Chiara Daraio for STYLE magazine

In November I photographed Chiara Daraio for the Italian magazine STYLE. Daraio, a professor of aeronautics and applied physics at California Institute of Technology, was being profiled for being a leader in her field, which in layman’s terms is the study of how stress waves travel through solid materials, which they will then use to develop new technologies. The shoot was fun and relaxed, using a combination of natural and strobe lighting in a variety of settings in her building at Caltech. Whenever possible, particularly with portraits, I try to research the subject I’m photographing to see what’s been shot of them before and also what’s other photographers have done with similar subjects. In doing so, I found that she had been photographed in the lab before for Popular Science, so I made that shot my lowest priority, not wanting to copy what had been done before. The editors had only asked that it be a photo that shows her as an intellect and a leader in her field, but I was pretty free to take it from there. While I did shoot her in the lab, in a fashion different than what had been done before, I was happy they chose to run this shot which just shows her relaxing in her office, where notes indecipherable by me, but pertaining to her research, were already on the chalkboard. On a technical level, the shot was pretty simple, using only a reflector to bounce a little window light back into the scene, but the results were good.

Broken Fire Hydrant, Venice Beach, Calif.

Broken Fire Hydrant, Venice Beach, Calif.

Forget fireworks. This year the big Fourth of July spectacular in Venice Beach turned out to come in the form of a broken fire hydrant spewing water four stories in the air at the corner of Speedway and Clubhouse Avenues. What else to do but throw off your clothes and dance beneath the downpour until the authorities arrive? Or, if you’re me, take pictures. In many ways it was a welcome relief the disappointment we experienced from the cancellation of major fireworks shows in Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey. We were still able to see distant shows to the north in Malibu and to the south in Manhattan Beach, but nothing that was in-your-face. On our way back from the beach after fireworks we came across this scene and, like everyone else, ran toward it. There, for 15 minutes or so, crowds of people cheered as people took turns dashing into the downpour until the authorities arrived, unwittingly making the show patriotic with flashes of red, white and blue light. After a few minutes they cleared out the scene and got to work capping the geyser. Apparently, the culprit was a car that ran into the hydrant, knocking it off its base. I haven’t heard that anyone was hurt and hopefully no one experienced too much flooding from the 4-inch deep river that formed in the alleys. Definitely a memorable cap to an otherwise great Fourth, despite the meager fireworks displays.

Check out more photos after the jump!

Broken Fire Hydrant, Venice Beach, Calif.

Broken Fire Hydrant, Venice Beach, Calif.

Broken Fire Hydrant, Venice Beach, Calif.

Broken Fire Hydrant, Venice Beach, Calif.

Broken Fire Hydrant, Venice Beach, Calif.

Broken Fire Hydrant, Venice Beach, Calif.

Prisoners

I recently happened to find myself a child’s first birthday party. Thought this was a cute scene. I believe the tykes were eventually let out on good behavior.

Maryann Pascal and Lola, in front of Lola's miniature replica an Encore resort poolside cabana.

Last week I travelled to Las Vegas to shoot portraits for a weekend feature on “pet palaces” for the Financial Times. Not being a pet owner myself, I was unaware of the lavish trend of providing to-scale, miniature models of actual homes for your pets, but it’s apparently quite popular. The most lavish example cited in the article is Paris Hilton’s $325k, scale model of her own mansion for her dogs. Sounds reasonable. The owner of palace and puppy that I was to photograph was Maryann Pascal, an executive with the Wynn/Encore Hotel resort, whose dog, Lola, has the privilege of napping on a daybed that was custom made to be a to-scale miniature replica of one of the poolside cabanas found at the Encore Hotel. The cabana was a surprise gift to her and Lola from a couple of her clients, who got to know Lola as a puppy when Maryann used to bring her in to work. Quite a gift!

This shoot presented three or four obstacles that, mostly through luck, I was able to work around. The first was that working with dogs, as with children, can be hit or miss in terms of getting cooperation from your subject. Fortunately, Lola was incredibly patient and obedient and was pretty much happy to sit wherever Maryann put her. The rest of the problems revolved around a request from the editors that the shot be very colorful, which I thought would be no problem as you can generally count on Vegas to have plenty of blue skies and sunshine. However, I arrived to clouds and cold weather, and even worse, blustery winds that I thought would put to rest any hopes of shooting warm, colorful images outside. Add to that a giant dust storm that covered most of the 35 miles between the border town of Primm and Las Vegas as I drove in. Luckily, the dust cloud dissipated by the city’s edge and high walls around the backyard pool kept the wind at bay. To take care of the rest, I cut out most of the sky and warmed up the shot with a CTO gel, pretty well obscuring the grey reality of the day. So, it all worked out. After the shoot had wrapped and the files had been submitted I then had an excuse to spend a fun couple of days in town with Erinn and some friends.

