Here’s a quick sample from Saturday’s photo-shoot for a side project I have been working on. The assignment is to create the images for a children’s book that is coming out in 2010. The final images in the book will be processed to appear as illustrations, but I thought I’d share an unedited version here.

The lighting for this shot was a combination of ambient and artificial. To accent the sunlight coming through the window, a small square softbox was placed left of the camera to light the model’s face and a silver reflector was positioned behind her.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/60 second, f/4, ISO 100

Sam Scholes is a Utah photographer whose work I have followed for nearly 5 years. I’m pleased to be able to say that Sam (along with Ben Kuhns) is hosting an exhibit of his photography this Friday night at the Brigham City Museum-Gallery. Here is Sam’s announcement:

This next Friday, September 25, I’m excited to announce the opening of the “Forgotten Places” photography show at the Brigham City Museum-Gallery. The show features 50 photographs taken by myself and fellow photographer, Ben Kuhns, of abandoned and decrepit buildings throughout Utah, California, Washington, and Nevada.

You are cordially invited to an opening reception Friday, September 25, from 7:00pm until 9:00pm. I hope to see many of you there.

Brigham City Museum-Gallery
24 North 300 West
Brigham City, UT

The show will be on display through November 11, 2009. Hours of operation at the Brigham City Museum-Gallery are Tuesday – Friday, 11:00am – 6:00pm and Saturday 1:00pm – 5:00pm.

If you find yourself anywhere near Brigham City Utah this Friday, I hope you’ll consider attending Sam’s exhibition.

One of the biggest honors an iStockphoto contributor can receive is to have one of their images featured as the Image of the Week. When you take into consideration that there are over 85,000 contributors who have built an inventory of 5,000,000+ images it really puts into perspective how difficult this can be to achieve.

This week’s selection is a great image by none other than local photographer (and my good friend) Nicole Young. Her panning shot of a speeding cyclist can be seen on iStock’s front page this week.

Congratulations Niki! The honor is much deserved.

Here’s another of my images that was spotted in the wild, this time on a news website in Poland. The photo came from the back pocket series of Kati that was shot back in April.

Canon 5D Mark II, Lensbaby Composer – 1/100 second, f/4, ISO 100

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/125 second, f/4, ISO 100

I received an email this morning from photographer Lou Horton. Lou was browsing the information leaflets at a train station in Southwest England and recognized one of my stock images featuring Kylee. It makes me smile to find out about situations like this when my photography has been recognized in distant places.

Thanks for sharing this, Lou!

Thanks to a very generous Scott Bourne of Photofocus.com, I was recently given a Lensbaby Composer to add to my lens collection. If you’re not familiar with a Lensbaby, it is basically a special effect lens that creates a moveable focus area (the sweet spot) amidst a creatively blurred out-of-focus area. I’ve watched from the distance as the product line evolved from the fairly simple original design to their current offering, “The Composer”.

I took some time today to become familiar with the lens and learn how I can use it in my photography. I put it on my backup Canon 5D body and commenced shooting. Today’s post is a quick peek at a couple samples from today’s shooting. The above image of the yellow flower was taken in my front yard as I headed out to lunch, while the shot below is one I captured of everyone’s friend Jarvie over at the Pictureline store in Draper.

Canon 5D, Lensbaby Composer – 1/15 second, f/4, ISO 200

It’s still a bit early to see how (or even if) I will incorporate the lens into my work shooting, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s been pretty fun to play with so far.

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/60 second, f/4, ISO 200