The area got the name from a fur trader named John Meares. He saw the headland and tried to cross over the bar into the Columbia River. When he missed, he named the area Cape Disappointment. This area has become known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Originally, locals cut the tops of trees and used a white flag to create a daymark. At night they would set trees on fire to mark the entrance. By 1848, the Government agreed that a lighthouse was needed, but it would still be almost another eight years before a lighthouse was built.

One of the keepers, Joel Munson is credited with organizing a lifesaving crew at the lighthouse. He rebuilt a wooden lifeboat of a foundered ship that would be used by the crew. Later, the Government would create a permanent lifesaving station at nearby Fort Canby. Initially, the lighthouse was outfitted with a first-order Fresnel lens. This was used in the lighthouse until the North Head Lighthouse was built in 1898.

The U.S. Coast Guard still has a station at Cape Disappointment and monitors distress calls from mariners. The Cape Disappointment lighthouse is the oldest lighthouse in Washington State and is one of the oldest standing structures in the Pacific Northwest.

“Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.” Pablo Picasso.

Many times I get comments like “you did something to that photo, didn’t you?” and I just look at them wondering why they can’t see what I saw when I captured the image. Sometimes I truly wish I could paint with a brush so I could answer them back “this is what I see.” I have long ago given up on waiting to hear what everyone of us aches to hear. It seems I mostly create fine art photography for me, and hope that there will be a few people out there who will agree with my eye and what it interprets.  So for those of you who want to “see” what I saw, look up, for those who wish to see the scene as an original “SnapShot” look down.

If you want to know what I did to create what I saw, leave me a note below and I will share what I can.

The original image was shot with an Orbis Ring flash with the exposure dialed in a little hot (This is another one of my workflows I will share at a later time). Since I shoot everything in RAW and use PS CS5 I am able to control all of the elements I would normally have controlled in the darkroom to bring out the color and shadows the way I like. My first step was to use the Gaussian blur filter to channel the focus to her face. Once this was accomplished I brought in two of my stock textures and began the process. I never approach a shot with a finished look in mind, I let the textures “speak” to me and use the brushes to paint and complete the look I feel is right.

Actually, when I have a model like Ruth, how could I go wrong. Below you can see the difference between the original and the finished image.

This week I got to photograph three brothers for a birthday gift for their grandmother. What mom wanted was to have me create a portrait of the three boys together. Oh, I almost forgot the most important part about this story, two of the boys were three year old twins, and their little brother was two months old. Posing these firecrackers were the least of my problems. The twins just could not sit still; they wanted to know what everything was and why it was in my studio. Much wiggling and squirming was going on. Then, I think it was Andrew who looked up at me and said, “Are we done now?” I had only taken 5 shots, so I comically answered, “We have to do this all day.”  You should have seen his little eyes. I then explained that grandma wanted a picture of them so she could remember them and as soon as we got the perfect shot we could all go home and have lunch. That seemed to do the trick because both boys began to focus and I fired off shot after shot. By the end of the session, the twins had had enough and, as you can see from the photo, Joshua was into a power nap. We were done and ready for lunch.

Yaquina Head Light House is my newest photo of the week. The day of the shoot it was a very cold 41 degrees. The real problem that day was the wind. Twice I was nearly blown over by gusts. Try shooting on a tripod in a gale, heck, try keeping your lens dry. I do think I succeeded however. It was low tide so I just jumped down to the beach and walked a short distance out to get the lines I wanted.

The lighthouse was built from 1871 to 1873 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and automated in 1966. It is currently an active aid to navigation. The lighthouse still uses its original 1868 French-made Fixed Fresnel lens. In 1993, the lighthouse was listed in the National Register of Historic Places

The lighthouse was used as the setting for the “Moesko Island Lighthouse” in the 2002 film The Ring. It had already appeared in an earlier film, Hysterical (1983), and The Nancy Drew Mysteries 1977 television series episode “The Mystery of Pirate’s Cove”.

