Session four took place the day after shooting the “Water Ballet” session and took place at my favorite barn studio near Somers. Keiko had suggested doing a barn theme and I had been thinking the same thing for several days before she mentioned it. We met in the morning to catch the easterly sun sprinkling its light through the holes in the barn roof.
(click for larger image)
Session three and four was with Keiko S. another exquisite ballerina who dances for Marisa at Northwest School of Ballet. In “A Night of Classics”, their spring recital I saw Keiko dance a selection from “Don Quixote” in a red tutu that was absolutely stunning! Here is one of those images to show you what I mean:
Several of Marisa’s dancers answered my call for models and Keiko was one of them. She shared with me her vision of the Ballerina project and I checked it out. One idea was a barn on her property but I told her I had a better barn, but her water park selection was amazing! We spent an evening together capturing images all around the park and even in the water! Here are some of her images:
Thanks, Keiko!
My second Ballet shoot took place at a state park near where I live. My model Meredith and her mother met me there on a warm spring evening just before sunset. The place I remembered from a previous session I couldn’t find and plus we had other people to contend with that I didn’t want to be in the background. We chose a spot above Flathead Lake and made it a part of the composition. For those not familiar with Flathead Lake, it has the distinction of being the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. The spot we chose was awesome and Meredith was too!
While driving home from the MT PPA convention in Helena several weeks ago I began to think about next year’s competition and what I could create to raise the bar. In one of the seminars I watched a slide show by Master Photographer Larry Lourcey and saw an exquisite picture of a ballerina which started me thinking of this project. Impact is the number one attibute that judges look for in images. Without impact images never get a second look. My original concept was to create an image of a ballerina surrounded by the grandeur of nature…mountains, lakes, forests, rocks etc., however the concept has grown since then.
I’ve done several dress rehearsals for recitals for a friend of mine, Marisa Roth…owner of Northwest School of Ballet and Company and asked if she would solicit some of her dancers for this project. I have four gung-ho ballerinas who are now working with me and we’ve done two sessions already. The first session was in Glacier National Park near Kintla Lake (see pictures in previous post).
Celia was my first ‘model’ and did the ‘Crown of the Continent’ session. She is incredible! We drove the rutted and dusty roads of the Northfork on a Sunday evening and weren’t home until 10:30 and then she had another 45 minute drive home to Bigfork on a school night! Not only that, but she posed in clouds of hungry mosquitoes while I took her picture and shrugged it off as part of the deal. A young woman with class and an exquisite beauty to watch as well. Thanks, Celia! I hope we can do even better next time.
Please check back for more on this project.
D.
“By bridal-model photography I mean models in wedding gowns and occasionally a male model as a groom. Why? Every strong image is useful to me in many ways.
Some examples:
The problem is that often ‘your’ time with the b&g gets taken away. Of course you shoot an amazing wedding for your clients but there are always ideas that never get a chance.
Shooting models gives you this time (your time!) to flush out compositional ideas and concepts. These types of shoots will help improve your composition more than you realize. It feels easier to step outside the box and try something different without the pressure of a wedding day. As you become more comfortable you start expanding your vision, passion and creativity and you can start testing these ideas at real weddings.
Some of the best models are past clients! They almost never charge for their time. They are often ready to do something cool and fun!” (excerpt from DWF: David Beckstead, “Define Your Art With Model Shoots.”
Liz and Nick were willing to help me with this awesome autumn shot.
O’dark-thirty came even earlier because I’d spent the entire previous day shooting a wedding and finished as the sun was setting: 9:30. Once I was home I spent another hour or more making sure the files were backed up and burnt, packed and went to bed.
I was on the road as the sun was rising and my destination was beyond Great Falls near a wide spot in the road called Monarch. The area is a historic mining area and designated a Scenic Byway by the National Forest Service. Although I was in a hurry, I had time to shoot along the way.
