My first shoot after getting back from surgery was one I was looking forward to. Kaline, who has modeled for me since 2002 ( and is featured in two of my all time favorite photographs, Mountain Peek, and Lady of the Lake) had her second child and three days after Cecilia’s birth I visited the newly expanded family at their home.

Her husband, Ben, works for the Post Office so I figured if you work for the company that does more deliveries than anyone else, why would you trust your most important delivery to a stork?

Unfortunately, the Post Office doesn’t make Priority One boxes large enough to ship a 7 pound newborn. So Photoshop came to the rescue. We photographed Cecilia at their home in a generic box filled with pink peanuts. Then back at the studio I photographed the Priority One box with the pink backdrop. A few minutes of Photoshop work blended the two photographs.

As we were photographing Cecilia, we had to rescue her a couple of times as she would gradually sink into the packing peanuts as she wiggled around. But she looked entirely comfortable sleeping in her box. However the shoot came to an end when little Cecilia burped up. Well that is an understatement. Think Mt. Vesuvious. I didn’t realize a baby could drink that much. It pretty much made a mess of her and the peanuts, but fortunately by then I had the photos I needed.

Becki has modeled for me several times over the last few years, posing variously as a sexy Ms. Claus, a sexy firefighter, and a 1920s flapper dancer. But this time Becki came into the studio as her self. Becki’s always been fun to photograph and she’s got one of the greatest smiles, especially when she’s cracking up, which is often.

But for maternity portraits I usually go with a more reflective expression. For this pose we wrapped Becki in some white fabric and went with very high key lighting and then processed it further to give the whole photo a soft, angelic look to it.

We squeezed this shoot in as my last shoot for the year before Lori and I took off for our transplant surgery. I should be back to work just in time to photograph Becki and Mick with their new addition to the family.

Because this month’s picture was created, rather than just photographed, I thought it would be fun to show you how it came together. I’ve done several pirate photoshoots both in the studio and on location, but this time I wanted to create something more theatrical.

The pirate was played by Michelle, who I met last year photographing her for her senior portrait. I shot Michelle against a blue backdrop that I new would be close to the shade of blue I’d want for the night sky. This made it easier to drop out the background and not leave a tell-tale fringe. The hardest part of lighting Michelle was getting the right balance of backlighting so that it would look like the moonlight was shining through her blouse. The color temperature for this shot was cooled way down to give it a blueish cast so it would look like a night shot.

A few days later I photographed the pirate ship against the same blue background. The pirate ship is a model that Andy Doerner built for Lori and I in 1999. It was lit in the studio to make it appear as the light was coming from the moon. I used one snooted strobe up on a boom to approximate the moonlight.

The sky and ocean came from a shot I took on a vacation in Mexico. Different treatments were done to both the sky and the water to get it to look like night. It seemed a waste to use such a colorful sunset, but I liked the highlights on the water and the clouds in the sky.

The moon was added from a public domain image shot by NASA. For the finishing touch, the stars in the sky were added on a separate layer in Photoshop.

Back in 2006, when I still had my studio on Main Street, Tracy Tucker came in one day and asked if I’d like to have an intern for the summer, as his 17 year old daughter was going to be staying with him and she had an interest in photography. I told him sure, as when I was learning I had asked a local photographer if I could intern for him and was disappointed when I was turned down.

A week later Ayrica stopped by the studio and I found out not only was she cute and very petite, but she was a ballet dancer. So before she went back to Illinois she did some modeling for me, showing her grace in Leap of Faith. Ayrica decided to go to college in Humboldt county so she’s modeled for me several times over the last few years. Then her boyfriend came out west also, and he soon turned into her fiance.

So it was with great pleasure that I photographed this couple on their very special wedding day on Moonstone Beach. This shot of Jeremy swirling Ayrica in the surf was my favorite, as it was a spontaneous moment that really showed how much fun they have with each other.

Back in 2000 when I first moved to Ferndale, I was still shooting film predominately, and the place I took my film was Chromogenics, in Fortuna. Greg Rumney, the owner of Chromogenics is an avid collector of vintage photographs. Behind the counter was a photo taken in the Ozarks of 4 very gruff looking hillbillies. It is very hard to look at the photo and not smile, it’s such a brilliant depiction of the stereotypical group of backwoods hillbillies.

