Bridgepoint Music

Bridgepoint Music asked me to photograph for  their website. The job entailed several different photos of many different genres of photos. My favorite we probably the photographs of the instruments.  We decided to do them on a white background. I used a small white seamless background and my Octabox for lighting.

James Manganaro, Owner at Bridgepoint Music

I had met James when I photographed him for a profile in InMenlo.com. James and his father Charles asked me to return for the website photography.

Inside the showroom at Bridgepoint Music

They also wanted shots of their impressive showroom full of musical instruments. I have down indoor shots before and often you take a lot of time cleaning up the space. But their place was neat-as-a-pin. The spot lights were nice to as the created some bright spots to make the shot more interesting.

I returned a few weeks later to photograph their newly installed practice room. These high tech rooms are sound insulated but small. I tried to show the open feeling of the rooms with their windows. I also tried to show the clean and modern appearance of the room.

The ancient instrument called The Serpent

Cache Creek Lavender

Linda and Charlie from Cache Creek Lavender. 85MM lens, f6.7, 1/180 sec. ISO 400. Alien Bees B800 camera right fired with shoot wireless trigger. 

Note: I wrote this blog for InMenlo.com. It is reprinted here because I love the photos I got from my two sessions there.  The first was at the annual lavender festival in June where I got the photo of the little girl and the macro of the bees and the second was a portrait session done around dusk, where I got the portrait. 

When Charlie Opper acquired a few acres in the beautiful Capay Valley northwest of Sacramento, he needed to figure out what to do with the place.  To the gratitude of hundreds of Menlo Park Farmers market attendees every Sunday, he chose to create a lavender farm. The Cache Creek Lavender Farm booth is where Charlie and his partner Linda Barrett share the products of their labor.

Charlie and Linda chose lavender as an ideal product to raise in the Mediterranean climate of their farm near Rumsey, CA. Asked what attracted them to lavender, Charlie rattles off a long list that includes, aroma therapy, sleep aid, antibiotic, anti-virol, burn remedy and scar reduction. But the thing most people love is the fragrance, which seems to relax and bring on a pleasant mood in most people.

100mm macro lens, f4.0, 1/350 sec, ISO 100

After getting the farm up and running, they were looking for an outlet for their products. Farmers markets seemed like a logical choice. Charlie says there is lots to like about the Menlo Park Farmers Market. “The market is really quaint. We have a very regular clientele and we are surrounded with very high quality vendors.” Charlie also likes the demographic mix which he says features students, seniors and dot-commers.

Charlie grew up in Southern California. He also took his love of surfing to Hawaii for 20 years. He met Linda in nearby Woodland, soon after moving to the farm in Rumsey. Linda grew up in Boston and came west to go to school at Davis, where she studied plant and soil sciences.

Now that the farm is up and running, they have a lovely shop on the premises and host an annual lavender festival the second week of June each year. The festival is well attended by hundreds of people from all over the state. It features lavender ice cream, wine, crafts, music and this year a wood-fired pizza oven. 

24-70mm Zoom at 62mm, f6.7, 1/500 sec, ISO100

One Light

Christopher Webster of Hogan's Goat Tavern for indogpatch.com

I seem to be going through a phase where I like shooting with one light. And even then, only when the ambient doesn't give me what I want. I think part of the beauty of it is the simplicity. I do a reading on the ambient, I then set my ISO as low as possible so I can see the surroundings in their own light and still freeze the action, or at least most of it. In the above photo of Christopher Webster for indogpatch.com,  I used a 1/4 sec exposure at f5.6 and 400 ISO. I used an Alien Bees B800 with a gridded soft box placed to camera left. This mirrored the light coming from the door. There is a slight blur when Chris moved to greet a customer (Look at his left hand), but the expression is priceless and the ambient in the bar is just what I wanted.

