I feel like I’m approaching being fully caught up. I wonder if I just jinxed myself and a meteor will hit my house this time tomorrow… Surely my clients would be understanding if I got hit by a meteor, right?… Right?!

Day 301/365

“Wahoooooo!!!”, said the Slough family. Thanks Heidi for letting me tag along!

Day 302/365

Evelyn & Yuly

Day 303/365

The Moyes family. Again, thanks Heidi for letting me tag along

Day 304/365

This is what it looks like when I wind up to my first frame on either of my new film cameras (the Holga and the Diana F+). I’m REALLY excited about showing you these! I’m going to be scanning and posting images from my film rolls soon. “Soon” as in soon after I check with NASA to make sure I’m not really getting hit by a meteor. (iPhone photo)

Day 305/365

Beads… (iPhone photo)

Day 306/365

Ok I have to talk about my personal favorite shots of Jennifer Klekas.

First off, Jen is a beautiful and immensely talented actress. I’ve seen her perform and she’s just stunning.

She dabbled in modeling when she was younger, apparently deciding she wasn’t any good at it. I know I know, “but look how beautiful she is!!!!”. Well, yes. But believe it or not, beauty isn’t everything in modeling. How you move has a lot to do with it. You shoot enough models and you start to get a feel for how models move just by looking at their portfolio, which is filled with STILL pictures. Don’t ask me how, you just develop a feel for who’s got it and who doesn’t.

Jen was kind of rusty but more than anything lacked some of the confidence she needed to move the way I knew she could. We still managed.

Anyway, the reason I wanna talk about Jen is because I got something that I’m really proud of.

And there it is:

In the one on the left, her hair is a bit of a mess, she looks uncomfortable in her own pristine environment, her expression looks stunned. She looks out of her element. This is before the guests arrive.

In the other, she’s poised, in control, clean as a whistle, confident; she could get you to buy her a villa in the south of France if she felt like it. This is the only face you ever see when you’re around her.

Visually, the contrast is relatively subtle. But the contrast in the mood of each image is so stark, they’re unmistakably different.

So woohoo!! I’m excited to have pulled that off

And here’s the rest that I loved:

Day 307/365

The mountain range across from my house, for the bazillionth time (iPhone photo)

Day 308/365

Trinity

A tender mother-daughter moment… Awww…

Day 309/365

Don’t tell ME to slow down!!! (iPhone photo)

I forgot to write it as such, but that last post was actually Day 268/365. So today, I start with Day 269/365 in what will hopefully be the last segment and exciting conclusion to the Broken Screen Trilogy.

I’m still trying to attach Spielberg as the director for it but we’ll see.

Trilogies are psychologically satisfying. They are the basic building blocks to any good story.

Beginning, middle and end. Exciting introduction, obstacle, resolution.

You could condense a movie trilogy’s story structure into a single movie as long as you keep its three act structure and it wouldn’t lose anything except the extensive details that allow Hollywood to milk as much money out of a franchise as they possibly can. But money aside, the three act structure is as old as time. Ok the Greeks came up with it but whatever. Go read up on Aristotle

Here’s the story arc to my little adventure:

Act 1, I received my new monitor and started setting it up. Exciting Introduction!

Act 2, I found out it was defective. Obstacle! RAWR!!

Act 3, I received an email from HP saying they’d send a replacement. Resolution!

Ball’s in your court Mr. Spielberg! I envision a $700 million budget with me in the lead role. I’ve instructed my imaginary agent to ask for $699 million of that. Good luck making a movie for a million bucks.

Day 269/365

The big monitor box, sitting there waiting for its replacement to arrive, while its two significantly smaller friends hang around in the background (iPhone photo)

Day 270/365

After a tiring downtown shoot, I went up to Ensign Peak to relax and enjoy the view. I only managed 2 shots with my iPhone before I was caught.

I really love this shot. Anonymous, natural and best of all, peaceful (iPhone photo)

Day 271/365

Ben & Liz

Day 272/365

I actually shot maternity pictures that day, but the subject insisted I didn’t post any pictures online. Oh well. Lightpost in a parking lot (iPhone photo)

Ok, I have to admit, I’ve been struggling quite a bit to pick the camera up every day with this 365 day project. And my iPhone has made it excessively easy for me to NOT pick up my camera and instead just grab a quick and all too often lousy shot…

For those of you just tuning in, on January 12th of this year, I started a project wherein I would shoot a picture a day, every single day for a year.

So far, I forgot to shoot on a day and added that to my tab, I accidentally deleted the pictures I took for one of the other days, and I’ve found myself taking some decent shots that without this project I would not have bothered to try taking in the first place.

So uh… wonderful learning experience… journey of a lifetime… eye-opening project… all that cheesy crap.

