Recent Work.

A little while back a friend of mine who owns Game Plan Gear, (http://www.gameplangear.com/), dropped by the Kentucky farm to shoot some photos of a new back pack he was planning to introduce this winter at the ATA show.  As luck would have it, another friend, Brandon Wireman had come around with a really tremendous deer he took the previous evening.  We managed to put Brandon and his buck to work right away.  To light the above shot, we used a pair of Elinchrom Rangers with just reflectors to add some hi-lights and open a few shadows.  The sun did the rest.  For the shots below we used a single Elinchrom with a smallish umbrella to soften the light a bit but to also keep a hard edge on it by moving it a bit further back than what would normally be optimal.  The fog rising from the pond in the early morning, which is a relatively unfamiliar time frame for me, along with being able to shoot nearly directly into the rising sun, hence the flare and apeture spots, really make the photos for me giving a really cool, dramtic feel.  Mike from Game Plan Gear tells me that some of these shots are being used larger than life on his ATA booth and will be on both the front and back covers of their 2013 catalog.  I'm looking forward to seeing it all in about a week at the Archery Trade Assoc. show in Louisville!

Quick Update

Just got a copy of what Realtree is doing with one of my images outside of the typical ads.  This is in their Brand Book for the coming year.

The Uncomfortable Secret Time of the Year

Every year about this time I spend the better part of my day working on stuff for the ATA, (Archery Trade Assoc) and SHOT show, (Shooting Hunting and Outdoor Trades).  Sometimes the work is for me picking and chosing what to show and what to leave out of my presentation for each show.  The majority of this part of the year is spent shooting last minute stuff for the majority of my clients.  I guess sometimes production pieces take longer to create than expected, a new product is just reaching final development, or maybe the product has been kept under tight wraps till the last moment.  I really enjoy this time of the year because of the constant change and pressure to perform, but it also is sort of a bummer because I'm wanting to show off some of the work but can't let it be seen by anyone...  So that is the case right now.  Although I have some really, really cool stuff to show, I can't.  However, here are a couple out-takes from a recent shoot for a totally different project.  Hope you like them.

Old Stuff Re-Found, Sort Of...

While doing a couple other things on my computer this morning, I came across that mysterious folder that seems to be always there called, "New Folder".  I get in a hurry and just create a new folder to dump a card full of files into, just to get them off a card.  The most recent new folder I found  was one in which I dumped a card into recently because I wanted to use the same card for something else.  I never paid any attention to what was on it.  As it turns out, the card held photos from a waterproof camera I used on Beaver Island in Michigan a couple years ago while fishing with the guys from Indigo Guide Service, (http://www.indigoguideservice.com/).  As I recall, I wasn't a big fan of the camera, but a couple of the photos seemed cool, thus here they are. Long story short, I've not posted here in a bit and this seemed to be perfect timing..  Hope you like them.

Ducks Unlimited

Recently I had the chance to shoot some photos for Ducks Unlimited for some of their Mobile Apps.  Below are a few they used, and a couple I liked that they didn't use.

Busy Time

The last couple of weeks have been a little hectic. And some of the pace has been carried over to home work.  Last week I shot the first couple days of the week in Nashville for a singer.  Had a blast!  Came home for a day or two then headed off for a shoot with the crew from Dominator365, http://www.dominator365.com/.  The shot above was one of the pix we did for Dominator365.  Managed to get the whole team in the tree.  Got home again the next day and shot for a few other clients here at home, and I'm still at it.  Dogtra, a regular client of mine has me working on a new project for them, DU has provided me with a bit of work that got me to drag out my waterfowl gear, and I'm shooting currently for a scent company, and getting ready for a shoot for a decoy comapany later this week.

Looks like the next couple weeks will allow me some time to make the rifle opener in KY, as well as the firearms openers in MI, and IN.  TOnight is a big night as my wife got me tickets to the Bears game against the much hated Deroit Lions!  I can't wait!

Below are a few more form the DOminator 365 shoot.

