I was very disappointed that Pocket Wizard tried to make one device  do everything and had a cost that was just too much to bear.  The Flex system was a poor concept designed for people who know they should get their flashes off their cameras but weren’t educated enough about how that worked to actually figure out the exposure and flash output for themselves.  Also they fried one of my Canon 580 EX II flash units with their Flex radio system and what is now know through out my studio as the black cloth death shroud.  That didn’t make a very good impression on me so I got rid of the Flex system and went back to regular pocket wizards until I found something that I thought would work better.   Perhaps if you are a person who completely uses Canon strobes and can somehow keep your flash from cooking itself to death, this system might work very well for you.  Denis Reggie has a completely lifeless review of it on the Pocket Wizard website where he sings its praises but I don’t know how relevant to the photography world Denis Reggie is anymore.  Wonder if they got him new flashes when the Flex’s burned out his flashes.  His pictures haven’t been very exciting for some time but I suppose making a million dollars a year providing an overpriced service to the rich, famous and vapidly uninteresting might have that effect on you.  He was a really interesting person to meet a few years back, but I get the impression that he’s just burned out. $50k a wedding just isn’t exciting anymore, Denis?

I bought the Radio Poppers JrX a couple weeks back and have been very impressed with their simplicity and effectiveness.  I’ve taken them out on a grand tour of tough situations and they have worked quite effectively.    They work well with my Canon strobes as well as Alien Bees and were bumped and bashed in and out of a car all day last week.  The Radio Popper JrX case design is nice and small and making adjustments is accurate though I wish they had chosen to go with a larger set of dials for adjusting the lights.  I’m searching the world right now to see if I can find another set of pot knobs that are big enough for me to use without wondering if I am even touching anything at all.  This system only syncs to 1/200 of a second and does not utilize TTL flash options which is ok with me since I haven’t used TTL in years due to its inconstancy.  The Radio Popper JrX are reasonably priced and I was more than happy to drop the cash to allow me to be more creative on the spot rather than manually pulling down the light to change the light output while dialing in my exposure and having clients wait.  Batteries are a little unusual in that you are not going to find them at Costco, but I gather that they were trying to keep it small and required 3v dc as most other transmitters do.  I typically root for the little guy and Radio Popper being the little guy has certainly stepped up with a product that impresses.

Scaffold Mart 5x5 scaffolding use on our house remodel in 2011

After much deliberation I chose to buy more scaffolding for a project I was working on.   Why would a photographer need scaffolding?  Well I don’t need it for photography at this point and am instead residing my house because I am rather a jack of all trades.  Surprising to many I am very good at many things but choose to shoot photographs because I enjoy it the most out of all the things I have abilities in.  There is future image plans for the scaffolding though.  We are slowly venturing into video production and are planning on having the scaffolding on hand to hold lights high above or to get a higher perspective for a camera angle.

I searched the local area in Austin for scaffolding and came up rather empty except for one place and it was rather expensive.  I trolled Craigslist for months trying to find something at an affordable price but scaffolding is far and few between there and the people who do have it think it’s value is more than I was willing to pay.

So online I went and visited many website obsessing about scaffolding, pricing and shipping and one place kept coming to the top of the heap;  Scaffolding Mart .  Never have I been to a website for tools and construction machinery that was so ridiculously excited about what they sell.  Someone spent a good deal of their life going on about the wonders and magic of scaffolding.  Literally there are 50-pages of text about their scaffolding and how magical it is and they went into great detail about the quality and the manufacturing.  They posted videos of the construction of some of their scaffolds, braces and walk boards which were elaborate and detailed.  These people appear to eat, sleep and breath scaffolding but it almost sounded too good to be true.

So I took the plunge and bought the scaffolding that I needed.  With a purchase over $600 they shipped the entire order for free.  I was very skeptical because it had to be hundreds of pounds of steel that was being shipped to me.  They shipped using Yellow-Roadway, a logistics and trucking company and estimated that the order would be to me by the middle of the following week.

