Several months ago I was contacted by Virginia Downes, Director, Production and Design for Godine, an independent publishing house located in Boston, Massachusetts. Virginia and I had previously worked together on another book cover when she was at Harvard Common Press. During our initial phone conversation she said she was interested in having me create a cover image for a book that, to quote the book jacket, “follows the players on West Point’s fiercely passionate rugby team as they became members of the first class to graduate from the military academy into wartime since the days of Vietnam.“ Virginia is a joy to work with, and together we combined our talents to bring Godine’s vision to life. Guidelines were provided by a tight comp. There was some thought of having me shoot on an actual playing field, but ultimately we decided that a tight studio shot, with the look and feel of a playing field lit dramatically would be the best option. This was a challenging and rewarding experience and I don’t think it is untrue to say that the people at Godine were very happy with the final results.

Earlier this year I was contracted to do several types of shoots for Kevin Espiritu founder of EpicGardening.com. In a makeshift studio set up in his warehouse I took product shots of his stock of beautifully constructed raised garden beds. With the help of some white seamless paper and some post production photoshop magic I think you will agree that you can’t tell they were shot on location in a warehouse. The next two days of shooting involved shooting on location at Kevin’s home garden. We shot lifestyle shots on day one, and the products by themselves on day two. Kevin seemed very happy with the results, which you can view by going to his website: https://www.epicgardening.com. Click on the red "shop" box on the upper right hand side of the home page. Kevin’s site reflects his passion and knowledge about so many aspects of home gardening. I highly recommend it.

A couple of weeks ago I completed a shoot for the Scepter & Sword Wine Company. I was tasked with shooting three different bottles of wine: a red, a white, and a rose to be published on web, print, and social media. The tricky and challenging part of this project was shooting the unique and beautifully executed dimensional foil scepter fixed to the outside of each bottle. Capturing the metallic feel of that design element while at the same time making the highly reflective bottle look great was dealt with by compositing multiple images of the bottle (lighting each element differently) and extensive photoshop retouching, which I enjoyed tackling. My client seemed very happy with the results...

While archiving images the other day I came across this image I shot a couple of years ago at my client's place of business in a very large meeting room converted to a studio for the day. My job was to shoot one of their employees dressed as a soldier in the studio setting. That photograph was then going to be combined with a background the creative department had found online. I had the opportunity to plan out beforehand how I was going to light this and process the raw image in post having already seen the stock background they picked. I knew it was going to be dark and moody, and towards the blue end of the spectrum so I lit it accordingly and in post pushed the raw image towards the cooler side so it felt to the viewer as if the soldier was in that environment. I think the creative department did a great job of meshing my image with the stock background they found, and the display component circling the soldier's head.

Recently I was contacted and hired to do a shot of this filtering product, made by Toray, a company located in Poway, California. You can't tell by the photo, but this is a 7 ft tube that was a bit difficult to position. Transporting this beast to a studio was not an option so I was asked to shoot on location at their facility in an area filled with equipment. Had to be bit creative in lighting, but my client was pleased with the outcome. I didn't know exactly how they were going to use my images, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how nicely the design of their brochure turned out.

Last month I did a shoot at UCSD Medical Center for VisionRT, a medical device company based in England. They make specialized cameras for radiation therapy medical equipment such as the one shown here. This shoot had its challenges that took a bit of planning to overcome. In order not to interfere with patient's treatments we needed to shoot after hours and within a small window of time. The room was small and cramped and the imaging device huge, as you can plainly see. Being a cramped room, even if I wanted to light it there was no place to place lights without them being seen in the shot, so I went with available light and captured multiple exposures later composited in Photoshop. In addition I did not want the extreme distortion that comes with using a very wide angle lens, so I used the photo merge function in Photoshop to merge together two images shot with lens that did not distort nearly as much as a 14mm or even 24mm wide angle might. Finally, since I was shooting with available light (meaning 5 second or longer exposure times) and they wanted people in the shot, I had to make sure the models didn't move during the many, many exposures taken. But it worked out great, and the client was thrilled!

Several weeks ago I completed a two day shoot for Hoist Fitness Systems in San Diego. We did product shots, exercise shots and beauty shots of models using their outstanding fitness equipment. They make products for both commercial and residential gyms. Having used their equipment at the local YMCA I can tell you their design and implementation is first rate.

Szaga Watches is a new designer and manufacturer of beautiful designed watches geared towards millennials. I love the minimalist and bold style. Did some test shots, one of which is displayed here.

The day before the 4th of July I had the opportunity to shoot for Quilt in a Day, a handicraft publishing company based in San Marcos California. We shot at a rustic and beautiful cabin in the mountains nearby San Diego. This is just one of 7 shots we did that day. Happy 4th!