Upland Michigan

As usual, it doesn't seem as though it's been as long as it has been since I last wrote here.  Fall has become pretty busy, which I both anticipated and looked forward to.  Several trips to Tennessee as well as Kentucky, and I even had my first, private photo workshop at the KY farm.  It was a BLAST!  I'm really looking forward to doing this again as well as more frequently.  Immediately after that weekend, A friend who happens to own Game Plan Gear came by to work on some images for his 2013 catalog.  One of the images below is from that shoot, but the best shots were for the cover of his piece and are not yet ready to be made public.  I gotta tell ya, I love the shots we did for this and I'm chomping at the bit for everyone to see them.  I really think they are some of my best to date!

The last couple of days I have been in Michigan which is so beautiful at this time of year, shooting hunting dogs for a client.  My friend Mike van Tubergen was only too kind to volunteer his German Shorthair and his home for the shoot.  His dog, Indy, has got to be the best looking dog I have ever seen.  He is a monster of an animal!  We spent an afternoon and a morning shooting with Mike and Indy and got plenty of cool pix.  Several more are below.  Another talent that Indy has, being the total athlete he is, is his ability to literally fly!  WIth a very short runway, this dog could launch himself practically to the middle of the pond.

Today I'm doing a quick shoot for a client of a female archer and preparing for an outdoor family portrait sesion a couple hours from home.  I'm realy looking forward to seeing some of my family and spending a bit of downtime with them.  Monday mornign it's back on the road to Nashville for a shoot on Tuesday for an upcoming country singer.  The set-up for this shoot is going to be awesome, utilizing trucks, creeks, and log barns, it's going to be a hoot!  I'll get some pix from it posted as soon as I can.

Just Playin'

Sometimes nothing is better for the spirit than a little bit of just plain goofing around.  The perfect opportunity for some screwing off "play" came recently while shooting with Daniel Lee Martin and Julie McQueen, co-hosts of Brotherhood Outdoors, outside of Nashville.  It's always a pleasure shooting with them and I know we can get to exactly what they need in pretty quick order because of their professionalism, creative thinking, and willingness to try something a bit out of the ordinary.  So after a little bit of work, we started coming up with some ideas for some unique photos.  One photo that I always liked was the cover of the European Vacation video cover.  So with a little  lot of inspiration from the original, we came up with a somewhat more pedestrian and outdoor take.  Although it might need a bit more refinement to be actually used for something, I believe there is a bunch of potential in it.  I kept the lighting as simple as possible using a single Elinchrom in an Octabank, and a rflector low and opposite to kick a bit of light back up in the faces.  A second Elinchrom with a narrow reflector was placed well below their feet, thanks to a draw, and fired straight back at them for a bunch of rim lighting.  If nothing else, it felt good to shoot just for the heck of it.  The second shot we did for no particular reason was another take on the American Gothic image.  The devilishy playful look on Julie's face is what makes the photo for me.

The shot immediately below is a favorite of mine from a shoot with them a year or so ago.  Again, it's another shot done for no real reason but turned out to be one of my all time favorites.

