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Best. Cover Band. Ever

By on August 15, 2009 in Bands/Music, People, Photos

My cousin’s new band played at the Back Alley Bar in Fullerton last night. I had heard from my other cousins that they were pretty good, but doesn’t everyone say that about every cover band, especially family? In actuality, they killed it. These guys were really good, and the house loved ’em. I have a very long day today so I wasn’t able to stick around for their whole set. My loss for sure.

So that I didn’t blind them like all the groupies were with their point-and-shoot cameras, I only took a hand full of shots. Click to enlarge, yo.

Off to teach scuba diving now, and then I’m at the House of Blues Sunset Strip to shoot my friend’s party. Long day ahead. Enjoy the pics!

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Walking Amongst the Eternal

By on August 1, 2009 in Architecture/Man-made, Photos

Photographers and artists are in the business of engineering. For the most part, our goal is to represent “whole” things in ways that people know them. Whether it be faces, smiles, or landscapes, our audience expects something ultimately recognizable. Something large and complete.

The irony, of course, is that the artist, the photographer, or the engineer has to coordinate a million small things to put together that recognizable form. Are we balancing exposure on someone’s face? Shall we use cross strokes with green paint on the trees, or blend yellow and blue?

I went to LACMA today with an unusual plan in mind (for me, anyways). Rather than photograph complete works of art, I wanted to focus on patterns and some of the more singular aspects of the pieces. We typically look at art and life as so many wholes without appreciating all the beauty in the nooks and crannies. Certainly the face of our lover is a welcome sight to behold, but true intimacy comes from pressing your fingers across their flesh, brushing your lips on their cheek, or taking in the smell of their hair as you nuzzle their neck.

As I walked through the galleries at LACMA today, I tried to see the small in the large. To be partner to so many ancient craftsmen pouring their souls into the details so that we the viewers can appreciate the whole. Art always has a secret to share, and the artist will whisper it to whomever cares to really listen.

All pretentiousness aside, here’s a selection of shots from today, including a few panoramics I stitched together. If you haven’t been to LACMA recently, you should go. The temporary Pompeii exhibit is incredible, as is the new modern art building which has, among other things, a cool Warhol collection.

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Trouble Comes in Three

By on August 1, 2009 in People, Photos

The lovely Double-L let me shoot her about a month ago for part 2 in my “Seeing Double” project. (Note: Part 2 should be published around the middle of August hopefully.) She wanted to shoot her nephews G, H, and L as a surprise for her sister. Since her sister is web savvy, and since she hasn’t received her pictures yet, we’re using initials here. No sense giving away the surprise early. ;)

After a lengthy battle with traffic, I met the team at Carbon Canyon for one of the most fun-filled afternoons I’ve had in a while. These kids were bursting with energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity. I probably spent more time playing ball or on the playground than I did shooting. Dub-L was fantastic with the kids and gave them marching orders when necessary, which wasn’t often.

Thanks to the family for letting me spend the day with them. I had a great time! Click the pics for embiggening.

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One of the things I like to do when I’m shooting children is to bring a smaller camera or two that they can use. Kids love gadgets, and most of them have used a camera of some type from a very early age. Letting them play with the small camera, and occassionaly my larger camera, often gets them on my side when nothing else does. To that end, I thought I’d share a few of the pictures the kids took whilst we were running around yesterday.

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Day in the Sun

By on July 26, 2009 in People, Photos

I met the Clelands at my favorite park for some family photos yesterday. Thankfully, I got some electrical issues with my camera sorted out and we were able to play around the park. I’m starting to think that—for as often as I’m at Carbon Canyon—the county should start paying me a promotional fee. :)

Thanks to Chris and Perla for making the drive out and letting me shoot their great young family. Oh, and little Christopher: it was a pleasure to take pictures with you as well!

