Bizy, bizy, bizy

It's been an interesting summer. So interesting, in fact, that I've been a little distracted and haven't been here as often as I would like. Let me bring you up to speed.

It was my goal to shoot something fresh at least once a week. I went to the airport and shot vintage aircraft. I photographed Sandra Day O'Connor. I photographed fly fishing. It was just what I wanted to do, but a trip to Las Vegas for a family reunion followed by a really fun project for Kyle Moyer and Associates turned my view away from the blog. This is a good problem to have.

After the Kyle Moyer project came an amazingly fun and funny promo project for R Squared Graphic Design. By the time we were done, not only were we laughing hard, but so were the clients of R Squared.

What did we do? Rick and the crew wanted mug shots of the staff along with a picture of them in jail. The storyline we were following was: The R Squared staff was arrested and thrown in a Mexican jail after trying to buy fireworks for their clients.

This was a project that could easily be messed up, but together, we made a top-notch promo. First, I photographed the staff with a ringflash, which can be a harsh light, but throws a wonderful shadow which surrounds the subject.

After that we went into that harsh afternoon sun and photographed everyone with a long lens so that the background would be blurry (and remove any sense of place) and the trip to Mexico would be more believable.

A few days later, we all met at Rawhide Western Town and that's where everyone went to jail. The backdrop of the western town was also a fun setting for the images where they were escaping from Mexico.

Rick and crew took the images, whipped up a promo for mailing as well as created a page on their Web site that allowed viewers to leave comments. From the looks of the comments, everyone had fun -- and they were popular.

How cool is that?