If you make a little time the sun will peak out from the edges every once and awhile. My friend Chris over at Patterns of Light and Dark and Paul at Paul Lester Photography have been making a few beach images so when I was in town today I couldn’t resist and join the fray. Cold and windy and that seems to be the order of the day for these type of images no matter where in the country you are. The tower in the distance is on the Navy Base on Indian Island which stores munitions, that in itself is pretty ironic given PT politics and general outlook. The pier is one of several city piers for visiting boats, empty now but full in the summer.
Not my usual type of image but I am trying to get out and shoot something everyday for awhile, just to see what happens when you go out for a walk with the camera and no idea of what you are after. That approach will probably change to going out with a vague idea of what I want to shoot, we’ll see how things progress. Slow and lazy time of year, short days and wet wet weather, counting the days til spring.
Not a lot I feel like adding in words today but I did want to post a little more of the On Black series I am working on.
I was going to write something about digging out of something but seem to have misplaced the thought. What is forefront in my head for several days has been the whole social networking idea and experience. For a fairly short time I have jumped into this whole flickr, blogging, twitter, facebook social media thing, and it has been enlightening in a lot of ways.
Living in the boonies, it is a little difficult to meet other photographers that have the same interests and ambitions. The people I have interacted with online in the social media world have really opened my eyes, taught me a lot and become friends. Bouncing ideas around among creative people is the fastest way I know of to elevate your own vision. There is an energy that is created that I envy when I hear about the folks I follow are in the same place at the same time. Second best is the one that happens when you share those ideas online with others. Not really sure what all I wanted to say here except, thanks to all my friends online for the extra incentive and free flow of ideas and info.
As for digging out, there is a notebook full of ideas that need to be photographed that should take me into the next few years, and it is added to daily. In addition to the photo ideas I am going to add a writing class to my list of things to do this winter, skills that I haven’t used since college have rusted badly. In fact a lot of things have rusted badly………
more later
Edit: the “how I made this image” is in the comments…….
I had the pleasure of shooting a fashion spread for my friend Rosie Itti last week. It is a bit of a departure from my usual work and I am really pleased with the results and the experience. 
Make up and models, hurry up and light, wrangle 7 or so people to get into a shot and make it all work. It was a great day of shooting and the model and people were great. Rosie had settled on a SnowWhite theme for the shoot and to my mind pulled it off with a fine modern feel to it. This was the second of two shoots. The first involved 5 models and styling of 5 looks for a white T-shirt. I may publish some of those later, but really like the results of this one.
I am not really sure what to say about this kind of work other than I really enjoyed it and would love to do some more. Generally what I like to do is more of an editorial shoot or location portrait work so this was a real departure for me. Less to do with telling the persons story, more of the style and clothing.
The Paul Buff PLM with the diffusion fabric really creates some nice light and I will be using it again. So until I get a chance to shoot beautiful models and a full on production like this again we will be returning to the regular scheduled programming and images. And please don’t ask me to define ‘nice light’, I can’t.
More of this and some new over on my flickr stream if you want to take a look.
rlketcham.com