Attendees of the Secular Student Alliance Southern California Leadership Conference pose for a photo in front of the Luther Statue at California Lutheran University

Cal Lutheran Secular Student Alliance founder and student body president Evan Clark

Last month I shot several assignments for the Chronicle of Higher Education. I always enjoy shooting for the Chronicle, because I get to meet fascinating people working in the numerous universities of Southern California, including leaders in cutting edge stem cell research and Academy Award-winning physicists responsible for the lifelike animation in the film “Avatar.” One of the more interesting of my recent assignments was for a story on a national leadership meeting of the Secular Student Alliance at California Lutheran University, a school of about 2,000 in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The event was brought to the school by the founder of the school’s first ever SSA chapter, Evan Clark, who also has the unique distinction of being the school’s first ever atheist student body president. The meeting centered around strategies that the chapter leaders at various schools around the country can use to run their chapters, peacefully spread their message and handle confrontations with those who don’t share their views. Although the day was pretty much a series of meetings (i.e. not visually stimulating for this photographer) the fact that it was taking place at a religiously affiliated school with the blessing of the administration was very cool and is something to think about. Should everyone be so open-minded!

One of many sunken canoes on the Venice Canals after many, many days of rain. Bad weather can make slow times seem even slower.

Anyone who’s a freelancer is probably all too familiar with the deadening silence coming from your telephone during the month of December. Or maybe it’s just me? Between the extended weekends following Thanksgiving and the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Years, there’s not a lot of time where any new business actually gets done in the twelfth month of the year. One thing that’s easy to do is to sit around waiting for phone to ring, growing increasingly depressed as the month drags on and your bank account goes down. Another is to whore yourself out (so to speak) for a quick buck so you at least feel like you’re working. This year’s unusual rainy season has made the first option the easy one this slow season. The second is a bad idea for numerous reasons, including that you’d be undercutting your industry and your time could be better spent. I’ve tried both approaches and neither does much good. A worthwhile alternative is to use your head and try to make the most of your so called “free” time. With that in mind, I decided to put together a “Top Ten” list of useful ways to help your business and yourself when things get slow around the holidays. Other than enjoy yourself and the time you get to spend with friends and family that is! I also realize December’s almost over, but rather than wait until next year I thought I’d put this out there while it’s fresh in my mind. Something to put away for next year perhaps. So, in no particular order, here are the…

Top Ten (or Twelve) Things To Do When Your Photography (or Other Creative) Business is Slow

1. Read and/or watch movies – Books, magazines and films are great places to find inspiration and activate your imagination. We just checked out Daren Aronofsky’s Black Swan the other day. He’s someone I enjoy for both his storytelling and cinematography. I’m also reading The Complete Joy of Home Brewing and rereading The Catcher in the Rye, which I picked up on vacation early this month. Perhaps the latter in honor of J.D. Salinger’s passing earlier this year. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it! Highly recommended, just don’t start collecting copies. I’ve heard that’s a bad sign.

2. Street photography – Get out and shoot! Even if it’s raining! Forget trying to find a subject ahead of time. Just grab your gear and go shoot what you see.

3. Update website or design and print a book – Go through your images from the last several months and see what you can bring into your portfolio (and, while you’re at it, take out!). Or print a portfolio book or a book focusing on a recent project. Blurb books have become particularly popular or print your own and put it in a Pina Zangaro or Lost Luggage binding. Both are more expensive, but look great as long as your prints are good. Blurb and others often have proprietary design software you can download for free. I prefer to use Aperture, which allows you to work from within your archive and can output in formats acceptable to most printers. In preparation for a trip to New York next month I’m printing one on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl and binding it in a frost style Pina Zangaro jacket. Looking good so far!

Keep reading after the jump!

4. Set up personal project shoots – If you already have ideas you’ve been sitting on, now’s the time to either shoot them or at least recruit subjects so you can hit the ground running in January.

