10 Day Photography Adventure in South America!

If you want to read the whole skinny and watch the video be sure to check out the latest post on my trip to Colombia Photography Trip.  In the meantime enjoy some of these photos taken the past few days:  Jardin, Valparaiso, Supia and Manizales.

Gearing up for 2012

Self-portrait - Playing with Hard Light

I completely destroyed my bedroom while working on some lighting ideas.  I wound up doing a self-portrait.  I used my ML-L3 remote for the first time.  Serious look, red scarf and two light set up.  More to come...

mixing, moving, shaping, playing with light

I have started playing with a very affective light set up that gives me tons of flexibility.  It's rather simple;  I point two lights towards each other and then shove the model directly in between.  I can then move the model in and out of the two lights while shooting from all different directions.  I don't have to move the lights...I move and I move the subject until I find the shot. 

Crazy shoot yesterday.  Almost started a riot in the hood, parrots showed up out of no where, 4 cop cars blocked the street while I shot.  When I asked my model, Laura E., what kind of music she wanted to hear she said, "Metal."

New York City - Architecture

I was walking around Sunday in New York City after a long week of teaching a workshop and giving a presentation at B&H Photo.  I decided to do some shooting for myself and ventured into the lower east side.  I became fascinated by rooftops and this is my vision.  Simple set up:  24mm lens and a ND filter to produce some vignetting.  A little messing around with color kept me inspired in post.

St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans - Voodoo!

New Orleans has always been one of my favorite cities to visit.  From the smells of debauchery on Bourbon Street, the sounds of the origin of jazz, the aroma of French creole cooking and the vibe of back porch voodoo, New Orleans has a special place in my heart.

I'm in New Orleans hanging out with a group of photographers this weekend.  We are about to set out on a photo adventure that captures the essence of New Orleans.  I managed to get some shoot time before everyone else arrived and soak up some of the vibes.  I walked around one of the above ground cemeteries shooting with my Lensbaby fisheye and a ND and noticed some voodoo being practiced in the cemetery.  Check out the last shot of this series.

Jenna Z

I had a great time shooting with the Backpacker Studio in Cocoa Beach.  I've decided to get back to my roots of traveling light and having fun.  Less gear, more communication, experience the adventure and search for the Holy Grail of shots.

I found an old mobile home park in Clearwater that I like.  It has a weird vibe to it, I felt like I was stuck in the 1950's with a bunch of old people staring at me.  But,  the pics are kind of cool.  Amber and I went for a retro vibe.  I used a beauty dish, octabox, bare bulb, softbox, ND filter, 50mm 1.4 and broke my Westcott.

No assistant today.  Windy as hell, semi-hot, full sunny conditions and strange location.  You can feel it in the pics.  But,  I like the strangeness of these images.

Rare Ninja

My video experience started out with a Canon Powershot 750 point and shoot style camera.  I made almost 100 videos with that little camera, mostly for lightenupandshoot.com with not much creativity in the actual video.  Recently I upgraded my video quality to a Nikon D7000.  Most of the time I shoot video clips of travel, photography tutorials and B-Role (like a street sign or landmark that helps tell the story of where you are).  Now that I have upgraded to the D7000, I can use all of my Nikon lenses to shoot video (wide, telephoto, fisheye, or strange Lensbaby effects) which helps in the creativity department.

On Friday I went to the beach with my friend, Caroline, to take a few pictures.  I was using the D7000 because I had been shooting Lightenupandshoot video earlier that day.   I decided to shoot some B-Role of the set-up so I could make a short tutorial on how to use a beauty dish and to show off my new minivagabond.  I liked the little 2 second clips of Caroline so much I threw together a quick video.  This video has me thinking how I could have really done something cool if I had thought about it.  More B-Role to show the environment and put together a storyline.  Video is becoming an important part of what we do as photographers.  Audio is the one part of video that really frustrates me, so shooting lots of little clips to tell a story is something I want to experiment with more in the future.  Enough of my rambling, here is Caroline playing around on the beach (shot with a 50mm at an aperture of 1.4; ND filter to adjust exposure)

Hurricane Irene

While Hurricane Irene was heading up the East Coast I took advantage of the wind with some cool shots on the beaches of Southwest Florida.  Chris Grosser and I met our model Rachel at the Don Cesar on St. Petersburg Beach at 8:00am for a short photo session.  At first it looked as though it was going to poor rain but the heavens provided some beautiful light poking through the clouds when we first arrived.  At the end of the shoot we broke out the Octabank and some powerful lights to get a few dramatic shots before calling it quits.  We had strong winds that almost blew away our gear, but the shots came out great.  Enjoy!  Mikey

New York City Workshop July 16-17th

I am totally excited to be doing some shooting and conducting a workshop in one of my favorite cities...NEW YORK!!! July 16-17th Check out the video and link below for details! ~Mikey

http://lightenupandshootnewyorkcity.eventbrite.com/

London Shoot

While teaching a Lightenupandshoot workshop in London I met two sisters that became models for Matt and Stephane (attending the workshop).   Photography has a funny way of leading you down the path of the unknown; during a conversation with one of the girls she asked if I could take photos for her new fashion line.  Come to find out she is a designer and needed some pics.  She organized an entire production for an editorial and we all made it happen.  Artperience Collective helped with the production and video as well...it was a great collaboration and some of the photos came out great.  Big thanks to Jarek Jarosz for shooting the video you see here and we are working on a video tutorial of the entire production/shoot.

YYZ, NYC and LON in less than a week

I have been slammed! Shot with Derek Shapton of Westside Studios in Toronto before the workshop last week. 2 Days of shooting with the awesome people of Toronto; booked it down to New York to do a presentation at B&H Photo before a shoot together; and finishing up the weekend by doing a workshop in London. DIGGING EVERY MINUTE!!!! MISS JOHANNA.

Hong Kong session

I did some shots of a model that was updating her portfolio.  These are some of the artsy shots when I was experimenting with light and a little messing around in post.