Tag Archives: photography

career, Lightroom 3, location shoot, photography, San Diego

Do you Shoot Food?

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I market myself primarily as an architectural photographer.  It’s hard.  Experts say to have people take you serious and pay decent money you have to be a specialist.  So do you?  I was trained and worked my early career as a photojournalist.  A good photojournalist is good at shooting a lot of subjects and an expert generally at none.  So what do you do?  I don’t want to be tied into just one thing so I do niche marketing.  Most of my work is photographing properties, new construction and aerials of those projects.  To those clients I market myself for my architectural work.  To a few others I’m known for my environmental portraiture.  I market them differently.  You get the picture.  In this economy you need to diversify within your business and marketing.  But to each your a specialist they need.  btw, yes I do shoot food……

The image:  Taken with a Nikon D3 and a 80-200.  Processed in Adobe Lightroom.

The Food:  Bully’s East, Mission Valley, San Diego, Ca.  Great place.  Yes, we enjoyed some of it when we were done .  The benefit of being a food photographer.

My Marketing:  www.zwink.com , my other diversified work, www.bigstudioz.com

HDR, Lightroom 3, location shoot, photography, Photoshop, San Diego

Not so quick Fix

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  Being a smart shooter is knowing when to ask for help.  I was recently asked to photograph this interior at UCSD for the builder.  The primary use was to enter in a competition.  The big problem was that the location was not going to be finished until the following Thursday, with the deadline that Monday.  Thursday would be too late.  So after a fair amount of negotiating my assistant Abbey and I decided to remove the cardboard off the desktops in the whole auditorium.  After a quick call to my retoucher, Holly of Spitting Images we decided to remove temporarily the plastic off three rows of the chairs.  That would give Holly enough of a sample to clean up the image.  Additionally we shot a section of paneling which she also layered on top of the black wood to complete the retouch portion of the project.  I then lightened the top projection screen and wal la……. image done, ready to send to the client.

As a pro you need to be a problem solver.  When someone say no as the project manager answered when we asked to clear all the plastic we came up with another solution.  Develop and utilize your resources.

Techy stuff:  camera: Nikon D3, lens 14-24, image processing in Lightroom 3, Photomatrix and Photoshop 5.  Additional retouching by the wonderful Holly Nelson-Kramer.

More of my work…… www.zwink.com

Fishing, GMR Works, Lightroom 3, location shoot, music, San Diego, Travel

THE MORE YOU KNOW……….

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………. THE MORE YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH MORE THERE IS TO KNOW

  Striving for a high level of success in any profession is a quest of all passionate driven people.  As you get better you start to separate yourself from the pack and the growth becomes part of the process.  It becomes easier to learn as your experience and education builds.  Knowledge becomes gold.  The more you have, the richer you are.

  BUT…. you eventually realize that even as you get better  there is so much more to know.  You may be good at what you do but you can get better.  Once you accept this premise your growth will continue.  No matter how good you are you will always be learning.

  I’m pretty good at what I do.  I feel I can compete with about 90% of the other architectural shooters out there.  I want to be part of that other 10%.  It will be hard as they are constantly improvising and improving, growing in their craft to make their work more amazing.

ABOUT THE PHOTOS:  taken at an Asmp-SD underwater photography workshop in San Diego.  Taught by local master diver and underwater photography expert Al Bruton.  All images shot with a Nikon D70 camera in a Nexus underwater housing.  Model:  Rachel

More of my images are on:  http://www.zwink.com

photography

Experimental High Pass Photo Shoot

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_JDZ8315

Gary and I have been friends for 17 years.  He is a good friend and assistant.  Often when I struggle to find a subject for a quick test he quickly volunteers.  This time our goal was to find a new lighting scheme for an assignment shooting 35 NFL rookies.
This shot was done in the studio using four Prophoto monolights.  We used a couple octabanks moving them around the subject to mold the light onto the subject while using a couple strip lights to create a higher contrast on the edges.  After adjusting the contrast the image was ran through the hi pass filter for the end result.  Our goal to create a high impact, eye catching image that could be used for a portrait or stock for our client was a success.

More of my work can be seen at:  www.zwink.com

location shoot, photography, San Diego

Getting high on the Vibe

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I was hired by Tim Young from GMR Works to go to a General Motors car distribution plant in San Leandro in the Bay Area. The goal was to get elevated on a lift and photograph the new Vibe cars arranged into the shape of the Vibe logo, drop it into a logoed template and get 100 prints by 6 p.m for a car dealers meeting. Making maters more complicated that day was extremely windy conditions and we had to go almost 60 feet in the air to get the proper perspective on the “logo”. After getting used to the sway of the platform/cage I finally made a good series of images. I proceded to do the postproduction on the image under a tent and then went and emailed the image to Chrome in San Diego where they proceed to do a rush print job for us. My assistant Gary Flanagan then picked up the prints and jumped on a flight to SF where we met him. He handed the box off to Tim and Gary and I made the next flight back to San Diego. All in a day’s work.

More of my work can be seen at:  www.zwink.com