meadows online photos

A Home Run! Hit  Outta' the Park!

One of my Food photographs was selected, and is in "The National Culinary Review" magazine. Jeremy Anderson's of Elliot's Oyster House incredible seafood dish called "Seared Mexican Shrimp with Roast Pepper Salad and Grilled Polenta". And that is a mouthful!

Hi Shawn,

 Thanks so much for sending me a copy of Shrimp Business magazine. Wow! It is pretty neat to get both the front and back cover. Shawn, you did a really great job designing, laying out, and especially cropping the images in the magazine. Frankly, there is nothing more important than how a photo is cropped. 

This is a  really classy, 1st rate job.

Also I was wondering if I could get a few more copies for my portfolio.

Thank you so much,

 I just completed three shoots for Ocean Garden Seafood and uploaded the photos. The 1st was at the spectacular Elliott's Oyster house on Pier 56 on Seattle's Waterfront. The second was at Voltarre Restaurant in Historic Ballard, and the Third shoot was at the Metropolitan Market.

 

  Warning food photographs can make you hungry!

   On Monday the photo essay I worked on the previous week ran in WWD "Women's Wear Daily", with the title "Serene in Seattle: Retail Enclave Resits Chains."

 

  Madison Park is one of my favorite Seattle neighborhoods and Senior Editor WWD, David Moin's excellent article describes the place perfectly. I read a pdf online and when I get some copies I will show the photo essay as well. 

 

  Also this week I was working on a commercial job, an ad series for Aree Perlman's Jewelry store.  It is amazing how shooting digital has replaced the whole scheme of analizing polaroids! No more goo on your fingers, and seeing the shot on the computer is so much nicer.  The difficult lighting effects required to shoot small products like Jewelry are easier to see on a 21 inch Sony monitor than on a small polaroid.

I had a pleasant surprise when I got to my mailbox yesterday. 

 

 I received a copy of the Hearth and Home magazine story with my photos.

 

 4 full pages and I am really pleased with the quality of the printing and the design and layout. It is such a spectacular place.

 

And the view, WOW! Be sure to see it online using the enlarge module on the bottom right of the picture slide show box.

Microsoft Pro Photo Summit

 

  On Wednesday and Thursday I attended the 1^st ever Microsoft Pro Photo summit. In attendance were some of the biggest names in the Photographic Industry, including Dennis Reggie whose last notable wedding was for Campbell Brown of NBC, Steve Fine of Sports Illustrated, Vincent Laforet of the NY Times and 350 others of similar stature.

 

 The topics of discussion began with “Publishing in a Digital World”,  “Color Management”,  “Directions on RAW”, “Maximizing Metadata”, “Trends in Stock Photography”, “Photography Workflow”, and “Reliable Storage.” Generally they were panel discussions with the leaders the industry in each category specialty.  After the moderator presented a series of leading questions to the panel the selected audience was allowed in depth questions.

 

  Not to speak for Microsoft in any way, but I feel they were honestly trying to get feed back from the industry leaders in order to make software improvements that would enhance the digital photographer’s user experience. With the public’s rapid adaptation and conversion to digital photography and their upcoming release of the next Windows operating system called “Vista” this is both understandable and a good move. Both days were filled with information and at times was very entertaining.

 

  One episode, or exchange that was absolutely hilarious involved and interchange between Vincent Laforet, and Thomas Knoll Director of Product development at Adobe. Thomas was responding to a question about the limits of number of pixels arrayed on a sensor, basically Mega pixel count, when he went to a long description regarding how quantum physics is now approaching it’s physical limits in terms of pixel density. Vincent who won Pulitzer Prize for photography, turned to Thomas and said something like “What was that?” The audience laughed, but it really dramatized how great the chasm is between the engineers creating the software and hardware ‘cameras’ and the end user, in this case a brilliant photojournalist. Adobe makes the preeminent software used by photographers today, “Photoshop”, but I suspect many users like myself, have no idea how it is actually coded or what makes it work.

 

 I had a chance to sit and have lunch with Thomas Knoll and remarked, “Why is it that I have the pleasure to be with the two smartest guys in the room?”

