Recently, my friend Wendy asked me to come shoot a bit at a charity event she held to launch her new She Movement. Women getting together to support eachother. While it was only a short hour or so, there were some emotional moments as Wendy and her cousin presented some personal stories of some of the women who attended, and the hard times they have gone through. I was happy to be able to help her document the launch of this special group.
Happy Easter
*note: tail added later, he is not a mutant*
Ice Racing
Another instance of extreme procrastination on my part. My friend Paul (on the #29 bike) has been my friend.... basically since birth. He used to ride his dirt bike around our neighborhood when we were kids. He tried to get me into it, but somehow I resisted motorcycles till my 20's. Fortunately I also suffered way less extreme injuries than he has! He had asked me a few times if I wanted to come out and shoot one of their friendly ice racing sessions out in the country. Finally this year I went and brought along my friend Andrew...also a big motorcycle guy.
While I completely expected 95% failure of these shots after realizing my tiny little flashes counldnt keep up, I was surprised to find that most of them were actually better than I thought. The problem (not to get technical) was that the max sync speed of these flashes was about 250th of a second, and to realy freeze the motion of the bikes I needed more like 500th of a second. We quickly realized this and changed our angle to be shooting more head-on, rather than having them bikes slide passed.
I developed these pictures pretty dark. The almost look as if they were shot at night. The snow flakes hanging in the air, caught by the flashes, look like stars. In actuality it was about 1pm, overcast, and very bright due to all the light bouncing off the snow.
In the end I ended up with some shots I was quite happy with, and Im sad that I sat on them for so long without even looking at them. The lesson is always check your shots... you never know when you'll be sitting on something good!
Bath time
Here is a bit of a staged shot from bath #2. Ironic that Im writing about bath time because he's sitting my lap quietly crapping himself as I do so. So new diapers when Im done I guess.
This was a quick shoot and required alot of arm twisting because Christine was sure he was being traumatized being wet and lifted out of the water to get cold. Probably a bit of an over reaction, but well worth it I think. Decided to go with a gritty high contrast look for this one. Im happy with the results even though it was not what I had originally envisioned. Take what you can get.