Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Nick Merrick Workshop



I recently returned from Santa Fe, NM where I took a workshop from the living legend, architectural photographer Nick Merrick (www.hedrichblessing.com). He's as great a teacher as he is a photographer and the class was far better than I even hoped for. Here are a couple of shots from the workshop...

Profiling




When working at college campuses, shooting profiles of students or teachers is a way for schools to have the people who actually teach or learn there get the message out about how great an experience it is to be at a particular college. The images here will be used as double page spreads in brochures and billboards along with quotes from people profiled.

The first shot of Staci, the soccer player has Staci lit from the left with a large Photek Softlighter and an Elinchrom RX600 from the right and another RX600 to the right of the lockers in the back bounced into the ceiling. The next shot of Doug, the math professor, is lit with an Elinchrom RX600 to his left and slightly behind him to give him a bit of backlight and also light the blackboard in the background. Another RX600 with a large softbox is placed to the left and a little in front of Doug. The last shot of Cathy, a graduate student, is lit with natural light streaming in through the windows behind her and an Elinchrom RX600 with a 10 degree grid as close and as in front of Cathy as possible and aimed directly at her face to give her just a little extra light. All three shots are with the Nikon D3 and the 70-200mm Nikkor zoom except for the shot of Doug which was made with the 24-70mm Nikkor zoom.

Times are Tough

Sometimes my assistant and I will grab a beer after a particularly long day and decompress. We were in the northeast recently in a small town hard hit by the economic crisis and stumbled into a small bar that catered to a community of veterans who are struggling like so many others. Not a day goes by that I'm not thankful for my Dad, Grandfather and all these guys and women who offered their lives in service to our country. Here's to the vets...