I am pleased that so many people are taking advantage of the opportunity to come to my Lightroom Workflow Workshop in San Francisco.  The workshop is SOLD OUT.  Should be a great crowd and everyone will walk away with a new way of looking at their images and their post production workflow.  If you are thinking about taking the workshop in a city near you, you need to sign up now, don’t be left out.

The San Francisco workshop is being hosted by liveBooks, my web portfolio creator.  They are hands down, the best in the business.  If you haven’t been to their web site, you need to go.  Not only do they make great web sites, they also have great learning resources for professional photographers including informative blog posts, webinars, video interviews and articles.  Don’t miss out.  Go to liveBooks and check it out.

I went out with Bill K., a previous student of mine to shoot some portraits of Tayler.  It was a fun morning and we got some nice shots.  The entire shoot was done south of Chandler, Arizona.  This area is filled with farmland and this month, we were fortunate enough to have a few fields of wheat.  When we decided to do the shoot, I knew we had to do it here because Tayler’s hair and skin tone are both perfect for the setting.

The Farmlands south of Phoenix, Arizona make a great backdrop for Tayler and her golden hair.

Tayler's hair reacts perfectly to the sun, but that powerful hair light can be a challenge as well. The last thing I want is a blown out highlight in that angel hair.

Eyes, lips, curls... nothing else mattered in this photograph.

Just a quick thought about exposing in the harsh sunlight of Phoenix, Arizona. There is almost no place like Phoenix on the planet. The hot, dry desert climate tests your skills as a photographer.  On a cloudless day (which is the majority of our days) there is nothing to soften the light of the sun and without humidity, there is very little in the atmosphere to refract the light, so we in the desert, are challenged to find ways to equalize the light.  One of the simplest ways to remove the harsh shadows from the subject’s face is to turn them away from the sun’s light.  In the shadow of their own body, there are no harsh shadows.  Just the expansive soft light from the opposite side of the sky.  However, just turning the subject is not enough.  Without some additional light source, the shadow side of the model’s body would be extremely dark and by exposing for her face, I would have to completely over expose the background.  So I must expose for the background and then light the subject with either a flash or a reflector and since I would prefer not to blind her with a reflector, I chose a flash.  But on-camera flash would flatten out the face and body, so in order to avoid the obvious flashed look, I took the flash off camera with Pocket Wizard’s new TTL System.  By using the Pocket Wizard, I am able to allow the camera and flash to work together to determine the proper amount of flash (with some flash exposure compensation on my part -2/3) for the subject, while my only manual exposure concern is the background.  My assistant holds the flash off to my right at about a 45 degree angle to the model, which helps to give her more volume than we would have gotten from an obvious on camera fill flash.  Direct on camera flash is almost always the worst form of light one can use to light any subject.  Look for ways to get that flash off o f the camera, or avoid using it all together.

There aren’t any perfect Wireless TTL systems out there yet.  But I think that Pocket WIzard is the closest to getting it right.  We’ll see how things improve as time passes.

In this image, Tayler is backlit by a very hot and bright morning sun. Exposing for the background puts her in a very dark shadow, making the image unusable. But with the help of off camera TTL technology from Pocket Wizard, both she and the background are just right.

Being able to find a small country road in the middle of the sixth largest city in the US is one of the reasons I love Phoenix, Arizona. We have such a great variety of locations in this state, the possibilities are endless.

During the photo shoot, I am often looking those natural moments between the poses. This image is one of my favorites from the shoot.

And sometimes, no matter how harsh the desert sun happens to be, soft light is still available in the subjects own shadow.

Im not sure what it says about me, but solitude attracts me to an image like nothing else does.

I have posted about Kevin Burdick before.  I thought I would share with you a slideshow and set of images from the album cover photo shoot for Kevin’s latest album, We Are The Walking Wounded. It is a fantastic album which you can find at iTunes or on his web site. Kevin has written some of his most haunting songs for this album.

Below are shots from Kevin Burdick’s final album cover for We Are the Walking Wounded.

It is always interesting to see the final product after it has gone through the designer. The original file was a color image with the head of the model included, and is a great image on its own. But, I love the effect of the crop on the image. There are so many things that can change an image, but I will always maintain that the crop is the hardest hitting change that can be made to an image. Notice the way the focus of the image is changed completely by the crop.  In this case the focus of the image becomes the girl’s wounds, and perhaps her pain…

Kevin Burdick's final album cover for his latest album, We Are the Walking Wounded.

