Over at KillTheAmbient.com I’ve put up a post that shows a little behind-the-scenes on our thought process for the treadmill shoot shown below. You can check it out here, as well as see just how popular fake boobies are.
Recent Humor Work
March 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment
If you are a photographer, you’ve probably had the idea of personal projects beaten into your head over and over again. I sure have. And since I love humor in photography, if I am going to take the time to do a personal/portfolio shoot, it’s definitely going to involve some laughing (in my head, at least).
Here’s some humor work that I’ve wrapped up recently. I was fortunate on these shoots to have an excellent team – Natalie Ogura, who produced as well as handled all set styling, and Matthew Johnson, who assisted and made sure my lights didn’t fall over and whack the models.
The location for the cat shoot was found via Home Away. It, like other vacation rental websites, is a great way to find a location that is unique to your town. For the treadmill shot, we located an Austin home which had the perfect wood-panelled wall. It was right in the middle of being renovated, so we literally had a window of a few hours before the wall was gone!
Best of 2010 Christmas Card Contest!
December 19, 2010 By 94 Comments
Wow – what a blast this year has been for holiday cards. I started in October photographing a couple families in Oklahoma, and it has been pretty non-stop since then. Now that all of my clients have sent out cards, let’s have a little fun.
Listed below are some of my favorite non-traditional card shoots from this year. Which one do you think is the best? Help me decide, and the winning client will receive their choice of an 11×14 print or canvas!
To vote, just do two simple things:
1 – Become a fan of the official Austin Christmas Cards Facebook page. You can find it here. Once there, just click the ‘Like’ button.
2 – Leave a comment below with the image number of your favorite included. Only one vote per person. Only votes submitted via comments count (not email or texting Lisa’s phone).
I’ll leave the contest open until Monday, December 27th.
Let the voting begin!
1. Miniature 
2. Wolfpack 
3. Stampede 
4. Fly High 
5. Off-Road 
6. Leg Lamp 
7. Snow Globe 
8. Camo 
9. Rock N’ Roll 
10. Rack ‘Em 
11. Classic
Christmas Card: Rack 'em!
December 18, 2010 By 1 Comment
The 2010 Christmas Card
December 14, 2010 By 3 Comments
Click for larger version
After last year’s production, Lisa and I weren’t sure how we were going to top it. We kicked around ideas all the way up until early November. Then, it hit us (Lisa actually): let’s do a Lost-themed card. This would be the only year we could do it. Plus, we had an extra bonus: my sister, Rayna, is currently in Hawaii with her husband. He’s in the Air Force and they just got assigned there. She’s a great photographer, and was excited to have a project to work on.
So, we set out to begin production. We researched some of the actual shooting locations for Lost. My sister captured some great background images. Originally, I began hunting down aircraft boneyards. I couldn’t find anything in Texas that had exactly what I was looking for, so I headed to istockphoto.com and found this plane wreckage. Perfect.
We photographed each family member in the front yard. For the compositing work, it was pretty straight-forward: match the lens, aperture, angle, etc. In fact, I will be teaching all of this at a Master Class at WPPI in February.
Vincent was heroically portrayed by our dog, Queso. Brandon and Trevor stood in as Jacob and the man in black (no, they aren’t missplaced jedis from another card).
Here’s a video with the layer build-up in Photoshop:
Overall, we are really happy with how it came out. I have no idea what we will do next year.
Be sure to check out some of the other holiday card work I’ve been up to here and at AustinChristmasCards.com.
