New client site - for a CPA

Working with my favorite clients to design a site. She's an accountant, so it has its challenges. The client gives me beer and lets me crash on her couch for helping her out with the design

setup shot

I love when set up photos end up being keepers. This is Dylan, who was kind enough to take time from his busy WOW schedule to allow me to use him as a lighting test. Such a good sport

Premier Accountant in the Seattle Area

A dingo ate my baby!
Not really.
I've been away from my camera for some time now, trying to find a new house to buy (one that we can afford in the area which we want to live) and I've had much of my time with my 9-5 job, in addition to trying to rebuild my 69 volkswagen fastback motor (well, the whole car, but the motor is first).
Kim wanted a photo that she could put on her social sites and her website, so while she was out gallivanting around Redmond today, I set up a 4 light portrait setup in our dining room. It felt really good to get behind the camera again and play with my strobes. I use Skyports to trigger my flashes, and my sending unit is dying on me. I have used and abused it to the point where it works when it wants to. The last wedding I shot, I used it for some shots, but then it stopped working and I had to switch to my ST-e2, which is my favorite.
Anyway, I used a couple of sample "uber-actions" by Doug Crouch to finesse the photos http://www.uberactions.com. Doug is a good friend and an awesome photographer. I assisted him on a few shoots and we had a blast.

Senior Portrait -Last minute style

My son needed to get his senior portraits done this year. We discussed it a long time ago and he asked if I would shoot them for him. We gave him the choice of different photographers and he likes my style, so I shot the pictures for him. I had elaborate lighting plans and great scenery in mind - something cinematic and dark. (Hey, that's what I do.) He wanted simple and natural light. They are his pictures, so who was I to argue. We agreed that this shot would be used for the yearbook to meet the deadline of Friday, and we will shoot again later for more artsy shots.
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Wedding in Boring, Oregon

I had the opportunity to shoot a wedding in Boring at a beautiful property near one of my favorite golf courses. This is just a teaser, as I am in the middle of editing the 900+ images I shot during the wedding. These two girls were quite the hams during the wedding. The smaller girl is Samantha, the daughter of the bride and groom. She is about the cutest little girl in the world. The older of the two is her cousin.
Here is an edit for which I used the Tri X filter in Lightroom. I still love grain from the film days and whoever it was that made this preset has reproduced it beautifully.
This is a first blush edit, so I'm not sure that it will make it to the client in the final cut, but I needed a warmup.

BTW, I moved

My family and I decided to move back to Kirkland, WA, where it feels like home. I made some great friends in Oregon and had some great photo jobs, but I feel like I'm home again. My email is still ken@kengillstudios.com and the website is kengill studios.

Still Life Rake

I shot this photo for a school project. I like it so much that I ended up printing it and hanging it in my house. It's really not often that a piece of my own work becomes a favorite, but this is one of them.
This was for a still life project of some sort. I don't remember the requirements. I think it was "simple background, single item still life".
If you are interested in the lighting, there is one white lightening with a grid spot pointing down and forward from behind the rake and one other with a large strip box to camera right. This one was flagged so it didn't affect the circle of light or shadow of the rake. I just wanted a little rim light on the tool.
Not that I'm sponsored by Craftsman, but I had a finishing rake like this one - a gift for housewarming. I was moving 3 yards of river rocks with the old rake, when the head popped right off toward the end of the job. I swore a few times and took the old rake back to Sears. I didn't have a receipt, but it was Craftsman, so they took the old busted and gave me the new hotness. I finished the job with my foot or a shovel, so the rake was barely used for this shot.

Holy Smoke

Wow, March was the last time I posted. I'm so embarrassed that it's been that long. Here's the skinny: We are moving back to Kirkland, WA after over three years in the Portland area, and are very excited about it. We will miss the friends and contacts we have made down here, but can't wait to get back to the Seattle area. It's where it feels like home.

What is a strobist?

Strobists are basically geeks, er people who like to light things with off camera flashes (strobes). The name comes from the site at strobist.com, where a community of like minded individuals can converge to learn new techniques and find out about what other photographers are doing. There is a small group here in the Portland area that meets up about once a month with a group of models at various locations for some hang time. The models and make up artists come do their magic with the condition that every photographer that works with a model provides an image for that model's portfolio. We geek out about equipment, argue about pocket wizard and skyport channels, and have a good time. Here are a couple of images from the last meetup at the Treehouse in the Beaverton area. It was a sweet location.

new website, blog, etc, etc

I'm changing the company over to a new life. kengillstudios.com and new blog at kengillstudios.blogspot.com come over and check it out. I wanted to make the work a little more personal with my name.

New blog features from blogspot

This is a test of the email feature of blogspot.com. It’s in beta form now, so I figured I’d give it a try. No picture for this post, but expect more pictures soon. In the meantime, check out my new site at http://kengillstudios.com.

