The Push Up

Believe it or not, this jumper is about to whip that rope under her feet and then catch herself in the plank position. This is an example of what you can do with a strobe that has a very long flash duration. It means that, unlike my Einstein 640, it can't freeze motion with strobe(which wouldn't happen anyway with this much ambient). What it does mean is that with some careful Macgyver skills I can steal just a portion of the light from a very long duration with an extremely flash shutter speed. This was captured at 1/1250 outdoors shot at f2.8! I used a single Interfit EXD400 light through a large PLM boomed above. I can't wait for it to be warm again! http://flic.kr/p/k3M2m7

Take Flight

A little gem from our shoot a while back! Love this girl and her spunky attitude! Thanks, Erin, for being you! Lit with beauty dish boomed above. Stripboxes on either side with ab800's and ab800 behind for background light. www.nakean.com http://flic.kr/p/jXju1c

Mysterious Hot Pants

This photo was toward the end of our senior shoot. We photographed around Alki Beach and the water taxi in West Seattle until it started raining on us. I have no idea how her hair is as perfect as it is in this photo because it just spent the last hour or so being blown this way and that by some pretty powerful gusts of wind! Ok, let me address the tittle of this photograph (Mysterious Hot Pants). They were, most certainly, pink. Not crazy bright but everything else she had going on was darker. Almost 2 full stops darker! I took advantage of a little trick I keep preaching about, which is convert your image to black and white. Then see where your eyes take you. Straight to the pants and legs. I needed to tone these hot pants down and did so using the burn tool in Photoshop. It Really helped to even out the image as far as lighting was concerned. The Mysterious part is all in the eyes and slight covering of one of the eyes. I can't quite tell what she's thinking but she seems pretty confident about whatever that might be. shot with a beauty dish boomed directly overhead, rim lights on either side with gridded strip boxes, gridded and nd gelled x800 through silver reflector low and camera right. http://flic.kr/p/i8gC27

Sweet girl

-Profiles of little ones might be my favorite photographs to take. I love the shadow and attention to the eyes. This was lit with a large octabox camera right feathered in front. a strip box was placed camera left and high as a hair light. Lastly, an alienbee b800 was pointed at the background with a grid to give a nice gradient. http://flic.kr/p/i2AmrL

Who Framed Roger Rabit

My assistant Erin kicked ars each and every 14 hours we spent photographing Friday morning and afternoon! Spunky attitude and quick witt helped us get through this long day! Thanks for the help setting up these shots for Seattle Prep Soccer photos! This pose and eyebrow totally made me think of the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit! Lit with a single light through an umbrella camera right and feathered into a reflector camera left. I had a rim setup behind subject and camera left but turned it off to judge my exposure for skin tones. The best way to know what your lights are doing is to turn them on all one at a time. http://flic.kr/p/fQY8a1

Jenna Hayes

Possibly my favorite photo of @Jenna Hayes at Bothel Landing Park. Photographed with large softbox camera left feathered far in front of Jenna. Hair light behind subject and camera right as well. Reflector just below and camera right. Hopefully I'll have a chance to photograph this Gymnast in action! http://flic.kr/p/fMWF2M

A thin line Jumper

Here's Danielle performing the Leg over at Hiawatha Park in West Seattle. With sun behind her, I'm finally getting the seperation I want from the images. It's not in the best spot to shoot (almost directly overhead) but I've learned to work with that mangy ball in the sky in just about any position and condition. Here the 64" PLM is boomed overhead at a little more heigt than her eye level. I am laying on the ground with the camera actually resting on the track quite aways away. I'm using the 85mm and I have it stopped down a few stops at f2.8 My shutter is, you guessed it, 1/1250. The DOF really helps take some attention off of the flash and provides a more natural looking photograph in my opinion. What do you guys and gals think? http://flic.kr/p/fymEpQ

Poised and ready to jump

Here's the very begining of our shoot at West Seattle highschool. Jessica was nice enough to pose for Rene and I after assisting Rene in teaching a jumprope class for kids. I'm still having a ball trying to understand what I can achieve with faster shutter speeds and flash. It's something you have experiment with quite a bit to get right because you don't get every ounce of your flash power with each pop. No meter will be able to tell you if you are exposed correctly. Thank god for digital!!! Here I have a 64" PLM boomed overhead with my interfit exd400 doing all the heavy lifting. It's shot with my 17-50mm lens at f4 and the speed is the 1/1250 that I've had good luck with in the past. I'm waiting to do some test shots in the studio to find what shutter speeds and power settings work best on the stobe. http://flic.kr/p/fy4RzW