But the reality is still that I’m struggling with this, and have been for some time. I distinctly remember thinking, very soon after starting the project, “Uhh… I’m out of ideas…”.

That was in February.

But unless something significant prevents me from it, I always finish what I started, and this (not so) little personal project is no exception.

Oh I should mention before posting these that my computer screen died on me late on Saturday night. That certainly adds to the fun for a visual artist huh! It was really weird seeing my desk without the monitor there.

You know what I should have done that night though? Call up and invite a whole bunch of people to watch me edit my photography, tell ‘em it’s really important and they just have to make it, and then when they get here, they can just stare in shock as I “edit” my work and exclaim “Oh man check out how beautiful the light is on that one!!”… Without a monitor sitting in front of me. Just an empty space where the screen should be…

That would have gotten me checked into a mental hospital in a big friggin’ hurry!

Thankfully, I didn’t end up in a mental hospital and I recently made friends with an awesome local photographer. Heidi made the trip to my house at about midnight just to bring me a 14″ monitor she had lying around so I could at least have a means to stay connected with my work and the world. A 14″ screen isn’t exactly ideal, in fact, for the most part it’s downright frustrating, but it beats the mental hospital outcome by a mile.

So if you’re reading this, thanks Heidi. I owe you one!

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to in the last little while, photographically speaking.

Day 228/365

Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for adventure
And whatever comes our way
“Born to be Wild” – Steppenwolf

Day 229/365

More wires and skies (iPhone photo)

Day 230/365

Only the beautiful and talented model Dani Jae can thumb wrestle and look fabulous doing it (iPhone photo)

Day 231/365

Death by Black Hole is a really fascinating book (iPhone photo)

Day 232/365

Really wasn’t in a good place that whole week (iPhone photo)

Day 233/365

A good friend’s daughter Trinity for her 1st birthday. I suck with giving kids birthday presents, so I offered to take pictures instead.

Day 234/365

Whenever I find the time, I love to go hang out at Rob Diamond’s Actor’s Lounge. Always gives me some good talent to keep an eye out for when I’m ready to work on new film projects (iPhone photo)

Day 235/365

Fresh perspectives on old themes.

Day 236/365

Seeing the curvature of the lights (iPhone photo)

Day 237/365

Trinity really dug into that cake (iPhone photo)

Day 238/365

The view from your backyard is always nicer than you think (iPhone photo)

Day 239/365

This looks like something Chase Jarvis might have done in one of his daily iPhone photo shoots (iPhone photo)

Day 240/365

Scrounging around to find a picture when I once again didn’t feel like picking up my giant brick of a pro camera, I found that the iPhone had a really strange lens flare through the windows of my bathroom (iPhone photo)

Day 241/365

My skateboard. I should mention that one of the reasons I wanted to pick up skateboarding was simply from a desire to feel what it’s like to glide past the world around me, feeling the wind in my clothes, in my face, all without moving a muscle. On that front, the experience hasn’t disappointed at all (iPhone photo)

Day 242/365

I’m getting more and more requests for shooting at the Salt Flats

Day 243/365

If there are any cops reading this (actually, the groom from day 242 is going to be one), please don’t come looking for me for holding up a camera in my car to take a mediocre picture of an old classic that I don’t know anything about while going slightly faster than the speed limit. Thanks! (iPhone photo)

Day 244/365

More sky, this time without wires

Day 245/365

A rainy day!

Day 246/365

Two things with my good friend Alisha.

1st, the “video” test I did with her just before the real shoot.

Alisha from Raji Barbir on Vimeo.

Then, you can add muscly to the already very long list of adjectives to describe everything Alisha is.

Day 247/365

I cooked something!

Day 248/365

In the morning, I saw this cool light pattern on my basement wall that I’d never seen before then (iPhone photo)

Then in the evening, I decided it was time to unwind to some classical music (iPhone photo)

Day 249/365

The inside of an abandoned car in the field behind my best friend Lisa’s house (iPhone photo)

Day 250/365

Ok I’m sorry… but am I the only one who sees a farting bunny in this one?? (iPhone photo)

Day 251/365

My portable recorder has a full head of hair! I laughed hysterically when I put that windscreen on (iPhone photo)

Day 252/365

Mason wanted to see pictures of himself as I took them (iPhone photo)

Day 253/365

I’m pretty sure this was THE laziest picture day this whole year… We have Apache helicopters buzzing around quite a bit here because of the nearby kinda-sorta military base right down the street. I’ve seen them fly really low. REALLY low. I’ve always wanted to catch one as it hovered down to the ground with civilian cars in the foreground.