Yellow-Roadway was kind of a pain to deal with.  They gave conflicting stories about where the freight was and when it would be delivered.  Their phone support was the most polite and helpful sounding group of people I’d ever spoken to but what they said on the phone what actually happened were two different things.  For two days I waited for the promised truck to come and drop off my scaffolding but nothing showed.  I called at the end of each day and they promised it the next day.  At the end of day two I asked if I could just pick it up at their local hub.  I spoke with the local hub over the phone and arranged to pick it up at around 6 p.m. the next day, but he said to call about an hour beforehand so they could get it off the truck.

The next day at about 5:30 I called and said I wanted to come and pick up the freight in about an hour.  The tired sounding fellow told me I couldn’t because there wasn’t anyone left at the hub to unload it.  This was the same fellow I had talked to the day before and arranged the pick-up with so I was somewhat annoyed and gave him a small piece of my mind about how non-logistical this logistics company was.  His manager wasn’t there so I told him that I wanted to see the scaffolding at my home the next day and not a day later.  I told him this in such terms to motivate him to actually make something happen.

The next day it showed up.  750 pounds of steel and wood found its way off the truck and into my front yard.  I thanked the driver and sent him on his way without incident.

Scaffolding from Scaffold Mart comes shipped by Yellow-Roadway, a logistics and trucking company

I looked over the Scaffold Mart scaffolding and found it was very nice, simple to put together and seemed to be made to take a lot of punishment.  I don’t know how they sell it as cheap as they do.  It really is very nice.  I’m sure my tiny order was probably not even worth sneezing at but I called them on a couple of occasions during the shipping debacle and while they didn’t always answer the phone they always called me back including a call after hours.  I was very impressed that they cared enough to call.  It was refreshing after dealing with large corporations for so many years who say one thing and do another.  I would definitely give a five out of five rating to Scaffold Mart for quality of their product and support that was top notch.

Scaffolding Mart 5x5 scaffolding

Scaffolding mart 7 foot cross braces and walk boards

Yellow-Roadway, on the other hand, is in desperate need of a more accurate tracking system and logistics that are actually logical.  I was very  surprised at how little people seemed to know about what was really going on.  But seeing as the shipping was free, what can I say?  At least I didn’t have to pay for the poor quality service.  As a side note,  has it ever bothered anyone else driving on the freeway that the Yellow-Roadway logo is orange?

A bride a while back was adamant about shooting as many of the pictures on her shot list well before the ceremony with the bride and groom separate. I had advised otherwise.   It was a hot July and the groom was not to terribly excited to go out in the sun at 4:30 for pictures.  He was supposed to arrive at the venue at 4 p.m. and be ready at 4:30, but had only just arrived with a missing groomsman.  They were only ready at 5 p.m.  Once outside, not a scrap of shade was anywhere in sight and the shots began with those people who were available for the shoot sweat pouring down their faces.  The flower girl had not arrived yet and the bridesmaids were not ready so most of the shots before the wedding were scrapped until after the ceremony.

Another bride planned to shoot an extensive list of shots well before the wedding in April.  Even though we started late with shooting because the bride and bridesmaids were not ready we started shooting, it was so bright out that day that everyone was squinting horribly in the picture.  It was a golf course wedding that offered no trees for shade near the clubhouse so the pictures were shot in bright sunlight which is not nearly as flattering as the pictures shot after the ceremony when the sun had dipped a bit.  The bride had beautiful eyes which didn’t show up in the shots before the ceremony but showed very well after.

What does a seasoned photographer say about the best time to shoot your posed family wedding pictures?  Shoot them after the ceremony. You aren’t going to save much time shooting beforehand as it is normally  a futile exercise in trying to get everyone out before they are ready.  Every one will have arrived at the wedding for certain by the end of the ceremony and there should be no delays hopelessly waiting for someone to show up so the pictures can be completed beforehand.  I suppose in the perfect world of magazine weddings people aren’t late, don’t get lost,  have their wedding clothes on already and are completely prepared when they spill a soda on their dress while applying make-up in the car.  It’s not fun to hear, but the wedding party in 50% of the weddings we shoot will not be complete until just a little bit before the ceremony takes place.

