Dani, my close friend and model muse, called me up on the 23rd asking me if I’d come out and take some pictures as a kind of paparazzi to an event she was hosting late that night.

I said sure.

Early the next morning, I had a bridal shoot. That same afternoon, I had a wedding. The day after that, I had another wedding. And then on Sunday, I had a model shoot. Yesterday, a bridal shoot. Tomorrow, another one.

It’s been kind of busy. My mom even started worrying when she couldn’t reach me anywhere.

All this to say that I know I’ve been slow at getting back on here and posting something new, but I’m still alive, and here’s a recap of my daily shoots:

Day 100/365

It’s getting warmer. Mason and I went outside to play some soccer. I think he really just wanted to play with the neighbor girl.

Psh! Ditching his dad for a girl…

Day 101/365

I needed an excuse to shoot some pictures and going outside sounded good, so Mason and I went across the street to the school’s playground.

The reason I needed an excuse to shoot pictures was because I was worried – no, terrified – that my camera wasn’t focusing properly anymore… Two days before back to back weddings…

This test didn’t reassure me at all…

Day 102/365

But then on the paparazzi shoot Dani asked me to come to, it was fine. Razor sharp. In really terrible low-light conditions no less. Whew!

The paparazzi thing was an event where Dani and other local models were supposed to pretend being big Hollywood stars and I along with a bunch of other local photographers were supposed to act as the scum of the earth; the paparazzi.

Thanks, Dani. Great friend you are.

What I discovered was that I’m a terrible paparazzi on a number of levels.

First, I couldn’t get myself to yell out random questions. Not because I was too shy, but because I simply couldn’t think of a single thing to ask.

Second, I couldn’t bring myself to use any of the really, truly, colossaly ugly shots that the real paparazzi regularly throw into magazines. You know the shots. Ugly flash, shiny skin, shadows behind the celebrities. Yeah. Ugly. Spectacularly ugly.

Finally, I really sucked as a paparazzi because I found it more interesting to shoot pictures of the mass of photographers falling over themselves trying to get the best shot than taking pictures of the celebrities themselves. My camera was pointed in the wrong direction. I didn’t do that more than a couple of times, but I noticed some stares when I did do it.

I’d post the pictures of that mass of photographers, but those shots sucked too.

The beautiful Kelly Kaye!

*APPLAUSE*

Day 99/365

Where do I even start…

The fact that I wanted badly to work with Kelly goes without saying. Her portfolio is certainly stunning and even intimidating, but she seemed to like my work, so I wasn’t gonna argue.

We set a shoot date and I started thinking about what I wanted to do. I kept drawing blanks, so I went location scouting. I decided I’d had my fill of run-down, “ugly” areas of downtown and wanted to go somewhere a bit more grand, a bit more poetic; probably a canyon. I settled on Emigration Canyon and headed off.

I drove and drove, got out of my car and walked where I wanted to take a closer look, but I couldn’t find anything that really blew me away. Sure, there were options, but nothing I was uncontainably excited about.

It wasn’t until just before sunset that I found this perfect little place where I decided I wanted to take Kelly. It had a beautiful little trail made of rocks, the view was spectacular, especially at sunset, and on and on. That was the place.

And before long, I knew what I wanted to do:

Barefoot hippie.

The idea struck a chord with me in a big way. Imagining her carefully gliding over a beautiful little trail made of rocks felt right. Maybe a bit heavy-handed, but I liked the idea anyway and I already had a specific picture in my mind.

So everything was ready to go. My model was booked, I’d found the perfect location, I had a concept in mind, I knew how much time we needed for hair and makeup and when we’d have to leave to get there in time for sunset and still have enough time to shoot in different places.

Then Kelly threw me a curveball…

FOX13 – yes, THAT FOX13 – wanted to shoot a story, which, in part, involved interviewing Kelly and getting some footage of her in action, on location, with me in charge.

“Ruh roh, Raggy”, said Scooby Doo.

Ruh roh indeed, Scooby. Maybe some Scooby Snacks will calm us both down.

