How to Stash-a-Flash

• Flash & Strobe Lighting, Outdoor Adventure Photography

I love to tell stories with light and do it with stash-a-flash technique which includes hiding a flash in the scene so that it lights a part of the subject.

This image of a rock climber is in my new book: Outdoor Flash Photography and was taken right before a thunderstorm rolled in. You essentially hide the flash with a remote trigger and in a place that it lights your subject but nothing else.

I hid the flash to light the climber and it worked well but some light spilled elsewhere and I show in the book how to fix that as well as how to add light to other remote subjects when shooting outdoors or on an adventure.

My New eBook: Outdoor Flash Photography

• Flash & Strobe Lighting, Products for sale

Finally….my new eBook: Outdoor Flash Photography is published and available.

If you have a flash and wonder how to use it, or you wish to learn how to apply light, this eBook covers it all.

You’ll learn:

  • The functions and features of the flash
  • How to see light
  • How to improve your flash photography
  • How to shoot action
  • How to tell stories with light…and much more!

Only $9.97

Click here to read more and order.

I Always Wanted to Photograph a Rocket Scientist

• Corporate Photography

I have photographed at companies that were in the aerospace business and always thought it would be great to photograph a rocket scientist, like someone in front of the space shuttle. There are plenty out there working for the defense industry, but I never quite landed that client.

So I decided to setup my own rocket scientist and photograph them in a style looking cold war and Eastern Europe. This is my wife with a lab coat on, wearing German WWII motorcycle goggles, holding a rechargeable battery with a 20′ long yellow extension cord duct taped to it. And a 5′ model rocket ‘enhanced’ in Photoshop.

Making Fun of Friends With Photoshop

• Flash & Strobe Lighting, Portrait Photography

Last weekend I co-taught a workshop with Christian Heeb and David Cobb on the Business of Outdoor Photography which was held at the Cascade Center of Photography in Bend, Oregon.

While I was demonstrating wireless strobe lighting outdoors, something important to outdoor photographers, I asked David to stand in as my model.

As you can see by the expression on his face, he was very excited at the invitation to model for me.

For the technical aspects read on….

On Assignment at The History Channels Ax Men Reality Show

• Corporate Photography

Every once in a while a cool project or assignment comes along. That is what happened when a client of mine asked me to go photograph at one of the sites of The History Channel’s Ax Men TV Reality Show. How could I refuse?

I have photographed logging, the timber industry, and paper manufacturing for companies like Georgia-Pacific, Westwood Corporation, and International Paper, so I am familiar with working in the woods and safety issues.. While I always enjoy getting into the woods with anybody including these guys, the fact that this assignment was a TV reality show certainly raised the ‘coolness factor’.

My wife and I however, have a closer connection to the show than this assignment. My wife’s family; my mother in laws side in particular, are from Vernonia, Oregon, where this show began. In fact, one of the historic buildings in town is named after my wife’s grandfather. The first two seasons I think were exclusively filmed in Vernonia before the production company branched out across North America to film other crews.