 

One other very special encounter I had was that I got a chance to meet Dennis Reggie.

 

 A reception was held at the Bellevue Art Museum. Dennis who is credited with the Term and style “Wedding Photojournalism” was actually a GREAT guy!  I asked him the classic question, “What goes through your mind when you create a great photograph, can you actually tell at that instant?” He said, “Yes I know I have got it.” To summarize the five minute beautiful oration he gave me. All I could say was WOW I think I just met Picasso! He laughed and it really broke down all barriers.

 

I really learned a lot from the speakers, and Tim Grey head of their Pro Photo division and Microsoft team involved went over the top creating this once in a lifetime event!

 

   The sun is streaming trough my window, and it is a beautiful February morning. In a state of contented bliss, drinking morning coffee, I realized that a milestone in time has passed.  It was 1976, with a new Nikon camera system, when I set out on my own, and began a journey that has now lasted 30 years.  I now look back on those early days of excitement and wonder, with lots of nostalgia. Building my 1^st darkroom, buying a studio strobe, looking through a 4*5 inch view camera, with the dark cloth draped around my neck, a focusing loupe in hand.

 

  Like so many others before me I began an adventure that was to consume my whole life. Each photographer needs to find his niche, and mine was 1^st in commercial advertising photography and fashion. Beautiful models, and bright art directors, and so much style…time has a way of diminishing the struggle and all the effort. But when I look back I realize that is what it was all about “the struggle”.  Most people concentrate on the rewards of their labor, material things, a new house, a fancy car, and forget about earning meaningful things in life, is 'in the living'. The lessons I have learned are simple.  The greatest gift an artist can have is to live ‘the struggle’, I have never learned as much as when I tried a little harder to get the lighting just right, and the true feeling to show though.  

 

 Every time I thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this,” something new came along that was more exciting, a new challenge. Last year Pro Lab closed and I was confronted with no lab for my professional film processing. I had been easing into digital via high resolution scans, and suddenly I was now with out a lab that was less than a mile from my front door.  I jumped into digital photography, read everything I could find, and just like in high school where I built a telescope as a physics assistant, I overcame my fear by mastering the technology.  It has been a lot of fun too! Oh well I am off to do a shoot…

I was on a photography web site called photo.net and realized that a bunch of the photographers there added their blogs to their wedding web sites.

 

  So I thought I wanted to do the same. There are so many personal projects I would like to post on the web, but would like to keep seperate from my business web site, and this is a great way to be able to to that.

 

In Seattle it has rained over 11 inches in January! I can't wait for Spring Time..hmmm

I recently purchased a 70 - 200 mm  F4 L lens for my Canon 20 D.  It was such a beautiful evening I decided to go to GoldenGardens and test it.  I was very pleased at just how sharp and clear the photos were. The only difficulty I had was that in order for an autofocus lens to work clear contrasts need to be in the scene. This was not possible with a sunset I found out.  No problem, I switched to manual focus and had a great time!

One of my favorite waliking places in Seattle is Green Lake, which is located in the North center of the city. It is one of the city's most popular parks, with a path around the lake.

 

While I was there yesterday I noticed these kids taking sailing lessons, supervised by adults in small power boats. When I arrived the class was ending, and they were trying to return the boats to storage. Imagine kids running all over the place in pure mayhem, add uncontrollable factors as wind power, are their source of energy.

 

It was hillarious!!

 

Boats almost colliding, like hearding cats.. combined with blue sky and bright red sails...you never know when something beautiful is going to happen.

 

 

 

 I have been working with digital photos in the RAW format, which enables the most information to be recorded. The detail is amazing, but it is a little unsettleing to work with photos that are not sharp right out of the camera.

 

 I have been using the Unsharp mask filter in Photoshop CS2 to sharpen the images and after that process the images are unbelievable.

 

I posted some test images from the Rose Garden at the zoo I shot on Sunday using a 17-85mm USM Canon Lens and the Canon 20D.  The lens has macro capabilities and I was also testing it's ability to AF at close distances. I had read that AF problems had occuring with some users. I suspect the focus points were reading other areas out of the center of interest.