Happy New Year!!!

I hope that everyone enjoyed Christmas and is looking forward to the new year. I spent Christmas week in Vegas and had a blast! I was glad to get home after that week. I missed the huge snowstorm that buried the Portland area and am okay with it. We stayed at the Stratosphere, which is at the far north end of the strip - about 4 miles away from the other end of the strip. We had a few down days, but we had 12 and 14 hour days walking around. I shot about 600 photos - hey, I was on holiday.Here's a photo for today. It is a wide angle view of Kim - my accountant, wife, babysitter, base of the pyramid...... She was sitting on the edge of the dolphin pool at the Sigfried and Roy park at the Mirage. The dolphins were done playing and the other tourists were being annoying, so we took a little breather and enjoyed the sun.

Strobists meet at the Ballyhoo studio in Portland

The PDX Strobist group in Portland, Oregon had their meetup at my Portland Studio for November. What was intended to be a small and intimate meetup became a crowded and overflowing studio packed with photo geeks and models. The chaos was awesome. My studio is just under 800 square feet, with two main shooting areas. Add food, cameras, bags, makeup, props, lightstands, and a dozen models and I think we ended up with about 15 photographers. It was intimate, but not quite what I had in mind. It was more like shoulder to shoulder shooting with people spilling into the halls for setting up lights and models.

One of the photographers, Scooter, is a student, aspiring photographer, and quite a sport. Another photographer and I dragged Scooter and two of the models into the non-functioning elevator in my building for a shoot. It was a struggle to get started, as the space was so tight and the widest lens I had was my 24-70 canon lens. Nice and wide, huh? Well, I shoot a 40D, so you can multiply that lens size by 1.6, making the widest setting a relative 39mm lens. Not that wide. I had about 5 feet to move in front of the elevator shaft, so that was about 15 feet deep. My three victims, er models were good sports and put up with me. These images are from the series. This one is my favorite from the day

Colors in portraits

kim stress
Originally uploaded by ballyhoo photography

The impact of color in a portrait. I needed a few more pictures for a school assignment. Kim had a full day of work, then taught an evening class in Tigard. She got home about 10 to have a camera shoved in her face and a fill card pushed into her lap and was told to act "natural". I love when people put a camera in my face and tell me to act natural.
Fortunately, over the years, Kim has become tolerant of my obsession and has been my willing test subject.
I wanted to illustrate her stress, without adding to it by making her act stressed. I could see that she was already stressed enough. She ran her hands through her hair as she decompressed and I caught this shot on one of the sweeps and loved the angles of it. I cross processed the image in Photoshop to add the contrast and add the color dynamic to the image and am happy with the outcome.
The blue image was the same night. I wanted a different emotion out of the same light. She leaned back, I changed the fill card a bit and shot this. I think it shows quite a different person. What do you think?

Scream at the Beach

Scream at the Beach
Originally uploaded by ballyhoo photography

I belong to a strobist group here in Portland, and we were allowed access (during the day) to all the haunts.
For you non PDX types, the Scream at the beach is a huge haunted house set that takes up 5 retail locations in a mall in North Portland. Some examples are a mansion, complete with crypt, a mine, an urban zombie-scape, and others. This shot was made in the funhouse (from hell) and this attraction was right after you walk through a 24 foot "squeeze wall" and is in a black room. Nice, huh?
It was so dark in many of the areas, that some of us used flashlights to help our auto focus assist. It was too dark to manually focus. You'd think that cameras were made for use in the light or something.
So, we spent about 6 hours in the haunts, checking out the different scenes and figuring out how to make pretty girls with horrifying makeup look like they fit into the place. Can you say head lamp for finding gear? the best part was - what color is most photo equipment? - finding all of our equipment as we moved from one location to the next. A good number of people were at the mall as we went from haunt to haunt. Girls in make up, guys with bags and stands and cameras. Makeup was done by Matt Huntley.

So, this is what happens when you retire

My parents retired a few years ago, had a house sale -opened the doors and put a price tag on everything in the house, including the house, bought a big truck and a fifth wheel trailer. They have been criss-crossing the country ever since with their 6 cats. I call them the crazy cat people, but that's beside the point.
They stopped by the Portland area to visit, so I took some time off to hang out with them. Here they are in their full glory as we sat on their "patio" and had some apple-tinis. During their cruise around the country, they have taken a truck load of pictures - friends, wildlife, road hazards, sites, etc. etc.

Now, my dad has picked up a Nikon D80 and shoots like there is no tomorrow. I think my explanation of apertures and shutter speeds deepened the fog of confusion as he is trying to learn to actually USE his camera and have some control of the quality of his photos.
Guess what we did for the couple of days they were here. That's right, drink beer and discuss how an aperture and shutter speed combination can be made to control the artistic side of photos, like depth of field and motion blur.
Some people say that parents are like tornados, the come around for a short time, mess things up, and leave after all the pieces have been scattered. Mine come around, we have some good food, good drink, good conversations and then they run off to continue their trip. This time, it's from Denali National Park, Alaska to somewhere in the deserts of Nevada. They were going to Texas, but decided that it wasn't such a good idea. Here's a couple of shots from while we were out on their first night at the Wall Street Pizza in Gresham, OR.

Welcome to the Fall

Autumn used to be my favorite part of the year: colors of leaves, warm days with cool evenings, soup. MMMMMmmm, soup. Although it's not number one in my book of favorite seasons, it is in the top four - "participant" prize goes to Fall. Thanks for coming. Actually, it's not a bad season, but it means that the daylight hours get shorter and all that.


These are pictures from this week about the Fall evenings and the wonderful (relative term) things they bring. Notice that I put the rain first, then the clouds?

Both shots were done during the same night, actually within about 10 minutes of each other. Full Sail Pale Ale was the inspiration for both of these shots. mmmmm beer. Actually, my creative juices have been flowing again for personal projects and I am trying to expand my range and shoot with different styles.

Events in Stumptown

I have only been in downtown Portland after dark a few times, so had to squeeze this photo of the SAM station at the Pioneer Courthouse Square.
I had the opportunity to shoot some events for the Pioneer Courthouse Square. I shot the Italian Festival, Root Beer Floats, the Senior Prom, Flicks on Bricks, and a few other jobs for the group that runs the park.
Each job presented its own challenges, which was one of the reasons that I took these jobs on. Between the white umbrellas in the sun, uncooperative weather, large crowds of people, and the night shots, the events were a blast. Not just standard "walk around and shoot" type of work.

Here is one of the shots from the Ghostbusters night of Flicks on the Bricks. That job was awesome because I was able to watch a great movie while I did some of the work. I realized that seeing the movie in this venue was kind of like a hotdog at a Mariners game. The movie is great on its own, but it was that much better when watching it in downtown Portland with hundreds and hundreds of people. The party environment really made it a great experience. The park was packed with people by the time the movie started at dusk. It makes me wonder where all of these people parked.