Photos from the... NEW STUDIO!! | Denver Portrait Photographer

Meet Mica!

I had such a blast photographing this lovely young woman in my new natural light photo studio!

Mica is such a darling person -- and her vocal talents will blow you away (check out her website).

I'm so excited about this unique photo studio, located in a turn of the century historic cotton mill just west of Santa Fe on Evans.

Historic architecture makes for a wonderful backdrop, and throughout the building is the kind of incredible light that can best be found bouncing through historic leaded windows and off brick and whitewashed walls.

It is simply DREAMY.

The studio also features fun sets as an integral part of its authentic history, and the possibilities for amazing portraits, from traditional to more unique, are endless. 

I photographed this set right in the middle of the day, on a day mixed with direct sunlight and clouds. 

I am positively IN LOVE.

And then... there's this amazing blue wall... don't you just love it?!

And yes, more traditional studio photographs are possible in here, too... What a blast!!

Thank you to my amazing friend and model from today -- Mica, your radiance shines so brightly from within you!!

Event Photography Denver | Tango

Sometimes, especially in covering an event or wedding, a moment is captured completely by being in the right spot at the right time.  From the back of my camera, I thought this was headed for the outtake batch, but it has grown on me.  To my eye, just the right things come through -- her eye, closed in the passion of the dance -- her raised leg being lost completely in the speed of the Tango -- and the fact that the clasped hands of the dancing pair are the most crisp moment in the composition.

I kind of love it.  But that's the thing about photography -- it is entirely personal.  What do you think?

Painting with Light

Warning: These photographs aren't for everyone.
But if you're among the curious... I'd like to share!  There's something I find enormously compelling and peaceful about leaving the exposure open just long enough to "paint" the sensor with a swath of light dotted foliage.  Resulting streaks of color appear painterly, but are completely the result of photographic processes.  I'm going to include a few sets here from my favorite experiments with this method.  Enjoy!

Capture Philosophy | Photo Tip 04: Finding Portrait Light on Location

A week or so ago, I had the opportunity to work with talented Denver studio portrait photographer, Mark Pells, on an ambitious headshot project for the theatre department at my son's school.  

As a completely self-taught photographer and a HUGE fan of natural light, it was fascinating to watch Mark create magic with his studio lights.  I found it most interesting to learn that I am often drawn to or actively seeking out  the very conditions in the field, which he sought to create in the studio.

Thought I'd share a few of my personal favorite conditions through examples, in case you're curious to experiment the next time you're out photographing your family and friends.  

These are all photos I took on a single walk with my son on a bright, sunny afternoon in Denver (as you can see in the first photo below).  These photos were all taken with a 100mm macro lens with a Canon 5D, set on aperture priority (all shots are between apertures of 2.8 and 4.5).

Often, it is instinct for us to want to place our subjects in the sun.  But beware!  Direct sunlight can be a great dramatic tool when used intentionally, or with reflectors, fill light, etc., but if you are out with your camera and don't have such accessories (which I did not use for the shot above), not only will your subject likely be squinting, direct sunlight will create harsh shadows that generally aren't as flattering for skin tones, facial features, etc.  Thus, it is usually better to take the subject out of direct sunlight...

Once you take your subject out of the direct light, you'll have better luck getting even skin tones.  In this photo, light bouncing around from north and east facing windows at a coffee shop provided gorgeous, flattering conditions in the afternoon.  I simply exposed the shot to feature the correct amount of light in his eye and let the camera and natural light do the rest.  You can actually see the north facing windows reflected in his eye. 

In this shot, I asked my subject to stand in a spot of reflected light -- sunlight that was bouncing off the windows of a building across from us.  Beams of reflected light are fun to experiment with, and are a bit easier on the subject's gaze.  As you can see, while it still casts some dramatic shadows, it also can create fun magic in the eyes.

One of my favorite things to look for is nice, subtle bouncing light that is slightly weighted in its direction.  By that I mean that the light is essentially coming more from one side than the other creating a nice broad highlight on one side of the face, in this case, the side towards camera.  A darker background pops his face as the main focus of the composition.

These last two photos are shot on the same long wooden bench, but facing opposite directions.  In this first one, there is only indirect light on my subject, but an open area of VERY bright light behind him.  I exposed for his face (so essentially you'd need to OVERexpose if you were using a camera that meters for an overall scene), and I let the background go white.