I was already a bit intimidated by Kelly’s very strong portfolio, now I was going to have to shine with a FOX camera pointed at me some of the time. I can’t even imagine how Kelly must have felt. This was new for her too and she was nervous just like me, except the camera would be pointed at her most of the time.

On top of that, because of FOX’s schedule for when they were planning on doing the interview and shooting the in-action footage, we needed to come up with a new location somewhere in downtown Salt Lake and shoot at around 2pm.

Worst possible lighting scenario…

2pm lighting sucks. A lot. The light is harsh, ugly and very strong. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky to shield us from this. I needed to find some shade, but in downtown Salt Lake, that meant buildings. And buildings are boring, unless of course, they’re in run-down, “ugly” areas.

So much for having had my fill of it.

Here’s my favorite of that part of the shoot:

Kelly had the whole day to do whatever we wanted and we had a gap of a few hours between when we shot for FOX and when we needed to go out to the canyon. So we decided to fit in one more look in between, and I already knew I’d been wanting to do a shoot with a model in black lingerie, on a bed, swimming in a big fluffy comforter, so I went for it:

And finally, my vision of the hippie when I first went out to the canyon. The first shot was the picture I was after, the second works well with the concept and the third is probably my favorite and the most spectacular. It’s very encouraging and exciting to see the gap between my vision and my results become narrower:

This didn’t really belong in the series, but it has a robotic, plastic mannequin, Marilyn Monroe feel to it that I absolutely love:

I can’t tell you how hard it was for me to cut these pictures down to just six. We took 686 pictures in all and I assure you, there’s a lot of them I loved enormously.

There’s an expression that is common among artists.

“Kill your babies”

It’s when you have to choose to get rid of something you love but that you know doesn’t belong in your body of work. You’ve got all these little creations that you love equally, but you know you can’t keep them all, so instead of giving your babies up for adoption, you kill your babies.

I had a hard time killing mine with this shoot.

I hope this post was worth your wait and thanks for sticking with me this long! Giant shoutout to Kelly Kaye (model) and Jaylene Barbir (makeup artist) for such fantastic work and FOX13 (giant media corporation – you may have heard of them) for allowing me to promote my business through their story. Thanks also to Kelly’s husband who helped enormously in making this possible by holding up the gold reflector, a simple job but I can’t stress how crucial a role it was in capturing the shots I did.

I’ll let you all know as soon as I find out when the story airs on FOX.

Day 96/365

Richard and I wanted to do a bit more than just the basketball shoot, but with the sun setting quickly and an outfit change to follow, we knew we wouldn’t have the time before the sun was gone. By the time we were done with the basketball shots and were ready to go out for the second part of the shoot, the sun was actually already behind the mountains.

Now, some of you may not know this from never having tried it, but if you’ve ever shot pictures or even video during sunset, you become incredibly aware of just how fast the light dissipates. In fact, for the shoot I’m posting tomorrow, the pace of my shooting increased dramatically as the sun quickly sank behind the mountains. Looking through the lens and then reviewing my shots, I could actually see the light walking out on me from shot to shot.

Mind you, it’s sublime light as everyone knows, but it forces you to become much more focused to get the shot you need before it’s too late.

Anyway, here’s Richard:

Day 97/365

Lauren Rackham is a good friend of mine and she was in charge of directing a high school play called “Once on this Island”.

Really being honest here; I was very impressed with the talent for the show. Heck, I’d never even heard Lauren sing before that day as she directed her cast. She has quite the singing voice.

Here’s my favorite shots:

Day 98/365

Chad was the first male model I worked with this year. He gave me a couple of truly awesome shots, as you may remember from a previous post:

But so Chad runs his own window-cleaning business and he needed to get some new flyers done. Here’s the shot we decided to keep:

And here’s the flyer I designed for him:

By the way, if you need your windows cleaned, he’s your man. He cleaned my windows after the shoot and man I’ve never seen my windows this clean, ever!

Day 99/365… TOMORROW!!

And please, PLEASE, if you never read another post on my blog for the rest of your life, you HAVE to stick around for tomorrow’s pictures!

