Digital Arts in highschool!

EFG Creative and I spent a day in late February at this amazing school. DATA stands for Digital Arts & Technology Academy, and the highschool offers focused training to aspiring filmmakers, photographers, animators, etc... Two students bounced SB600 and SB800 off the white ceiling for me all day, which was nice. Very refreshing to have assistants. The assignment was to capture the students in the environment and get some slightly more formal staff shots of teachers and the principal for upcoming marketing and web collateral. The light was flourecent, so flash was essential though I left the gels in the bag. More and more I find that I like the color balance of ungelled flashes. Or maybe I'm just lazy. 

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More photos at Veggie Obsession

It's been fun to work with Amy White on her blog. Her recipes are delicious and she's a good sport about taking the time to get the right photos. In fact, she's a bit of an aspiring photographer herself, and is even trying out my D50 right now... Her recipes are also featured at on Edible Santa Fe Magazine's site and Mrs. White will have a feature in the print version this spring, which I photographed (of course). 

Spending time at the Andaluz Hotel

I've been working for a few weeks with the Andaluz hotel to compile a cache of images for them to illustrate what the hotel has to offer. A major concern for them was to incorporate more people, to breathe life to their current marketing collateral. The assignment has been a big one and has involved many different setups, some using amatuer models and lots of lighting, some using ambient light and the customers that happened to be there. I was fortunate to have Rip Williams on hand one evening to add his expertise. I used eveything in the bag for this shoot, including the dreaded tripod (extensively). All my speedlights came out and I pushed the limits of the D700s high ISO performance. I also recently upgraded to Aperture 3 and used this project to test it out: worth the upgrade. Used Nik extesively in the processing of these files. The shots at hand include the grand opening of the Casablanca space, models in the Cabana area, night shots in the Lucia restaurant, food shots, chef portaits and some shots in the Presidential suite with models.