Gateway Canyons Resort

I was recently working on a project in Southern Colorado for

 Noble House Hotels www.noblehousehotels.com 

and had an enjoyable experience working 

along side one of their principals, Scott Colee, on a project for

Gateway Canyons Resort www.gatewaycanyons.com, 

not too far from my home base. As you can see from this 

photograph, shot from their Eurocopter, this is an unbelievably unique and beautiful

setting so as we were shooting, the location possibilities were almost overwhelming.

 A good problem to have.  Gateway Canyons is owned by John Hendricks, 

who also owns The Discovery Channel dsc.discovery.com. John spent a couple 

of days with us while we shot and I enjoyed his warmth and genuine interest in 

photography. An excellent photographer in his own right. 

Gateway Canyons is a very first class destination with beautiful grounds and 

accommodations, food and amenities.  

Check it out.

This shoot was sort if a dream because I was able to use a wide range of skills with lifestyle,

automotive, landscape and architectural requirements on our shot list.  Although we did 

not shoot it, there is a world class automotive museum on site at Gateway, installed there

for the guests.  It houses more than 50 significant, restored cars dating back to the early 1900's.

Part of the amenity offering is a "Driven Experiences" where you have an opportunity

to drive any of a number of high performance cars on a spectacular highway winding

South to Telluride.  For me, certainly not a hard thing to shoot.

We hit a window of spectacular weather for this shoot when they had been getting 

quite a bit of inclement weather.  We would shoot with the cars at dawn and dusk

and the rains came every day, but almost always during our down times.

We were using quite a bit of supplemental lighting, as usual, on our lifestyle 

 shooting during the day so weren't quite as concerned about the ambient conditions

with this as with the car photography. Mornings dawned beautiful and the evening's 

 were ,well, "desert stunning".

As a destination retreat, Gateway will pick you up when you bring your corporate or

personal plane into the airport, about an hour away, in one of their Bentleys. Shooting a

plane isn't much different than shooting a car so stacking these together worked out

pretty well.  Pre-planning the set was the most important part of getting this shot.  We 

ended up with a clear sunset, so decided to add the appropriate clouds to enhance the 

final shot and to give it it's vertical crop. 

Any photographer will tell you that kids and dogs are the "bane of their existence" and 

that's really true, pending the attention spans, respectively.  Once you add in a horse, you 

know you have trouble on your hands.  As you can see, that was where we were on this shot.

With the help of my cowboy talent, Paul McLean, www.radicalartistsagency.com 

we were able to pull off about 4-5 captures that seemed to work before

the dog ran off, one of the kids chased him and the horse in the background lost interest  

and retreated permanently into his stall. 

I thought this was one of the better shots to come out of this shoot.

We used some primary supplemental lighting on our foreground scene in this shot

blending with all of the ambient light sources to give things a natural look.  Truth be

known, it started raining the minute we wrapped this up. Lucky, lucky.

My thanks to our team, Hope Carlton and her assistant Jolynn Garcia (stylists), 

 Gina Bishop (interior stylist), Robb Reece (assistant), Scott Colee (Noble House),

Elizabeth Hendricks North & Healey McBride (art direction).

Robert Pizem

I'm not sure exactly how, but I got hooked up with Piz.  Robert Pizem, actually. He invited me out to shoot a little rock climbing, something I hadn't done in a while and I was honored to do so with him. Piz brandishes climbing industry sponsors like SCARPA, Arcteryx, Sterling Ropes, WindXtreme and Camp-USA and is a 5.14 sport and crack climber, specializing in big wall free climbs and traditional climbing.  For their websites, visit Piz's blog at http://pizem.blogspot.com.  Robert and his climbing partner Mike Brumbaugh, www.avonventuresports.com Robb Reece, www.robbreecephotography.com (my sometimes assistant, sometimes biz partner) and I hooked up for 2 sessions. I tried to shoot the story line w/ some big views, portraits and the always important detail shots in the limited time I had.  All went well and I was amazed with the ease these guys moved around the rock. They were as "at home" as most people are their living room.

Rock Climbing is a photographic subject that has so many unique subject opportunities and presents an array of approaches. The athletes are uniquely fit and make great portrait subjects in a landscape setting.  I have always tried to shoot with the very best rock and ice climbers in my past, for obvious reasons, visually, for sure, but also because of the level of professionalism and safety. I would advise everyone else who does this to do the same. It was Warren Miller who said that when a camera is introduced into the situation, the subjects IQ drops by 60 points.

I would never want an injury (or worse) to happen on my watch, as the photographer who "introduced the camera into the situation". Here I added split supplemental lighting and a little layering to control spill, for a more stylized approach.

Here with natural light, a little more of a select focus and an adjustment in visual approach.

Big views and small climbers. This photograph would have stood up just fine as a static landscape, but when the drama of an accomplished climber is added, additional value is created to an otherwise "walk up and shoot" image.  Really not too bad either way. We placed the Piz-man on the shady side of this rock in this bouldering situation and needed a smidgen of supplemental light to add depth and to open him up a little bit.  I placed one light "deep" so it would be coming from the direction of the main primary light source, the sky in the far field.

