How do you handle an employee all-hands when your company was formed in the middle of a pandemic? Videographer Todd Skogur and I were asked to cover just such a momentous occasion, as Utility Golbal got together in-person for the first time in Denver. Working in real-time and under existing light, Todd and I were tasked with creating the new company’s first Image. These photos were a little time capsure, but were also going to be shared with investors and […]
Robotic surgery sounds otherworldly, but it’s actually becoming somewhat commonplace. Certain procedures, like prostate surgery, have seen the benefits of smaller incisions, less blood loss, and reduced healing times. To share their stories of excellent patient outcomes, Intermountain Health brought me in for a day. To make the procedures look believable, we sterilized various clients’ limbs. Always a good time to have your leg wrapped in orange bacteria-killing plastic for an hour. Interestingly, in some cases, the surgeon is a […]
Many of you know Ernie as one of Denver’s great videographers. Well-traveled, talented and wise, and one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. But he has a dark side: He’s a bluesman. Unlike me, he did something useful during the pandemic: He wrote and recorded an entire album. He had bandmate Mary Johanson (Wasted on the Young) come and give voice to his cool, witty lyrics. And he was nice enough to have me come around a do a few […]
My friend and colleague, newly-minted attorney Johnnie Nguyen, is running for office. He’s going to surely be elected his district’s next CU Regent. In order to get the word out, I was asked to do a morning of photos with him and several CU students. We might call this lifestyle photography—Creating a believable vignette, arranging the talent, giving them direction, and capturing a series of emotive yet technically-proficient photos. After Johnnie wins Regent, watch out. The sky’s the limit with […]
“That sounds so cool!” I said to the events coordinator at Jackson, my Financial Services client in Nashville. He had just invited me to photograph their big day in New York: Ringing the opening bell on the floor of the Stock Exchange. This is the seat of the world’s economy, where it all happens, and a place you can’t even take a tour of anymore! We also went up to Times Square to see their digital signage. Their extremely tall […]
Last month saw another challenging but fun multi-day shoot for Black Hills Energy. Their focus for this years’ Annual Report is their gas service in the Omaha area, and all the safety improvements being made there. From a 100-year-old downtown basement to suburban side-yards to rural pipe upgrades, the scope of service improvements kept growing. Nebraska is beautiful in late summer, and literally 90º warmer than last years cover shot: Dusk in Wyoming in January. The key to a productive […]
This month saw a challenging and endlessly interesting shoot. The Black Hills of South Dakota were calling, and as spring eased into summer, that’s a great place to be for not one, but two shoots. Coeur Wharf, a gold mine that’s been in production for more than 30 years near Deadwood, is operated by Coeur Mining. This location’s photo library was long depleted and was in dire need of a massive refresh, so we worked 2 1/2 days and delivered […]
March 5 with the first day of vaccine availability for agricultural workers, and JBS Foods in Greeley has 3500 of them under their roof! How to handle that many vaccinations? Do them in-house. With military precision, JBS managed to bring the vaccinations to their employees at work. The plant was closed, they got a paid day off, were given a specific time for their first shot. Reps and nurses from Kaiser, HealthOne, Centura and others were on-hand to administer. It […]
Why, why, WHY do we sometimes see different things on our monitors? Occasionally I hear about image brightness or color. Surprisingly though, not too often. When I edit an image, do you see it the same way I did? Depends. Computer monitors, like almost anything else in the world of tech (thermostats, tire inflators, your Subaru’s speedometer), need to be calibrated to be consistent. What does that mean? Calibration means setting up a device to a specific set of standards. […]
The Construction Blue Book is a regional (a dozen or so states) professional contractor’s magazine featuring up-to-the-minute stories about best practices, industry news, and at least one spotlight feature on a company or project. I’ve been lucky enough to be their local photography contractor for several years, even though they seem to need shoots on either the hottest day of the year or the coldest! But it’s a welcome challenge: Tight timelines, a 1-man crew, amateur talent, tricky locations. Basically […]
