Kayla's Boys

My friend Kayla, a groomer, has been wanting me to photograph her poodle DaVinci literally for years and we just never really got around to it.  Last year she got a second poodle, Roman, and this Saturday, I went over and we took pictures.  While Kayla was finishing getting ready, I wanted to photograph DaVinci - he's a really cool dog and loves me, so figured that he would listen to me enough to get a couple good shots before Kayla finished her makeup and trimming Roman.

What I instead learned was that DaVinci HATES getting his picture taken.  We're pretty sure the flash of my Alien Bees reminds him of lightning.  This is one of the only shots I managed to get of him before Kayla came downstairs - he was half hiding behind the wall.  I felt so bad, poor puppy!!

Roman, the more skittish dog who doesn't like being touched, was all for it.  He sat nicely and posed and moved his head different angles and basically completely shocked me and Kayla.  We had been expected the opposite of what the boys gave us.

Kayla was in some of the photos as well.  DaVinci hid underneath the stool she was sitting on, so she decided to sit on the floor with them.  Her puppies love her!!

I took this last shot afterwards using only the window light and imagine Roman to be saying "It's ok, it's all over now!"  From this shoot I learned that while I do love pet photography, you have to be prepared for the animals to behave out of character and that it might take more time and effort than expected.  I'm just glad DaVinci still loves me!!

Resistance 13 Promos

Resistance 13 is a metal band from Ohio.  I've known them since their formation, and did their original promos awhile back.  Coulda sworn I had a blog on that shoot, but I can't find it.  Since then, they've had a change in line-up.  Over summer, I saw Jeremy and Bryan (the two original members) at Mayhem Fest and we discussed doing photos.  This past weekend, that shoot became reality.

Jeremy and I had thrown around a couple different ideas, but our main one was a pretty large scale project which we would need a lot of extras for.  Hopefully it will eventually happen, but for this shoot we went with option #2 - find a badass location and take sweet pictures.  We drove out to the Aliquippa Industrial Park and if you know anything about Aliquippa, you know it used to be a booming steel town 40 years or so ago.  Nowadays.....not so much.  We drove along until we spotted our badass location, which ended up being a huge pile of rubble.  Slabs of concrete, rusting pipes, the whole deal.  I hadn't really expected to be rock climbing, but luckily boots are my standard form of footwear.  (Doc Martens = LOVE!)

Rock climbing was definitely fun.  After spending awhile in the rubble pile, we got in our cars and went back aways to a run down building with broken windows.  Here we mostly did individual headshots.  They had spotted a building coming in that looked interesting, so we went down that way and determined that the fence wouldn't let us in.  There was, however, a small dirt road leading up a hill into some trees...spur of the moment decision we went up it.  It didn't look too promising, and then we reached the top of the hill.  Train tracks, and directly across them, a rusted out old car.  Score.  I wasn't too interested in the tracks - they're cliche, and still in use.  We tried to find someone to ask if we could shoot with the car, but when no one was there, decided to do it anyway.

I'd say it was a good choice.  Oh, and that train track?  Definitely still in use.

We hit up a place called the Joseph Building as well, using the faded ads on the brick as a backdrop.  There's a picture of the guys goofing off in front of it on my Facebook page, check it out!  It's my old hangout - when I was about 5 my dad's pizza shop was next door.  Now it's a water tower, but visiting the spot was cool because I used to play around there all the time as a kid.