Portlanders - get down to the Tanker Bar on SE Hawthorne and 48th for a fantastic display of some of Cherry’s calendar images! 6 of the best are on show for the next couple of weeks and they look awesome framed! Don’t miss it! You can also pick up a calendar while you’re there!
Also - stay tuned for some huge pin-up related news soon………..
In the early hours of this morning my site was hacked. A small malicious file was placed in every single folder that directed people away from my site and onto a virus site.
Thanks.
It’s taken pretty much all day to identify what happened and try to deal with it. At the moment, all links are broken, although the main page is back up.
I’ll fix it as soon as I can! I may update my blog software while I’m at it and that might break the whole thing…stay tuned!
A very hacked off Mike.
It’s been a long time in the making, but it was worth the wait! The first batch is back from the printer and ready to be sent to lucky new owners!
If you like what you see, don’t wait for 2009…grab one now and enjoy Cherry in all her 50’s glory for the rest of 2008 too!
A little under a year ago we took Henry to the beach for the first time - he was a baby then…he’s a little boy now!! We stayed in Lincoln City and had some fun on the lovely sandy beach, which was freeeeeeeezing! Damn Oregon weather!
Here’s Henry being awesome:
Out and about on Sunday at the Kennedy School soaking pool with my son, Henry, we spotted his favorite car in the parking lot…a Mini. NO…not that rubbish that BMW pretend is a Mini…but a REAL one!! It still had UK plates underneath the Oregon ones, and it was right hand drive to boot! Here’s Henry exploring…
Regular readers will know that I’ve been working with the wonderful Ms Cherry Dollface on her 2009 calendar…to say we are both excited about how it’s turning out is a huge understatement! We can’t wait for it to hit the presses, and wanted to give everyone a sneak peak. Here then, is October!! All the shots are inspired by classic 50’s pin-up artwork. We sweated and bled to get as close to the original paintings and drawings as possible, then put our own spin on it. This shot is the result of a couple of hours of painful studio work for Cherry (having bolts drilled into your hands and springs welded to your knees isn’t nice ya know!!) and around 15 hours retouching on my part. This isn’t the final image, but it’s close. More images in the coming weeks, and hopefully a finished calendar for you to buy soon after that. Enjoy!
No photography today - busy retouching my last wedding and Cherry’s calendar. Here are some of the songs currently rocking my playlist:Bon Jovi “Dirty Little Secret” - on hellova sexy song (no iTunes link)
Mötley Crüe “Saint’s Of Los Angeles” - anticipation for the new album is at boiling point…
Elvis Presley “Viva Las Vegas” - I miss Vegas…must get back there soon…
And - bizarrely - Def Leppard’s latest…”Songs From The Sparkle Lounge”. My buddy Steve told me to get it, crank it, and rock out. He was not wrong. I’m not a huge Leppard fan, but this takes me all the way back to the 80s. Required listening for anyone who still dreams of ripped jeans and long hair.
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of shooting Sunshine and Grady’s wedding. Helping on the day was Bo Baumgartner. Great fun to work with, Bo shot some awesome images for the happy couple. He’s available for weddings to, take a look at his site!!
It’s always fun to see images of myself shooting - cringeworthy, but fun - here are a couple of me getting right in the way of Bo’s camera!! (Thanks Bo!)
I like to get close to my subjects!
Yup - that’s me…right in the middle of Bo’s shot!
And here’s me looking all action man!
A big weekend ahead photography wise…Tomorrow I have my first wedding of the year with the fabulously good fun Sunshine and Grady - should be a blast!!Then, on Sunday, the first of two shoots with the amazing Cherry Dollface for her 2009 calendar…I’m ultra-excited about this - her ideas are awesome, and the calendar is going to be out-of-this-World!! Stay tuned - details soon!!