Being a client of one of the region’s great political strategists gets exciting for just a couple months, every couple years. It’s then that I get to meet wonderful and energetic candidates running for everything from Dog Catcher to State Senate. But our shoots aren’t overly social. They’re super cram-packed, actually. I receive a “tick-tock” schedule the night before with really well-planned locations and very tight timeframes, and usually bight and early, we’re off. This year was no exception. We […]
You make sure the gardener, cable guy, plumber, and roofer are insured, right? Often trade licensing carries a liability insurance requirement, but photography does not. You should still require it. Liability means that if the photographer, or any other contractor working on your property, breaks something or hurts someone, they will be responsible for it, not you or your company. Altitude Arts carries $2 million in liability, plus other additional coverage. Here’s a standard “Acord” certificate. Once you confirm that […]
Well, this has been an interesting year. And the business portrait train did not stop, it merely sat in the station for a couple months. But it’s chugging along again, and safely. One of my clients has me come to their various offices (dozens around the Denver metro area) to do head-and-shoulders “headshots” of their new employees. We’ve always done these in an office setting: Behind them you see a bit of out-of-focus window or plant. Something architectural, maybe a […]
Stop worrying. That’s my gig. Nobody thinks more about lost files more than me. And that should give you peace of mind! That and the fact that Altitude Arts’s backup system is battle-tested. Here’s why your files are safe: Every shoot, as it’s put onto my editing computer, immediately starts backing itself up both locally and in the cloud. Just copying the files onto my machine puts them in five—FIVE—places: Two cards in the camera My editing machine My local […]
This month, I had the pleasure of photographing one of the pillars of the Denver medical community. Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis is the CEO of Craig Hospital, one of the nation’s top treatment facilities for brain and spinal cord injury patients. These images will be featured in Dartmouth Medicine magazine. Besides being a physician and businessperson, Dr. Allen-Davis is also a fine artist and photographer, so we happily frittered away part of our short time together laughing about F stops and […]
Covering big events—Galas, dinners, awards ceremonies and the like—can be a real challenge. A wonderful, stressful, and fulfilling challenge. This year’s Boy Scouts Sports Breakfast was no exception. Documentation is not what any client wants. That’s what a newspaper would do. Communications and marketing people need something loaded with color and energy, a callback to an exciting time, and an enticement to attend next year. Sure, capturing details both big and small is part of the job. Setting the scene […]
Black Hills Energy, an electric and gas utility, is headquartered in Rapid City, South Dakota. On the doorstep of the actual Black Hills! Every year around midwinter, the investor-relations folks like to huddle with the in-house design team and me to come up with a way to photograph that year’s report theme. For the 2018 report, it was READY, which is what you want your local utility to be when an imminent blizzard is threatening to cut off your heat.Black Hills […]
Photographing an inside story for a magazine is always great, but getting to shoot the cover is really an honor. It’s validation that the art director both thinks highly of your work, and trusts you with their baby. Meet Joe Beeler (and follow him on Facebook!). Joe is a cancer survivor and awareness advocate, who is taking his cause to Mt. Everest base camp later this year! He’ll be on the next cover of Good Health magazine, published by SCL Health. […]
Last month, I was asked to shoot stills for a stand-up comedy special featuring Chad Daniels. Chad’s been all over Sirius XM Comedy lately, and his people felt the time was right to shoot another hour-long show for TV. All they needed was some stills to promote it, design into the DVD box, and pepper his social media with. Great show. Hilarious guy. Impossibly talented huge, easygoing TV crew. And what a beautiful venue! A designer had rebuilt the Comedy […]
Neoscape of New York City is a very interesting client. When a developer or builder is financing a new project (like an office building or apartment tower), Neoscape helps develop visualization tools. They’ll composite a rendering of a building into its future neighborhood, and include community members, extant infrastructure, and original photography into the scene. This week, they were in Denver, shooting stock with me, a small crew, and several professional models. Technical question: Where and when to get a […]