This week the spotlight is on Paz Ramos, the Principal at Alder Elementary School in Gresham Oregon. Alder has the unique designation of being one of the most impoverished elementary schools in the state of Oregon. When I met Paz my eye was immediately drawn to a pencil sketch he had on his wall. The likeness was uncanny and I asked if the illustration was of him. He said no, but that his daughter had drawn it of a famous basketball star, he didn’t say who. I still think it was his daughters ‘Freudian’ version of her dad, the competitor.

The feeling of healthy competition permeates the halls of this school. Everywhere I went I saw banners and pennants of the various colleges in the region. There was even a map of the U.S. that designated the different locations of each of the teachers at the school, the name of the college they attended and the city where it was located. His goal is that each of his students goes to college. He even has a note pinned on the wall between first and second grade that portrays in proud exclamation the date these students will graduate from their chosen university.

I came away with a new appreciation of long term goal setting. His purpose there seems to be to help each student have the desire to see where a college degree will take them. The only problem I saw with all of this was that there wasn’t a banner from my alma mater, Eastern Oregon University. My goal this week is to make sure that is rectified.

My hat goes off to Paz Ramos, the dedicated teachers and staff at Alder Elementary school for setting the tone of success for our future leaders.

One of my favorite types of photo session is with small children. I like working with the little ones because they are so unpredictable and I actually get a great deal of exercise trying to keep up with them. While this can be a major motivator to keep me on my photographic toes, as it were, this type of sitting can quickly turn chaotic and frenzied for everyone. When the kids enter this state of pandemonium there is not much I, as the photographer can do. I just look at the mom, or in the case of this week’s photo, the two moms and say with my eyes “HELP!?” Well, in this case I actually said that with my mouth too. Those two little girls were in control of the entire room and they knew it.

The photo session was supposed to go like this. It was right before Christmas and the two moms, sisters, and their husbands, met with their firstborn little girls in the lobby of a large apartment complex where one family lived. Ruth had just turned one and Brynn was 10 months. The two moms and I discussed the shoot and agreed to go with Christmas colors for their dresses. So, the moms went off to adorn their girls with the new outfits and I set about arranging the session area. I set up my portable lighting equipment and performed a few light balance tests and when everything was technically perfect, I called the families down to begin the shoot. As soon as the moms placed their girls on the couch they both began to cry. Now babies cry all the time and sometimes when I capture the correct ‘tear in the eye’ it can be very heart warming, but not these girls. No, their cries were the pained cries of an innocent being tortured in some gruesome way. Their cries pierced the atmosphere and I am sure ever canine within a 30 mile radius perked up to see what could have caused such a sound. So, we separated them, which did little to dissuade their determination. No, they were not going to have their portraits taken and that was final. It was as if they had secretly met in their cribs the night before and made a pact, “no portraits, on pain of death” and swore and oath.

I fancy myself as a fixer of problems and solver of tribulations and I was not about to be outdone by two little girls, no, there was more at stake here. My professional reputation as a children’s photographer and my ‘face’ were up for the taking. I suggested that we move the couch away from the wall, use the curtains a as backdrop and have the kids stand on the couch, facing me. I would then position the two moms behind the couch to entertain and distract as I prepared for the shot. Then, just at the perfect moment I would say “NOW” and the two moms would duck behind the couch and Ruth and Brynn would be left standing in all their glory. How was I to know that one year old little girls can turn faster than my 1/200^th of second actuator? I had no idea they could move that fast. Every time I yelled “NOW” the moms would duck and the two girls would spin around to see what was going on. Granted they had quit crying, and they did seem to be having fun, so, I decided not to fight it any longer. I let the moms continue their behind the couch entertainment and I just shot away.

The families came away from the photo session somewhat amazed over how two such tiny people could end up controlling the actions of so many adults. And I came away with a very unique portrait of two beautiful little girls and the memory of what it was like to be young and filled with so much energy.