After a rather quiet winter, spring has been mental as far as photography goes!!! In the next few weeks, I’ve got several shoots with models, some engagement shoots and wedding season kicks off on the 10th…the first of 15 booked so far this year!!!On top of that, I’m going to be shooting a calendar with the awesome Cherry Dollface which will be in 50’s pin up style!!I’m also in the process of getting together a new portfolio for my ‘Intimates’ sessions (hence the work with models)…stay tuned…big things coming late summer!!For now, …here are a few from the ‘intimate’ session with Cherry: Cherry, Dollface by name, Dollface by nature…
While browsing Craigslist tonight I saw an ad from a “photographer” wanting models TFP…nothing odd about that, except his name…Mike Long…can you believe it?!! If you are going to work with a Mike Long in Portland, double check you’re getting the right one……And good luck to the other Mike!!
Got a ton of images for your Facebook profile..but they are all a bit tired and old?? Jazz it up with some professional portraits!! Here are a couple from a session with Kentin - his profile is now rockin’ !! Sessions from as little as $50…get in touch now to book yours!
Hot off the presses….Mötley are back, and they are still kicking ass!!
If you are bored with American Idol, manufactured pop, bland, generic music…then the Crüe should have the cüre….
They have a new album due out in June, the first with the original line-up for 10 years. The first song, “Saint’s of Los Angeles” rocks. Big time. They have a huge tour, “Crüe Fest” with 5 bands this summer. The only bummer is that I’ve got a wedding booked for the Portland date!! Some travel may be in order…
Reading the BBC News website over the weekend I noticed a story about a light plane crash in Kent, in the south of England. While it’s no-where near any relatives of mine it’s always eye catching to see such stories and often makes you think of home. Today I saw some further reports about the crash and found out that one of those killed in the crash was racing driver David Leslie.I met David at Brands Hatch in 1995 while covering the British Touring Car Championship. He was then the lead driver for the Honda team. Whenever I got close to him he was friendly and accommodating for a young photographer who had no clue what he was doing amongst all these ‘professionals’. Most of my images from that period are still in negative form (all film in those days) and have never been scanned. Searching my digital archives I’ve managed to find a couple of shots of David, scanned form the sheets of negs, through the clear film and lo-resolution. A great driver - there is a nice obit on Autosport’s site
Went to my first gig in Portland last night - The Cult! I’ve seen them a bunch of times in the past, from small clubs in London, to Wembley Arena and the last time was at the Fillmore in San Francisco with my best mate Steve. The Roseland is, well…small! The security were Nazi like in their attitude (at one point they told people to sit down…..I kid you not. At a rock show…..urgh…) They had scanners and pat searches on the door, so I’m glad I didn’t try to smuggle a camera in. My phone isn’t the latest and greatest (still waiting for AT+T to offer free incoming calls like Sprint do so that I can switch to an iPhone…that’s another story!) and as you can see from these shots, it’s camera sucks! Still, a great time had by all there, and Jason and I had many beers (my head tells me too many) and a rockin good time.
Our make-up artist - Hollie - is an amazing girl. She’s a singer, actress, author, model…you name it, she’s done it! We use her for all our shoots, but recently shot her too - awesome!!
Wedding photography workflow.
The digital age was hailed as the freedom that photographers had wanted for years, but in reality it’s chained many of them to their PCs late into the night after a shoot. For some, it’s a necessary evil, get the basics done, archive and move on. For others it’s the start of an artistic journey. My company, Times Two Studios, specialises in helping photographers with their workflow - we take their digital files, color correct, tweak and artistically work them in their own style. Long before my partner Craig and I began to offer these services I’ve had a workflow for my own shooting that suites my style and makes me more productive.