Stay tuned…

More catching up to do. I think I’ll be fully caught up now. Whew! That only took about… what? Seven years? Oh wait, no, I’ve only been doing this for 95 days…

On with the show:

Day 89/365

Natasha and I scouted some locations prior to a model shoot. We found an awesome little abandoned location in downtown Salt Lake. Here’s my favorite shot:

And then the model, Katerina. You may remember her from last month’s Salt Flats shoot:

Day 90/365

I was the designated photographer for our Easter family party:

Day 91/365

This is a really easy-to-make middle-eastern specialty called mana-eesh. I’m not sure that you’d spell it like that in english, but phonetically at least, it’s correct. Anyway, me likey the mana-eesh:

Day 92/365

This is my personal favorite sample wedding album. It’s an 8×8″. I just ordered a 12×12″ silk album about a week ago and I’m looking forward to showing that off to clients when it gets here.

Day 93/365

Sasha is a truly, truly terrific actress. I’m not just saying this; I know this for a fact. I’ve seen her in action at the local Actor’s Lounge which I used to have time to attend pretty regularly. Sasha impressed me so much from just the few scenes I’ve seen her perform, that I knew almost right away that I wanted her to have the biggest supporting role in an upcoming project I had cooking. That is, “upcoming” until my camera was stolen recently…

By the way, you might not believe it from seeing that third picture especially, but it was pouring down that day. Very ugly day to be shooting, but I tried to make it look and feel like summer.

Day 94/365

I really need to clean out my window well. I saw a mouse scurrying around using the tumbleweeds that got trapped in there as a means to get to the bottom of the well and back out.

Now, the normal reaction would be “ewww!!”, while my reaction was “Oooo!!”

In fact, I was on the phone with my realtor when I noticed the mouse, emails kept pouring in from other sources, chat windows kept flashing, my facebook kept popping up with new messages, and all I could think of was “I’m gonna need to switch lenses to get a half-decent shot.”

Day 95/365

Seems like a lazy shot to take, but I’ve been making a big marketing push for rajibarbir.com. Among other things I’ve been doing, I’m now listed on AltPick. In any case, I’ve been staring at that screen a lot lately.

For those of you who missed the post from the other day, here’s a reminder.

Day 85/365

Day 86/365

As the title implies, I worked with Dani again. We’d actually planned the shoot for that day (the 7th) weeks ahead of time, while the one from a few days back (the 4th) was last minute. That’s my excuse at least.

I tried doing some natural light stuff and it really didn’t work out… Like, at all… It’s making me want to get to the point where I can do it well, so I’ll probably try again in the future.

And then I turned my lights back on… Ahhhhh… The control…

Day 87/365

I honestly didn’t think Quincy was gonna show up! Communication had been touch and go, but I was glad when I heard a knock on my door.

Also from that day, I took this shot of my cologne… Why? Because I was in my bathroom getting ready, I look down to my cologne and then realize… I have the most pretentious, arrogant cologne on the planet!

I promise, I really just bought it because I liked how it smelled!

Day 88/365

I’ve never bought a Seventeen Magazine in my life. That day, I did. And that’s because I’ve been published in it! Woohoo!!

Look for this photo in Seventeen’s May issue, which I shot in the summer of last year:

Day 84/365

Like Benjamin Button, the new pictures are aging backwards…

Or something.

Alisha is an awesome model and another personal friend of mine. She and I have worked together several times. Here’s my personal favorite from the last shoot we worked on in the summer of last year:

It’d been way too long and we both knew we needed to work together again. We threw around some ideas in our various conversations but nothing really stuck.

Until Natasha suggested we use these cool aviator glasses she’d bought online recently. That sparked the ideas this shoot was based on.

Enjoy!

Day 83/365

Just a few days before this shoot, Natasha Roos calls me up and says she wants to shoot.

“I have a car”, she says. “A baby blue, mint condition, ‘66 Ford Thunderbird.”

Whoa. That’s cool.

It’s especially cool because it’s not hers and we still get to use it. It’s her friend’s roommate’s boyfriend’s doctor’s wife’s father’s cousin’s nephew’s car dealer’s Thunderbird.

Who cares, we have a ‘66 T-Bird!

