Evolution of a Shot

Most of my photographs for clients don't end up as we start.  There is almost always an evolution to the images.  Here is an example: One of the services that this client offers is janitorial service.  So they wanted to have three of their workers on one of their trucks looking like they were working. So here is how we started:

As you can see, it doesn't look like anyone is working, there is too much "stuff" in the back of the truck and the light was not that good with the washed out background around the truck.  So the first thing we did, is to move the truck inside where we could control the light. As much as I try to be on location at the proper time of day there always comes a time that the outdoor light isn't working.

We have now added a light in the back of the truck to light up the interior better and also added a soft light in front and removed loads of things out of the truck.

After we add the workers back in we will need to do some Photoshop work on the final image.

Some of the changes we made was to remove the license plate (copy a portion of the frame of the truck and pasted it over the plate) remove one of our light cords, remove debris that was stuck to the floor of the truck, remove a red strap that kind of caught the viewer's eye.

Here is the final image, coverted into black and white, using Nik Silver eFex II.  In this program you can control the contrast of the image and sharpen areas that need the extra structure.

Textures and Portable Flash

Since photographing products are a common request, I can say over my career I have photographed quite a variety. From toasters to washers and dryers to jewelry to bedspreads, I've done quite a bit.  On this particular day we were photographing designer pillows.  These are all hand-made from a small company in Fairfax, CA, Twig and Cricket. Our challenge was to show the texture in the product as it was in a natural surroundings of a home in Oakland, CA.

Nothing like a great shot of my bald head.

The lighting was pretty simple.  Start with a nice overcast day in the early morning so light is filtering through all the windows.  I added a small strobe, a battery operated SB-800 on a wireless trigger, to hit the subject with a just a tick of fill light.  This was shot with a very shallow depth of field to bring out the texture in the napkins.

Again, we used daylight from the windows and a portable flash with a slight warming gel to light up the front of the pillows.

We photographed the whole line of pillows in the same set-up so the owner could use what she wanted in different parts of the web site.

Warm light added with portable flash.

We set up and shot several outdoor photographs early that morning. Since the light was flat, we added a portable Nikon SB-800 with a warming gel off to the right to add some texture and give it that morning glow.

Dancing In a Daydream

One of my most popular images I have ever shot, took only a few seconds to set up. The story behind this shot I created years ago is simple.  I was on vacation in Carmel with my wife and I had just bought a new lens and was down on the beach working with it one day.  I saw this tiny  little girl having a great time at the beach.  She would walk down to the water and back up as the waves came gently in.  She spent about a minute near the water's edge and went back to her family.

I thought that would make a good photograph so I went up to her dad and asked if I could take a couple of shots of her daughter.  I gave him my card and told him to contact me and I would send him some prints in an exchange for a signed model release. He asked if I wanted her to change he clothes or anything and I said no, I want to just recreate was I saw a few minutes earlier.

The girl followed me down to the water's edge and I shot about five frames.   I got what I wanted on the first frame and then took a couple of back up shots. Forty-five seconds, tops.

When I came back home and processed the images, I knew I had something special.  A few weeks later I was contacted by the father of the little girl and I sent him some prints and he sent me a signed model release.

I have since won several awards with this image both on local level and on a national level.  One my most popular and it took less than a minute with almost no set up.  I titled it: Dancing In A Daydream for competition.

Postal Money Order Fraud

Here is an unusual situation that just happened to me: A woman contacted me about photographing an event on April 1st of this year - a memorial service for her late father.  She wanted family groups photographed as well as some candid images of the people attending.  Her language was very broken in the email saying things like; "Please let me know how convinent it would be for you in other to plan ahead..." Kind of weird, but not necessarily a red flag some people have a hard time communicating via email.

As the event is drawing near - I sent her a note to have her call with a credit card, meet me at my studio or send me a payment to hold the date. This is when it got interesting.

Today she sent me a FedEx Package that contained about $2000 in Postal Money Orders, (the deposit should have been $1600).  The FedEx package came from a company in Illinois called General Control.

Since most of my customers don't want to pay MORE than they need to, I thought this was a little fishy.  However, since I didn't know for sure, I had to cover my bases so I didn't not show up to an event that people expected me at.

