Food Photography

After I moved to Provo I thought that most of my contacts up in Logan would forget about me and find someone else. Turns out they still love me. I got a call from my friend Laura. She owns a company called Vivian's Live Again (formerly wheat free nutrition) and she needed some shots done of her products for her labels. Then after we did that she was so happy with my work that she invited me back to photograph more product and some recipes as well. She specializes in gluten free food and is also moving into Dairy free as well. It's really a cool business, and the food tastes great. So if you happen to be a non-dairy person, or if you have Celiacs, I highly recommend Vivian's Live again. Look at some of the photos and how appetizing this stuff is.

The one thing I am not really happy about is how much reflection is on the wood. Other than that I am pretty content.

Little Artsy Potato Shot. I highly recommend food stylists.

This is a photo, of a photo, of some food that I shot for some labels. Yes, I shot the photos for the labels. If you are in Cache Valley, you can find these at Lee's.

No I am not paying homage to Warhol, well kind of, but we needed a shot of a traditional label for her website. She's trying to educate people as well about Celiacs and what to look for on food labels.

For all of these I had the opportunity to work with a food stylist. It was Laura's brother Paul (I don't have his last name right now, but if you want it, I can pass it on to you). He made the day so much more productive. He's a chef who used to work at the Restaurant up Millcreek Canyon. Great guy and very talented. 

Working three jobs

So I have been pretty busy lately, mainly because my wife is in grad school and in order to support the family while she is otherwise occupied, I am a stay at home dad who works three jobs in his free time.

So you already knew that I taught Graphic Design at Stevens-Henager College, but I recently got another job designing sports apparel for a company called Fit Athletics (www.fituniforms.com), and another job photographing 5k fun runs for a company called flo-foto (www.flo-foto.com). I've had a great opportunity to expand my portfolio, meet some really amazing people, and travel all over the country. Below are some samples of my recent work.

Walking Dude animation.

That's what he is. I wanted to see if I could animate a dude walking (in Flash), and I did it. I learned a little bit when I did it. Of course it's not perfect, but when you're using inverse kinematics it's not exactly an exact science (at least it isn't for me yet). I took about a half hour and put this thing together (drawing it in Illustrator, setting it up in Flash, and animating). This is something I want to do a little bit more of in the future. I really like animation and it's something that I wanted to do when I was little. Kind of a dumb story but I decided not to go after it when I was a sophomore in my High School careers class. We looked up the salaries for the jobs we wanted to do and animators were like in the lower echelons of pay scale (like $10 an hour, it really sucked) and that changed my career path to, well nothing at the time.  But it wasn't animation which is sad because I really wanted to do it. I spent most of my younger years drawing all the disney characters, and, like any talent if you don't use it, I lost it, or at least most of it. I can still kind of do it. 

Anyway, the animation was just kind of an experiment, but I can do a lot of other things as well. Making someone walk is pretty difficult (well to make it look natural is difficult).  Since my focus before has been on photography, it's been a real learning curve working in graphic design (Oh I don't know if I said this before, but I am freelancing as a graphic artist). I mean I know all the principles and how they apply, and also all the software, but actually putting it into practice is something else completely. I have a huge respect for the full time graphic artists. It's hard work.

Here's another one I did. Most of these were done as examples for lectures in my classes, but it helps the students get the idea of what they are supposed to do.

The above video was just a quick one I did (in Flash) for Stevens-Henager College just to put on their video displays. We needed some recruiting videos for the graphic arts programs (everyone was going into medical specialties) so we made this one and it worked, the program grew.

Mountain Bike Photos

My students at the college are working on an advertising project. They decided to focus on a specific bike pedal that allows the rider to both clip in and use a platform. So in order to do that they needed some images to create their layouts. I brought in the photo gear and they art directed the photo shoot. It was pretty awesome and I think they did a good job. I'm excited to see how their final project comes together. 

Xtremeguard Promo Video

I haven't posted in a while because I have been so busy. As much as I wish I was busier with more work, it sure is fun to spend some time with the family. But when I made this video, I really was pretty swamped. I was teaching 4 graphics classes, as well as freelancing graphic art and photography. I was originally going to turn this down, but thanks to my wife she convinced me to do it. And because of that I could go out and buy a new bike. I didn't use all the money for it, just a little.
Some other fun news that has me stressing a little bit (just a bit) is that my wife was accepted into grad school, so we have to move. This means I have to leave my job teaching and follow her to pursue her passions, and I am totally cool with that, because she did the same thing when I wanted to do grad school. It was tough, and it probably will be tough at first but we are excited for this opportunity. Anyway, enjoy the video. I made it for a company called Xtremeguard. They make screen protectors for cell phones. Great company to work with and very accommodating.
www.xtremeguard.com

Dragging your shutter

Over the Holidays (which are still happening) I photographed a 50th wedding anniversary, and while I really like to do live events like that, there is inevitably some down time. During that down time where there are no pictures to take (I've photographed everyone in the room, the food, the decorations, even the building) my brain starts to think of different things I can do with my camera. This night I was thinking of Picasso's light paintings. So looking around I saw several Christmas trees that were just sitting there with tons of Christmas lights on them and I thought, What the heck. So I set my exposure to 5 seconds, focused, and then moved my camera in fluid motions, thus creating light paths from the Christmas lights. Here is the result.

Frozen Macro Landscape Photography

Yep you read right. FROZEN. This took a few days of prep work to get everything set, plus a quick run to the grocery store to get some dry ice. First I had to get a bowl (I know real scientific) and fill it with some sand so that my "Trees" would stand up while they froze. I "planted" the trees and then filled the rest of the bowl with water and set it in the freezer to, well freeze. After it had solidified a little bit I went back with a spray bottle and misted more water on the trees and on top of the already frozen water to create some texture.

After that I used some dry ice to create the blowing snow effect. I think it turned out pretty good, and it feels good to get back to doing more macro landscapes. I usually have to block out a whole night to do these things, but this one didn't take me too long, probably because I have done them so much before I've got it down to a science on how to set it up and get the desired experience.

I ran out of dry ice for this last one, but I still think it works. especially the piling up of the snow in the bottom right corner.