Have you ever had a photo session go awry and end up with something you hadn’t planned? Tell me about it.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of covering the Winter Formal at Portland Lutheran School. PLS is an independent prep school with students who are highly motivated to learn. This is the second time they asked me to cover an event for them and some of the students remembered me from my first visit. This always makes a shoot easier, because common ground lets everyone relax and be themselves. On a typical shoot I spend a great deal of time conversing so my clients end up feeling more relaxed. Having a relaxed and comfortable subject turns into a much better portrait.

Because of the familiarity I shared with the kids I asked them if they wanted me to take photos with the same poses as last time, or if they wanted to try something different. Several of them wanted to know what “different” meant and I explained that a static photo is fine, but some movement or action would add character to the finished print. There were several of them that were very excited about this idea and we had a great time creating a number of fun poses together.

My photo of the week spotlights a young couple who had mixed opinions about the idea of creating a portrait that was “different.”  She was all over the idea, while he was less than enthusiastic about “acting out” some emotion in front of me and his classmates. What can I say; I understand what he was trying to tell me. We’re guys right? We like keeping our emotions close-in. So, I told her to hold on to his shoulder and jump as high as she could while kicking her legs in the air. She just smiled as if to say, “You read my mind.” I told him to stand there with his arms crossed and produce an expression on his face that would let the world know how he was feeling about the entire process. As you can see, the shot worked perfectly. I tweaked it just a bit in Photoshop to bring out the edginess of the moment but the portrait says it all. A wonderful visual statement of how guys and girls handle emotion, “differently.”

What emotion would you “not” like to have recorded on film? Or, what emotion would you be willing to have recorded for posterity?

This week I had the opportunity to photograph Brittany and Chelsea for their senior portrait. As you may have noticed they are twins. Their photo session occurred over a two day period mostly because we live in Portland and the weather changes every six or seven seconds. The studio session was completed during a rather rainy and gloomy day so we all agreed that the outdoor session would be postponed to a setting without all the water and mud. Like that will ever happen in Portland during the winter. As luck would have it just two days later the weatherman warned us that a strange yellow ball in the sky would make its’ appearance. So we decided to take our chances and schedule a shoot for that time. While the rain had subsided the overcast situation made for a rather fun and unique shooting opportunity. I was able to use many of the Strobist techniques I had learned and ended up creating some very dramatic photos.

This one in particular is stunning. As we had finished up the shoot we began walking back toward the cars and I looked up to see a break in the clouds and noticed a nearly full moon up above. I had the girls sit backward on a bench in the park, I laid down, yes in the mud, and had their cousin John hold the remote wireless strobe. The captured photo was phenomenal. Every aspect of the shot seems to be in perfect balance.

Shooting with teen agers can be trying at times, but I have to say these girls were the most polite and well manner young people I had met in years. The shoot was fun, they were perfect models and I came away with hope for our future generation. Well done ladies, and thanks for a great shooting experience.

This week’s photo is of Anita, a young bride who was married at the Bell Tower Chapel near Sandy, Oregon. The setting started out as an experiment in light for me. The ceremony had concluded and most of the guests were outside at the banquet celebration. I found Anita walking, alone, back into the chapel. I think she was looking for her newly acquired husband. Don’t tell her but I saw him out with the boys, I think there were cigars involved.  Anyway, when I saw her walk through the chapel after the pews had been cleared I thought the setting would create such a beautiful portrait. So I had my assistant attach a remote wireless strobe to a pole and had her raise the strobe very high and aim the light down at Anita at about a 45 degree angle. The only thing left was to adjust the camera so the ambient light was as subdued as possible. The idea was to have the strobe light accentuate her and her gown. I think it worked perfectly. The only post processing I did was to use Photoshop to darken the edges a bit to help further draw your eye into the center and then I added a little Gaussian blur to reduce the distracting background.

If you would like to know how I made the light stick, eMail me and I will share my specifications and the recipe for a wireless remote light-on-a- stick.