How To Photograph

a Baby in a Mailbox

I don’t have access to a giant cocoon or ginormous flowers or pterodactyl-sized butterfly wings… these are only a handful of things that me and Anne Geddes do not have in common.

I do however have a mailbox.  It sits on the east side of my house and is framed by a large tree, very scenic this time of year.

I enlisted my wife to take baby Sawyer outside for a quick snapshot and after coming back inside I realized a quick snapshot wasn’t going to do.  I had to bring out the big lights… which meant we were going to cause a bit of a ruckus, which meant our neighbors might look out the window to ascertain the situation and it wouldn’t take much imagination for people to assume the Garns were outside, in the middle of the afternoon, drunk off their rockers.

So we had to move quickly, and quietly.  I brought out a large softbox with a single Elinchrom Style 600 RX strobe to provide some fill light, and pearl reflector to bounce a bit of the flash back in the deep shadows from the afternoon sun… after all, the early morning or late night sun would be a little too chilly this time of year and it would take some really irresponsible parents to take a newborn outside under those circumstances.

We bundled baby Sawyer up in a pile of blankets and my lovely, giggling wife was responsible for gingerly placing him inside the mailbox (notice I did not use the word stuffing or shoving).  She was also in charge of holding him gently underneath his head.

In fact, the whole process was a little too gentle, most images were of him sleeping peacefully, but that just wouldn’t do… luckily upon removing him, or adjusting him (notice I did not use the word poking him with a stick) he got just a tad bit ornery and made the perfect “get me out of here” face.

Ahhh, poor kid.  You’ll thank me later though.

Click to Embiggen

Websites

Just in case you didn’t know about these…

• YouSendIt – Perfect for sending really large images over email (think full resolution images, zip files of entire shoots, etc.). www.yousendit.com

• ModelMayhem – Find and network with models, makeup artists, hairstylists and photographers worldwide. www.modelmayhem.com

• Deviantart – Show off your work to the biggest online community of artists in the world. www.deviantart.com

• DPreview – Incredibly detailed reviews on virtually any digital camera. www.dpreview.com

• Aphotoeditor – Great insights from the keyboard of a well-known (now retired) photo editor.  www.aphotoeditor.com

• CarbonMade – The cleanest gallery/portfolio site that I’ve ever come across, uploading and arranging the galleries is an absolute breeze! www.carbonmade.com

• FaceBook – This may seem like a duh but I find more models through facebook than ANY other source! www.facebook.com/jakegarn

This is a quick and short so if there is something I missed leave a comment and tell me about it, if I agree with you then I’ll add it to the list!

In Lightroom

A brief introduction to some editing tools I used in Adobe Lightroom 2.0.

You Can Call me Jake

Stacy Garn, photo by Jake Garn

Just over two years ago, on May 15th, 2007 my Great Grandpa, Stacy Garn, passed away. He was 100 years old and seriously one of the coolest guys I’ve ever known.

He was healthy and happy right up until a month or two before when, inexplicably, his health declined and he was finally bed ridden after a long active life.  On a visit to his bedside he held my hand and tried so very hard to tell me so many things, it was a struggle for him to talk but his eyes said it all.  It was obvious he didn’t want me to leave but it was just as obvious that he needed his rest, when I left we both had tears in our eyes.  That was the last time I saw him alive.

Two days after he passed away I married my beautiful wife Jennifer. The timing seemed more than coincidental, he left his bed just in time to see us get married, but with enough advance notice that his funeral (which I wouldn’t miss for the world) finished just a couple hours before a plane took me and Jenny away on our honeymoon.  Nobody had to miss anything.

Sawyer Stacy and Dosh Garn, photo by Jenny Garn

On September 16th, 2009 Jenny gave birth to our very first child, Sawyer Stacy Garn. Every other time I’ve ever heard of babies being born I was always told the weight and length, and it never really meant anything to me… I just had nothing to reference it against.  But now I do.

7 lbs, 13 oz and 21″ long, he’s a happy healthy little boy.  And inexplicably he already found a best friend. Maybe little Sawyer Stacy just has one of those kind, love-able souls… I think he gets it from his Great-Great-Grandpa.

Regularly scheduled photography blog will resume shortly. 