It’s a photographer job to make sure that excellent pictures are shot at a wedding and leaves with a considerable amount of good images  to represent that wedding well.  A coordinators job is to make sure the wedding runs smoothly but their responsibility ends when the wedding ends.  They don’t care if the pictures turned out poorly because of bad scheduling.  The pictures are the only thing most people have to remember their wedding by so take the word of your photographer if you’d like fantastic images.

An additional reason I typically try to shoot after a ceremony is to take advantage of softer, warmer looking light  from the sun.  Once the sun has dipped the light from the sun has to travel through more of the atmosphere which softens the light and changes the color.  It is certainly more flattering to do this and also it tends to cool down a little bit once the sun isn’t directly overhead.  Thinking of the  comfort of your wedding party helps to get happier pictures. It will be cooler with more shade  available to keep people from getting too hot later in the day.  In Texas this is something to think about a good part of the year.

If you do choose to shoot all of your pictures beforehand and have the bride and groom see each other before the ceremony be sure to remind people to be timely more than once. Certain people will not show up unless they are reminded many times.  Sometimes people won’t show up on time no matter what you tell them.  Bride’s in the past who were concerned about specific people not showing up on time have purposefully told them an hour earlier than the schedule said.  Some were still late.

Any which way you choose to shoot your posed pictures at your wedding, flexibility is definitely a good choice as you are preparing for your fun and exciting day!

Texas Governor Rick Perry shares a cell phone with filmmaker, Robert Rodriguez at Troublemaker Studios during a bill signing in Austin, Texas.

Filmmaker, Robert Rodriguez speaks at Troublemaker Studios during a bill signing in Austin, Texas.

Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks at Troublemaker Studios during a bill signing in Austin, Texas.

I did it again. By the grace of God I once again have a studio to meet people in and shoot if the weather is inclimate or if I just feel like exploring light! It was a long arduous journey through a lot of pain and suffering and yelling and throwing things and bending drywall and sanding and everything but in the end it was worth it! I had a party and invited everyone I know including clients, and photographers. Below are some of the guest pictures that I shot.

Ben and Sara

Andy Peterson

Mark and Emily

Farah and Spence

Nichelle and Darren

David Hill

Matt and Rhonda

Jeff and Alissa Marrow

Ulrike

Brittnee

Janna and Ryan

Sierra and Sandra

Well, I’ll tell you what: Macs are slow. I know everyone in the audience out there is beginning to scream with incredible vehemence but dollar for dollar you all know it’s true. I will concede that Macs are beautiful, well built machines filled with quality parts and if you have the money to burn you are certainly able to pay at least twice as much and get a machine that is better than your typical Dell or HP. But what about the custom built PCs that have parts that are the same quality as that in the Mac? Where Windows XP is easily as stable as OS X? Can it be? Of course. Just don’t go buy a Dell or a HP because the only way they make money is by purchasing the cheapest parts in the largest quantity.

Now before you all spam me with your, I had a PC and I switched to Mac or Mac has never failed me or I’ll never read your blog again posts, I’ll tell you a secret. I own more Mac’s than I do PCs and as far as laptops are concerned I would never buy anything else. I have a couple of Mac laptops which are grand machines for the typical operation of an office, emailing, writing, taking notes. But they are terribly slow if youask them to even start Photoshop. At that point they come to a halt and that cute little beach ball of death torments you without end. I also have an iMac G5 which is quickly approaching 3-years-old which is considerably faster than both of the laptops but still is no comparison to my 2 4-year-old Pentium 4s. Not even close. The contest is over.