They say that if you choose something you love to do as your career you'll never work a day of your life.  I also get to wear flip flops to work. Every day. Happy shooting.

I wanted to take a moment to mention that we recently have lost another hero of Americas Greatest Generation.  Art Gilbert, born in 1921, was man who's story was so typical of so many boys who grew up in depression era America. He rode a milk cow to school each day in his youth and later, after WWII built his house, brick by brick, from the rubble salvaged from a demolition of his Methodist church down town. As an Army Engineer, he landed in the second wave, D-Day (June 6th, 1944) on Omaha Beach.  He and his gun crew, who miraculously made it ashore, were cited for actions resulting in the destruction of a German heavy gun battery that had decimated Army Rangers in the first wave landing.  Art Gilbert was a member of America's Greatest Generation that, quite literally, saved the world from the brink of destruction. Just in case you're wondering why Garth Brooks doesn't sing in German (or Japanese) today.

I would also like to honor the loss of my Father-in-law,  John Nicholas Simpson,  in August of 2011, who also served on the sands of the South Pacific in our conflict with the Empire of Japan.  John was an rifleman in an infantry unit seeing action in the Battle of Makin Atoll, Quagilene, Saipan and Okinawa.

I miss him.

Honor a Veteran or a member of our Military Forces Today. 

This is a photographers "short story" that could easily be a novel.

A call came in from Dena Stroje, (Assistant Art Buyer, Brunner, Pittsburgh) asking about availability for an up coming project for Cub Cadet Lawn & Garden Tractors and we threw our hat in the ring with   a preliminary estimate.  We knew we presenting against 3 or 4 other photographers including one that had shot the previous year so that gave us about a 20% chance of being named to the shoot.  As events would play out, we were called in, but really were not fully of the moving parts on this shoot.  I was thinking "how difficult can it be". We were so lucky to be working with an agency who truly wanted to empower us to prevail and we were guided step by step by their art buyer, Dani Caruso and Creative Director, Steve Farrar.

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, location was very important, and grass was even more so, so once we decided where, geographically, we were shooting, we sent out our location scouts.  Nailing down suitable locations that fit the specific needs of the respective equipment we were photographing cycled for 2 weeks prior to departure time. We received nightly scouting reports and location scouting carried on well into the actual shoot.  It had been very dry in the Pittsburgh area and although there were a ton of beautiful places to shoot, we needed perfect grass.  Preferably under irrigation.  Unlike where we're based, not everyone with a big lawn in Pittsburgh has a lawn irrigation system.

As we started selecting our shoot sites and securing permissions, we pulled in our "greensman", Greg Jones.  Gregs' sole pre-shoot job was to start watering and fertilizing our grass.  Once on the shoot with us he cared for grass, planted bushes, pruned, sodded, and planted (and pulled) schrubs and bushes.  Greg has many feature films to his credit, so his job with us was not a big deal for him. He told us that he had once turned a street in the Pittsburgh area into a street in Iraq. I, on the other hand, kinda liked having my very own gardner on hand.

I have had the pleasure of working with a producer who is based in Asheville, NC, Kevin Gregory and wanted to pull him in to be our Den Mother.  Kevin is an "attention to detail" guy who has been in the business for a while and always thinks of things that don't even cross my mind.  Once this project was turned over to him, my pre-shoot responsibilities consisted of dissemination of information to the agency and acting as over-seer.  Once on the shoot, Kevin was always at least two steps ahead of us. It didn't matter what we needed, he led the bird perfectly.  We rarely saw Kev, but there were no less than 20 people on set ant any give time.  A veritable ocean of clients, agency, talent, assistants, stylists, equipment wrangler, props, wardrobe, trucks, trailers, lawn and garden equipage.  Kevin was the omnipresent over seer.  The Den Mother.

In the final analysis, I've never work with such a large group of people who played so well together. So many moving parts, so little tension.  I was really surprised at how the home owners opened up their properties to our relative "circus" and thank the folks at Brunner for their complete support for a successful result.  They had been through this seven times before. I'm excited to see how things look when they come out of post at Brunner.

On a recent photo shoot for Shea Homes, I was asked to share the set with a video crew from Millennium, Inc., and specifically, Joe Mavick, their hired gun from Glimpse Multimedia who was brought in to shoot the television spot.  Really great guys and very easy to work with.  Neither of us, still or video preempted the other in terms of importance on the shoot, however, they clearly had more moving parts and a more involved script.  They had done all of the tech-scouts and did all of the casting and wardrobe, so my per-pro roll was simple.  Just needed to wedge in and get my shots.  Our morning got rolling pre-sunrise at 05:30 and while prop and wardrobe was getting the talent ready I wandered off and got this amazing un-scripted shot that was not on our original shot list.  As it ends up, this image may anchor the ad campaign. One never knows, so shoot it. The perfectionist in me would have loved to have had a couple of kids running from camera, out into the tall grass.  Something to think of next time out.

