Samantha's Senior Portraits...

I recently had the privilege of photographing Samantha Moyer for her Senior Portraits. The photographs were taken at the Spring Mountain Ranch State Park. On the day of the photo shoot, I was concerned because an excessive heat warning had been announced for the Las Vegas valley. Fortunately for us, the weather was nice and we were able to take lots of photos throughout the park.


Spring Mountain Ranch State Park is an oasis in the desert. Only 15 to 20 minutes from Las Vegas, it has open green pastures, beautiful white fences, large green trees, a nice pond, and beautiful red rock mountians in the backround. As you can see, it is a nice place for outdoor portraits.


 
I want to say thanks to the Moyer Family for allowing me to photograph Samantha at such an important transitional period in her life. Samantha, I wish you the best in your senior year and in all that the future holds for you.

Victoria's Birthday Portraits...

This year for my daughter's birthday, my wife and I wanted to take some portraits of her with balloons. Here are few of them...

THE END! SEE YA...

Baby Dannon Johan Martin...

On June 12th 2009, Dannon Johan Martin was born to Patricia and Daniel Martin. I was given the opportunity and the privilege to photograph the newborn and the proud parents in their home. Here are a few from their photo shoot.



I want to say thank you to Patricia and Daniel for trusting me to come into their homes and capture such a beautiful moment in their lives. Thanks.

Illegal Photo Shoot At the Golf Course

Today I share with you another photo shoot. This time I photographed my daughters, Victoria and Mia, and my Mother-in-law, Marisa. For Mothers Day we gave my Mother-in-law a photo frame that said, "Great Mothers are promoted to Grandmothers." I was not really happy with the photo that we picked for the frame so I planned a photo shoot to create a photo for it. Here is the photo that will be placed in the frame.

I had originally thought about doing the photo shoot in my in-laws backyard, but while I was getting the lights ready, an idea popped into my head. My idea was to do the photo shoot in the golf course that is part of their community . I immediately shared the idea with my wife because she is a good barometer of my craziness. If an idea is way too crazy she will let me know. Fortunately she also thought it was a good idea . To make the photograph even more interesting I asked my Father-in-law if we could take their reclining love seat..

Shortly after arriving and setting-up, a man who lives along the golf course became interested in what we were doing and started to take pictures of us. At first I was not concerned, but when he started to take pictures of our license plates I became uneasy, specially since we did not get permision to do a photo shoot in the golf course. I knew we did not have a lot of time and I really did not feel like dealing with an angry old man. To make things even worse, Mia was not cooperating. She did not want to sit still. I was only able to take the one picture you see above before she decided she had enough and started to squirm off the seat.

After Mia jumped off the seat, my wife laid her on the top of the love-seat's backrest. This was a great idea because it was something she would do on her own if she could. Unfortunately I was only able to take three photos; two before she climbed off and one as she was climbing off. Here are those three photos.

As you can see, in one photo Victoria has her eyes closed. In the other, Mia is not happy and both her and my Mother-in-law are not looking at the camera. With Photoshop I was able to combine both photos to create this one.

I really like the candidness and craziness of the photo where Mia is climbing off the backrest and onto my Mother-law’s back. The obvious problem is that Jessica is in the photo trying to catch Mia. I really had to use some Photoshop Magic to take Jessica out of the picture. How do you think it came out?

After Mia ran off to play, I took these photos of Victoria and my Mother-in-law.

After taking a few more photos we quickly packed up before the old man taking pictures of us and our license plates called the cops.

Just kidding… I am not sure if he called the cops, but for a second I was worried that he might.

Ruby's 18th Birthday Photo Shoot

I know it has been a while since my last post, but today I bring you some photos from Ruby’s 18th Birthday Photo Shoot. Before I meet Ruby, I had heard many great things about her. I new that she works at a movie theater, goes to Rancho High School, that she is about to graduate, that she is turning 18 years old, and most importantly that she is a good daughter. You see, her mother cuts my hair. When I get a hair cut, Rosie (Ruby's Mom) talks and cuts…talks and cuts…talks and cuts. I tell her all the new things that Victoria, my six-year-old daughter, is learning at school and all the mischievous things that Mia, my 19 month old daughter who is very rambunctious and strong willed, has done. She, intern, tells me all about Ruby.

So when Rosie told me that Ruby had recently taken her senior pictures and that although they came out nice, she wanted some fun portraits of Ruby for her 18th Birthday, I raised my hand like an excited first grader who knows the answer to the question that his teacher has asked. In my mind I was yelling, "PICK ME...PICK ME!"

Every book on Portraitures emphasizes the need to get to know your client before taking their portraits and that by getting to know them; their true personalities will be reflected in your portraits. With this advice in hand, I met with Ruby for the first time a week before her photo shoot. I brought some ideas, but I really wanted her and I to brainstorm possible poses and locations. I was happy to find out that she already had some ideas. She wanted some photos in her bedroom and some fun pictures with Elmo (she is a big fan). Because I already knew that she liked Elmo, I presented her the idea of taking a picture of her and cloning a lot of Elmo’s into the picture. I wanted it to look like the world was being taken over by Elmo’s or that she REALLY liked Elmo. As soon as I arrived, I noticed her beautiful eyes and knew that I also would have to take some close-up photos of her eyes.We scouted her house and came up with a rough draft of what photos we were going to take. The plan was the following. We would start in her room and take some photos of her on her bed and do the close-up of her eyes. Then we would take some photos of her and her large stuffed Elmo on the stairs for the clone photo. Last we would go to the park to take some more pictures of her with Elmo and some pictures of her by herself.

Okay… I know you guys are probably saying, “SHOW US THE PICTURES ALREADY!”

Here they are…

The first three photos were taken in Ruby's room.

After taking photos in her room, we moved to the stairs where the following were taken.

To make the following photo, I took seven photos and combined them to look like one. This is often referred to as cloning. This is not the first time that I created this type of photo. The first time I did it, I combined four photos of myself to made it look like there were clones of me running around. To see it click here. When I show this picture to others, they comment that it is kind of creepy. Yeah, it is weird to see copies of yourself in the same photo, but since Elmo is only real in Sesame Street, he doesn't have the same effect. What do you think?

These last pictures were not planned, but due to the windy weather we were not able to go to the park. We improvised a studio in one of the semi-empty rooms and took these last photos. By the time we did these photos, Ruby was a lot more comfortable with me taking her photos, she was getting tired, acting silly, and Rosie was making both of us laugh. I think all of this is reflected in the photos. What do you think?

Lastly, I want to say thank you to Rosie and Ruby for letting me come into their home and share my passion with them. It was a lot of fun.