But lately, I’ve been processing more and more images as things get busier and I’m starting to see the P4 is just not fast enough anymore. So the time has come to build another machine. I hear you mac people grumbling in the background. It isn’t going to happen kids. To get what I need in a Mac, it would cost around $4k which makes sure I have plenty of RAM, ample harddrive space, and absolutely a 500GB raid 5 array. I can buy the parts for around $1500 and actually have a faster machine if it is a Windows or Linux machine and it will be equal in stability. Where is the contest?

The naming game has been going on for years. I wasn’t very creative when I started. The main machine is Blackbox. The back-up main machine is Mistertime. The iMac G5 used to be White Wonder but is now is Timelord in homage to Doctor Who. The Powerbook is named Gigaflop and the new MacBook is called the TARDIS in reference once again to our new found obsession with Doctor Who.

The new machine will be a Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHZ machine and I’m toying with the name Torchwood, another Doctor Who reference. It’s an anagram of Doctor Who. You’ll be happy to know that I didn’t obsess to that point about the show. The creators did that during early production of the 2005 revamping of the show to prevent it from leaking out to the press. The show was code named Torchwood to throw off any leaks about it’s true nature.

I’m open to ideas. Leave posts in the blog. Let me know what you think. But no hate mail about my estimation of Steve Jobs’ obsessive compulsive need to control the universe like a young, unmasked Darth Vader in the early years. His vision is nice, but it’s just kind of slow.

I decided to start small in Austin rather than going in on a studio that was meant for a more established business. And I did that and stopped looking around for a studio space.

Then out of the blue, something just dropped into my lap and I couldn’t say no. 2007 Kramer Ln, Suite 104, Austin, TX 78758

It was perfect in more ways than something can be perfect. It was actually too big and gave me a little more room to design something really cool, somewhat like my last studio but bigger, better and cooler.

I try not to emphasize this to most of my clients, but I can do just about anything. In my past I’ve learned a little of everything and done a little of everything especially in the construction world. The following pictures showcase some of that everything that I have done in the past and apparently still have the skills for today. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t read the blog and just looks at the pictures it just looks like someone came in and did it all for, but I did everything single thing in the remodel from the framing to the electrical. I just do photography because I love it and I am better at shooting a wedding than anything else I have done.

There are a few people must thank for helping me out of the kindness of their hearts because I am too cheap to hire people and refuse to hire illegal aliens to do the grunt work.

First off is: Nate Mayfield who is a world class trumpet player here in Austin, studied at Juliard and was reduced to laying floor with me for a couple of days.

Second is: My bother Adam who was all too excited about finding me in his driveway to unexpectedly pick him up before some awful part of the remodel. Cheerfully he would lend his assistance.

Lastly is: Victor. Drywall hanging crazy man.

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This is what it looked like after we began laying out the walls. The space was used as storage for the guys behind my space since the last tenant left early in 2007. One of the tenants behind me owns a company called Digital Vehicles, Inc, a company that makes realistic formula one racing simulators that tour with the races. That explains why there was a race car in the space when we began and for almost the whole remodel.


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I framed these walls all by myself today because everyone else was busy. I think it took about 5 hours.

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Victor came over and we whipped out all of this drywall in about 6 hours.

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Christina helped me to do the plate on the curved wall. There are no picture from this part of the operation because I was holding the plate in one hand, had a drill in the other and had an extension cord strung over a roof truss hitch to the middle of the plate so we could get it up there. You had to be there to see it and if you had been there you could have taken the picture.



–121807
My brother Adam came over this happy day to finish framing out the curved wall and hang the drywall on it. To make drywall bend you have to soak it with water and then yell at it the whole time you’re putting it up while water runs down your arms off of it. Looks so easy when it’s all done like it is in he picture.

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Everyone abandoned me for the tape, mud and sanding part of the project. I suppose they had good reason because I came home for a couple of days looking like I snorted a 5-gallon bucket of cocaine. I think the is probably the most annoying thing I have ever had to do. I hate sanding drywall mud. Next time I’ll just get hire someone to do it for me. Ya right.

