It’s been a while. One day short of three weeks in fact. And according to recent predictions, today is The Rapture: D-Day + 1! How are you feeling? Good? Good. I feel hungry, but otherwise I’m fine :)

Back to reality though; this was a behind-the-scenes shoot I did for Crimes of the Heart, a play performed superbly by some of my local actor friends. I didn’t get to see the play for myself until 2 days later, and what’s funny is that I had about as much fun observing the behind-the-curtain craziness as I did watching the play.

So many funny things we had to whisper and hold back the laughter for…

Promise, I did not write this, nor did I encourage it. What’s really funny is what I’m not posting here, but these messages to me got completely out of hand! Somehow it ended up involving silverback gorillas.

This is Alisha.

Actress, model and long-time friend of mine, she came to me with a request to shoot pictures of her acting crew. They’re all headed on a cruise to perform a play! How cool is that?!

I do have a question though… If the ship tilts significantly to one side or the other, is it customary to shift the performance in the opposite direction to keep people from getting motion sick?

Hmm…

Anyway, onto the headshots of all the beautiful/handsome people. Everyone except Alisha was getting the star treatment, because… Uh…

Because all the actors are playing actors in the play.

Most. Redundant. Sentence. EVAR!!

But so, all the actors needed headshots to print out and actually use during the play, so what it means is that they needed to be in character for their headshots.

Jeremy plays Hugh Lockwood, Veronica Vicious’s lackey husband.

Mary plays Glo Star, the desperately untalented actress trying to reach the top of the food chain.

Tony plays Brent, director and host of the awards show.

Tonia plays Ravishing B. Yuety, the up-and-coming ingenue.

Heidi plays Veronica Vicious, the talented but mean actress.

And Alisha plays Sally White, Veronica’s stalker…

And here’s a few of Sally White’s stalking exploits involving the highly irritable Veronica Vicious:

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing. – Charles Schaefer

I was standing steady in the corner of my son’s bedroom, NERF gun in hand, cocked and ready to fire, silently waiting for my two boys to fall into my trap and come to me. My oldest, Gabe, took the lead. “Ok Mason, you take this room, I’ll take that one.” I didn’t know which of the rooms he meant.

I press my finger on the trigger more tightly. Gabe walks in.

I fire. Direct hit!

He screams, laughs and runs back out. Mason in the other bedroom is screaming and running to his brother’s aid. All out war! I reload, fire again, chasing them now.

Oh man that was a fun afternoon. Thought it might be worth sharing :)

Back to my work, here’s a headshot I did recently for a terrific actor and all-around great guy called Matt Mascaro. He was in NURF Wars, which I’m afraid is still in the works. Anyway, here you go.

Wedding, engagement session and model shoots coming up next, either today or tomorrow.

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…

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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…

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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!

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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.

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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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And here’s the flyer I designed for him:

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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…

Day 26/365

I thought for sure I’d be blogging about my disastrous (in my mind at least) first day of shooting NURF Wars, but instead I’m gonna show you what my son does every now and then.

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