Christina was a former DSLR photo student of mine here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She contacted me about having portraits made out on location because she was actually now leaving ABQ. I had long been wanting to use Albuquerque Civic Plaza as a location so I was glad she agreed to my suggestion to shoot there. Even though it was a middle of the afternoon shoot, I used my new 42” Cheetahstand SoupBowl softbox to be able to shoot in the harsh lighting conditions in numerous spots around Civic Plaza. The water fountains, unfortunately, were not on, but everywhere else was free of passersby and there was no lack of spots to shoot at.
Almost every real estate photo and drone shoot in New Mexico has its challenges. And then sometimes a property has pretty much every challenge possible! That is the case with this home in Placitas, New Mexico being listed by Mark & Susan Ryerson. The first challenge as you can see from the above photo is that the front of the house is largely blocked by trees and it is up on a hill, so getting a direct front view shot was not really possible, not even with the drone. The interior had unique architecture, but somewhat small rooms with large furniture in them. Even using a 15mm lens I had to really search for angles I liked for the living room in particular. Then flying the drone itself, I never had a signal issue between the remote control and the drone until this flight, likely due to the massive power lines right behind the house, which also prevented flying from that direction. Then there was wind from being so close to the mountains and the aforementioned trees all around the house! Overall, this was one of the most challenging real estate shoots and drone flights I have ever done in the Albuquerque area. Thank you to Mark & Susan for their great help as they always provide on this shoot and flight!
What is it like to make over 70 headshots over two days of shooting? Well, actually, it was surprisingly easy due to how well organized the team at Bohannan Huston was. Thanks to Brian and Marylin for getting everyone to the studio setup very efficiently and to Jessica for assisting. This was still the single biggest headshot shoot I did, taking three hours on a Monday morning and then three more hours on a Wednesday afternoon. Thanks to my well established lighting setup, even a conference room can be a very effective photo studio. I was able to accommodate people of all heights, glasses or no glasses, and keep the results of each headshot consistent so when looked at on the company website, as you see here on my own site, there is uniformity to each engineer. After each day’s headshot shoot, we did however getting a little more creative with these psychedelic candid portraits!
This near Rio Rancho but actually still Albuquerque, New Mexico residential real estate property was actually the second property shoot of the day I did for Mark & Susan Ryerson. They are my favorite real estate agent clients to shoot for because they make shoots fun! I usually work with them on luxury real estate properties, like this one that sold in less than one week because they are great agents, and maybe also the professional photos and 4K drone video I made of the property, so there is no drone video of this property, but there are aerial drone photos. This property is quite unique I think because it has a sunroom! How many homes are you going to find in New Mexico with a sunroom like this?
Senior Portraits are not one of my specialties, but when I do have the chance to do them, I always try and add more own signature photo style to them. This shoot with Ryan came about because just a week earlier I photographed his dad at an engineering consulting company. He asked if I would photograph his son for his senior portraits. I was very flattered someone who had just met me, and was one of 70+ people I photographed that day for headshots, would ask me to make such important and personal photos (thanks Scott!). We met back on the grounds of the engineering company and utilized its great red bridge for the above mixed style photo: casual dress, outdoor location, basketball action! It was my suggestion to get the basketball involved in a nontraditional environment.
One of the biggest compliments I can get as a headshot photographer in Albuquerque is when an actor from L.A. chooses me as his headshot photographer, and after our session, says my work is a good as those photographers in L.A.! Thank you Jake for a great headshot session, your Google review, and for making my job very easy behind the camera by being so good yourself in front of it. Hire Jake!
On a recent return to Rio Rancho, New Mexico for a rural land real estate shoot for Hemingway Land, I found the property to be rather sand dune like in places. New Mexico is a high desert environment, not the typical sandy desert many may picture when hearing the word desert. There are places that are kind of sandy, like this one where you can leave prints, or paw prints, like the ones you can see in the above photo from my dog Kiki who joined me on this desert real estate shoot.
