Jim Larson Photography

I had a great time yesterday photographing our friends new puppy.  His name is Zappa and he was one of the most well behaved puppies I’ve seen. Zappa is an interesting mix of a Rat Terrier and a Chihuahua. Here is one of my favorite images from the photo session.

To see the rest of Zappa’s photos, click HERE to be redirected to my gallery site.

Enjoy!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

One of the aspects my photography business is shooting portraits.  My wife owns a music studio and a lot of students and parents coming through on a weekly basis.  This gives me an opportunity to show some of my work to potential customers.  As soon as I get this one printed, it will be up on the wall not only as advertising for me, but for this particular shot, as an inspiration to the music students.

The image was captured by placing the model on a white seamless paper background and a white, somewhat shiny floor.  After the image was copied to the computer, it was edited to take out any slight shading on the white background and to add a light brown gradient.  This was all done in Photoshop in about 10 minutes.

Now it is off to the printer for a nice 16×20 print!

I’ve missed a few opportunities to show off our little white dog, but couldn’t pass up this shot from her 2010 calendar.  Yes, we truly print out calendars every year of various photos taken of her.

This was a very simple setup from a technical point of view.  Alle was sitting on a black piece of plexiglass to give a nice reflection.  The background was black seamless paper and the lighting was a single 2×3 foot softbox.

When shooting pets, or any living subject for that matter, a good starting angle is to get at their eye level and experiment from there.  Make the subject look larger by shooting up at them, or smaller by shooting down.  I was pretty much at eye level with Alle.

Every once in a while I get to photograph a real natural model who makes it easy from the photographer’s point of view. This was the case on Saturday as I shot senior portraits for a good friend of ours. She was very much at home in front of the camera and everything came together quite nicely for the photo session.

Lighting was quite simple.  I had a 2×3 foot softbox over my right shoulder and one strobe high over the model’s right shoulder to give the nice hair light.

The background was black seamless paper.

The model and her mom were quite pleased with the results, so I’d call that a successful shoot.

Who doesn’t love a puppy?  This young Australian Shepherd  was an interesting subject. Unlike most puppies, he was quite mellow, so that was helpful in the studio.  However, unlike most subjects, he didn’t understand commands like “sit,” “stay,” “speak,” but he did pretty good.  Koda is one of the most handsome dogs I have ever seen.  His markings are amazingly beautiful.

My wife was making some interesting sounds to get Koda’s attention.  Unfortunately, when she started to howl, the poor puppy thought it was one of his counterparts from the wild, so he tucked his tail and ran.  However, he did respond with some adorable head tilts when she started to whimper.

Prior to the shoot, I headed over to Home Depot and picked up some “white tile board” for use under the subject.  This worked great with the white backdrop.

Thanks to Kenzie and her mom for bringing Koda over for the photo session.

My wife came into the studio this afternoon and made the comment that I think outside the box.  Hmmm, maybe I do as this is not your typical photo, but one that took a lot of setup, trial and error.

This is the first time I’d ever tried to do anything with smoke and by the end of the shoot, the studio was smelling strongly of incense.

I wanted the shot backlit to really bring out the smoke against the black background. A single softbox was used above the gun and a small white reflector was used to get some reflections on the side of the barrel.

Try thinking of some dramatic effects and create them in real life.

Every once in a while I get to take some really fun photos. Today happened to be one of those days. The place where I work was having a company wide meeting and asked if I would bring in my photo gear to take pictures of the guest speaker. This guest speaker is world famous due to her excellent performance in the 2008 Summer Olympics in China. She is from the Boise area and is an outstanding cyclist. Her name, if you haven’t guessed it by now, is Kristin Armstrong.

Kristin must be used to doing photo shoots, as she was quite comfortable in front of the camera and never blinked once due to the strobes.  :-)

Congratulations to Kristin for representing our country and city so well as she brought home the GOLD!  We are all proud of her!

Here is Alle’s September calendar shot taken while she was sitting inside a guitar case. She must be a musician at heart.

Here is a simple studio shot of our country’s beautiful flag.

Happy birthday America.

July is a patriotic time of year and thought that we should get our dog into the mood too.  We have a blanket that is made up of various stars and stripes patterns and thought we’d give it a try.

I set up the studio lights and a dark background for some good contrast.  Having a willing model always helps too.