First skiing of the season

..and with it comes bringing along lights and camera and the eternal search for a new way to shoot Tony.

 The Sands Hotel and Casino as kind enough to put us in a top floor room with morning light, when asked. No idea what they thought of us bringing up a light case, stand bag and camera stuff.. I'm sure more than one suspect 'photo shoot' has been filmed upstairs. 

The sunlight came in at a pretty rakish angle in the morning. I thought it might be more straight on, but I guess it ended up working out. Good thing I stole a pint glass from downstairs, it made for a rad sun-refracting disco star. Happy accidents, best occurring in photos, not on snowy mountainsides while wearing skis.

chair by night looking out at the Eldorado.. home of the best $17 buffet dinner in Reno

Sugar Bowl was fun, with soft perfect snow and helllla cold. We had to take the gondola across from the secondary parking lot, as the Judah side wasn't open yet. Kind of cool, like riding the old Sky Ride across Kings Dominion.

Gondola face

Mt Lincoln ski-lift face

Babes in the Wood: Diego

"Diego, he's a pretty fun kid", to quote his mom...

... I couldn't agree more. Give him an axe and he's killer!

We shot some fun family pics as well 

some outtakes:

And then I needed a child hand model for another Chronicle Books kids placemats cover, so I roped Diego's mom into dropping him off to be a model while she had a haircut in the city. 

teaching Diego the fine art of throwing a model's tantrum and demanding a nonfat latte before working any more.

taking a dirtbiking-posture-on-the-CL175 break

Tilt Up

Last Friday (11/9/2012) I had a solo photo show at a space called the Garage Sale Project.

For a couple years now I have been photographing Tony when we go up to Tahoe to ski, bringing along lights and camera and exploring a bit of outer-lying Sparks and Reno, where we stay overnight. More than a few times I have found myself intrigued by buildings in the industrial areas and used them as a backdrop for shooting a sort of staged portrait of Tony.

Using these photos as a start to the show idea, I was inspired more when I went to see the garage space firsthand. Across the street was the back side of the local Safeway, sporting a similar facade to some of these locations.

I then began to form a vision for the space, making each of the three walls be a different part of a study of that style of tilt up architecture. 

 

The third wall was perhaps my favorite. I work alot in an industrial park the town of Brisbane, CA, and have often wanted to take photos around that area and see what evolves from it. This show seemed like a prefect place to pursue that. Especially since Chris, the owner of the space, is someone I met there...

To see the Brisbane project in more detail, I have posted a link here.

The opening was fun, lots of folks came out, thanks to all of you!

Babes in the Wood : Molly

Babes in the Wood project took young miss Molly to the hills of Berkeley for a shoot last weekend. Bringing along my firepit cauldron as a prop, I scouted the week before for a location that had surplus amount of trees but would also not be host to a carpet of poison oak.

After stumbling through a number of families' Labor Day picnics, I found the spot. Sorry, but if I tell you where it is, I'd have to kill you. Pretty sure Molly's father Bryan almost did want to kill me after almost getting us lost looking for it again:
.

 

I met Molly and Bryan, Molly's parents, when I photographed their gorgeous wedding in the mountains four years ago:

 

But back to Molly.. making some great faces after licking the cauldron:

baby wrangling!

Visit the rest of the Babes in the Wood project here

How to make a most fabulous bookshelf without your boyfriend's help

A couple years ago I saw this bookshelf in my local coffeeshop, Sugarlump Cafe.

Inspired, I decided I wanted to make a bookshelf like that of my own, to house my record player and various oddball decorations.

For a couple years I thought about it and figured I'd get around to it.. get my boyfriend to cut the shelves, find brackets, etc. Well one day at a local hardware store I came across the standards, or the long pieces that mount to the wall, on complete give-away sale. Bought them and then eventually bought some brackets, also in a brass finish, to match.

Next up was the shelving. I decided to go for inexpensive, in case the whole mess turned into exactly that. So I bought a 4x4' oak-veneered 3/4" plywood board and had it cut to spec at Lowes. Making a base shelf 16.5" deep, to fit the largest bottom brackets and then a bunch of 10.5" shelves of varying widths to stagger it like above.

I bought some Miniwax light walnut stain for the shelves and had a few dremel tweaks to do to the brackets, but ended up with the following story:

I first taped the marks on the wall to get a feel for it.

Then used 3" screws to secure to the lathe in the wall. I learned here that whoever built this wall made the door a full 1" wider from the corner at the top of the door to the bottom.

 

Had to dremel away a bit of the metal on the brackets to fit in the standards. Different brands..

As the stain dried I set them in to take a look.

Then threw some crap on the shelves to make it real.

Babes in the Wood: Ethan

Every once in a while a shoot goes smoothly, all is reaffirmed towards spending money and energy towards this project. Such was the case shooting Ethan this past week.

Noting, after the fact, that this could be a possible publicity still from Battle Royale, private school uniform and chosen weapon nearby. Though I suppose now it would more widely recognized as Hunger Games homage. I enjoyed both, but did read Battle first and will always love that it was a random find at a bookstore at SFO.

 

Ethan had just seen The Amazing Spider Man, and was testing out jumps and leaps in between photo-direction

And then Ethan and dad had to try out the bow and arrow:

 

annnnnd, more spider man

 

From the (non) Bully Pulpit

Decided to bring photo gear along, while camping last weekend, to shoot a portrait of pal Kevin: lover of camels and dirtbike rides in the mud.

an amazing storyteller..

I seem to be, these past few years, shooting lots in the woods. I plan to make a conscious effort to change it up in the near future. Noted here.

 

 

 

pretty woods/ scary trails, to a novice rider (ie me).