Eat Your Damn Broccoli

To date, this has been my most viewed photo. It is probably because it has brocolli in it. And my cat, Indiana Jones. I didn’t shoot this photo for any publication – it was just for fun.

This photo was a concept that I had stirring around in my head for many years now, and I had yet to excecute it previously because I lacked the proper lighting and technical knowledge. I loved the idea of an insane “cat person” yelling at an inanimate object to enjoy it’s meal, as if post yelling, everything would be fine.

I messed with light and dimension on this photo for over three hours until I was satisfied with the results. In the procoess, my eager and awesome roomate/model spit over an entire bag of broccoli out of his mouth and all over our dining area and camera equipment. The lighting scheme I ended up using involved having flashes on 1/2 power on either side of and slightly behind Kyle, and then using my B1600 head as a direct overhead lighting on a very low setting. This style is more or less my typical arrangement, with the exception that the confined spaces of our tiny apartment requires much more finesse.

Rich the Pool Boy

This is Rich. He is a poolboy at the Phoenician and has been for over ten years. He has seen a lot of crazy things, and was a pretty laid back guy. This photo was shot for 944 Magazine.

The concept for this photo was easy – lets make him get in the water with his uniform on. Why? I dont know. It seemed fun. The Art Director at 944, Drew, said that the pool at his condo had an extra cheesy tropical scene painted on the surrounding walls, so we went with that.

We arrived at the set, and Drew quickly realized that he did not have a pool key. I thus proceeded to throw all of my expensive equipment over the wall…

Rich arrived and had no problem jumping into to pool. We wanted him to hold some bright liquids, so I bought a bunch of Jones Soda flavors and used the brightest colored ones for the shoot.

I set up two naked flashes at either end of the pool, and used a B1600 attached to a softbox for fill.

The Music Man

This is a photo I shot for a 944 Magazine photo shoot. This assignment was to shoot this awersome gentleman, Nate, founder of a not-for-profit company called Ear Candy Productions. Their goal is to provide instruments for schools by hosting fundraisers and other similar events.

My editor told me that he wanted me to do this shoot without any instruments in the frame, and not in a music store. After days of deliberation, I was stumped on finding a fun and unique idea until I saw a scene in the Zach Braff film, Garden State. The scene was of Braff wearing a shirt patterned exactly like the wallpaper behind him and I thought it would be a neat effect to replicate with a more specific pattern.

My assistant, Kyle DeBruhl, and myself starting setting up three hours before the shoot by printing off 50 sheets of music off of the web, and double-sided taping them to my living room wall. The piece of music that we used is some sort of rights-free Russian symphony piece that I found on Google images the night previous.

Nate arrived at my apartment and was full of energy and enthusiasm towards my concept. We fitted him in my suit jacket that we fashioned with the music and got started shortly after some minor wardrobe rips and malfunctions. So it goes…

I set up two flashes flanking Nate high and behind, both bouncing off of large silver-lined umbrellas as my main lights, and an Alien Bees B1600 through a large soft box as my fill. I shot this photo with my Canon 20D and 17mm-85mm lens at about 35mm.

The Anatomy of a Photograph.

I take photos.

I try to take photographs as often as possible and of as much as possible, yet there is always a feeling of inadequacy present, because there is just so much to see, and so little time to shoot it all.

My goal in this blog is to dissect select photographs that I take and to document as much detail as possible about the elements behind each. It is my hope is that through this blog, I will give myself better insight into the things I shoot, and to give readers knowledge on how to create photos.

Coming soon: We’ll start with one I took a few weeks ago for a 944 Magazine shoot.