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Primer. Yeah, you missed the texture and one coat of primer, but it all looks the same after a while.

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Paint. Do you like my colors? I don’t really care. I like them.

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We began the floor and got a little more than a third of it done. This is where Nate showed how fast he could move.

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Cutting around this curved wall took a lot more time than I thought it would. I think I spent 4 hours just cutting around the wall. Aren’t my kids cute?

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This is the office where all of my computers live now.

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This is the office where all of my computers live now with a brand spanking new floor in it.

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Nate Mayfield and his infamous Baroque Trumpet Drill.

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Wiring the track lighting and finalizing how the switches were going to work. This is what I consider to be the end of the construction phase of the studio. Was it fun to look through? Did everyone learn something? I sure did. Hire subs and don’t try and cram it all into a month.

This year I finally broke down and caved under the carefully crafted advertising and media hype of the iPhone. Actually I wasn’t all that keen on the iPhone because of it’s extreme price and devotion to AT&T and wished for a device like it but without the phone part and necessity to pay a cell phone company $60 a month even to use it as an iPod. They read my mind, those buggers. Out came the iPod touch and I was hooked. They had figured out a way to get $300 out of me. And I am the first to admit that this little gizmo is incredible. Though they’ve locked the iPod Touch up to the point that it’s a little frustrating when trying to view my own website, a custome designed PHP site with embedded Flash which is not supported by Safari nor does it seem they will support Flash, it still has a whole bunch of things on it that are really useful and I have enjoyed having a new toy that I can play with.

Overall I had a good time and it motivated me to continue pushing the limits with what I do and make images that are unforgettable. Below are a few images I shot of his models then tweaked with my own tweaks to make the images similar to his final output at the end of the day. In the end I didn’t buy his magic doodads and instead invented my own. I sell mine a little cheaper. Check out the Cheap Tricks section of our website to see what our Tweakers do. I’M DEAD SEXY!

As is my style with everything, I am very spontaneous. I like new adventures. I’m the type of person who will call someone I know 1000 miles from home and see if I can stay the night 2 hours before I’ll be there. This has happened a couple times with my old friend Josh. He says that no one from the old school visits him very often so it’s always fun to drop in on him and go out on the town and eat around LA.

A couple of years ago, my brother and I moved my mother to Texas and called Josh asking if he had a 40 foot parking space in front of his place 2 hours before we would be there. He wasn’t really expecting us. You can tell that he was thrilled to see us as he took us to Burbank’s Fuddruckers

We’ve been out to visit many times and out to shoot with the 24p HD digital cameras that his employer has a couple times as well. It’s the same model camera that Star Wars: Episode 2 & 3 were filmed with. Our fist HD experience was us being goofy for the camera to see if we could figure out how they worked. Our second experiment was actually scripted, though very badly by me, and a volunteer cast and crew came out of the woodwork to make it happen.

Josh got a roughed-up make over by a professional make-up artist.

I don’t remember this guys name, but he learned his part half way through filming on the car ride to our location. He played a very fine russian fellow.

This guy was an Emmy nominated make-up artist who was just about to ship off to work on Pirates of The Carribean 2 & 3 so you can imagine how good this guy really was. I think we gave him $20 for lunch though he was a friend of a friend and was really just doing it for nothing. He’s working on Josh’s old room mate, Drew who provided most of the wardrobe by emptying his closet into his car.

Another woodwork volunteer. He’s basically holding onto an $80k camera, $40k lens and a number of other attached devices that probably cost more than my car. He and another guy donated their experience as grips and camera operators and actors when we ran short.

Lunch time on set with Drew and one of the mystery people who I can’t remember the names of.

It was a fun project. We spent about 4 hours of prep the night before the learn the basics of the camera and did the entire production in about 8 hours.