Michael!

Hey Hey!

These days I'm still living out of a suitcase. Most of my time right now is focused on teaching photography and writing for a couple of folks. But I've been inspired by folks like Zack Arias to shoot more. If I'm honest, I really miss it. So when I see fellow photographers post amazing work I'm like damn, I need to get off my rear and make some images. Zack uses another word! Ha!

When I was in Seattle this past October I arranged a shoot with Michael. Michael is a photographer, videographer and audio engineer based in Seattle. He's also a Seahawks fan!

I wanted to share some of my fave images from the shoot as well a couple of failures. As creatives we are only supposed to show our best work, but I think it's also important that we review things that failed and learn from them.

So here is one of my favourite shots:

See anything wrong? Yep, his face is out of focus. :(

Our cameras are awesome, but they can fail us and we can fail them. This is a moment where I just knew I had that focus point on the right spot. And when I previewed the image on the LCD I said, yep, nailed it.

Guess what, that LCD is small and hard to see in broad daylight. Plus seeing detail on someone's face and if things are in focus. Yes, I can zoom in to see, but I was convinced it was solid. Perfect I am not. :)

Lesson learned. Next time triple check that focus and do some manual focus as well. Focus peaking on the Fuji system is rad and may have helped me nail the shot!

On to the other images that I think came out really nice.

What I love about this shot is that it's in the same alley the failed shot is in, we simply turned around and boom, new background. That's something else to keep in mind. If you're going to do portraits on the fly (which is what we were doing), look around for a few different landscapes and backgrounds you can utilise. We were shooting in Pioneer Square, downtown Seattle. It's one of my fave spots to create images in Seattle, because of that diversity.

Here are a couple more traditional headshots.

These are all natural light. All captured with the Fujifilm XT-1 using either the 35mm f/1.4 or 56mm f/1.2 lenses. Edited with Capture One or Alien Skin Software's Exposure 2.

Part of why I used two really different software programs is that I wanted the traditional headshots to have really solid colour profiles (even though these are the black and white versions!). I went to Exposure 2 to dive in to their awesome film styles to give a couple of these an older look. When Michael and I were discussing the shoot ahead of time, vintage film photography was part of his inspiration.

Thanks for checking it out. If you're interested in booking a portrait session, send me an email!