This is
Katie Horvath, an attorney who specializes in intellectual property and patent law. The field of law we image creators really dig. I've photographed her before, for the
XDL website.
Whenever I see Katie, I always ask her about her work protecting clients' intellectual property. I can't help it, other areas of law just don't mean as much to me. Occupational hazard, I guess.
Now, about the picture. We made her portrait in downtown Richmond a couple weeks ago. Since Katie is based in Michigan, I was a little concerned about how her wardrobe would travel in a carry-on bag. Thank goodness she favored a soft-fabric suit. If she'd had one of those man-tailored structured suits, we would have spent 30 minutes steaming out the wrinkles.
We were at the offices of
Durrette Bradshaw, where I've shot in nearly every office, conference room and the law library at least twice. It was time to do something new (for my own sanity and out of respect for our subject).
After cruzin the D-B offices for someplace new, we went down to the lobby and looked around. There it was, the arch, the flag, the office buildings. The only drawbacks were all the glass windows to reflect my lights back at the camera. I just kept moving light stands around till I could stop seeing them in the windows behind her. Winifred got Katie ready for the camera upstairs in the D-B offices while I worked out the lighting.
We were going for a "Federal Court House" look with this composition. Getting access to a Federal Court House to shoot a portrait is unrealistic these days. It's about as easy as getting access to the Federal Reserve Bank--imagine airport clearance only ten-times more invasive. The other goal we achieved was giving Katie a "could be any big city" shot. Since she travels a lot for her work, we didn't want to place her with any identifiable landmarks or natural scenery that would confine her to a specific region.
I love the way this turned out.
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Honeybee keeping is making a comeback. All the news about 'colony collapse disorder' has gotten environmentally-aware folks into bee keeping, which is a good thing for all of us.
A photographer friend,
David Stover, has been keeping bees for a couple years. Now, my neighbor
Stacy Moulds and her husband Charlie Field are going to start here in Church Hill (they went to bee-keeping class last week!)
Yesterday, I walked out of the studio to admire the redbud trees we planted a few years ago. I was surprised to see honey bees all over the blossoms.
Trying to photograph the tiny honey bees was challenging (for me, anyway) and I realized (again) why I'm not a nature photographer. I'll leave that to the wildlife pros like
Lynda Richardson.I shot this with one of my back-up cameras, the Canon 50D, hoping the multiplier effect of the smaller sensor would help get me "closer" to the tiny bees. I used a medium zoom 24mm-135mm lwna, with a screw-on +2 close-up filter, 200iso, 200th of a second at f11.
A honey bee moves faster than a 2 year-old on twinkies. Using auto-focus, I struggled to keep up. Shot a bunch of frames...I like this one because it shows the all-important pollen ball on the bee's right leg. I hope this bee and all it's bee-buddies make it back to the hive and live it up!
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A couple weeks ago, we went to Virginia Beach to photograph a Republican candidate for the VA House of Delegates, Chris Stolle. We got to the shoot and that's when I realized the Obama 'O8 bumper sticker was on my truck!
Fortunately, Chris's campaign manager, Missi Sousa (a worldly young woman direct from Washington D.C.,) wasn't phased in the least.
We spent the day with Chris, going to various locations and photographing him with lots of different folks who work and live in Virginia Beach.
Creating images of a candidate for office is just like creating images for any product or service. Our job is to visually tell a story about that person. Chris' campaign was in need of specific images to help tell his story; illustrating key issues in his platform.
One of the images the campaign needed was a casual portrait.. His "day job" is an OB-GYN at a local Tidewater hospital. He's senior staff at the hospital; sees patients along with evaluating the hospital's response to patient treatment in general. But "Dr. Chris" as I called him the day of the shoot, didn't need another white coat physician portrait. What he needed was an "I'm a taxpayer like you" across the kitchen table portrait. An accessible, next door neighbor approach was called for. My goal was to create an image that would make a good first impression with a voter who is just getting to know Chris.
The frame above is what the campaign chose for the
campaign home page.Copyright 2009, Elaine Odell, Church Hill Photography.
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Perhaps you'd call it "courting the youth vote". If you were running for office, wouldn't you? We followed
Chris Stolle, Candidate for VA House of Delegates to a Virginia Beach High School to capture images of him talking with students. After classes that day, the Republican Club hosted a Q&A session with the candidate.
I've shot these types of discussions before and love doing it. The students are so freakin' smart. Not only that, they're surprisingly (to me, anyway) aware of current events and local government issues. The candidates always seem to get caught a little of guard. They come in relaxed, thinking this will be a laid back discussion. They end up switching gears, going from "oh, this will be easy," to "these kids are just as smart as everyone else."
The only problem with these shoots is that eventually I start paying too much attention to what the students are saying, and not how they look (which is what the clients are paying me for.) Fortunately, there are enough other folks around (like Missi Sousa, the campaign manager, or Chris Jankowski, political advisor) looking for the occasional un-tucked shirt or slouching posture.
When I shot this, the only direction I gave the students was where to sit. Between questions/answers, we moved them around to different desks. This gave all the students a chance to be recognizable on camera and ask their own specific question of the candidate.
The side-story here is educational funding for the State of Virginia. Just like a lot of places in the Commonwealth, this high-school was very overcrowded. There were no less than 8 classroom trailers outside what looked like a vintage mid-80's main building. And this was in an affluent Virginia Beach suburb.
When I realized we were shooting in a classroom trailer, I worried about setting up the shot. It was an overcast day, threatening showers. Was any natural light getting into that trailer? Would it look like a real classroom? Would there be any students in there?
Fortunately, there were plenty of students and big windows on the two long walls, facing the other trailers. The weak diffused light from the windows combined with the overhead fluorescent fixtures to provide a soft fill light. My assistant, Sam Allen, set up off-camera strobes to the right of the candidate to bring up the overall light level in the room. My intention was to make our strobes resemble sunlight streaming through the windows on one side of the trailer. The strobes allowed us to shoot at a fast enough shutter speed to freeze action and keep depth of field (sharpness) on the candidates and students. Without the additional lighting, we would have had mushy, out of focus images.
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This is Grace and Otto. They're getting married this summer and Hassan & I will have the pleasure of being with them on their wedding day.
We do A LOT of planning and preparation before we shoot a wedding, and one of the most important ways we prepare is to shoot an "engagement session" with the couple.
Since their reception will be held at the Omni Hotel, we decided to use the picturesque River District (which includes Shockoe Slip and the Canal Walk) for our location. This allowed us to show the couple (who don't live in Richmond, thus weren't that familiar with the area) the locations we might use for their wedding portraits.
We started at the fountain infront of the Martin Agency on 13th Street. I love this fountain, but so do the birds...so if you go to make pictures, bring a few paper towels if you want to sit on the edge of the fountai
n itself.
We started shooting in the late afternoon, but not close to sunset, because I wanted to be sure to get sunlight on their hair, and hard light in the water droplets from the fountain.
I love Grace's hands. I always love hands showing in portraits, and it's even better when you can incorporate that with a couple. It takes some practice though, getting hands to look pretty and not like bear claws.
One of the drawbacks to shooting in urban settings are cars parked on the street. This was a beautiful Saturday, so the whole world was out. A long lens with shallow depth of field helped blur the parked autos, and keep the focus on the couple.
We lingered here on the fountain and let the two of them just look out at the scene. I always turn away from the couple and give them a few moments to chat and whisper to each other. If I'm lucky, they forget I'm around and do something silly. That's when I get images like this with energy and spontaneity.
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This is Katie Horvath, an attorney who specializes in intellectual property and patent law. The field of law we image creators really dig. I've photographed her before, for the XDL website.
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