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Red Rockin’ Vegas

By on July 12, 2009 in Photos

My brother and I decided to take my 8 Irish neighbor girls to Las Vegas for a 4-day weekend. It’s so unlike any other city that we pretty much had to take them lest their American holiday come up short. I didn’t end up taking all that many photos, so I’ve only got two sets to share. The first is from atop the Stratosphere hotel where we went to watch the sunset, take in the strip at night, and to nearly die on the crazy rides they have up there.

Picture 1: sunset. Picture 2: the roller coaster thingy, seconds before it drops and scares everyone to death. Picture 3: my brother and one of the Irish lasses during said drop. Picture 4: the strip at night. Picture 5: more of the lasses on the other scary ride, just before it starts up and twirls them around 1,000 feet above the strip.

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Friday evening we decided to drive out to Red Rock Canyon, which only takes about 30-45 minutes to get to. The place is absolutely stunning: huge skies, awesome canyons, and if you’re lucky, wild donkeys!  I spent most of the afternoon snapping pics of the sky, so I’m only going to put up a few.

There is a 13-mile driving loop that takes you around the park which is great by itself, but we decided to hop out and do some hiking as well.

The girls had never been in temperatures above about 28 degrees Celsius, so the temps that pushed 40+ Celsius (105 F) and up wreaked havoc on a few of them. As a result, only 3 of them made it out to enjoy the scenery.

Picture 1: sky. Picture 2: Elaine hams it up. Picture 3: sky. Picture 4: Ann-Marie also hams it up. Picture 5: Sky. Picture 6: sky and us.

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Young Love

By on July 6, 2009 in Engagement, People, Photos

I had the great pleasure to meet Natalie and Casey today to do engagement photos for them. Natalie mentioned that they were really drawn to a vintage look, so we met before sunset at an abandoned train in Orange to give it a go. It’s a style that I’m also really drawn to, so it was exciting to try it out on a full shoot.

Before I continue, let me just mention that Casey filmed his proposal on an old 8mm camera. How rad is that?

In any event, below are some samples from my attempt to capture this wonderful couple with an eye to cross processing and desaturation like one might see in older photos. I’m crossing my fingers that they like them!

Edit, 2009-07-07: more photos added.

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Smokey Stables

By on July 5, 2009 in Architecture/Man-made, Photos

I had planned to do some bike riding around Back Bay Newport today, but because of a severe case of Independence Day foot sunburn, that was out. Instead, my brother and one of our Irish lasses (Annette) and I did a photo hike through Smokey Stables at sunset.  Here are some of the shots from the day.

I don’t usually shoot “pattern” type shots, so this was a lot of fun. Try and spot the photo in which Annette is an unhappy subject. :)

Click the thumbnails to pop.

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Danger’s Crew at CC

By on June 14, 2009 in People, Photos

Danger Gill turned a year old about a month ago, so he and his crew met me at Carbon Canyon to recreate some photos we had done there when Becky was still pregnant. We didn’t recreate many, but a lot of the other shots turned out great. I love this family, and the chance to be there as they grow is one I cherish.

Without further ado, here’s a sampling of what we took. For those of you reading this at 22:00 Sunday, I’ll add more a little later.

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This is one I like to call “Who’s this lady think she is, trying to get my Cheerios?!?”

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Seeing Double (Part 1)

By on June 7, 2009 in People, Photos

As part of becoming a better photographer, I’ve decided to start giving myself assignments. This first one can be called “twins” or “seeing double” or “the setup for these shoots is hard!” If you want to read more about this process, feel free to do so after the pics below. Oh, and I still need models for the remaining shots. Let me know if you want to participate!

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So notes on the project:

As I mentioned, I have decided to give myself projects in order to improve my skills. I chose this one because it requires work in some very discreet areas:

  • Setup and positioning
  • Photoshop, in particular layer masking and good selections
  • Concept (which I have not been very good at in the past)
  • Wardrobe
  • Working with a diverse group of models

The concept for this is to shoot multiple exposures of the same person so that it looks like they’re interacting with themselves.  This is not an original idea by any means, but because it did require sort of a “professional mindset,” I thought it was a good one to start with this summer. In all, I have about 15 shots planned, with the above 5 representing a small portion of those (I’ll post the rest when they’re shot). Once I have the full set up, I’ll explain more about the technical details of how I set these up in case anyone wants to try it for themselves!