Silky Water Near Glacier Park
Mustard Fields of Valier
Despite what I thought was a late departure, I arrived ahead of many of the family members. With some extra time I drove uphill to the Sun Mountain Ranch where I met with Uncle Butch and his son Eddy (whom I hadn’t seen or talked to in thirty-plus years) and grandsons who were riding horses. I’d promised to take pictures of the ‘heavies’ he’d recently bought and was training but they weren’t yet harnessed. One of them cast a wary eye my direction the other disappeared behind a building (shy?).
Heavy One
Once back from the ranch, the family had gathered. As I’ve stated before, because time is short it’s vitally important to record family history by word or image. For various reasons I had not been able to attend many of the past re-unions. That made this one much more special. I met with people I hadn’t seen in decades.
Cousin Earling
Cousin Ed and son
Uncle Terry and his granddaugher, Elaina
Cousin Jeff
Cousin Casey
With those I’d not seen in ages, there were those I see on a more regular basis:
Brother Darrell (needs a haircut…heh) looks cool with the shades.
Brother Dave
Old Cowboy
The food was good and plenty of it, as is usual for this sort of thing and I’m sure that most of us ate way more than we should have. The entertainment was a drive-by wagon ride by Uncle Butch and his team of Belgians.
Belgian Freight
Horses are for riding
With all the activity and feasting one thing which can get easily overlooked is recording the relationships for posterity, despite the pleas of people who say, “I don’t take a good picture.”
Sisters Three (Aunt Velma, Laverne, and Lila)
All good things come to an end and soon I was traveling back home. My usual route takes me through an area of Montana which is often brown and not very scenic. This year, because of abundant rainfall, it was a veritable garden. I stopped to shoot pictures because I knew no one would believe what I said.
Rocky Mountain Rain
Day Two:
The night was shorter than usual. That may have been because I stayed up late but woke up at my normal time which is o’dark-thirty. I took a quick peek outside to see what the weather was like and was pleased to see the skies had cleared off overnight and it was a gorgeous spring morning with wisps of fog wrapping itself around the pine trees and creek bottoms. I took a quick shower, grabbed my cameras and tripod, scrounged up a cup of coffee and after asking a few questions about where I might find some hiking trails, headed out the back door of the main lodge to shoot the morning mists:
Trevon and I crossed tracks near the lodge and he was after the same thing…the misty shots. He was headed to Salmon Lake nearby in hopes he could get some good shots of it before it lifted. The mist seemed to be all around us, however by the time we got to the lake it was, for the most part, gone. Still it was worth shooting a few frames…
Feeling ‘skunked’, we started to return to the resort. I am somewhat familiar with the area because we have had family reunions in the area for nearly twenty years and I noticed a fogbank to the west of the highway toward Placid Lake, another local body of water extremely popular with residents of Missoula. The lake is overcrowded / overbuilt, in my opinion, with summer and fulltime residences lining the lake and small, old cabins are surrounded by 5 and 6,000 square foot ‘cottages’. When Trevon and I arrived we were indeed greeted by the misty landscapes.
At the end of the road we parked and walked through the trees…
to find the lakeshore and old friends waiting for summer’s arrival:
The road out was still in the swirl of fog and lined with vibrantly colored Lupine:
At the bridge where we first stopped to shoot, the mists had receded from the lake but it still left us with incredible views of God’s artistry in nature:
The remainder of our day was not quite as exciting, but still very educational. Travis continued to explain the necessity of having a business plan to succeed. Without one it’s nothing more than starting on a journey not knowing where you are going. At the end of his presentation he had a slideshow of his photos and in these pictures were people who were no longer alive. Travis kept speaking and I wondered how he could go on as I was choking back tears. He showed a series of portraits he’d taken of a man and woman…middle aged and they were sitting on a charcoal grey backdrop; the woman was leaning into her husband who was seated behind her. Several weeks later the husband died in a plane crash. Travis’ point was this…what we do is so important…never think of it as just a job. This woman had these pictures to hold close… to remember her loving husband…tangible evidence of their lives and love together.