Now, having lauded the video crew, I will advise that what they were looking for in the way of locations, and looking at everything in the form of a "complete script", instead of as a single view, might not have been my absolute first choice.  I was not on the tech-scout and wasn't able to put in my request for nailed down locations.  There were a couple of really nice sun angles as well as this short section of fence that offered a nice prop, around which we were able to stage our talent.  with a bit of supplemental strobe light off camera-right created about 45 minutes of opportunity.  None of our talent, to my knowledge, were professional, so the "spontaneous dynamic" of the talent group was a bit compromised.  Giving them all something to hold on to, along with a bit of low-grade direction worked quite well.

The architecture on and around the property we were shooting on was really spectacular.  Modern and rustic at the same time.  As we were wrapping our morning shoot and heading into the club house to re-group, I stumbled on the this pretty little silver Mercedes parked curbside.  On a whim, I decided to shoot it...static. And then shoot it again, sweeping the shot at about 1/15th of a second, all taking about 4 minutes of my time.  Later on, in post, I was able to composite the two basic captures.  Another investment of about 30 minutes. You decide...worth the effort ?

As part of our scripted shoot, we were asked to photograph some little kids playing in one of the communities playgrounds.  By this time our "child talent" was hot and tired and not in a very good mood.  As things started to come off the rails, a kid wrangler, one of the Moms, stepped in and somehow got the kids fired up again.  I had them walking along a 2 foot high stone, wall toward the camera, to centralize the action, and walked them through my shot 3-4 times.  Then it was just a matter of waiting to catch the animation, which finally did come.  Light and airy.  Kids are not alway my favorite thing to photograph, but when they ignite it always makes me laugh.

We had 3-4 fairly complicated, cast of thousands, interior lifestyle shots to do, and this is where we knew we would need to dodge in and out with the video crew.  They were lighting with kino's and one big HMI.  The kino flo's were, for the most part, insufficient for our needs, so we needed to set up our own supplemental lighting, where we thought it best placed...and wait until the Joe got his shot done.  By this time, we were running a little behind our intended schedule so I, quite literally, had 5 minutes to get this shot right. You can see the light spilling in from back behind the model in the blue shirt, camera right. This was Joe's HMI spilling through from the other room as they set up for their next sequence.  I can't believe how smoothly and quickly the video crew "shooted and scooted" with all of the gear they were packing. 

Although not on my shopping list, I had my eye on a strong architectural view of this beautiful club house. We wrapped and released our talent just in time for my assistant Kevin Cox, kevincoxphotography.com to run over a sneak this shot in.  I do not know who the architect on the building was, but would like to.  Another mention I would like to make is my client David Miles of Miles Strategic DNA.  We have may days of shooting together under our belts and I always appreciate his art direction as well as his loyalty to my work.

Suunto watch company is creating some POS for their retailers so we teamed up with Ian McClendon, who always comes through for me with great hunt and fish support services with his outfitting service Independence Pass Outfitting Service LLC based in Aspen, Colorado.  I met Ian while shooting for Remington Firearms Company a few years back and he had just taken an eight point bull elk with bow and arrow, which we used as a prop element in that shoot. We ran into each other again while shooting Keystone Lite 3 years ago.  We've remained friends and I'm realizing what a dynamo this guy is.  Always great to have resources like this, and although I shoot in many categories, Ian is my "go to" guy for hunting and fishing production resources.

We were concentrating on bow hunting this go-round and Ian had this elk rack on hand for us to use as an eye catching element for our shots.  This particular 6-point was not shot by Ian, but killed by another unknown hunter who let it run off and was unable to retrieve it.  Ian stumbled onto a sow and her cub gnawing on the carcass and somehow chased them away long enough to grab the skull and rack.  How he was able to do this is beyond me, but it made a great prop for our photo shoot.

So how do you exploit wrist watches in a backwoods hunting shoot.  It was actually easier than I  thought it would be because a hunters hands are his tools and figure into the photography fairly prominently, whether large or small.  The main thing was to make sure the watch was on the correct hand to you'll notice that we had to make sure to change the watch hand pending the direction of the flow of the shot.

We didn't have much time on our side for our shoot and wanted to make sure to cover a couple of different locations.  When we were in the rocks, we were battling some "in and out" direct sun and wanted to make sure we were able to blend our backgrounds naturally by locking down and exposing for our flash as well as for the more subdued light of the natural scene with the intention of layering later on in post.

I've always felt that even the purest digital file always looks, well...like a digital file.  I make no bones about the exploitation of a few key after-the-fact plug-in filters to bring some of the look of film back.  Having the opportunity to shoot in both the granite rocks as well as in the aspens brought a "hi-key, low-key element of play to our palette.  Our plug-ins work well in this already gritty context.