Had an opportunity today to make some family portraits for my good friend and fellow worship leader, Allen Brown, and his wife, Saralyn. Their boys and their wives were visiting from Boston and Kansas City, and as is the desire of every parent when the kids are in town, they wanted to make memories!
Click the video below for a video montage of today’s shoot.
A few of my Photoshop / photography students and I trekked up to Los Angeles over the weekend. I had been up there a couple weeks ago with my son’s class for a field trip to the LA historic core. While I came home with a few photos from that excursion, I spent more time with my eye glued to my group than to the viewfinder of my Nikon.
I determined then that I’d go back at the first opportunity. I had planned to take the train to LA Union Station, but Bob (one of my students and an excellent photographer) offered to drive…which made it much easier to get around carting all our gear. (Thanks again, Bob!). Took a lot of photos that day, including quite a few of the Walt Disney Concert Hall: the Frank Gehry architectural masterpiece.
If you’ve seen photos of the Disney Hall, you know there isn’t a straight line or square corner anywhere in the design. I also found it difficult to get a good, unobstructed view of the building as a whole, so I concentrated instead on details of form, line, and shading.
Had to deal with some pretty serious reflections and glare (being all stainless steel on an overcast, albeit bright SoCal morning), so some of the images were best realized via high-dynamic-range (HDR) imaging techniques.
Posted a few more images of Disney Hall on my pbase gallery at:
www.pbase.com/haverstick/disneyhall
Also got to meet some interesting folks, including Armando, a member of a Scion car club. He and his friends arrived at one of our locations just as we were about to pack up, and he was kind enough to allow me to make this portrait (single off-camera SB-800 Speedlight with shoot-thru umbrella):
We were also fortunate to meet renowned LA event / street photographer, Gary Leonard. We stopped by his gallery downtown, and had an opportunity to talk with him. Was really interesting to hear his perspective on making a career as an LA photographer. Check out Gary’s images at: www.takemypicture.com.
The only image I missed that day, and one of the reasons I’d wanted to return in the first place, was a portrait of Elmo G., one of the docents at the Firehouse No. 1–the oldest firehouse in Los Angeles. Located near LA Union Station, we got a chance to explore it a bit when I was there with my son’s class, and made this portrait of Elmo:
I now know how to contact Elmo (whom I’ve since spoken to by phone…quite the character), and I plan to make a trip back up to Firehouse No. 1 some morning when I know he’ll be there to make a better portrait.
All in all, it was a great day of photography and conversation. Look forward to doing again sometime soon.
As much as my daughter loves posing for portraits, my son does not…unless of course, it involves putting on his paintball gear and channeling Chuck Norris. Even then, I get a lot of “Are we done yet, Dad…?”. Nevertheless, I’ve collected a few shots of Conner–both studio portraits, and action shots of him on the paintball field–and assembled them into a cool video slideshow.
So, click on the slideshow above, sit back and enjoy… Oh, yeah…and keep your head down!
Hi Friends,
Well, we’ve finished most of Cat’s senior portraits. I say “most” because we may still add more as the mood strikes. We’ve already got at least one more shoot planned, perhaps for this weekend if the timing works out, that should render some cool images. [More tc].
But for now, I wanted to share the images we’ve created to date, and thought the best way to do that was with a video montage. So, get your popcorn ready, and sit back for 3 minutes of senior portrait coolness… (click on the video image above to play). By the way, if you don’t understand the lyrics of the background music, fear not…it’s in Japanese. One of Cat’s favorite J-rock bands: Alice Nine.
We’ve also created a print on demand magazine featuring selected portraits from her shoots so far. You can preview the complete issue of “Senior Portrait Magazine: Cat Haverstick” by clicking on the cover image below:
We finished Dan’s senior portraits this past weekend. What a great guy to work with! He was extremely patient with me telling him to “raise your chin just a little…turn just a bit to the left…no just your body…turn just your eyes toward me…” Click on the video above for the results of our labors: 3 minutes of senior portrait goodness!
Also did a Senior Portrait magazine for Dan and his family. You can preview it by clicking on the cover page image at left.
So, if you’ve got a senior, or someone who needs a portrait sitting for work, acting headshots, school photos, family portraits, or pretty much anything that involves professional photography, email me at jon@jch-photography.com, and let’s talk!
Thanks for dropping by!
