Jon Lake

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Jon and I started Brooks together nearly three years ago, and I made my initial attempt at this portrait during our first few weeks of school. The image ended up having some issues with the lighting and general image quality, so I considered it a near-miss. Naturally, I’ve wanted to reshoot it ever since, and I finally got my chance a few weeks ago when I received an environmental portrait assignment.

Jon has an amazing personal history deeply rooted in LA’s graffiti culture, and it offered me a chance to really have some fun with the lighting. Graffiti is subversive by its very nature, so I gelled one of the strobes red, the other blue, and spot-lit the wall with a 1/4 speed grid. The idea was to light the entire scene in a way that makes the viewer feel as though the police had just arrived.

Be sure to check out Jon’s Instagram @ohyaword, and special thanks to Kelton Woodburn for all the help.

Class: Advanced Lighting / Paul Meyer

Tamara Estes

I’ve wanted to set up a shoot with my good friend Tami for almost a year now. She has a lot of experience working as a nude art model for painters and life drawing classes, but this was her first time posing for the sole purpose of photography. Likewise, nudes are far outside my usual range of experience, so I’m honored to have had the opportunity to work with her and try something new together.

A major component of this assignment was to use continuous light sources instead of flashes, which in this case were two Kinoflos and a Mole Richardson hot-light. They took some getting used to, but the lights worked exceptionally well, and produced some of the most beautiful light I’ve ever seen. Sincere thanks to Jesse Coble Studios for letting me use his awesome new office-studio, and of course, special thanks to Tami for being every bit a much a part of this shoot as myself.

Class: Advanced Lighting / Paul Meyer

The Law of Reflection

Light science, and the challenge of visualizing it, will be the overarching theme I explore throughout the semester. These images are intended to illustrate the physics of how light travels. Light rays typically travel in straight lines from their source, and interact with objects differently depending on their density and texture. When light encounters a rough surface, it scatters or refracts. When light bounces off a smooth or shiny surface, it reflects at the same angle at which it arrives. Lasers are highly concentrated beams of electromagnetic radiation. By shining a single laser beam onto 11 carefully positioned mirrors, that same beam will reliably reflect at 11 equivalent angles, reemphasizing the predictability of the phenomenon known as The Law of Reflection.

For this experiment I used a Galileo series laser in conjunction with a tripod mount, 11 kicker mirrors, and a Rosco fog machine. Special thanks to Ryan Buller for all the help.

Class: Stop-action Photography / Scott Miles.

Moriah Quinn

Moriah Quinn was kind enough to model for me during a classic head a shoulders portrait assignment.

Class: Advanced Lighting / Paul Meyer

Interference Pattern

Two drops of water illustrate an interference pattern, captured at Brooks Institute’s industrial studio 2. When two drops of water fall side by side and land into the same body of water, they will both create concentric rings on impact, which will spread out and eventually collide with each other. The areas where these ripples intersect are called an interference pattern. This physical process isn’t exclusive to water, light also behaves this way, as well as sound.

Holography, a technique that produces three-dimensional images using lasers (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), relies on the interference of light beams from a laser or other coherent light source.

Inspiration

One of my absolute favorite photographers is Dan Winters, and I had the incredible pleasure of seeing him speak at the Eddie Adam’s Workshop last year. His photographs cover so many different themes and subjects, everything from celebrity portraiture to aircraft cockpits. I can’t help but be inspired by the versatility of his interests and his ability to capture them all. Our first assignment in Advanced Lighting class was to find artificially lit images that inspire us, and attempt to recreate the lighting. I went with an amazing portrait on Winter’s site, and my good friend Andrew Davidson was kind enough to lend me his profile.

Class: Advanced Lighting / Paul Meyer.

The Hum of the Hive

Danny Terhaar, age 45, has been an organic beekeeper for two years. He’s responsible for nearly 50 hives spread over several locations from Carpinteria up to Thousand Oaks. Recently, he’s started up Bees and Beyond – a bee rescue company. Bees and Beyond offers humane swarm removal services to areas around Ventura county. Rather than exterminating the hive, Terhaar relocates the bees to a new home in his yard or with other local beekeepers.

“Shoeboxing” is a term my good friend Ben Morris coined to describe the tendency photographers have to let their work gather dust on their hardrives, and I couldn’t be more guilty of it in this case.  I produced this project several months ago, but for whatever reason I never got around to actually posting it until now. Despite my inherent fear of them, I had developed a sudden fascination with bees, so I did a search for some local beekeepers online. I was fortunate enough to find Danny’s website beesandbeeyond.com, and he was kind enough to let me come by. Danny’s easily one of the nicest people I’ve ever me, and I mean that sincerely. Even his bees were polite.

Class: Natural History Photography / Ralph Clevenger

Photographing Sound

My good friend Ryan Buller and I had a really great time setting up this shoot. If you’d like to see how it was done be sure to check out the behind the scenes video on Ryan’s Vimeo page.

The New Energy Frontier

1/5000 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 200, Nikon D300. San Francisco, March 30, 2012.

The objective for the class was for each student to spend 15 weeks photographing an issue that we are passionate about, and I really wanted to challenge myself to shoot something out of the ordinary. Since I tend to photograph people more than anything, I decided to go about creating environmental and architectural photographs that would document society and the power infrastructures that support it. 

I took a slightly different approach to the multimedia component of this assignment. Rather than build the story on a timeline in Final Cut Pro, I decided to design an e-book article for the iPad using the iBooks Author app, and looked to Al Gore's "Our Choice” and National Geographic's "7 Billion" for guidance and inspiration. I'm by no means an expert on energy, so this is not intended to be any sort of comprehensive study or report. Rather, this essay relates a picture of what I've learned and come across during my research. I got interested in sustainable energy by watching a ton of TED Talks, and many of the speakers had hopeful and inspiring things to say about the future and the potential for renewable energy. One speaker in particular whom I refer to several times in the e-book is American architect William McDonough. His design theology became the foundation for my project, and I tried to create an overall piece that visually spoke to many of his ideas. What developed is a three-part photo essay that represents the present, the present future, and the potential future of our current power struggle. 

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Photos: Approx 7,500 stills over 8 shoots

Travel: Approx 2,476 miles (not counting flight miles)

Aircraft: Maule M7 STOL fixed wing aircraft, Schweizer 300CBi helicopter

Cameras: Nikon D300, Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Holi Fest

A few weeks ago I photographed one of the most enjoyable events I’ve ever witnessed. My good friends Ryan Buller,Ben Morris and Suzanne Tylander were kind enough to invite me on a road trip up to the Hare Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, to photograph the Holi Fesitval of Colors. Roughly 80,000 people showed up, and we were among the first to arrive. There was a buzz in the air that seemed to grow throughout the morning – and then all hell broke loose. From sun up to sun down people celebrated wildly and threw tons of colorful powder on each other. Every two hours the day was punctuated by mass “throwings” that literally blocked out the sun with an enormous cloud of color and filled our lungs with dust. Everyone was in great spirits, and I found the experience to be overwhelmingly warm and joyful.

Holi is a Hindu faith practice that celebrates the end of winter and the beginning of Spring. When you consider that the state of Utah hosts the highest concentration of Mormons in the world, it’s easy to appreciate the spiritual and cultural diversity taking place here.