Skin Deep at Stage Coach Theater

The current production at Stage Coach Theater is a charming romantic comedy called Skin Deep.  They asked me to do a photo session with them.  This is still in Stage Coach's temporary space and for that reason the lighting was very challenging.  They weren't set up to do the usual even wash of light but did the best they could with the materials at hand.  So I had to deal with the fact that the light was very bright in some spots and too dim in others.  Particularly challenging when you have both things going on in the same frame.  Still, it's with these kinds of challenges that we learn to grow.  Here's some of the pictures from that photo shoot.

Food PhotoShoot

The following week I was called back to The Piper Pub to do some food photography for advertising and their menu.  I put a mini-soft box on my main flash and then aimed to shoot from behind one side of the plate.  Opposite that I mounted my reflector on my C-stand to bounce the light back into the shadows.  This arrangement highlights the texture of the food and makes it appear more three dimensional.  I placed my camera on a tripod and aimed it so that the view would be of the food just after the server placed it in front of you.  I went for manual focus on this project so I could pick exactly where the picture would draw the eye.  So that I could see the field of focus better I attached my camera to my laptop and switched it to live view so that I could see everything full sized.  Then the kitchen set to work, bringing out dish after dish.  I took lots of shots, never satisfied with the first picture but looking for ways to make it look even better.  This job was a whole lot of fun and I'm really looking forward to the next time I have a chance to do something like this.

Happy Hour Photo Shoot

 I was hired by The Piper Pub, a local restaurant, to photograph their happy hour for a new advertising campaign they are starting.  They needed some high resolution photographs to play in ads on the big screens of local movie theaters.  Oddly enough, the weather turned out to be the biggest challenge on this shoot.  The Piper Pub has big windows that face into the angle of the sun.  That's particularly challenging this time of the year as the sun hugs so close to the horizon through the day.  They put down the blinds but of course shafts of bright sunlight streamed around the edges and through the door.  So I was dealing with a zebra pattern of  really bright light while everything else was practically in shadow.  I didn't want to use my flash since there's only so long before I would start bothering the customers with my big flash gun.  So I had to resort to the "spray and pray" strategy where I shot lots of pictures so that something had to come out good.  In the end, we came out with something that we could work with.

Now next week I'll be posting on the food photography that I did for The Piper Pub.  That was a lot of fun as I got to work on many of their handsome dishes.