5. Balance Books – I’m constantly putting this off, though my accountant says I’m not as bad as others. Not gonna lie, doing your bookkeeping sucks. But now’s as good a time as any. Better, actually, as you can catch and hopefully resolve any problems before the end of the tax year, which could save you a lot of time come tax season. Like homework, the hardest part about this for me is actually sitting down and doing it. Once started, I guess it’s not that bad. For something that fundamentally sucks eggs, that is.

6. Work on SEO – Do something (like writing a really wordy blog post related to your industry) to improve your Search Engine Optimization and hopefully drive more traffic to your website or blog. Updating your site, creating new content, getting other sites to link to yours and going through old posts to see what can be improved are great ways to improve your SEO and one of the cheapest ways to bring in new traffic and, hopefully, new clients.

7. Exercise outdoors – I try to work this into my regular schedule, but there are times when I put it off for awhile. I’ve always found that going out for a run is a great way to get your mind off things, which in turn often leads to daydreaming, which leads to new (hopefully good) ideas. If nothing else it just feels good to get out and get some fresh air and can stave off feelings of depression. It just dawned on me that not everyone lives in Southern California or Florida and running in mid-December might not be quite as easy as it is here. Still though, as long as there’s not ice on the road or temperatures so cold that your face’ll fall off, a winter’s run can be quite nice. So dress accordingly and get out there!

8. Spend an afternoon perusing photo books at a book store – This would have been an especially good thing to do here in LA this past week, as it’s been raining for the past 6 days! Barnes & Noble and Border’s both have decent selections of photo books by some very accomplished photographers in various genres. Local bookstores (if they still exist) – such as Arcana Books in Santa Monica, which specializes in books on art, design, architecture and photography – can be even better, though they might not have a coffee shop. Either way, photo books are one of my favorite ways to get inspiration and favorite things to collect. My most recent addition is Sam Abell’s The Life of a Photograph, which he signed when I met him after a presentation he put on with the ASMP earlier this month. A most cherished addition to my collection, as he’s one of my all time favorites.

National Geographic legend and Canon Explorer of Light Sam Abell! Fun guy to have a drink with.

(Here’s an iPhone photo I took while joining him, the other ASMP board members and the great folks from Julia Dean Workshops at Finn McCool’s in Santa Monica!)

Moving on…

9. Send out a creative holiday greeting – I’m bad about this, but maybe I’ll give it a try this year (I didn’t). Sending out a creative card that uses your own photographs is a great way to keep in touch with friends, families and clients. A friend of mine just sent out a great one featuring a studio shot he recently did of his son doing a jump kick in the air, around which he photoshopped in a Christmas tree and a Merry Christmas message. Simple, but memorable. Another I recall was by a coworker at the St. Petersburg Times, that showed himself and his girlfriend in the clutches of King Kong donning a Santa hat. Memory might be a little fuzzy on that one, but it was something like that. His cards were always a hit around the office.

10. Organize office or workspace – I tend to get organized and unorganized in waves. I typically start out with things in order. Then, over a few weeks, my surroundings slowly devolve into a space more resembling a pig pen than an office. At some point I just can’t take it anymore and spend a whole afternoon frantically putting everything back in order, thus starting the cycle over again. What with Christmas shopping and the onslaught of holidays this time of year I find myself nearing the tipping point yet again. Getting everything in order now though will be a great way to kick off the new year.

11. Go to the post office – If you’re just looking to kill time, go to the post office! The Venice post office is notoriously slow and with the holidays here and no apparent attempt to increase, if only temporarily, the already cut staff, the lines are absolutely snaking. Whether you’ve got presents to send or just need stamps for your holiday cards you can easily kill an hour or two waiting in line. While you’re there you can play fun games like trying to guess which frazzled person carrying boxes up to their eyeballs is going to blow first. Assuming it’s not you. That would be cheating.

12. Cook – Cooking a meal you don’t normally have time for is a great way to spend a day. Between finding a recipe, going out to the grocery store jam packed with holiday shoppers, cooking, eating and doing dishes you’ve pretty much spent your whole day. And your Whole Paycheck, if that’s where you like to shop. But cooking’s fun and eating is better, so why not? OR, brew beer! Erinn and I spent all of yesterday doing just that. It’s a great hobby that fits perfectly with my other hobby, drinking beer. Also a great time killer, though I won’t give it a spot on the Top 10 or 12 list. Trying to provide only productive tips here.

So there you have it. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section. Bring on 2011!