More Fishing, Not So Much Catching...Yet

I love fishing!  Some of my earliest memories go back to fishing with my parents and my uncle.  My wife says it's all made up memories because I can't even remember to lower the toilet seat after using it let alone from my pre-k days.  I think it's more like selective memory.  I mean I believe that you only have so much brain space and I don't want to waste any of it on toilet seat etiquette, ya know what I mean?  Anyhow, Within the last year or so I have become somewhat obsessed with flyfishing.  I can directly blame Brandon Butler, http://www.driftwoodoutdoors.com/ and Kevin Morlock, http://www.indigoguideservice.com/.  How could you not fall in love with the romanticism of the long, sweeping casts and clear waters in A River Runs Through It?  Pulling trout out of virgin pools of water beneath boulders the size of small cars deposited there by some glacier about 3.2 million years ago?  Flyfishing here in Northwest Indiana is nothing like that or like any of the covers of flyfishing mags on the shelves at Gander Mountain.  Here it's more like guerilla fishing in an urban jungle.  Here you spend your time walking through 12 foot weeds behind a trucking facility to get access to a small trickle of water from a storm sewer that's spewing water from a rain 3.2 days ago.  Instead of the long flowing casts you're forced to use pinpoint, slingshot type casts or the ocassional sideways rollcast, if you're lucky to even have that much room, to make your presentation.  The fish here aren't the same either, they're bigger!  All these tiny tributaries are at some point connected to Lake Michigan, and Lake Michigan has monster trout and salmon.  Local chef and flyfisherman extrodinaire, Scot Hinkel, http://www.bistro54main.com/, has taken mercy on me and included me in a few fishing trips near home.  Now although I have not caught anthing here on a fly yet, I have seen steelhead cruising waters that might not even cover their dorsal fins.  I've seen kings pulled in from creeks here that even I could jump across.  My day will come and when it does I promise I'll have some really awesome pictures of my fish, but til then, you'll have to settle for a few photos of Scot trying his best to ignore the "urban', and concentrate on the dorsal of that steelie 8 feet in front of him, right there next to the discarded spare tire...

Headshots

Recently I have been shooting a bunch of headshots for various reasons.  However after looking at them all together, I'm wondering what actually constitutes a "headshot".  Several of the photos here were shot during full shoots, while some were set up and shot for headshots, period.  Typically they are all pretty much one light and one or two reflectors tucked in tight.  Shooting this type of photo I really like using a single Elinchrom lite in a large octabank about 90 degrees to one side and a relflector just out of the frame oppopsite the lite and maybe a second reflector, particularly for women, up under the chin.  It is nearly impossible to get a bad headshot with an octabank!  My question I guess is when does a portrait become a headshot, or is it just different terminology for the same thing?  Anyhow, here are a few more from recent weeks.  Let me know what you think about them please.

Guns!

A good friend of mine, John Bond, is in the process of starting his custom firearm business, J and J Precision Firearms.  It should be ready to go about any time now actually.  It seems as though most of the things he will be utilizing for his new endeavor is shiny, which means it catches my eye as a photographic target!  From the bullets to the casingfs, to the machinery, and even the final products, everything screams to be photographed.  I oofered to shoot a few photos for him that could be used in the design of his website, and after a lot of what I'm sure was gut wrenching introspection, he allowed me to do it.  (I'm really just kidding.)  For whatever reason, I wanted to try and shoot as much as possible with the variety of available light, and/or a single, small Speedlight.  I was pretty happy with the results, but I'm really looking forward to what will be done with the images when the designer is finished with them.  Here are a few more...

One Light Hero

I just returned from a week of workshops and hands on events at the annual POMA conference, which this year was in Tunica Mississippi.  One of the things I wanted to do was shoot a portrait of a couple people that would be there that are part of a project I began work on a while back.  I managed that just fine, but I also shot a handfull of portraits of some of the other attendees/friends that were on hand.  I will include a few of them here.  They were all shot simply enough with a single Elinchrom Ranger head in a standard Octa Bank modifier.  Far from standard, the Octa light is awesome!  A 3×4 foot soft gold reflector was used on the opposite side.  However, I met a man at this event that I think deserves all the attention and recognition and help he can get.  His name is John Annoni and he is a teacher, a mentor, and a hero in my book.  Please look at what this one, single person has accomplished for the betterment of our world.  wwww.twomillionbullets.org and www.campcompass.org  His is the first photo below.  

John Annoni

Kevin Tate

Pete Brownell

Roger Patton

Randy Bowden

Brandon Butler

Sunny and Hot South Carolina!

 

I finally had the chance to shoot with some friends of mine that are in the process of preparing their new show for the Outdoor Channel.  Scrap Yards and Hunters, (http://scrapandhunt.com/), hosted by Will Simmons and Mary Daniels Mitchell.  We had been discussing the shoot and trying to set it up for quite a while and finally had the chance to pull the trigger, so to speak, this week.  I had not ever been to South Carolina before and didn't really know what to expect.  Seems like a great area but DAMN its hot!  One day it was 98 in the shade.  Unfortunately we were not in the shade.  As a side note, I have discovered that eastern Tennessee closes at 9pm.  Thats it, 9pm, shut the door, nothing is open.  Here are a few shots from my time there with them.  (I'm not sure why, but the lower images seemed to be dropped way low on the page, so you might have to scroll down to see them.  Maybe its just my screen)

The Joy of Dogs!