… whereas the original un-cropped image focuses less on her wounds and metaphorical pain and more on her loneliness and solitude, as she trudges down a lonely road.  Leaving the image in color still allows her wounds to remain important in the photograph, but the overall message behind the photograph is very different in the original, rather than in the cropped album cover version.

The original image that ended up as the cover for the album cover, complete with the model's head.

Some photographers might be upset when the intent of their image is changed from their original idea at the camera, but I was not shooting some high brow artistic project, I was part of a larger production which had as its end goal a multi media product. This kind of a thing includes the music and lyrics of the musician and his vision, makeup artist, designers, crew and models. And everyone adds to that final creation, by bringing their artistic abilities to the table. Many times, as a photographer / director, I ask for one thing and on the way to the end, a model will give me something completely unexpected and it is far better than what I had originally intended. And I am happy to follow the new path and follow where it leads. When I am involved in a larger production, it is important for everyone to have a strong opinions, but check their egos at the door. Quite frankly I was pleased with the final image and thought it furthered the song’s message quite nicely.

Scouting the album photo shoot was the most critical thing we did.  We knew that there was an old town called Thistle, Utah that had been buried in a mudslide years and years ago, so we went out in search of the location a few days prior to our shoot and found this home buried in a bog, which had a fantastic look, and was near highway, so it made access very easy.  The only real concern was how to carry a Grand Slam Piano Body through the thickets and swamp to a small patch of dry, firm ground.  It was quite a challenge, but we did it and I think the images were a success as a result.

Kevin Burdick and his wounded entourage and his stage piano in the near a half sunken house in Thistle, Utah.

Kevin, his manager and one of the models carrying a Grand Slam baby grand body across the highway back to the tour bus after the photo shoot.

I wanted to see Kevin playing his piano in the most unlikely place. This spot worked out great.

It was an fun shoot, we all had a great time and got some cool images.  It is important for me to get out of the wedding photo zone once and a while to photograph something very different.  Shooting personal work, political events, editorial portraits and such helps me to maintain a fresh eye on the world and I find that each time I come back to a wedding I have something new to give to my clients as a result.  As photographers we have to continually practice and keep our skills sharp, and any opportunity I can find to do that in a different way, I take.

Here are a few more images from the album cover photo shoot.

This one seemed to feel like an old horror film, where the girl is running away from the monster and of course she is constantly falling and looking back.

The makeup on this model was very good. As we were shooting I thought the little lip bite was adorable in a strange way.

The vantage point on this image was critical to seeing Kevin, the wounded and the swamped house. My height was accomplished by climbing up onto a half demolished old shed. Not the safest place to be, but we didn't have a ladder. Lesson: always bring a ladder, but if you forget, do anything to get the shot...

We were very proud to have gotten the piano into this position for the shot. And my hat off to Grand Slam for making a piano body that is light enough to get it into this spot.

Musician: Kevin Burdick

Photographer: Jared Platt, Platt Photography

Location: Thistle, Utah

It is an interesting thing to have talented friends.  I grew up around very talented people, but Kevin Burdick was one of the most talented and has always amazed me with his story telling and musical depth.  It is such a pleasure to work with him as his photographer.  Next project: a music video!

Great news!  I will be lecturing at the Pictage Partner Conference in New Orleans this November.  The topic of my lecture is one of my favorite to give: The Photographer’s Eye.  I have given this lecture two times this year, one in Hong Kong and the other in Phoenix.  It is also the basis for an entire semester course I teach to college students.  It is an entertaining and inspiring lecture on the unique attributes of the photographer’s art form.  If you are coming to partner conference in New Orleans, come join me and get inspired.

There will be a lot of great speakers at the conference, including my friends: Dane Sanders, Melissa Jill, Jay Goldman, Jared Bauman, & Jeff & Erin Youngren.

Join me at Pictage Partner Conference in New Orleans, November, 2009.

Check out the latest of my blog posts on the Pictage Blog.

“We are living in a an unsure economic climate. You have seen this in your markets as people begin to hold back on their purchases, cut the size of their guest lists, scale down the size of their packages and look for the greatest value as they interview photographers.  Even those who are willing to spend a healthy amount on their photography will nonetheless, be very cautious in their decisions.”  (read more)

It is now official, I will be teaching a WPPI Master Class in Vegas this spring.  The name of the class is: The Ultimate Lightroom Workflow Experience.  It will be held on March 10th, from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm.  If you can’t make it to one of my workshops this fall, and are coming to WPPI, this is a good opportunity to learn more about streamlining your workflow.  I am looking forward to this experience.  No doubt you can also catch me on the trade floor at my sponsors’ booths: Pictage, Blurb, GraphiStudio, Triple Scoop Music and liveBooks.