Victorian

A behind the Scenes Montage

Video shot exclusively with the Canon 5D Mark II, the video mode is not a function either I, nor my assistant Ryan, is too familiar yet (as you can gather from our initial discussion). This first attempt is a bit rough around the edges but it gives a nice peek behind the scenes.  This is also my first attempt at editing a video, I used Apple iMovie, and I must say, that is a cool little program!

The song you’re hearing is You’re the One that I Want by The Boy Least Likely To (used by permission from the band!). I saw them in concert when they opened for James Blunt a few years back and I think I fell in love! Their new album is out soon! (http://www.theboyleastlikelyto.co.uk/)

PHOTO CREDITS:

Photographer: Jake Garn
Wardrobe: Michelle Boucher
Makeup: Paula Dahlberg
Hair: Steven Robertsen
Photographer Assistant: Ryan Muirhead
Models: Olivia, Monica, and Lilian Henrie

Day

It was an aggressive project… months in the making… lots of coordination… and lots of planning.  The idea was to style individual models in opposite ways and combine the results into a series of images.  The entire creative team bounced around dozens of ideas and in the end settled on five concepts: flame/frost, wet/dry, black/white, sweet/sour, and serene/chaos.

Beyond the absolutely mind-blowingly creative styling the hardest part on my end was shooting a girl with one look, having her go back for another hour or two of styling, and then positioning her in such a way that I could later seemlessly combine the looks into a single composite.  And if that wasn’t hard enough we ran into a highly unusual snag…

After shooting the Sweet and Sour series some very unfortunate luck hit… the Sour images required a re-shoot as a data failure made them inexplicably disappear.  Due to crazy schedules, exotic Mexican swine flus, and random vacationing we were not able to re-schedule all involved for well over a month… which meant by the time we were able to re-shoot all the lighting, posing, and positioning of the camera and lens had to be carefully re-set to mimic a month old shoot.  No easy task.

Bad luck turned into good as the new images fit together seemlessly and a project that was months in the making is finally complete!

Enjoy.

Makeup by Paula Dahlberg | Hair by Steven Roberston | Wardrobe by Keith Bryce | Models are Ashley, Ashlé, Cassie, Kali and Caity

Diagrams

I get lots of questions about lighting, so I thought I’d layout some shots and how I lit (or is it lighted?) them.  Hopefully this will be fairly informative, let me know what you think and if you have any special requests!  Illustrations that I used to create these diagrams are courtesy of photographer Kevin Kertz.

Want to buy any of the equipment shown above? Find it at Adorama using the search box below:

I Hate You

A behind the scenes look at a high fashion photo shoot.

We brought mosquito repellant, but I think it was laced with honey, or cow’s blood, because it sure didn’t seem to work very well. As I write this I am experiencing the thrilling sensation of 20-30 red bumps that, like spoiled kids at the grocery store, are each demanding my full attention.  I will ignore them and proceed.

We wanted to shoot four separate models wearing custom wardrobe designed by Keith Bryce.  The idea was to start hair and makeup at 4PM and start shooting at 7PM and fit all four girls in before sunset at 9PM.  I knew from the beginning that this was overly optimistic.

(hold on, I have to itch my knee, oh yes, so wrong but it feels so right!  Uh oh, now my calf wants attention, and my ankle… maybe this is why you’re not supposed to scratch them…)

Ok, I’m back.  So at 7:30 (a half hour behind schedule) I was barking orders like a mad scientist knowing full well now that the sun would set well before we finished shooting, my brain started racing with backup options.  At 7:45 we took two girls out and started shooting, the rest arrived about 45 minutes later… the shoot that was supposed to be done by 9 lasted until about 11:30 which sounds about right, but the results were well worth the trouble.

Some tricky issues we had to resolve during the shoot?  Lighting inside a small shed without room for ideal light placement, keeping the guy standing by the model ready to catch her if she falls off her pedestals out of the frame, balancing the pedestals on uneven ground, and for the first time in my photography career I had to edit out a mosquito that was perched on a models chest apparently going to town like it just bought her dinner.  Stupid mosquitoes.