Many photographers these days shoot JPEG - the awesome Adobe Lightroom now offers the same tools to correct JPEGs as it does for RAW, and for some workflows it’s the fastest and easiest way to work. I shoot RAW for many reasons, none of which are ‘to save my ass’. While RAW does contain many more times the amount of data than a JPEG file and duff exposures can be brought back in, that’s not an excuse for poor shooting. The number 1 reason a wedding photographer should be shooting RAW is white balance. During a fast moving event like a wedding with changable lighting conditions, it’s impossible to set a custom white balance that will stick for more than a few shots. You may have window light mixed with tungsten mixed with flash - your custom balance will get it wrong on several. So, shoot auto then right? Nope. Again, each image will have a different white value. When you shoot JPEG, that white value is written into the file. For ever. And ever. It becomes virtually impossible to get a set of images to match. If you shoot auto white balance and RAW however, that white value isn’t embedded into the file and you have a much better chance of getting a series of images to match.
So - for my workflow, I need to have the tools available to edit, process and file RAW images.
My workflow begins before the shoot, by syncing the clocks on any cameras that may get used - this ensures that the shoot will be in order when imported into software later on.
When I get home from a shoot the first order of business is to download the cards to my hard drive. I use a firewire reader over a USB one for speed. All the images go into one folder. I am very fastidious about backing up everything, so before I do any edits at all, I open Adobe Bridge, rename the whole shoot with the date and a reference name - for example: 030708-Mike_001.CR2 - and then back them up to an external hard drive. They are then burnt to 2 sets of DVDs. This step is still part of my process, but in the next year I’m going to phasing that out, and instead moving to having multiple hard drives for back up. DVDs are just not reliable long term, slow to archive and retrieve, and actually more expensive that HDs. Hard drives aren’t 100% reliable, but they are much faster to back up to…time is money!
Once the back ups are done, I sort through my first edit. In the past, I’ve used pretty much every piece of software, but have recently moved over to Photo Mechanic - and it rocks. Nothing on the market can display RAW files as quick. You can bash through a shoot and make your selects in a few hours.
These are then moved to a selects folder and renamed again, in sequence.
Next step is to import the selects into Adobe Lightroom. I’ve tested Aperture from Apple, but it lacks some key features and a bit of speed from Lightroom. When importing I create full size previews - which helps speed later on.
My first step in Lightroom is to quickly run through the shoot and pick out my favorites - these ones will get special treatment in Photoshop later.
The shoot is then processed using my own presets and style - this different for everyone, and the photographers that use our services at Times Two Studios all have their own presets that we created for them. The images are balanced for exposure, contrast and white balance. Any images that I set aside for custom work are then looked at to see if there are any presets in Lightroom that might work, and then the whole lot are exported as full resolution JPEGs with sRGB profile embedded. For the majority of the images, that’s it. For the special ones, they are then taken into Photoshop for any artisic edits.
Once all images have been finished, I then make any online galleries or slideshows needed for the shoot, and then back up the finals to DVDs and external hard drives.
The above workflow is the basis of not only my personal one, but the workflow that we use at Times Two Studios. It will evolve as software changes and as our needs do, but we’ve found it’s the fastest and easiest way to manage large shoots.
I’ve been a very bad blogger. I love blogs - I read, on average, 15 blogs a day, mostly from other photographers. Many of them are far more prolific in their blog writing than I’ve been. One even went a whole year posting every single day! Now, that’s a bit much, and he admitted that at times we was searching for content.
Still, there is no excuse for not keeping this place more up to date, and I plan to be a better blogger from now on!
With that in mind, I’m going to be adding some different content here from time to time - not only photographic work that I’m currently working on, but tips and advice for other photographers, workflow help and some post-processing information too.
To kick things off, tomorrow I’ll post a bit about my workflow for weddings.
Mt Hood is only an hour or so away, so we finally took Henry up to the snow for some much needed rest and relaxation! Tagging along were our friends Anna (all the way from the UK) and Jennifer and Jason. No skiing for Alison and I, but we did take Henry out on his first run in a sledge!
Our home for the weekend was an amazing cabin with a hot tub. Not much photography going on - too much soaking and relaxing…here’s a few:
The studio is getting very busy lately, and I don’t get the chance to shoot just for myself much - so this past weekend I bundled Henry up in the stroller, and took an hour or two to wander around the Pearl District with my camera. The buildings are awesome there, and we had a great time!
