Jul 31 2010

Portrait Photography | Portraits of My Family

My sister got married a few weeks back.  I was particularly excited about this.  Aside from the obvious fact that my sister was getting married (congrats to Ash and Michael), a whole slew of family members were flying to the Houston area for the celebration.

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This was good for a number of reasons.  For one, I love getting to see my family.  It is something that does not happen enough.  For another, it means that good food is probably going to be present.  But most importantly, family has a hard time saying no.

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You see, prior to the wedding, I had concocted the evil plan to set up a mini studio and persuade (force) each family member to spend a few minutes acting goofy in front of the camera.  All of the family was scheduled to come over to my parents house the day after wedding for dinner, so I found a space upstairs and built a portrait studio on location.

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When I announced to the group that I would be coming around and stealing them away for individual portraits, I could see the fear and unease in their eyes.  Every ounce of their being seemed to scream “We weren’t told about this! If I had known…..” But, we are family; and family has a hard time saying no.

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So one by one, we headed upstairs.  The next step of the plan was to have them look angry, clap their hands and scream.  While this did create some memorable family portraits, it more importantly brought their real essence out; you can’t help but be genuine when you just got done screaming at the camera.

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So I took everyone’s photograph.  I had a good time doing it, and I think most everyone else did too… or at least they lied to my very convincingly.  I came away with a slew of good images and since it was impossible to choose just one image for each person, I chose six instead.  To see all of the rest of the images, click the link at the bottom of the post.

This is not however, a full set of my family.  My sister and my new brother-in-law are absent, for good reason (honeymoon).  A few cousins could not get away from work and we all missed them.  Others had to head back home early after the wedding.  Some family members have passed on and could only be present in spirit; they are sorely missed.

For all you Family reading this, thanks for being my family.  Simple as that.  Thanks.

Check out all the family portraits here.

You will be glad you did.

Jun 10 2010

Dance Photography | Ballerina on the Roof

I recently met up with my friend and ballerina Laura to fulfill a portrait vision that had been stewing in my head for sometime.  The plan was to have a ballerina in an endless golden field, lit by the setting sun.   While driving to and fro, I found the perfect field not to far from my home and with Laura’s help and a cooperative weather pattern, my vision could be fulfilled.

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Of course, I live in Austin, Texas.  To be specific, North Austin.   Here, the weather is unpredictable and generally uncooperative.   Unfortunately, I tend to think that my positive thinking will have some magical effect on how the weather will actually turn out.  Needless to say, the night and morning prior to the scheduled shoot time, the sky opened and released its watery fury down on Austin.

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You may have noticed that the images in the post show no signs of a field full of golden grass.  Well, the field of golden grass had been turned into a swamp of golden grass.   Unwilling to subject ourselves to muddy torture (we had sushi plans for after the shoot), we searched for an alternative shooting environment nearby.

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It is something I have gotten used to, these backup locations.  Every Austin portrait photographer has or will have experienced the enjoyment of a location falling through and should always be keeping an eye out for last minute scenes for their location photography

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We chose the top of a tall parking garage nearby.   Its height made it easy to fill the image with the uninterrupted cloudy sky and we were thankfully a good number of feet away from mud.  The sun was hidden behind a layer of clouds, so we pulled out the strobe lighting equipment and set it up.  Enter the dramatic portrait!

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After a bit of shooting and getting to see a beautiful sunset, we packed away the gear and headed down to the base of the parking garage.  Waiting there for us was the wonderful and ever tasty Sushi Zushi.  It was a perfect way to finish up the day.

Many thanks to Laura for being patient with my minuscule amount of ballet knowledge and to Steven and Lindsay for your help and support.

May 19 2010

Personal Work | The JBP 365 Project

I have begun a 365 photo project.  The primary goal of this is to create more images and to push my creativity and vision.   A secondary site called The JBP 365 Project will host this project; you will find a link in the menu above.  Please feel free to stop by and check my progress as I photograph my way from May 19, 2010 to May 18th, 2011.

Note:  the photograph of Zilker Park in downtown Austin, TX does not have any relevance to this post.  I just happen to like it.

Apr 20 2010

Portrait Photography | Photoshoot with Emilie

Emilie and I have been wanting to do a photo shoot for a while, but our schedules seem to have a way of deviously scheming behind our backs and making it nearly impossible to find a time to get together.  So, throwing our hands up in the air, we reserved the the first Saturday that we both had free; it was over a month away.

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We decided to make a party out of it and invited our Austin portrait photographer friends Ming Gong and Raychel Deppe.  The plan was to head out to McKinney Falls State Park right out side Austin and to get take photos of Emilie using the waterfalls, trees, rocks and good ole fashioned nature as a backdrop.

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Of course, good ole fashioned nature decided to play us a mean card: rain.  If memory serves correctly, it rained for two days prior to the scheduled shoot and there was a 60% chance (read: 100% chance) of rain  on the day of the shoot.  austin portrait photographer model test ballet tutu

Not wanting to have a soaked and muddy model, let alone soaked and muddy photographers with soaked and malfunctioning cameras, we took evasive action and found a location that could shelter us from both rain and mud.

Enter the parking garage!

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Parking garages are great.  If it is raining, they keep the rain off your head and the mud off your feet.  If the sun is harsh and contrasty
(and hot), you can stay on the lower levels where the light is softer and you can find great light directionality from the windows all around
you.   There are repeating patterns in both light and structure, angled and parallel lines.

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It also helps if the parking garage is relatively empty.  Cars tend to clutter up the place.

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If you are in the market for a nice parking garage as a shooting space, try to find one that backs up to a park or greenbelt.  As parking
garages are naturally rather open spaces (no real outer walls) it is much nicer to have a blurry green foresty background than to have a nice
blurry McDonalds sign mucking up the frame.  If you are a portrait photographer or people photographer in general, keep a mental list of garages in your neighborhood.

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Even though our initial plan was ruined by past, present and future rain, it turns out the rain was a blessing in disguise.  The skies were
overcast all morning long, providing nice even soft illumination everywhere.  It was dreamy… and it kept the temperature cool.
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We started shooting on the roof and headed to lower levels when the rain came splashing down.  We quickly realized that the wet concrete offered an opportunity to work with reflections. Rain, my friends, is a boon.

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After a lot of photographs and a lot of laughing, we broke camp to head out to Trudy’s, one of Austin’s great Mexican restaurants that serves up a mean Mexican Martini.   It was a good day and one soon to be repeated.

 

 

 

 

Apr 13 2010

Portrait Photography | Photoshoot with Leah

I had the chance to meet up with my friend Leah this weekend to do a photoshoot just for fun.  One thing that is great about living in Austin is that there are so many great locations to shoot, tons of vingettes that are begging to be backdrops for a portrait.

We started the shoot by meeting at a nearby coffee shop and discussing ideas and visions for the shoot.  After suitably caffeinating ourselves, we jumped in the car and headed to low traffic area in the north of Austin near the Domain shopping center.

I was really enjoying the burst of spring that past few weeks, so most of the shots were among trees, long grasses and flowers.  I am having a hard time picking my favorites from the portrait session, but here are a few of them that I have edited already.

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