Good question. Our new system is cool and fast, but those little CDs that used to come in the mail (a week later)? Well, you probably won’t miss them. So here’s a step-by-step guide to saving and backing up your shoot. Enter your final shoot (not proofs) URL and password. Note the download button. Click “Download” then “Select All” That’s it! They’re on their way to wherever your downloads go. You can download individual files as well—Just select them one at […]
I made it my mission this summer to get my photo files delivered in the fastest, most client-friendly way possible! I wanted the process to be interactive, and for you to get your final files fast, even when hundreds of proofs and final hi-res photos are involved. No more snail-mailing CDs! After a ton of research and beta testing, I chose my new delivery system—Photoshelter, which acts as a one-stop interface for sharing media. What this means for you: You’ll get […]
This month, I had the pleasure of photographing an official bill-signing at the Governor’s Mansion in Denver. My friend and client, Rep. Jessie Danielson, had co-sponsored a bill allowing Colorado residents to collect rain on their own property. For some reason (maybe because it was basically in plain English and applied to regular Joes like me) it became very popular, and the signing was a hot-ticket event. Of course, you can’t bring up “barrels” without Gov. Hickenlooper bringing up beer. […]
This month, I was tasked by the official American Bar Association magazine, ABA Journal, to cover a complex story involving a jailhouse death, and bringing larger questions about capital punishment to light. One of the subjects, the father of the victim, has become an outspoken death penalty opponent. In his Pueblo home, surrounded by religious and Native American imagery, we made a series of reflective portraits. Later, in Denver, I photographed the legal team involved. The publication commissioned two photos and […]
The 2015 World Downhill Championships were held in Vail this year, and what an awesome scene it was. You know how in the Olympics when the slalom racers get to the bottom of the hill and hit the brakes, showering the crowd with fresh Colorado pow? Yeah, we did that. In person it’s pretty cool.Anyway, my old buddy videographer Gene Moffett got a call from the International Olympic Committee (in Switzerland!) asking him to form a Denver-based crew for a couple days […]
Fun night. Unusually, I was asked by Production Designer Dylan Kiszlowski, to cover a rock show. The band: Widespread Panic on Halloween weekend. Sweet! Dylan had just finished re-designing their set to reflect the holiday: “We surrounded the screen with a mass of misfit boards that mimicked the wall lining of an abandoned mine shaft. We call it the Decaying Wall. Attached and spaced from each other with black aircraft cable, the boards floated independently in one big rotting wood […]
Every year, like atomic clockwork, the communications folks at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder have me up to photograph their annual award candidates. Note that the next best thing to winning a Nobel is winning a NIST Award! This time, we peeked, among other places, into the lab of a team developing a standard for pacemaker parts. You see, they flex every time the heart beats, and failure amongst the manufacturers was commonplace but irregular. The FDA […]
I’m sure you can tell from my personal vehicle what a total gear-head I am. I mean, velour seats, CD player, and over 100 horsepower. So it was merely an extension of my personality when Brian Malone of Malone Media asked me to assist his camera dept. on a documentary shoot taking place at this year’s Indy 500. The story: Racing legend (ex-driver and team owner) Sam Schmidt was preparing to take the wheel of a custom Corvette C7 Stingray […]
A client told me the other day that another photographer who was bidding one of their shoots claimed he “didn’t need lights.” Existing-light photography is a noble vocation, but inappropriate for most of corporate work. A headshot like this one should only take a couple minutes—these are busy (in this case, medical) people—and wandering around an office for an hour won’t fly. An experienced photographer will scope out the set quickly, and be ready when the subject arrives. […]
Boulder’s crown jewels is the little-known National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, where the world’s top physicists research the Next Big Thing. As their photographer, I’m always baffled by the complexity of the work going on there, and tax my remaining brain cells trying not to bump into anything breakable. Some of these labs are tidier than others. Every year, I have the pleasure of photographing their National Awards winners (some of whom are Nobel laureates) and attempting […]
