The Scottsdale Railroad Park is a great place to photograph children.  They hardly know that the photographer is there, which is perfect for my style of children’s photography.  I prefer them to be busy and having fun and these two twins were very busy and having lots of fun.  Here are a few of my favorite images from the child-life portrait session.

It’s all about the leggings!

Their mother works for Wells Fargo, so this stage coach was a perfect fit.

I love the sense of height here.  I seems like the kids are making an incredible leap here.  And who can resist a carousel in the back ground.  Although, you will note that when you do have a carousel in the background, you must shoot at a wide aperture, otherwise, the background would be far to cluttered and would compete with the kids in the foreground far more.

This next set reminds me of a Norman Rockwell painting.

I had to include this shot.  This was toward the end of the session and the little boy was being a bit challanging and there was this little moment between father and son.  If I were to make one of those one word motivational posters out of this, it would be titled: FRUSTRATION.  I thought it was a perfect little story of its own.

Now for my favorite part.  Ice-Cream!  There is a little ice-cream shop there at the park, so we went in and got a few cones.  Ice-cream equals joy!

Photography Session Information: Children’s Portraits

Photography by Jared Platt, Platt Photography

Location: Scottsdale Railroad Park, Scottsdale, Arizona

Jessica’s Senior Portraits 2011 from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

We shot Jessica’s senior portrait session in Chandler, Arizona with a short trip out to the farmland south of the city.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from Jessica’s senior portrait session.

Photography: Platt Photography
Location: Chandler, Arizona
Music: Mindy Gledhill, Courtesy of Triple Scoop Music.

I am working on a project for the Phoenix Symphony right now and went to a recent rehearsal to photograph some shots for their upcoming 2011/2012 season brochures and banners.  It is quite an honor to do this job and I am thrilled to be a par of promoting the Phoenix Symphony.  I am particularly looking forward to their performance of Sheherazade in March of 2012.  Anyway, it was an interesting place to stand.  I may have chosen this vantage point just so I could stand where the conductor stands.  In the photo above, I am trying to explain to them what I am looking for in the photograph and in the image below, they are playing the most hilarious renditions of various masterpieces, all purposefully out of tune.  I thought it was pretty funny.  But then I was in an orchestra when I was young, so their musical savant humor is not lost on me.

My assistant for the day, Eric Greenhalgh snapped a few images of me working, and I thought they were amusing.  Thanks Eric.

I know the trumpet player in the next photo was getting a real chuckle out of my proximity to his horn.  I know I was…

So what do the photos I took look like?  You’ll have to tune in in a few weeks for that.  I am still working on the project and will unveil a few of them, once we wrap up the first batch for the symphony.  And if you are a Symphony goer, you will most likely see some of the images coming in to you through your mail.

If you are in Phoenix, or passing through, take the time to go see these talented musicians perform.  I am completely impressed, and I don’t impress easily.  And don’t miss Sheherazade.  I’ll see you there.

Thanks again to Eric Greenhalgh, who was assisting me on this shoot for grabbing a few cool shots of me working.  Check out his work.  He’s a good photographer.

The Ivory Coast: The anatomy of an album cover. from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

Making an album cover photograph for piano rockstar, Kevin Burdick, gets increasingly difficult, as we continue to push to limits of where we can take his pianos. His most recent album, The Ivory Coast, took us and his piano to the sand dunes in Yuma, Arizona, where we suffered through extreme heat as we tried to hoist this heavy piano through the sand. It was fun, but challenging to put the album cover together.

This video includes interviews with Kevin Burdick about the making of the album cover, video footage of Kevin’s exclusive sand dune performance of Freight Train and many of the photos from the album photo shoot.

The video was edited exclusively in Adobe Premier CS5, which uses the 5D Mark II video file natively without requiring a conversion like Final Cut Pro. One more reason that Adobe is the best choice for image making professionals.

The final album cover contains four different photographs: the piano, Kevin on the sand dunes, the ocean and boat and then the texture.  Follow the post below to see the various elements of the album cover and the progression of the album cover.

Moving the piano was very difficult.  We obviously could not get it to the top of a 30 foot sand dune, so we found some small “mini dunes” that were accessible by truck and off loaded the piano there.  But even then, it took three of us to move the piano and I think all of us almost popped a disk in our backs.  This was one of those old pianos and it was HEAVY!

Our first photograph was the piano.  Since it was the hardest thing to move, we figured we would start with that and match all of our angles for future photographs to that.  We shot the piano early in the morning as the sun rose so we could get the same lighting we would get at the top of the sand dunes down the road.  We had to shoot pretty quickly so we could get out the the large sand dunes before the sun got too high in the sky, so we got our shot done and sped off for location 2.  The Sand Dunes.

This is our second shot, which is not too complicated a shot to create, it is just getting to the spot that is difficult.  In order to get out to a spot that has the same angle as our piano shot we had to hike in a mile or more into the Sand Dunes.  This is not like walking on the beach.  First, it is hot as hell.  Second, the sand is very deep.  Third, walking up hill while the sand falls downhill makes for some very intense stair step workouts that create the sense that you are not going anywhere.  Fourth, did I mention it was HOT!  And of course, Kevin is not wearing shoes!

Once we climbed high enough to get a shot from above looking down on Kevin and a series of dunes behind him, we got many many variations, as well as some video footage for music videos, etc.  We also got some cool shots for Dixon Golf in the United States’ biggest sand trap (watch for tomorrow’s post).  And then it was up to me to get the rest of the shots.

This photograph, which I had taken earlier at a wedding in San Diego worked perfectly for the background.  We wanted our Sand Dunes to overlook the ocean with some kind of a boat back there, so I searched my image catalog for the terms ocean and boat and come up with this image.  I worked perfectly.  I suppose, had we been going for realistic, the clouds would have been completely wrong for the photo montage, but we were looking for a dreamlike album cover of a place that exists only in the mind, so this fit the bill.

Then it was off to the image catalogs again to find the right texture to distress the image a bit.  The texture also helps to mold things together that otherwise wouldn’t fit all that well.  I keep a collection of textures for this very purpose in my image catalogs.  When I am shooting weddings or travel photography, I keep my eye out for interesting textures and collect them for uses just like this.  Being organized enough to find them is the real key.  So, I typed in the word texture into my Lightroom Image Catalog and choose the texture I wanted.  If you are having trouble finding your images, you need to do more key-wording!

This is what the photo composite looks like without the texture, before it is cropped and placed into the album cover design.

And again, once we have added the texture and the text to the photograph.  You can see how much the texture helps to soften the look of the image and make it a bit more dreamlike.  I actually prefer the tall skinny version of the image more than the square album cover.  I miss the days when you purchased a CD in one of those long skinny cardboard boxes that you could further design.  This would have been a perfect photograph for one of those.  But alas, now you will simply go to iTunes and purchase Kevin Burdick’s new album, The Ivory Coast, on iTunes and see only the square front cover.

But of course, if you do that, you can see the back cover here.

We actually set up the piano the night before the shot so that we wouldn’t have to cary that thing in the dark.  So as we left it for the night, the sun set in the desert and the lonely piano stood quiet and alone among the shrubs.  I love this shot.

Photo Shoot Details:

Photography: Jared Platt, Platt Photography
Music: Kevin Burdick, (follow him on Facebook)
Photo Location: Yuma, Arizona
Video Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
Video Editing Software: Adobe Premier CS5

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