past the crowds than with the normal lenses we’d started the day with.

Randy Hanna was full of really valuable knowledge about the animals from the African Savanna that we were shooting for the first few hours. He also made sure we weren’t rushing and ignoring basic technique. There was a big range of skill levels in the group of about 30, so this covered everything from basic composition to checking histograms or setting custom focus points. He’s a Nikon and Hasselblad camera user, so we also got to teach him how to navigate the Canon menu while he was trying to help another student.

Me with the 200-400mm f4 lens. Photo by Wren. — Me with the 200-400mm f4 lens. Photo by Wren.

We had another shock on the Savanna when we looked back through our photos and realized the Zebra we’d been shooting was a stallion. A very well-endowed stallion. A fun example of missing something big that was in our faces while in a hurry to get good shots. Anyway…

After the African exhibit we ate lunch, and then headed back to the classroom for our guaranteed ‘animal encounter.’ We’d paid extra for ‘VIP’ tickets to take part in this, so we were expecting a chance to shoot one of the exotic animals up close. We were a little disappointed that it was just one of the zookeepers doing a standard showing of two owls. Nothing against the owls, who were beautiful, but it was exactly the same experience that any zoo-goer can have multiple times a day at the raptor display. Plus, since we were in a packed classroom with fluorescent lights, there wasn’t much of a chance at a good photo anyway. Kind of lame.

To follow this the ‘VIP’s were to have what Glazer’s advertised as a ‘Curated Zoo Walk’ with an actual Zoo Photographer. This turned out to be a bust as well. It was a last-minute replacement photographer who volunteers for the Zoo, and who arrived late offering only an impromptu Q&A session. Since Glazer’s was going to pack up all their rental gear and end the event at 3pm, and this guy started talking at 2:15, Wren and I had a choice. We decided our time would be better spent shooting in the park.

Trying not to be rude, which was hard since we were in the front row, we rushed to the rental table and I borrowed a massive 200-400 f4 lens and said sayonara to the lecture. We ran as fast as we could with the heavy gear back into the Zoo for our last 30 minutes of rental time.

We went straight for the tigers because… why wouldn’t you?! We were really lucky again. The tiger display is brand new and has three adult tigers. Two were lying just inside the glass in easy view and were holding their bodies fairly still while actively surveying the crowd. Score. We found a spot by the glass and dug in, ignoring the other patrons around us. We weren’t bothered because we were packing serious equipment, though we also left space in front of us for kids to get in beneath our eye-line. The 200-400mm lens was HEAVY, so I supported it on a monopod, while Wren shot hand-held next to me with her 70-200mm. We were able to zoom in on every hair on the tiger’s face and we got so excited, they were posing for us so well, that we unconsciously started shouting out directions. “Oh yeah!, turn a little to the left! Yes! Good Kitty! Look here!” We might have freaked a few people out, but we got the shot. We did the same thing with the jaguar, who was pacing back and forth in her enclosure.

After we returned the lenses and monopods, we were able to get free 13”x19” prints made of our favorite photos. We both chose the tigers, though I wish I’d printed one of the shots of Wren that I’ll post shortly. Since we were both out, we couldn’t resist shooting a bit of each other in action. More on that in a later post. With our prints in the trunk of my car and the event now ended, we went back into the park to shoot with our own lenses for another hour and a half until the park closed. This was another great choice, since there was so much more to see. We missed the great lenses, but still got shots of lots of animals in action, like the ocelot, the lion cubs, the aviary, and most fun-the otters.

So all in all, a great day. We wound up walking about five miles and taking thousands of photos. I have a few posted here, and Wren has posted some of her own that you should check out on her Facebook page. To finish our Saturday: Famous Daves for dinner and Coldstone after. Check back soon for more on the human portraits we took and I’ll be starting up actor headshot season here in Seattle.

Video Double-Fisting with Canon 5d and 60d

May 9, 2015

Since getting the new gear last weekend I’ve been aching to push what it can do with video. I got really lucky today. The first time I’ve taken it out for work was this morning to capture video of child auditions for The 5th Avenue Theatre’s upcoming production of The Sound of Music.

I can’t show any of the video or photos from this morning, but it was so much fun. It was a great reminder of why it was so important to me to have a life in the theatre, even if it’s not in acting or directing. It was easy to feel all of the feels watching kids march up one by one to introduce themselves and sing. Every year helping with auditions is one of my favorite things, because it draws me back to the excitement of first auditioning for shows when I was in High School and reminds me about the awesome opportunities that the theatre offers to these kids.

To shoot the 106 kids that auditioned, I used my new 5d mkIII with a 50mm prime lens on a tripod for a continuous static shot throughout the day. Since this is meant to be the main video used for some upcoming projects, I rented a shotgun microphone from Glazers and attached it to the top for better sound quality. It captured the voices really well, without being overwhelmed by the accompanist’s piano. Since there were so many kids, between each few batches of 20, I moved the camera to the opposite side of the stage. This switched up the angle of the wide shot for variety.

To fill in with more details of the performances, I shot handheld with my good old 60d. Since the 5d was on a tripod and doing its own thing, I used the other camera to find interesting close-ups that can be cut together with the full shot later. It was a nice way for me (selfishly) to get closer to the action by cropping in close. It also let me sneak in still photos here and there as the day went.

So now I’m feeling pumped up and have tons of footage to show for it. Most will wind up on the cutting room floor, but that’s cool too. Have a great weekend out there; the next post will be from a guided shoot of the Woodland Park Zoo!

My Canon 5d Mk III on a Benro tripod with a shotgun microphone attached.

New Things!

April 6, 2014

New Bag, Tripod, and (Dat da da!) Camera!

So... this weekend has been fun. I thought a good first entry to this blog would be to recap all the new additions that are going to be making an impact on my visual work from now on. My Canon 60d has been a FANTASTIC camera and has been my go-to for the last three years. Though it is, and continues to be a great sidekick, it's time level up. Saturday I picked up my new camera, the Canon 5d Mark III.

This thing is great, I've only taken it out once so far, and already I can tell it's going to be a thrill to shoot with and will make it even easier to make great images. Over time I want to really push what it can do, especially with video. Last night I was watching The Avengers, and in his commentary Director Joss Whedon talks a bit about the 5d. Apparently during the sequence where the heroes are fighting their way through New York City, there was so much to shoot that he gave out 5d's to several assistants to go out and shoot the fighting guerilla style. He pointed out several sequences, including Captain America running and gunning, that had been shot on the 5d. It's really exciting to me to have the same tool in my bag that they used to shoot that film, and a good challenge to try and create something fun.

To go with the 5d, I thought it was time to invest in a few new accessories. I've been using a bag that was really generously given to me by Rick Reil of Realife Photography in the Tri-Cities, but over the last few years its started to be the worse for wear. Both straps recently broke on a shoot, so now I've picked up a new Lowepro bag that you can see in the photos below. It's super light and has a ton of storage with room for both cameras and a ton of lenses. Attached to it is a new tripod as well, a great Benro that's super strong and light that I can hook right on and go.

The awesome Wren Bentley and I went to the park today for a bit, and she took some great photos of the new gear in action. Check it out :)

New Canon 5d Mark III, Lowepro Bag and Benro Tripod. All photos by Wren Bentley.

Adventures in Seattle

I'm beyond lucky to have a lot of adventures shooting in Seattle. The artistic community here is so vibrant that there's always something new to find.

This blog is a place to keep track of some of these adventures and to share them with you!

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