New website is live

It is alive! I finished building my new site today and got it uploaded. I still have a little javascript issue to figure out, but I'm happy with the look of the site. I hope you enjoy it.
kengill studios check it out

Trip to the beach

I was building my new website, which involved updating my portfolio. This is an image from a series I did recently. I really like the image, but I'm trying to keep my portfolio size down a bit.
We went to Seaside, Oregon for pictures of clouds and birds, and the wind was blowing hard enough that we had to lean into it just to keep standing. I love the way the dunes look as sand is blowing across them. This was kind sand, and it didn't blow into our faces too much. Wasn't that nice of it?

We ended the day with fish and chips, then packed up and headed on out of the town with our bag of salt water taffy and got to brave the snow to get back to Portland.

new site, new blog, new new new

I am in the process of changing everything from BALLYHOO photography to kengill studios. Expect changes and all that really soon

Clean up, clean up, everybody cleanup

I have been staring at monitors for about 5 hours now, and decided to take a break from it for a few minutes - by typing a blog on my monitor. Silly Ken. I have been organizing and editing images in Lightroom. I finally decided that just knowing where the files are isn't good enough any more. Here is a little photo I took while on holiday in 2007 on Kauai. I just like the simplicity of it. I'm really not a flower photography type, but I like to keep my options open.

Lighting tests

I use studio strobes for rim lighting when I'm at my studio, but had never really tried it with my speedlights. I do a lot of different styles of lighting with the speedlights, but wanted to experiment. I didn't get exactly what I wanted, but was happy with a few of the shots we did.
This is Dylan, my willing victim of photo geeking. I think I got about a dozen shots before he started goofing, flexing and yelling "gadoosh!" That was when I knew we were done.

Walking around photos

Back to Vegas. One of the nights in Vegas, we walked from Mandalay Bay to the north. We saw an "in and out burger" that we were really hungry for. I haven't had one of their burgers for 4 or 5 years - the last time I went to SoCal.
Anyway, we were stopped by a freeway which had no access to the other side. We walked a few blocks east, trying to find a bridge, but to no avail. To make a long story short- 14 hours of exploring, way too much walking, blisters, tired, sore, neck was even chaffed from my "sling bag" - I had to carry my camera for 2 days by hand because I couldn't war my bag any more for the pain.
This photo is of one of the parking lots being built for a new casino being built. It was about 12:30 and I liked the lines of the structure in the dark. I never really thought about how many people work in one of those monstrosities. I was told that 6-7,000 people work in a couple of the larger casinos. To put this into perspective, Nintendo of America only has about 1,000 employees across the country. Wow.

Ah, cooking. One of my favorite things. I love vegies and fish - oh, and PASTA!!!! This was an exercise in evening (Guinness induced) photography at the end of a very long day. I like the motion of the noodles and the steam. I am taking some media classes at the local community college to get my web chops up, and had to do an assignment in color balance. In case you are wondering, this photo was only sharpened a bit, and a bit of a vignette added to knock the corners off. The rest is all done in the camera. I love post-processing images, but like to keep things simple when I am just doing things for experiments. The funny thing is that the original concept for the photo was to just shoot the knobs of the stove, with only one knob in focus. I didn't even shoot that idea, I thought of putting the pot on the stove, just for a different angle on the stove, plus having a little more visual interest. Next, I thought, "boiling water in the pot would be nice". Next, I decided that there should be a little motion in the image, since it is one of my favorite overall things to shoot.
For you photo geeks who may be curious, this was lit almost completely by the hoodlight over the stove and the regular kitchen lights. There was a bit of fill from a silver disk to the camera left, but that was it. This was a 2 second exposure at f8.

Another Cascade Corporation photo

Here is a before and after image of worm gears that are manufactured by Cascade Corporation. I never really thought about how worm gears and sprockets were made.
I don't just geek out about camera equipment. I love metal work and I felt like making Tim Taylor grunts the whole time I was in the warehouse. All of the cutting, welding, and grinding going on was pretty cool to see.

Portland Lift Truck Parts Manufacturer Picture

Cascade Corporation, a worldwide lift truck part manufacturer, whose headquarters are located in Wood Village, Oregon let me come to their warehouse to shoot some images for a school project. I hadn’t done industrial shots of that nature before, and they were very open to letting me walk around and take shots. I used mostly ambient light, with small splashes of strobe here and there to either fill in shadows or to bring a little more interest to the subject. The building was well lit, but for production, that means that the work areas are evenly lit, so the workers don’t have to strain to see because of shadows on what they are working. I had a blast, and the people in the different work areas were very helpful, either acting normal, or telling me when they were going to do something visually interesting.