With gas prices nearing $4 per gallon, Victoria (Creative Visions Photography) and I carpooled to Seeley Lake on Saturday morning, leaving Kalispell at 9:30. As it was before (we carpooled to the state convention also), we talked nearly every single minute we were traveling and the time spent on the road seemed much less that it was. The conversation was never dull…at least from my perspective. I can’t say what Victoria thought. The scenery throughout the trip was amazing as everything was emerald green from the spring rainfall; a color we haven’t seen for several years because of the drought conditions prevailing across most of the nation. With all the opportunity to shoot pictures, we didn’t. Considering we are both professional photographers, that is nearly incomprehensible.
We arrived at the Double Arrow Resort about 11:30 and the main lodge was already teeming with photographers, many whom I recognized from the annual state convention in April. It almost felt like coming home. Since my room was in the main lodge I took care of that right away and took my bags to the room. Victoria was staying in a cabin called “The Hilltop” and was just a few yards from the convention center. After checking in we needed to get lunch and the closest place was the resort golf course. As we left the lodge, we met Steve Helmbrecht from Havre who had a lot of questions about Lightroom; we invited him to come with us and Victoria engaged in her favorite pasttime: teaching.
Once back from lunch we were introduced to our speaker, Travis Gugleman from Rexburg, Idaho, a very successful photographer in just a short amount of time. His studio has only been open for five years but his business is booming. We all wanted to know how he did it. Travis is a very engaging speaker; he talks a LOT, very fast and is hilarious. I suspect he is ADHD and should be on drugs…but he’s not….well, that’s not exactly true if you consider Mountain Dew a drug. He’d had basically no sleep in 24 hours because of prior commitments and having to drive five hours to get to Seeley Lake from Rexburg. Travis’ wife and two children were with him at the conference.
We talked for a short while in the lodge as he told us how his journey in photography started; then we went outside…into the COLD! Yes, with nearly half of June gone, it still feels like winter at times. Today it is snowing in Kalispell and Bigfork…I don’t know about the rest of the state…and although it isn’t sticking on the ground I’m positive that it is putting TONS of water into the mountains, locked away for a later day and hopefully diverting the huge forest fires we’ve had nearly every summer for many years.
Travis talked about his philosophy and procedures for shooting (ummm…he says, ‘creating images’) seniors. We had two models, one guy, one girl. The female model, Betsy, was the daughter of Rhonda Malecha, a photographer from Seeley Lake. Betsy was very relaxed in front of the camera, probably as the result of her mother constantly pointing a camera at her when she was young. In Rhonda’s defense, Betsy is VERY photogenic. The male model, Cory, was a friend of Betsy’s…they’d known each other since kindergarten…and he, as well, was very photogenic and comfortable in front of the lens. As you might suspect from growing up in rural Montana, both models had ‘country’ leanings, as in cowboy and cowgirl. But we’ll get to that later….back to Travis and the COLD.
While Travis spoke, the crowd shivered in the wind. I know for a fact there were goose bumps on Betsy’s legs and I have the photographs to prove it. Which goes to show that these models were not wimps! Travis encouraged us to shoot along with him and for a while I thought I was the only one shooting. I felt slightly conspicuous surrounded by others MUCH better than I who weren’t shooting (but WERE shivering). I shot anyway and eventually more camera’s appeared. Perhaps they were waiting to see if my lens and camera frosted over before taking out their own?
Travis shot four different locations around the main lodge of the Double Arrow. Here is a shot from the lodge setting:
Afterward we drove to downtown Seeley Lake for some more ‘urban’ settings…in yer dreams, Travis! About forty people carpooled to downtown Seeley Lake, Montana and I know for a fact we were the object of more than a few stares, but we stood and listened and shot (ummm…captured images) the models while Travis lectured in front of the Seeley Lake Grain and Feed store.
As we ambled up Cedar Lane,
we found the texture Travis had alluded to early in his lecture. We stopped in front of a residence and positioned our models in front an old garage (which sent Rhonda scurrying to tell her neighbors about our activities, lest they assume we were a band of urban terrorists slinking about the metropolis of Seeley Lake bent on photographing strategic buildings for acts of mayhem). Good job, Rhonda, we weren’t arrested!
We found that Betsy has a wide range of fashion sense:
Notice the goose-bumps.