 

I hadn't plan to write this blog, actually the thought never crossed my mind until I had sent these, and several other pix to a client this yesterday.  There is something that is just so enjoyable about photographing dogs, whether they're the main subject or not.  They add so much to every shot.  DU had just purchased these and a bunch of other photos made last year in Mississippi just before Christmas.  These dogs belong to Chris Jennings who works for DU and was gracious enough to allow me to not only photograph on his waterfowl lease, but also to do a bit of hunting with him.  The dogs are his.  I hope you enjoy looking at my photos of man's best friend and also get the opportuninty, quite regularly, to watch them work up close in the field in person.

Wrap-Up and Planning

I seem to be spending a bunch of time away from home the last couple of months.  One reason is all the work involved in getting the Kentucky home up and running, so to speak.  The second reason is that work has been a lot steadier this year than the same period last year.  That is a real good thing!  The pup above is Luke the Drifter.  He belongs to a buddy of mine that I spent some time with recently, Tony Smotherman.  Otherwise known as the Travelin' Hunter.  While I was there in Nashville with him we shot some images for his new upcoming project, and a few "just cuz" pix.  I'm thinking that ol' Luke here will make some sort of apearance in my Dogtra work soon.  The image below is one of the other images I really liked that came out of this trip.

The rest of the summer is booking up pretty quickly as well.  Looks like at least one or two more trips to Nashville for work, a trip to Mississippi for the POMA Conference, some fishing photography in Michigan and perhaps Florida, and of course more personal work and payoing work in Kentucky.

Doesn't seem that it's been 3 weeks since my last post here.  I couldn't wait to get my site back up and running because I was missing writing here.  Now it's back and I forget to do anything with it...  Go figure.  The image above was one I shot recently of a friend of mine, Kim.  She was very pregnant at this point and she and my other friend Scot, had their baby this morning.  A boy.  Congratulations!

The image above works for me for several reasons.  I think she looks beautiful, it's something of a new style of photograhy, at least for me, and thirdly, I didn't drag out a ton of lights and gear and stands, etc to make it.  The photo was made with just a single, medium sized reflector.  SHe is backlit through the tre and the reflector is just bouncing some light, albeit, hard light, on her face.  Seems like a far cry from my more typical dark and desat style.  I don't think this will become my go to shooting style, but it's nice to know I'm maybe not as 1 dimentional as I thought...

The images below are older shots, but were on my desktop for some reason or another.  I still like them and thought I'd share them again, if I ever did in the first place.

If You Don't Like the Weather, Give it a Minute, It'll Change...

Recently I had the opportunity once again to spend some time with a couple of the best, most professional, personalities in the outdoor industry!  Pat Reeve and Nicole Jones.  For the third time in the last several years we were able to get together and shoot some of what I feel is my best work to date.  Over the course of three days together, we shot in sunrise, sunset, full sun, overcast, light misting rain, total drenching downpour, dark of night, brush fire, and even a few snow storms!  Truth is, most of the weather was just fine on location, we created all the rough stuff, so to speak.  Although far from unsurmountable, creating what we felt was believable harsh weather was a challenge in it's own right.  Getting the lighting right, without destroying the electronic gear in the often soaking enviorment, was the second big issue.  Mixing our weather with the real weather, like the amount of light, wind, etc. was the third biggest hurdle.  It took time and I know it was pretty miserable for Pat and Nicole being wet and cold most of the time but to their credit they toughed it out and we made some great pictures together, again!  The few shots below are just a small sample of the work that came out of our time together.  I can't wait for next time!