I went back in my emails and found that the event was going to be at the Palm Event Center in Livermore. I gave them a call and found that nothing had been booked on April 1 for them.  Red Flag.  However, it would be possible that a different location was chosen and they didn't let me know yet.

Next, I took a look at the Postal Money Orders that they sent me:

MoneyOrders

Fake Money Orders

As they looked good with their sliver ink and multi colored paper, however the person who they were from, (Ashley S.) was neither my email contact or the person who sent the Fed Ex. Another Red Flag, so I went online to check and see if the Money Orders were indeed real.

The site I ended up at was United States Postal Service to see what a Money Order should look like.  Here is what I found:

These Money Orders don't look anything like what I received (is this a big enough red flag?).  They should have a watermark of Ben Franklin on it as well as a multi-colored security thread running though the paper. Mine were way off.

For confirmation, I called and finally got through to the United States Postal Service Inspectors to tell me if the serial numbers were infact invalid -they were.

For even more follow up I called the company, General Control that was listed on the Fed Ex packet to see if I could talk to the person who sent me the Fed Ex.  My thought was if it was some sort of scam - this woman is investing at least in a FedEx overnight package.  Since the first name of the person sending me the Fed Ex packet was almost identical to my emailer,  I figured why not call.  I spoke to a person at their company to find out that their FedEx account number had been stolen and had been used to send out over 50 fake FedEx packages, mine was one of them.

FED-EX

Fed Ex Return Address

OK, I'm not an idiot, now I am sure it's a scam - but how do they get anything out of it.  I doubted that there would be anyone at the shoot next Friday so how would they profit from this scam?  It only took a few minutes to get the email hook.  I sent them a note, saying I had received the Fed Ex and in it was MORE money than I had expected, I went on to say, shall I just credit them for more hours or add on prints to their order?

Here is the email response from Melisa, my contact. I turns out she has a pretty good command of the English language after all:

Hi Terry,

I just contacted my associate and he said that he misunderstood me concerning the instruction I gave to him as regards the amount he was supposed to send to you . I am very sorry for this mistake.

Actually he was supposed to send you $1000 as the first initial deposit and send the balance $950 to my  touristguide in china.  he has been waiting for the money so she can start making preparation for the booking of hotels of our guest who will be coming from china for this service .

What I want you to do now is to take  the money order to your Bank and deposit the payment in your account to get cash out, and just deduct money for the initial deposit as agreed and have the rest balance sent to him on the below information.

First name - XinLast name -XieAdres- 137 TAOJIN LUCity -guangzhouCountry - CHINAZIP CODE 10004

You can deduct the western union fees from the balance and send the rest as instructed. I will balance you up after the conclusion of the service. Please transfer and send me the below information so that i can forward it to her to pick it up immediately.

1. Sender's Name 2. Reference NumberThanking you in anticipation of your favorable assistance.Await your urgent reply.

Melisa.

******

It turns out, reporting this sort of thing is a hassle all onto itself.  After spending quite a bit of time on-line and on telephone-voice-prompt-hell, the US Postal Inspectors were pretty useless.  One representive suggested I try to deposit the money orders at the bank, what?

The group that did respond was my Alameda County Sheriff's Department - they took a report, my email conversations with the scammer, and they took bogus money orders with them. Hopefully  that is the end of it.

So needless to say I'm not shooting their event on April 1, (April Fools Day) after all.

Before and After

Last week I was asked to create an image for a cover of Golf Today Magazine.  I had little time since the deadline was only a day away. Upon arrival, I found some of my background options limited.  The lighting was poor, (florescent lights from above), so I knew I had to add my own light. With all the product gathered around in this shop, I couldn't use my large studio lights because I just didn't have the space.  So I used a couple of small SB800 lights and I used the TTL in the Nikon system for exposure. This is a fantastic way to get a good artificial light exposure quickly.

With one light into place I saw that I had a nice soft light as my main light and I had to add a background light.  Since this was a scientific lab (for golf) I decided to gel the background light with a blue gel and lower the exposure for that light to get a richer blue.

With the lights adding blue, I had the subject change his shirt to a blue to match the colors on the steel club heads in the background. I then went into Photoshop and spent some time bringing out his eyes, softening the skin and other normal retouching processes.

Finally it was sent to the magazine just under deadline and here is the mock up from the magazine.