But this wasn’t it. This was just plain lazy. Sorry (iPhone photo)

Day 254/365

Had to take a new self-portrait for my listing over at Wonderful Machine. I’m listed in the US under Salt Lake City and then if you filter by specialty I’m listed under Beauty and Fashion.

Anyway, I hate self-portraits… and I’m not crazy about this one… Maybe someone can take one I’ll finally like for longer than 30 seconds.

Day 255/365

I wrote a song. I think I’m going to call it “You Make Me Feel”. For one pair of ears only.

Day 256/365

Heather and Jenny, for a Utah Business Magazine shoot.

Day 257/365

Gliding! (iPhone photo)

Day 258/365

I actually really like this one. I was just wandering around the very empty plaza on Redwood Rd and around 5400 S. on a Sunday, waiting for someone (iPhone photo)

Day 259/365

Patterns in the field (iPhone photo)

Day 260/365

3 good things I did that day.

1st, I made tabouli!! I make good tabouli. Really, I do!

2nd, I took a walk on an incredibly windy day despite the advice not to (iPhone photo)

3rd, I took more pictures of wires in the sky (iPhone photo)

Day 261/365

I love that cake.

And I love the fire-like light on those rings.

Day 262/365

No way out… (iPhone photo)

“Wish You Were Here” (iPhone photo)

Day 263/365

Downtown with Sam & Aileen

The coolest piano ever!

Day 264/365

Mason is slowly taking over my love for skateboarding (iPhone photo)

Day 265/365

I never took a picture of my empty desk with the missing, very smelly (it burned up) and broken screen. This is the 14″ replacement. It makes my speaker monitors (the big ones) look huge. I just got an email telling me that my new screen is getting here on the 7th, assuming FedEx decides it wants to deliver on time.

Day 266/365

LOL!!!

I saw this while walking into the Walmart with my little boy Mason, did a double take and then laughed hysterically. Can you spot the misspelling?

Things haven’t quite slowed down fully yet, but I have some time to spare this morning and thought I’d post before I suddenly got buried under an avalanche of work again.

Also, two things…

First, I think I forgot to take a picture yesterday! It finally happened… I forgot to take a daily shot… Oh well, put it on my tab. I’ll hopefully remember to shoot an extra day after I reach my 365 days.

Second, I messed up my daily count somewhere… Either on the blog or with my files, because the first shoot for today’s blog is tagged with “Day 199″ in Lightroom… So uh, I don’t know. Who cares, I’ll have two days that are tagged with “Day 199″.

Day 199/365

Dan and Debbie got married a little while back. They were awesome! Right from the engagement shoot, I discovered just how much fun and how adventurous and full of life these two were. The shopping cart shot is still comfortably one of my favorite engagement shots of all time.

Anyway, so Debbie came back to me, wanting to trash her dress. I was happy to oblige

Here was the result:

Day 200/365

Nathy could hardly speak english, having just moved from Columbia, so I was lucky to have had her posse act as translators.

Fortunately though, beauty doesn’t need to be translated.

Day 201/365

Josh & Natalie – I love seeing shoes being “left at the door” when someone’s doing something fun (dancing, golfing, whatever). I see it as breaking free from one’s constrictions.

Day 202/365

The shadows of grass. (iPhone photo)

Day 203/365

The iPhone sucks at catching action shots. (iPhone photo)

Day 204/365

The button you push when you wanna get across the street. (iPhone photo)

Day 205/365

I was on the freeway doing 70MPH, but I don’t care, that sky looked cool to me. (iPhone photo)

Day 206/365

We had a Category 4 tumbleweeds issue… (iPhone photo)

My neighbors on the other hand, had a Category 5 situation. (iPhone photo)

Also, BEAUTIFUL smoky skies from a nearby wildfire… I have no clue why I didn’t get my real camera to catch this… (iPhone photo)

Day 207/365

And finally, a shot from a wedding I did recently. This is the father of the groom I think.

Here’s what happened.

He got up to give a speech like many others had and did after him, but he went on for a while. So I got plenty of opportunities to get the shots that everyone would be happy with. Shots of him, shots of the bride and groom, shots of the guests, etc. All the traditional stuff.

But he was still going and my shots were getting repetitive, so I decided to goof around a little.

Now I’m willing to bet that most people, especially the bride and groom, won’t like this shot. I hope I’m completely wrong of course and please let me know how you feel about it in the comments section, because I love this shot.

I’ll say it again.

I LOVE this shot.

The man is completely dwarfed by the enormous expanse around him. He’s practically insignificant in terms of the space he occupies, and yet you can’t really look away from him can you.

I hope you like it too.

Ok not really… I designed a book over at Blurb that I wanted to print and keep for myself. I’d been meaning to do this for quite some time, but just never got around to doing it. Finally, a few nights ago I decided to start, and once I did, I couldn’t get myself to stop until I was done. So I was up until about 2am, two nights in a row, obsessively working on it until it was complete.

