Netflix Special: On Location with Demetri Martin Looking for a unit stills and film production photographer in Denver who gets both the creative and production sides of the set? I’ve been shooting film and video production photography since my LA days, and while I don’t do it every week, when the right project comes along, I’m all in. Take Demetri Martin’s latest Netflix comedy special, filmed at Denver’s Paramount Theater. Two live shows. One very full backstage. My job: capture […]
Location portraits are tough — and that’s exactly why I enjoy them. Every shoot in a real-world environment brings its own set of moving targets: light, space, weather, people. All the years I’ve spent solving problems on the fly are what turn challenging settings into successful days. That experience came in handy when I recently worked with Ingenovis Health on a series of location business portraits for their team. The concept was simple but smart: create a mix of portraits […]
Shooting outdoor headshots in Colorado is always an adventure. The strong Colorado sun presents its own set of challenges, and when you’re working with harsh sunlight in outdoor photography, the key is using the right lighting gear to balance everything out. For this shoot, I relied on a 6’ overhead “butterfly” silk (Westcott Scrim Jim Cine) and a 6’ Photek SunBuster umbrella, paired with strobes to control the intensity of the sun. It’s never just a set-it-and-forget-it situation — outdoor […]
You wouldn’t let an uninsured roofer climb around on your house, right? Or hire a cable guy who doesn’t know a wrench from a wire cutter? Hiring a photographer without liability insurance is the same gamble — just with nicer lighting. Most licensed trades — like electricians and plumbers — are required to carry liability insurance. Photography isn’t regulated the same way, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less risky.You should always ask your photographer for proof of insurance. Here’s why […]
Business Portraits in Denver? Let’s be honest: nobody wakes up thinking, “Today’s the day I get a business headshot!” But if you run a business in Denver, you do need one. Why? Because your face is on everything from your website to your email signature to that charming brochure you keep forgetting to update. And when your photo screams “2014 LinkedIn selfie,” it’s time. Whether you need corporate headshots Denver, employee photos or business headshots in Boulder, we’ve got you […]
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 […]
Politics is supposed to be a miserable business, right? Well, I must have pissed off all the right people, because my political clients are wonderful. We shoot mail pieces all summer long, for every office from City Councilwoman to U.S. Senator. And guess what? We have a blast doing it. Long days, challenging conditions, but always filled with interesting conversation between wardrobe changes. Best of luck to this lot! See more people on location here. Lighting on Adam by gaffer […]
Convenience! I’ve been taking a lot of headshots at conferences lately. Why? Mostly because we all got a couple years off, and many of my clients have employees spread all over the country. They only get together occasionally, and what an opportunity that is to do consistent portraits! These are from last month at a big conference hotel. I was set up in a small side area, and everyone was invited to stop by between the morning and evening sessions […]
Since 2020, we’ve all seen a really noticeable rise in remote working situations. Just this past month, I’ve photographed over a dozen portraits of people whose employers are out-of-state. This is Elizabeth, who works in Denver, but whose home office is in Atlanta. her company, wisely, provides skyline backgrounds of all their cities. I just dropped this one in. If you have an out-of-state team, consider a solution like this for both your brand’s cohesiveness and your associates’ convenience! For […]
My wonderful client, Sentral, who design and build the hippest of apartment communities, asked me to help them with a bunch of portraits while they had all their executives in town from all over. They had an event that evening in a hotel ballroom, so we got a suite for Happy Hour & Headshots. Suites are funny. The most obvious place for backdrop and lighting was a bedroom, but it wasn’t nearly wide enough. No problem, I can stand out […]
This month’s shoot with Bighorn Co. was real blast. The goal was to make a piece raising awareness of the union workers around you that you might not even realize are in a union! We got to use the beautiful C2 studios in Denver, with makeup styling by Beth Ryan, and had a blast meeting these folks as they filed through: Teachers, fire fighters, nurses, etc. Studio shoots are always enjoyable. We got the tunes and hot cocoa going, and […]
Production stills are generally a great experience, especially when you know the crew well, and the product is just gorgeous. This month’s shoot for Uplight was no exception. The DP was Brook Aitken, directed by Waypoint films’ Jed Mortenson. Our location was this beautiful modern home in Boulder. Production stills are often more efficient than booking two separate shoots: Stills and motion, but they do take a little time although you can shoot some during filming. Questions about doing stills […]
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 […]
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 […]
I hope this is obvious. Here’s the website of a client who just redid their business portraits. Which one do YOU think looks better?