Hooper Nicole Wong at sunset at Warm Water Cove

Nicole Wong is a Hula Hooper. We wanted a shot of her at sunset and with the hoops in motion. Balancing the light at dusk is always a fun assignment. Here, we used my Alien Bees B800 with a gridded soft box, to the right of the camera. I wanted to freeze the hoops as much as possible, so I used 1/180 for the shutter speed, the fastest that allows me to sync with the flash. There is a little blur on the hoops, which I like. f5.6 gave me the right amount of depth of field. I used ISO 200 to help get there.

Bud Spangler at his Oakland studio. 

This shot for (InMenlo) of jazz producer, Bud Spangler, did not need any ambient. It was a tight space I could light with the single light. In this case I put the Alien Bees B800 with Octabox, right behind me. It gives me a ring-flash type effect, but with softer light. This was shot F8.0 to keep the acoustic material on the walls sharp. 1/90 was the speed and ISO at 100 for detail.

The Lucy Billings Album Photos

I had the privilege of working with Lucy Billings to do the photography for her album “No Other Road”. Over three different sessions we worked on various locations, lighting schemes and ideas to create a group of photos that could serve the purposes of the album and be used for publicity. Here are a few with a brief discussion of how they were created.

Before we began shooting, I scouted the area for roads we could shoot on. We were looking for something scenic and somewhat remote, in keeping with the title. The cover shot (at the top of this blog post) and the inside back cover shot were done on Stage Road near Pescadero, CA. This is about a mile from the coast. This photo was taken in the section of road with large eucalyptus trees on both sides. The eventual cover used an illustrated scene with Lucy lifted from the photo. Touraine Bellah at Bellah Design was the creator of this colorful cover. The lighting was natural sunlight. We filled in the shadows with a reflector held by my assistant Sara Kline.

Our second session yielded one of my favorite portraits I have taken. (Above) On a cloudy and windy day, we headed out to the San Francisco Bay under the Dumbarton Bridge between Menlo Park and Newark. There are various dirt roads through this section of the bay that were used by Morton Salt when most of this part of the bay was salt evaporation ponds. There is also an abandoned railway bridge that we used in the background. Lucy braved the cold wind and stood for several photos. I used a coco ring flash and an on camera Canon 580 EX II speedlight. This brightened Lucy up against the background and made the red dress shine. This photo is on the inside flap behind the front cover.

The next shot is on the back of the album. This was taken at the end of the same day we did the bay shot. This shot was done inside at Lucy’s house. I used a Pepper hot light positioned high above and stood on a chair to get the above angle. I like the way the tungsten light warms up the photo and chose not to balance out all the effect of the warm light.

For the publicity shots, we started off at Vida restaurant in Menlo Park, CA. Ali El Safy, the proprietor who had previously posed for my shot The Restaurateur is a big supporter and let us use the restaurant for a backdrop. This shot was taken inside in the front of the restaurant. I used a narrow depth of field to keep the background out of focus. There is one LumiPro LP160 speedlight with an umbrella mounted camera left.

The outdoor shot with the columns was taken at Stanford. We got a strong background with the columns and added a light camera left. Once again we used an LP160 speedlight with an umbrella mounted on a stand.

This shot with the guitar and the embroidered blouse turned out to be another favorite. Back at Lucy’s house, we used an Alien Bees AB800 with a softbox to light Lucy’s beautiful red hair and get the great reflection on the guitar.

The fun for me on this project was getting to do so many different types of shots with the same subject. Lucy is very patient and willing to try lots of different ideas to get a good photo. Give her album a listen. You can access it on her website www.beinglucy.com or on iTunes.

Camera Descending a Staircase

I always liked Duchamp's painting "Nude Descending a Staircase". So when I was shooting photos of cameras and robots for Videre Design, I decided to pay homage with a little creation of my own. This stereo camera has its own set of legs, so i wanted to anthropomorphize it. I shot the camera at 8 different angles on a white background. The I deleted the background and layered the different angles on top of each other in photoshop. I blended them with different levels of opacity and even stretched and bended one with the free transform tool. It was a fun result.

I used a similar technique for a self portrait last year. I used 9 of 12 views shot. I did this one before I knew how to blend, merge and feather.