Food Truck Menu Photography clean and ready for display!
Elder drove his food truck right up to my house for an extended menu food photography shoot at the JCP Home Studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In just over two hours I was able to photograph 30+ menu items for Elder. He wanted a clean white background for the photos as these will appear on TV screens on his food truck. We still made time to get a hero shot and a couple other highlight shots of the New Mexican food dishes he and his team prepared that morning. This was also the first time for me to use my new LED continuous lighting for a shoot, so that while shooting tethered with continuous lighting, Elder could see in real time the shadows and highlights of each dish even before I pushed the shutter on the camera!
Wanting to try out my new Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art lens on my new Sony a7R V camera, I went to the Bosque at sunset time to see what kind of shots I could create with a long lens, albeit it one with a large aperture capable of very shallow DoF. By the time I got there the light was indeed fading fast. I chose to focus on foreground objects and leave the sunset itself out of focus. This results in a kind of melting effect to how the sunset looks. I actually liked shooting at f/1.4 at 85mm and getting most of what was in the photo out of focus. This is most easily seen in the above photo of the very fine grass sticking out toward the sunset. This grass was so hard to see even with the a7R V’s AI based autofocus, I had to manually focus the lens!
I was contacted by someone with a couple dozen high end watches, including Rolex, to be photographed for listing for sale online. Without an exact idea for number of photos per watch, the posing of each watch, I agreed to have the new client come in with one example watch to see what he wanted, so that when he brings all 25, we have an established style and look to then photograph each watch efficiently. We learned a lot in many aspects about what each of us needed to do for the final shoot. I still find it hard to believe that the watch you see above is worth $70,000! I look forward to the full shoot of all these shockingly valuable watches in the near future.
On location for unique lawyer headshots in Albuquerque
The lawyers of Ray Law, Brian and Nicole, met me at FatPipe ABQ for an on location headshot shoot, and also to make a better than stock image of Brian with a client. It’s funny how things in photography work, where I had not used FatPipe ABQ as a location in a couple of years, only to have three shoots there just this month! We chose a window for the background for their headshots, along with a shallow depth of field style. The result is a totally unique headshot for Nicole and Brian. Then using one of the conference rooms, I made a better than stock image so potential clients can see Brian on the Ray Law website in a real photo of him and a client. I really, really suggest removing all stock images from your website and replacing them with yourself and your team! Thank you Nicole and Brian for choosing me as your photographer!
Learning through photography with the Water Utility Authority
My last two days of photography for 2022 were spent at various Water Utility Authority of Albuquerque sites, both inside and out! This was actually my second shoot of the year for them, as I worked on making photos of award winning residential landscaping that you can see in their 2023 calendar. I learned a lot during these days of shooting about where our water comes from, how it is processed, and just how far ranging the duties of the Water Utility Authority are! As you can see in the photos, for the inside shots I was in testing labs and huge pipe filled caverns, and then outside from retaining tanks right to the banks of the Rio Grande River itself! Thank you to everyone at the Water Utility Authority willing to be models in the photos!
An annual event I photograph in Albuquerque, New Mexico is the River of Lights. The past two times I have had a chance to test out a new lens. This time it was the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art lens, which I liked from the very first shot I took with it! This lens was as close to the ideal one lens solution as you could get both in terms of focal length (85mm) as many of the light creations are a fair bit away from the walking paths, and the fast f/1.4 aperture for great low light performance and for creating bokeh when possible. Which is your favorite River of Lights display?
Continuing the CNM Founders photo series (see this, and this, and this) I went to Electric Playhouse in Albuquerque, New Mexico to photograph the owner, Brandon, right in the settings customers can see when they visit! Talk about getting unique backgrounds for personal branding photos! Brandon cycled through various light projections. We settled on one that is actually straight fire and another Van Gogh-esque surreal blue swirl. If only I had these projectors in my own photo studio! Thank you to Brandon for the opportunity to shoot in Electric Playhouse itself.