For this photo, we switched positions so that the brighter area is now behind me (the camera), and it's a little easier to get a traditional photo with a nice tonal range, great skin tones and no hot spots.
And of course it never hurts to capture an impish grin :)
Happy shooting!!

Architectural Photography | Capture Philosophy: On NATURAL LIGHT

I came to professional photography through the back door, after receiving my Master of Architecture degree and spending many years early in my career practicing architecture, planning and design.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a passionate darkroom and landscape photography enthusiast on the side, and wonder now if perhaps years of chasing ever changing Colorado light -- watching the power of natural and ambient light to dramatically change our perception of a landscape depending on its angle, intensity and color -- came to inform my taste for an architectural photography which celebrated that same quality of light.

My vision for how to photograph ARCHITECTURE specifically was sparked after receiving photographs over the years of my firm’s design work, realizing that I had a deep frustration with the way artificial light was being used in photographing architecture and design.

Natural and designed light are critical to our experience of architecture and design intension. Too much artificial light and you end up with staged, “movie still” looking photographs. Granted, traditional photographers were largely bound by limits of the camera in its ability to capture contrast, but the advent of digital has opened new doors to capture in different ways.

NATURAL LIGHT defines our PERCEPTION OF SPACE

Critical to showcasing contrasting elements and the layering of spaces, is the manner in which a lighting scheme is designed to illuminate, reflect and bounce around such materials and spaces.

The manner in which light - both natural and designed - plays within an architectural space is both the greatest potential satisfaction and most painstaking challenge of my work as an architectural photographer. Few photographic subjects test a camera’s limits as interior architectural photography does with its inherent drastic contrast from a subtle interior scene to the bright sunlight pouring in through windows.*

This presents the greatest challenge to a photographer IF and when the intention is to capture a scene the way our eye sees it.

In the days of film capture, a photographer overcame this technical challenge of balancing inside available light with the overpowering intensity of daylight by bringing in often very large amounts of supplemental lighting. If a view out the windows was important to the scene, artificial lighting was an absolute requirement to allow a camera to expose for both internal and external lighting conditions.

TRADITIONALLY, the consequence of obtaining a bright, balanced shot with supplemental lighting was the death of the intended architectural lighting design scheme, all too often distracting shadows of furniture strewn across the floor, and an overall loss of the subtlety of the interaction of contrasting elements, textures and shadow patterns.

With the advent of the digital capture and processing, it is now possible to push the limits of photography in new directions, coming closer than ever to a photograph being able to convey the subtleties of a space AS OUR EYE SEES IT, with all its depth as well as its intended contrasts. This can now be more closely achieved through a technique of shooting and layering multiple exposures of the same scene under natural and designed architectural lighting conditions.

Different styles are emerging for maximizing and celebrating natural light, from bright sunny interiors with intentionally over-exposed windows, to overt High Dynamic Range photography, where edges are punched and often exaggerated for dramatic artistic effect (a method which can be incredibly compelling, but in most cases, not necessarily the most appropriate method, if the goal is to represent the architecture on its own merit).

In my work, the desired end effect is a natural looking, sophisticated and welcoming final photograph that invites the viewer into the space to appreciate its design elements. This requires painstaking attention to detail and plenty of self restraint when working with up to 7 or 8 different exposures.

I have tried various methods and software programs to achieve results, but I find that I obtain the look I want in the end, only by approaching these layers by hand, selectively using different elements of each exposure with great attention to detail. Patterns have emerged in my process, but I find that a slightly different thought process takes place almost every time I sit down to edit a shoot, depending on what I see in each vignette.

The process of working with natural light can save an abundance of time in the field, as the setup of supplemental lighting equipment is essentially eliminated, but it requires a tremendous amount of patience, skill, creativity and passion for the subject matter after the shoot in the digital darkroom.

Ideally, the finished photograph becomes a sensitive reflection of the architecture, and in the best cases, even a work of art in itself.

--

* The human eye is capable of assimilating information from contrasting bright (sun pouring in from a window) and low light (interior) conditions almost instantaneously in a way that a camera is, as of yet anyway, simply not capable.

Architecture of Jim Hardy

Had a blast shooting this gorgeous contemporary home a few weeks ago in Telluride, Colorado for James Hardy, Architects. Exquisite attention to detail, exposed structure and mining vernacular blended beautifully with the softer, more textural finishes of the interiors, making the job of photographing this home highly satisfying!