A lot has been going on recently, from the rebuild of the website, to work for new clients, and quite a bit of editorial work, at least for me. The image above is one of four that Realtree is using on the backs and double trucks of various waterfowl hunting magazines. It's from the most recent batch of Max4 effectiveness work we shot this past December in MS.

As for the editorial work I mentioned, American Hunter, the NRA publication ran a small image of mine a couple months ago and then came back to run this photo below, across 2 pages for the start of their piece on selecting the proper optics package.

Harris Publications is also running a series of photos I shot in Rifle Firepower, with a story they did on getting  back to using your grandfather's deer rifle.  Several shots were used in the story.  And another magazine, Petersen's Hunting is running the shot of the woman getting her jaw broken by an asian carp, on the back page called the Rear View.  And as a final editorial job, Bloomberg Businessweek ran a different shot of asian carp on the Illinois River in one of their recent issues.  Indiana Outdoor News will be running an image of mine in next month's issue to round out what has been quite a stretch of editorial work.

Very soon I post some images from a 3 day shoot I did last week in Minnesota with a couple of returning clients.  I was thrilled with what we accomplished!

As for right now, I am back at the farm in KY waiting on a friend or two that will show up today and another in a day or so to do a bit more turkey hunting.  One is coming for the heck of it while the other will be here to film an episode for his TV show. Hopefully the birds will cooperate for both of them.  I will be heading to Nashville sometime next week for what I anticipate will be a bit of work and some good times with family.  From there it will be off to South Carolina for a few days of work then on to Georgia for a couple days.  I may make it back home by June... which is just in time to head to Beaver Island and Fort Lauderdale, both for fishing and photography.  I love my job!

Home!

Seems like it has been an unusually long time since I've awakened in my own bed. Other than a few days here and there, I have probably been gone the better part of two months I think. But now I'm home, for about three days anyhow. The day after tomorrow I head to MN for a multiple day shoot with a great client. I'l have a one nite stop over at home, then it's back to KY to hunt with Tony Smotherman, the Travelin Hunter. I also have a few days of work that will be shot there during this trip. After that, I believe I will be heading to Nashville for a bit of work with an entertainer or two, and to cut some cedar trees that will become roof supports for the KY home. By the middle of May I will be heading to South Carolina for another multi day shoot with a new client. There are a couple other irons in the fire but I think I will have an extended stay at home by the end of May.

Heck, I might even get a chance to hunt turkey here at home!

The Season is Over?

I guess I'm never satisfied. I've spent like the last 3 months thinking about turkey hunting this spring. I mean probably more time thinking about it than I thought about deer huntning. Opening day here in KY was this past Saturday, and somehow, despite oversleeping, I killed one half of a double with my buddy John. Obviously he killed the other half. I was thrilled to say the least, turkey season was shaping up to be even better than I had hoped. Fast forward a few days to this morning. Somehow John's alarm at the other end of the hoouse woke me. I can't believe he didn't hear it but he never did get up. I figured as long as I was up I'd give it a go just to see if I could find another bird. I think it took about 15 minutes to strike one that was interested. Actually I think he came from the next ridge over. He covered about 500 yards in nothing flat and then spent the next hour and fifteen minutes strutting at about 70 yards from me. I finally couldn't take it any more and stopped calling to him. He gobbled a couple more times then drifted over the hill. I managed to get my legs straightened out and uncramped and got back into position. Made a quick call and he bellowed back instantly from about 100 yards. This time he pretty much ran to me stopping briefly a couple times to strut. He ended up in the dirt at about 10 yards with a bit of help from a Benelli and a 3" Winchester shell. Talk about happy! But before I could cover the few yards to retrieve him, I realized my season was over. You can only take 2 birds here. All that time thinking about it and now its over.

I had one other thought to extend it a bit. I figured I could drag John around the hills for a couple days. Unfortunately when I suggested it ot him, he was ready to head out immediately. OK, thats fine. But go figure, it took us about 10 minutes to strike a bird and another 10 for him and two others to race their way to him where the winner was shot in the face. His season is over too. Dang our luck!

Anyone want to go turkey hunting?