“How long do we have with it?”, I ask, thinking we’ll have a limited amount of time in a specific location, like I was stuck doing the last time I got to play with some cars and a model.

“We have it all day and we get to take it wherever we want”, she replies.

No way…

So I suggested we take it by the Saltair. There’s a long, lonely road that goes along the I-80, just west of Salt Lake City. It looks remote enough. Perfect.

Now we just need to find a model, and I immediately thought of Dani, a personal friend and model I’ve worked with repeatedly and with great success. I call her up, and she’s all over it.

Sweet.

The following pictures resulted:

It finally happened… I made a mistake with one of my daily shoots, and although I didn’t forget to take pictures on April 6th, I deleted them from my memory card before yesterday’s shoot (April 7th), thinking I’d already downloaded them…

You’re just going to have to trust that I did take some pictures. I actually took some shots of the head of my acoustic guitar from various angles.

Those pictures are gone forever now.

And that does mean something to me. I have made it a point since I first started taking pictures digitally (summer of 2003) to always back everything up. The great photos, the crap photos; I downloaded them all, and I backed them all up. Always.

So the fact that I have a photo shoot, as small and insignificant as it was, which is gone forever, is just a touch upsetting. But, seeing as it’s not the end of the world either, here’s my (hopefully) funny approach at kinda sorta posting something anyway:

Day 85/365

Ok, onto the normal stuff.

I think the next few days, April 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th deserve their own posts. I don’t want any one shoot to win out over another one. So I’m going to start where I left off, with…

Day 82/365

Courtney is an actual bride, not a model Although I think she does dabble in modeling.

She’s getting married in California, but I was unfortunately booked that day. She insisted that I be responsible for shooting her bridals.

Day 76/365

Tic, toc, tic, toc.

I really wanted to do this one back when I was shooting NURF Wars.

Day 77/365

The light pole across the street snapped in half the night before I took this. I never heard it break, and I certainly didn’t think the winds were so strong as to snap a light pole clean in half!

My little boy Mason and I went out with our cameras to take some shots.

Day 78/365

Showing off the business cards. Why? Because I’m replacing my wedding-related business card with a new one.

Out with the old:

In with the new:

And the other two, just for good measure:

Day 79/365

Models I’m going to be working with. Hopefully soon. I did a casting call at a local talent agency to try and recruit more male models to work with.

I’m especially excited to work with Pat, the first and oldest of the three. He has the most interesting face ever. Just this quick snapshot is kinda cool!

Oh and if Pat looks familiar, it’s because he was the farmer in the very successful Napoleon Dynamite movie.

Day 80/365

My son’s bike chain. It was late and I was hurrying to take something before midnight. I’d almost forgotten to take one that day. But so I was rushing, snapped this real quick, looked at it and thought “Wow… Cool”

Day 81/365

My guitar picks.

A bridal and two female model shoots coming up next.

Stay tuned!

Day 74/365

Johnny, the original model for Mormons Exposed, recently agreed to shoot with me. I didn’t know he’d done that kind of work before, but we had some time to talk before starting the shoot at the music venue we were using, and that was one of the things that came up.

Anyway, our concept was just of him playing the guitar.

A little side note before I continue. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the pictures, but, and I’m not making this up, he sang about flying donkeys, idiot elves, goblins, dragons and castles.

It was tons of fun as a result

This last one was done as kind of a joke. We thought it’d be funny if he was pretending to rock out to a Guitar Hero guitar. If you’re really familiar with these things, then you might notice that this is technically a Rock Band guitar, not a Guitar hero one:

Day 75/365

Mat:

Like any photographer, I like abandoned houses. A lot.

This was a house that I’ve seen countless times on the side of the road, just off of I-215 and around 2200 North, but that I’d never been to.

Until now. And man oh man was it awesome. It was a night shoot and I was shooting alongside Natasha Roos again until I had to head out, about 20 shots into it… Oh well, maybe more stuff next time.

This was a different model. Chris is a close friend of mine who has acted in my films and now we’re starting to shoot some model stuff together. This shoot wasn’t really my idea, it was Natasha’s, but it was good, so I came along for a little bit. I just want to do something where I can actually show what Chris looks like