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Jakie Goes to Hollywood

By on May 25, 2009 in People, Photos

(For the record, please don’t call me “Jakie.” Hopefully you get the reference. Thank you. :) )

My friend Roger Chong works in the film/TV industry, and along with some friends who are in the same business, decided to make a short film called “Decoded.” The idea is that if it does well at film festivals, someone will give them money to make a long version. If any Hollywood producers are reading this, you should probably just fund them now. The movie is pretty much inevitable.

Roger wanted a set photographer to document the crew and to get still photos for the EPK and asked if I could help him out. Although I was nervous about my first such job, it was a ton of fun. Since the entire movie was shot in low light or night conditions, it was also one of my most challenging photo shoots to date.

Here are some of the pictures from the shoot, including cast and crew alike. If you’re into photography, stay tuned after the pictures for more on what I did and what gear I used to accomplish all of this.

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For those of you who stuck around, here’s some technical info on my process.

First off, I shot with 3 cameras. I used my Canond 40D, a Canon Rebel XTi, and a new Nikon Coolpix P90 I picked up for this shoot. Although I didn’t really want to do it, the two Canons were running at 1600 ISO pretty much the entire weekend. Even at such high ISOs I still struggled with the dark set Roger was using for mood. The 40D did pretty well at 1600, although a few of the pictures have pretty significant noise artifacts. The Rebel worked hard to get good shots, but it really had trouble at 1600. Most of the pictures here are from the 40D.

I brought the Nikon along for two reasons. First, it has a tiltable LCD screen that I could use for overhead, wide-angle shots. Second, it has a nearly silent shutter/mirror that I had planned on using when the mics were live to get up and close to the action. Since blimps (1, 2) are so limiting, I thought this would be a good choice. Turns out, I was wrong. The Nikon really struggled in conditions less than strong light. Surprisingly, even at ISO 400 noise artifacts were substantial, and going beyond that yielded pretty much unusable photos. In its defense the Nikon P90 is still a point and shoot, but even though it’s an “advanced” one, it’s definitely not ready for the big time. Daylight shoots, restaurants, and pics for your Facebook page are probably going to turn out fine.

As for lenses, I spent most of my time using a Canon 50mm f/1.4 prime, Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L, and Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8.  Even though f/2.8 is pretty darn wide compared to most lenses, the cameras still struggled to get good exposure. And that was with 1600 ISO!! I spent almost the entire time using spot metering to look for tiny areas of brighter exposure.

The 50mm is a little soft at f/1.4, so I tried to stay away from being wide open if I could. Even so, I spent a good amount of time there in order to get a number of the shots. Ideally, I would have had the 50mm f/1.4 and another prime lens at like 100mm. I don’t know if Canon makes like a 1.4 or 1.8 at that range. I’ll have to look.

Finally, I switched my Canon 580 EX flash between the cameras as needed. I didn’t use it that much, as it mostly killed any artistic value of the shoot when I had it on camera. Having it off camera wasn’t really an option, as I never knew where the film camera would end up pointed.

Hopefully I get to do this again some time in the future. It was a lot of fun!

So that Google picks up the very talented people who worked on this film, here’s a search-friendly list for that purpose: Roger Chong, ,Matt Maxwell, Bryce Scherer, Michelle Luchess, Derick Green, Channing Ross, Kyle Harbour, Nic Thorson, Nico Guidote, Jamie Hewlett, Joyce Tom, Victor Pages, Richard Orta, and yours truly, Jake Reinig.

Actors included Jack Samet, Ian Pfister, Ricky Pak, Jameson Young, and Manley Woods.

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