I was never really planning on sharing it with anyone. I just wanted to put together a book with my work in it…

Weird, I know.

But then I finished it and it felt like such a powerful and intimate visual diary of my experiences and my growth as a photographer and a person that I decided I had to tell everyone.

I’m anxious to get it!

Meantime, I’m almost, if not over a month behind on the photo blogging… I’m still taking shots daily, but I’ve been supidly busy lately… I’m getting to it all still, so hang in there.

Oh and I still see some traffic to the blog, so I appreciate those of you still keeping an eye out for me! I’ll be blogging again soon.

One last thing. For those who haven’t noticed, I now have a “know me” section on the website. This will take you to my Facebook, Flickr and Twitter accounts if you feel like getting to know me a little.

I hope to see some of you there!

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 71/365

Meichelle is an awesome model. Her online portfolio shows a variety of work, the majority of which leans towards really high-fashion stuff. She does have the figure and a fantastic look to do just that, but I felt that she had a really great “girl-nextdoor” look too, so I went with a more casual approach.

So we went to a little park close to my house. Nothing fancy, but I’d never shot a model there with snow on the ground, and I figured her blue eyes would really pop there.

This is exactly the shot I was after:

Then she put some glasses on. I’ve never done this with glasses before, but I figured “Hey, why not include myself in this shot?”

And then… we decided to do something stupid.

There was a relatively large basin-like area next to where we’d been shooting, normally just a giant patch of grass, but at that particular time of the year, it was half-covered in snow.

And that’s an important distinction; half-covered. Because the part that wasn’t covered in snow was covered in knee-deep water.

That’s where we wanted to go.

What?! It looked cool!!

So we started heading down. Not thinking much about how we’d get there, we went through the grassy area to get to the mini-lake. It looked dry enough when we started down that path, but before we knew it, we were navigating through ankle-deep water, little streams of water running through here and there, trying to step on the tiny little patches of grass that were poking out of the water. It wasn’t any use, our feet were soaked. And the cold… Oh man, it was cold.

And the whole time, I’m thinking “Is this really going to be worth it?” Because honestly, I wasn’t even sure when we first looked out to the water. I mean the water looked cool, but would it work with a model in it? Not to mention that since we came so unprepared, I wasn’t expecting to have much time to find my groove and get what I wanted before we both froze to death. Meichelle especially.

We stopped in a little patch of snow just off the side of the mini-lake, I made sure I was fully ready to shoot as soon as she was out in the water, and off she went. She didn’t go too far, but who could blame her?

This isn’t a particularly strong picture, but I just had to show the bravery.

And this is my favorite of the ones we shot. I’m still not sure that it was worth it to be honest. It sure was fun, but I’m not too crazy about the shot itself.

And then we went back to finish the shoot:

Day 72/365

My son doesn’t clean up his Lego blocks too well…

Day 73/365

The stack of padded enveloppes that are ready to go out to my models:

I have a couple of days worth of model shoots, so make sure to scroll all the way down

Day 53/365

I shot a couple of male models that day. The first was in the morning (Warren), while the second was a night shoot (Phillip). I have to admit that after shooting with Warren, I felt I needed something a little stronger. Warren’s pictures are technically fine, but they’re just portraits. Phillip’s stuff was more of an experiement with aggressive lighting techniques. I liked that better.

Warren:

 

Phillip:

Day 54/365

Lianna is a stunning model I’ve worked with before. I love working with her. We’re hoping to do a couple shoot with her apparently very handsome boyfriend sometime this week. I’ve never met him so I have no clue what he looks like, but I trust her judgement.

Plus she said she’d have access to some rich people’s houses for our shoot, so it’ll enhance the shoot that much more.

Anyway, I agreed to shoot with her down where she was, in Pleasant Grove. It’s about an hour’s drive from where I am, so it’s not exactly convenient for us (“us” meaning me and my favorite makeup artist), but I figured it would help get us some new locations without scouting for them, not to mention that she’s totally worth the drive (this is in case she reads this blog… hi Lianna!).

Finally, I think I suck as an editor… I have a really hard time figuring out which of these (and the ones above) to keep and which to keep to myself. A tight edit would yield one to three great shots… I’m ending up with a lot more than that.

What do you think?

Day 36/365

As I start this blog post, I’m 12 minutes past my daily deadline (ie. it’s 12 minutes past midnight). I just finished Photoshopping the best shots from today’s shoot, and I’m really loving some of these. Some of them are starting to feel like stories, with each shot telling a different part of the story.

In fact, I’m gonna give each group of shots a title.

Girl Next Door

Alone in the Dark

Portrait of a Dancer