Sean O'Connor at Sean O'Connor Lighting in Beverly Hills, Calif.

It’s great when you find a subject who’s willing to work with you to create a better photo. For example, here’s a recent shot of architectural lighting designer Sean O’Connor that is running in this month’s issue of Architectural Lighting magazine. I had a fun time working with Sean, who runs his own firm in Beverly Hills.

For the assignment, I was pretty much given free reign to shoot photo that somehow conveyed the fact that the subject worked with light. Not knowing what my options were, I called Sean up to find out. At first neither of us had any clear ideas. Sean was reluctant to shooting in his office, but didn’t know of any alternatives that were available at the moment. It wasn’t because there’s anything wrong with it – it’s actually a stylish, loft-style office with plenty of natural light and a view overlooking Wilshire Blvd. – but more due to the fact that it’s been used before and he was interested in doing something different and more creative. So was I. But because he currently had no local projects in or around which to shoot we decided to shoot there anyway, but make the most of it and figure something out on the fly once I arrived. He knew he had a variety of lights and other lighting design tools lying around and was willing to work with me to figure out something that could make an unusual portrait. So often when I’m doing editorial work I’m met with either the challenge of shooting someone who doesn’t want to be in front of the camera or doesn’t want to put in the time to make the photo work. It isn’t always the case, but it’s often enough that it’s refreshing when you find someone willing to participate in the process.

When I got there I looked around for a while before deciding to shoot in his conference room. In a nearby closet he showed me several long ceiling lights that we could use and, liking the texture of the back wall of the conference room, which was made of paneling that allowed him to stick thumbtacks into it, I asked him if we could use it. Problem was, there were about 50 or so sheets of paper that were tacked up to it from a recent project, but fortunately it was finished and he offered to take them down. From there we went around fitting bulbs to the fixtures and arranging the lights so they formed a graphic background for him to stand in front of. We then closed the blinds so there would be no interference from ambient light. From here, my task was to light him in a way that wouldn’t overpower the effect of the strip lights by throwing too much light on the wall, so I fitted a 10-degree grid to a single light and aimed it down on him to cast as much fall off as possible to the floor and out of frame. The end result worked pretty well I thought. We also did a natural light shot in the main office and another one on the roof of the building, overlooking Wilshire and Beverly Hills, but this is the one the editor went with and is among my favorites from the shoot. Yay, collaboration!

I have lots of new photos to post, but most are from magazines assignments and haven’t been published yet. So, in an effort to avoid stagnation I went back through my Death Valley  photos and picked out a few new ones to post. More info about this trip can be seen 3 posts back, so I won’t repeat it here. More new work coming soon!

This makes me look like I can actually jump!

Break Dancing in Badwater Basin!

Matt shooting at dusk

Winding road in Death Valley National Park

Focusing on salt crystals at Badwater Basin

Gas station approaching Death Valley

I recently folded my old wedding photography site and blog in favor of my new wedding photography site , which better features my work and integrates more features for clients, such as private online proofing galleries and direct, online print ordering. At the same time I decided that rather than maintaining a blog for each site I would consolidate the wedding blog into this one. So, in order to preserve some of the content from my previous blog, I’m posting some of the favorites here before moving forward with new work.

Fashion shoot in front of The Brig, Venice, Calif.

I’ve been doing a few portfolio shoots lately, teaming up with models, stylists and makeup artists and just seeing what we can come up with. This is from a recent collaboration with model Keira Kitagawa and makeup artist Dee (last name to follow). After doing a number of shots in the studio we went out around Venice to find interesting locations. We ended in the parking lot of The Brig, a popular bar and landmark along Abbot Kinney Blvd. I had noticed the lights before while scouting for locations and thought this would make a great place to shoot. Our timing wasn’t great though. We finally made our way to this location just as the attendant was starting to charge for parking and cars were starting to pull in. He tried to charge us to park, but I told him we were looking for places to shoot my friend and asked if we could quickly take a shot and move on. He agreed, but was probably surprised when I pulled a big light out of the trunk. Dee helped Keira get ready in the car and we literally shot for less than 5 minutes, popping frames between crossing cars and pedestrians. Hard to get a clean shot! Finally it all came together and as an added bonus, a car that was turning in to park provided a nice edge light on her legs, giving it something the other frames were lacking. Overall it turned out pretty well I think. Nothing like working on the fly and under the gun! Thanks Keira and Dee for a successful collaboration!