Many of my clients see me for business portraits. Headshots, we like to call them. Some have in-house design teams to edit and retouch the files for them, but many rely on me for that. In case you’re interested, here’s how all that works: We shoot a series of portraits of each subject (nothing new there) and the client watches them go down on my laptop, approving or making suggestions along the way. If they have a graphics team, all I […]
“I don’t want to be photographed just standing there in the hallway,” attorney Bill Babich said. “Do you know of any diesel truck graveyards?” I didn’t. But after a few minutes on the phone, I had the nice people at Active Truck Parts, literally halfway to Omaha, on board. You see, Babich specializes in transportation law, and was interested in demonstrating that for the cover of a new legal directory. I was excited to spend the morning far away from […]
Oh, come on. You were kind of excited to hear that the talented kids at Lakewood High School won themselves a Katy Perry concert, weren’t you?They, like, made this great video and, like, Katy Perry totally came through? Check out the video here. ABC’s Good Morning America asked if I’d be able to cover it. As THE ONLY MEDIA PHOTOGRAPHER. Aside from the 3 am call time (you read that right), it was a blast. Katy came on about 5 am […]
Meet Gordon. Gordon likes to run. 100 miles at a time. But he also runs a successful law firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His unusual hobby caught the eye of Blue Onion Advertising’s client, Needles, who feature real customers in their national ads. We photographed Gordon on a record-breaking unusually warm day in mid-march in Boulder. Up before dawn, two locations and countless poses down before lunch. Hopefully, invisible to the client is the work that goes into this kind […]
Yes, that is one question you want to ask to your gardner, your mover, even your corporate photographer. Only the most experienced vendors carry liability insurance. Coverage that indemnifies you and your firm if there’s any sort of accident or damage at your shoot. Paul carries a multi-million dollar liability policy to protect you. Just ask your controller if they prefer that their vendors arrive insured. No, really. Ask them! I’ve never needed to make a claim, but that’s the way I like […]
File under: Celebrity Architectural Photography Some months ago, I had the pleasure of photographing details around Chez Elway in Cherry Hills, Colorado for Vantage Controls. (They make the coolest home automation/lighting controls anywhere.) Eventually, Electronic House Magazine got wind of this project and decided to wrap their October 2012 issue around it, cover and all. So, I brought in a super-high-resolution system (120 mb/file) and spent the day photographing the grounds, inside and out. Yes, that includes the pool house, home theater (which […]
First for Women magazine (circulation 1.6 million), a great client, scheduled another shoot to coincide with the second significant snowfall of Autumn. I think we might have powered through one or two extra Cappuccinos that morning (Thanks, Hotel Monaco!), but we all arrived eventually. Model and bodybuilder Ranee Elder was styled by Jessica Chynoweth. Michael Calanan ably assisted.
Sometimes, a great shoot followed by a kind word just makes your week. From my client at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Dept. of Commerce, in Boulder: “I just got the photos and they are great! Thanks so much. You and [assistant] Peter [Wayne] were great to work with. The scientists really appreciate the small impact that you make in getting these photos. Not having their labs invaded for hours at a time is a huge benefit, and […]
This week, I worked with the LA-based crew of an ABC reality show, Wife Swap, on a special: Celebrity Husband Swap. I had worked on WifeSwap, HusbandSwap, SuperNanny and others but, in this state, everybody knows this guy. Our subject was the infamous pastor Ted Haggard. Want some dirt? Nicest guy in the world. Pastor Ted and his wife Gayle patiently answered interview questions frankly, with good humor, and made plenty of jokes about themselves and their situation. The show […]
Spring has been weird everywhere, and Colorado has been no exception. But First for Women, an incredibly popular women’s health and lifestyle magazine (circulation: 1.6 million) called to book a shoot of two of their local weight-loss success stories, just as the cold rain started falling. We booked the gorgeous new Four Seasons Denver but the forecast wasn’t promising. On the day of the shoot, deadline looming, the rain was coming in horizontally and it was barely above freezing. The […]