PROBLEM SOLVING IN DALLAS
My client in Dallas asked me to photograph his clubhouse with the city skyline behind it.
No problem.
An hour before sunset the 40' boom lift I ordered hadn't arrived. I found it a mile away and had to drive it at four miles-an-hour through city traffic back to the site.
The hose my client left to wet down the sidewalk in front of the clubhouse wouldn't reach, so my trusty assistant and I used buckets filled from the birdbath to wet down what we could in the time we had left. The rest I would clone in Photoshop.
As we worked, I realized that the sun was going to drop into clouds at sunset, which would kill the highlight on the skyline, so I went up early to get a shot that I could manipulated in Photoshop to match the rest of the sunset shot.
In order to keep the skyline shot I'd made in registration with the sunset shot I would later make, I had to wait in the bucket 40' in the air while being slapped around by a huge Texas flag on the pole behind me.
While my assistant kept the pavement wet and cars from parking in front of the clubhouse, I made separate exposures for the exterior, the interior, and the sconces adjusting my exposures for the fading light and camera "shake" as it got darker and darker.
From over 50 exposures, I would select three along with the image of the skyline to mortise and manipulate in Photoshop.
The next day my client asked me how it went.
No problem.
TRADE MAGAZINE COVER
My client wanted to photograph his vacuum chamber in operation for a trade-magazine cover.
When I scouted the project, I realized that the final image would have to be made from three separate exposures that would have to be kept in perfect registration so they could be mortised together in Photoshop.
The first exposure was made for the brushed stainless-steel door. I flagged the top down to add a little drama and to enable the publisher to reverse out his masthead copy. I then gelled the image blue. A second exposure was made for the assembly inside with the door open. However, a much longer lens was needed to get the unit to fill the window. A third exposure was then made just for the purple aura given off when the unit was in operation. Working in Layers and using the Opacity slider in Photoshop, I was able to balance the detail of the second exposure with the glow of of the third exposure.
RESEARCH MAG
A business magazine asked me to photograph a CEO for them as if he were delivering an impromptu lecture. It's always dangerous to try to capture good facial expressions from someone who's talking. As a fall back, I have the subject mouth the different vowels-- consonants don't work. I think this was and "e."
'09 HOLIDAY CARD PREVIEW
This image was taken in southeastern Morocco, near the Algerian border, along the old caravan route to Timbuktu, Mali.
The day before a typical Saharan sandstorm blew up and turned into an atypical Saharan thunderstorm. Luckily our camels made it to a small Arab cafe before the torrential rains began. The following morning the dunes had been blown as smooth as butter, and the moisture from the rain was sucked out of the dunes to form these magnificent clouds.
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