And Cory was not always a cowboy:
“Multiple streams of revenue” is a term I keep hearing in photography and one of those streams is stock photography. I have to confess that I was not always an attentive student in Travis’ class and I was NOT alone (fess up you guys…Vic, Tina…)
When we were finished with our outdoor session we piled into the vehicles and all trooped back to the resort. After a short break everyone gathered in the conference center where Travis showed us some of his studio techniques with seniors and special lighting; then he started talking about his business plan and what he did to be so successful in such a short amount of time. Travis is a very astute businessman and is continually educating himself to that end. As I’ve heard so many times in the last few months, being a successful photographer is more about your abilities as a business person than it is about your creativity. The statistic: Fifteen percent is your creative side, eighty-five percent is your business sense (I can’t tell you where the statistic was found). However, in my experience I know that most ‘artistic’ people are NOT business people. They can’t or don’t know how to promote themselves or how to run a business, which is a recipe for failure.
The formal activites of day one ended with a BBQ at Rhonda Malecha’s studio. I can only wish for a studio as nice as she has and I should have taken pictures of that too, but didn’t. Most people huddled together in the sunlight soaking up it’s feeble warmth and chatted. The food was excellent…BBQ pork and chicken, lots of salads, fruit trays, dips and chips and generous amounts of libations:) Rhonda’s husband was chained to the BBQ units (j/k). We returned to the lodge after the BBQ for a ‘nuts and bolts’ question and answer period which focused on the health and trends of photography business in the state. After that meeting there were several group meetings for people interested in Lightroom, HDR and one other which I can’t remember. People were huddled around the electronic-blue glow of computer screens as the sunset faded in the west. Trevon Baker, who was outside the lodge looking in, said it was a very ironic picture, to say the least: The great outdoors usurped by LED’s filled with pictures of the great outdoors!
Every year Photographers in the state of Montana convene enmasse at a location for their annual convention. This year was no different. From Sunday April 13th until Tuesday April 15th the Billings Convention Center hosted our annual meeting. On Sunday we learned about HDR photography from Steve Helmbrecht. HDR is an acronym for High Dynamic Range and seems to be growing in popularity in photography circles. As with anything new, there are those who are adamantly against it. Monday morning we listened to Jim Lersch tell us about Seniors his way and Commercial Photography for Dummies. Tuesday was probably the most needed seminar of the whole convention: Marketing and Seven Habits by Ed Belinski. In our business twenty percent is based on our creativity and the other eighty percent is business! Photography is a BUSINESS and for some photographers that fact is hard to realize. We want people to like us for the beauty we create, but it comes at a cost.
I car-pooled with another local photographer to share expenses and to help keep me sane as we drove the 400+ miles to Billings. We talked a LOT. On Tuesday we left Billings and drove a short distance to Livingston where she was giving a lecture on Adobe Lightroom, another essential piece of software for cataloging our ever growing catalog of images and helping to speed up the workflow immensely. By the end of the trip my head was swimming with the new faces and knowledge I’d acquired in such a short time. I often liken experiences such as this to getting a drink from a firehose. Too much, too fast. I was so busy I only took four pictures the entire trip.
E-sessions are important. The reason they are important is because it allows the photographer to get acquainted with the couple and they, in turn get to know the photographer. Relationships are always important and getting accustomed to having a lens pointed at your face is a good thing, but you should also be able to trust your photographer. I always try to get each couple to relax and be themselves…it helps to get rid of the ‘deer-in-the-headlights syndrome’. In order to do that I have to show them who I am…and that I’m not much different than they are. We try to have fun while we’re shooting.
Charlie and Shannon and I met at a cool brew-pub in Lakeside, which I never knew existed. We shared beers and glasses of wine and ate and talked about their wedding, family, and another half-dozen equally important things. The shoot took place on the shore of Flathead Lake at a friend’s home. I was a bit concerned when told about this spot as in March it can still be very winterish in Montana and while driving to our meeting place there was a snow squall over the lake. I was nervous, but Providence smiled and it turned out to be a spectacular backdrop for their E-session.