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 […]
Let’s talk business portraits, AKA headshots. Last month, I had the pleasure of doing a new round of photography for Bachus & Schanker, whose faces you know from TV and billboards. Kyle Bachus and the creative team are so great to work with, as they’re always miles ahead of their competition. In this case, they decided we should spend extra time with each attorney to capture them on unlit seamless for the designers to cut out and manipulate later, depending […]
Annual report assignments are routinely the best. Small or no crew, but willing and collaborative clients. Also, long shot lists and occasionally challenging conditions. The 2020 Black Hills Annual was no different. Usually shot in summer or fall, this years’ edition was put off for obvious reasons, but also because our hero location, the Corriedale wind farm in Wyoming, had just come on-line. So…January it is. A wind farm in January is exactly as cold as you think it’s […]
The only good part of working during a pandemic is facing interesting challenges. I was contacted by Forum Financial of Chicago recently to shoot a remote portrait for one of their advisors, but without anyone from Forum on-set. In addition to a portrait, they also wanted to start adding personal branding-type photos to their advisors’ pages, so clients could get to know them a little better. The first subject happened to live in Denver. The Creative Director had interesting ideas […]
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 […]
All photographers are also retouchers, to some extent. Most of us can remove a background, clone out a fire hydrant or wastebasket, or make a gray sky blue. But sometimes clients are surprised at how a truly great retoucher, a real specialist, can save an otherwise unusable photo. Here is an awards night photo I made for a client just a few months ago. They’re nice enough that they make prints of these special career moments, and send them to […]
Every so often, you end up on a really wild shoot. This one was for Goodyear Tires, and it entailed making production stills during a digital shoot for online ads and social media. A simple concept: Goodyear snow tires are like having your own team of huskies! Just combine actual sled dogs, a lovely Mercedes, and a ton of fresh powder in beautiful Winter Park, Colorado. Our day started pre-dawn, with grips and riggers affixing heavy video cameras with stabilizers […]
A big new gas pipeline was going in, just outside Cody, Wyoming. And these days, the sun sets about 9:30 at night, and rises at 5:30 in the morning. What does that mean? Nobody’s getting any sleep shooting this annual report. And we wouldn’t want it any other way. In about 36 hours, we made nearly 3000 captures, and drove nearly 1000 miles. Executives and projects like this are on tight schedules, and couldn’t wait. It’s been said that dawn […]
One of my favorite clients invited me to their conference last month. Headshots were not on the menu, but sometimes they get ordered anyway, right? Meet Ricardo, a busy vice-president at Ciena. He was the man of the hour at this conference, scheduled from early morning until late at night, but he needed an informal business portrait somewhere in between. We hadn’t planned on portraits, but I packed a little lighting kit just in case. I was able to photograph and retouch him on […]
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 […]
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 […]
What an amazing assignment. Arrow Electronics has teamed up with the National Sports Center for the Disabled to create the Paralympians’ Challenge. Filmed right here in Colorado! Mentor athletes with disabilities are paired with kids to overcome the fear of taking on mountain walls, rushing rivers, and steep trails. Mentor Alana shoots a Class IV rapid in Waterton Canyon. Alana had never kayaked before! The Tyrolean Traverse over Clear Creek in Jefferson County is no match for the skill and attitude of […]
Season 15 of the Emmy-winning cooking competition is wrapped! And being the only still photographer for the entire 2-month production was both challenging and fun. Fancy food, amazing locations, and brutal competitions are just a few of the things you can expect to see this season. Watch our TWO Colorado chefs, Carrie Baird (Bar Dough, Denver) and Brother Luck (IV, Colorado Springs)! Read more about shooting stills (OMG! Blimps!) on a huge show here. Also, listen to Chef Tom on the WTF podcast, […]
For the last several months, I’ve been on the road for Komatsu. They’re gearing up for a event in Las Vegas, and are stocking up on original photography of modern “intelligent” machines in action, as well as the people that operate and support them. The images are to be used in two huge trade show displays and a new advertising campaign. In addition to visiting construction sites in several states, we even spent a day photographing workers in their Chattanooga, Tennessee excavator assembly […]
Always great to kick off a big project in the middle of summer: Clear skies, long days, and leaves on the trees. My client, Blackeagle Energy, makes and installs pipelines for natural gas (and a million other things) but their old website was hamstrung by random snapshots and cheap stock. Their agency, Kinetic Marketing and Creative of Billings, Montana, suggested creating original photography from the ground up. Happily, they referred me to the web folks at Blackeagle. With construction timelines and […]
This month, I had the pleasure of working with Taylor Carpenter of Carpenter Design on a ground-up web redesign for the Health & Wellness Center at University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora. As far as Taylor and I are concerned, a cohesive design and photography plan is the only way to totally redo a web site. The visual consistency, the uniform style, and the happy lack of stock imagery are all keys to a successful update. Our shot list, planned over several […]
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 […]