Greg told me it was his best seller and at first I didn’t believe him. But when I had my gallery on Main Street we sold a lot of those hillbilly photos for Greg. Since then Greg has gotten out of the film business and concentrates on selling prints from his collection. His business name changed too, he now goes by The Old Photo Guy.

I thought it would be fun to make my own version of the photo with a few of the local Ferndale characters. Andy Doehner, George Enos, and Richard Harpham joined me in recreating the photo, using Fernbridge as our location.

Since I did this photo just for fun, prints of my version aren’t for sale, but you can view and purchase the real version at Greg’s website at www.oldphotoguy.com. I did exhibit this photo at the fair and it received a second place ribbon in the Professional Digital Enhanced class.

After moving away to the big city, Maria’s return to Humboldt County coincided with the blooming of my favorite wildflower patch. Maria and I had shot at this location a few years ago, and it’s a spot I find so beautiful that I try and return there every year. Last year we had such a late spring that when I visited it at the normal time the flowers were just getting started. That also happened to be the day that all the forest fires started and so I didn’t make a return trip back last year because it was so smoky.

So it was with great anticipation that I was looking forward to shooting there again during Maria’s visit. On the drive up, it kept getting foggier and foggier and we almost turned back. But just as I was thinking of turning the truck around, we’d get a break in the fog and it would encourage me on. Not knowing if there’d be enough light to shoot with when we got there, and if we would hit the flowers at their peak, we proceeded on, until finally we rounded one corner and there they were. My first thought was if nature can put on such a spectacle of color, how come the weeds in my yard aren’t this pretty?

The fog rolling through added to the scene, and we shot for about an hour before it finally just got too dark. Even though the display only lasts for a week or so, it’s such a beautiful spot it has a permanent date on my calendar.

This isn’t the most beautiful image I’ve ever presented for my Picture of the Month. But for me it is one of the most meaningful. Two years ago my wife, Lori, began losing her hearing at a drastic rate. It had a huge impact on both our lives, and it turns out it is only the beginning of the adventure that we will be dealing with. But due to the wonders of modern science, her hearing was returned with bionic ears, or cochlear implants, as the doctors call them.

Due to the amount of time we spent out of town for the surgery and her recovery, I didn’t get to do much personal photography last month. But slowly our life is returning to normal, and I hope to have something better for you next month.

While we were in San Jose last month, I thought I would take the opportunity of being in the big city to work with a make up artist. Searching on Model Mayhem, I found Wendy Tran who helped transform the model, Danielle. I’ve had an ambitious idea for an Egyptian themed shoot for awhile, but it’s been hard to locate a make up artist to work with in the Ferndale area. So I used this as a test of the make up concept. It was a lot of fun working with Wendy and Danielle, and they both did great work. This was Danielle’s first attempt at modeling and she seemed a natural at it.

When Natalie and I worked together last year, we discovered that we both wanted to do a romantic shoot with a horse. I pictured her galloping down the beach with the dress blowing in the wind, but the logistics of putting that together was more than I could manage.

First I wanted a pretty horse and finding one near a beach, and to have it be bulletproof was pretty tough. After a year of searching and numerous setbacks such as owners and horses dying, I finally settled on the pretty horse part. Melissa Fischbach was helpful in letting us use two of her pretty friesian stallions. 

My first shoot with Natalie we used this wedding dress from the 1930s so I knew she would look great wearing it. But mounted on a huge friesian she had a look of nobility. It wasn’t the shot I had envisioned a year ago, but still one I’m proud to have in my portfolio.

After creating the image for last November’s Picture of the Month, I thought more and more about old Hollywood glamour style lighting as practiced by photographers like George Hurrell. I wanted to experiment more with that style, which is dramatically different from what I typically use for portraits. So when Chynna contacted me about working together, I thought it would be a good opportunity to experiment in the studio.

In the 1930s they typically used hot lights with fresnel lenses to focus the light right where they wanted it. That also provided the hard contrasty light that is so indicative to that style. Not having fresnel lights nor the budget to purchase them, I made do with my studio strobes with open 5″ reflector dishes. 80 years ago they would have also had a number of gobos or flags and again my studio was lacking, so Photoshop had to come to the rescue for some of the final details.