Fashion Illusions | Styling and Wardrobe by Keith Bryce | Hair by Chad Seale (assisted by Josh Parkin and Tita Tillak) | Makeup by Janelle Bentley | Photographer Assistant Ryan Muirhead

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes Photography Courtesy of Ryan Muirhead (click for full size images)

Keith Brcye and Jake Garn Demonstrate the Pose

Jake Garn demonstrates arm placement.

Chad Seale and Josh Parkin work on Lindsey's hair

Keith Bryce admiring his finishing touches.

Marathon Project

1 Makeup Artist, 1 Hairstylist, 1 Photographer, 14 Models

Whenever someone tells me they are training for a marathon I always assure them that it is completely un-necessary, I will be more than happy to give them a ride. “Really, it’s not that far out of my way,” I tell them.

But no, They don’t want a ride.  They want to “Prove to themselves that they can do it.” They also like to tell you how many hours it took them.  I always act really impressed…

“Really, only nine hours?  Wow!”

But secretly inside I’m thinking to myself, “Uhmmm, you could have driven that in a half hour, and don’t even think for one second that if the ancient Greeks had cars that they wouldn’t have done just that.”

I say all this knowing full well that some people just have a passion for running, it’s a passion I won’t ever understand but I do understand passion in general.  I believe that there is this passion in every single one of us, some people are lucky enough to discover and nurture their passions and others spend their whole life searching… but when you find it you know, it just is inside of you and wants to burst out of your stomach like an incubated Alien in a successful movie franchise starring Sigourney Weaver.

The format was simple – every half hour a model would arrive for a half hour of makeup, a half hour of hair, and a half hour of photography.  The theme was Accessories, we asked each girl to bring a variety and we’d plan the shoot around them, some brought a closet full of treasures and some brought nothing at all.

In my head, before the shoot, I planned on a single look for each girl for a total of 14 images, a daunting project in itself.  But as soon as the shoot started I realized it would be much bigger than that, I couldn’t stop shooting.  The creative buzz was palpable, the energy just so fun and a half hour was plenty of time to get several looks in especially when the lights didn’t require much resetting.

In all we shot 2,188 images, just over 50GB of RAW images.  To put that in context if I were to save all the RAW images onto CDs it would take about 68 blank CDs to fit all of them.  All in all I selected 46 images for final retouching.

Why would we do this?  Part of it is to prove we could but most of it was to satisfy a creative passion in each of us.

After the shoot was over my stomach and head were buzzing with this creative adrenaline rush, I really don’t know how to explain it other than to say it just might feel like that runner’s high after they push through the wall… maybe that’s why they run.  But all I know is I can’t wait for Marathon Part II.

Hair by Steven Robertson, Makeup by Paula J. Dahlberg, Photographer Assistant Ryan Muirhead, Models: Paris, Achlé, Jenna, Sue, Claire, Morgan, Erynn, Arianna, Madeline, Carly, Lindsey, Cassie, Samantha and Kali. Photography by Jake Garn

]]> http://jakegarn.com/marathon-project/feed/ 10 http://jakegarn.com/swine-flu-meets-chaos-theory/ http://jakegarn.com/swine-flu-meets-chaos-theory/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 06:13:47 +0000 Jake Garn http://jakegarn.com/?p=298 Swine Flu Meets

Chaos Theory

The simple story of a complicated shoot that quite simply wouldn’t exist if not for the flu named for swine.

Right now, on May 3rd, 2009 as I am typing this the outcome is yet to be written and four days ago him having a suspected case of the Swine Flu was kind of a big deal.  In other words I’d prefer he stay the heck home and we would gladly reschedule the shoot when he was fully recovered and much less contagious, thank you very much.

I know, I know… word on the street is we’re not supposed to call it the Swine Flu anymore, apparently some claim it may be offensive to people of Muslim or Jewish faiths who don’t eat pork (I am not making this up), instead we should call it the ‘Mexican Flu.’  I know what you’re thinking because I thought the same thing, since when does anyone think it’s OK to eat Mexicans?  They taste terrible!  Of course I’m only joking… Mexicans don’t taste too bad.

The email responses went out and everyone agreed that proceeding without the visionary hair stylist (who shall remain un-named due to doctor/client privelages) was not an option, and the shoot was canceled.

That would have been the end of the road if Keith Bryce wasn’t a friggin’ maniac, and I use that term in it’s warmest, most complimentary way possible.  Fans of Project Runway may recognize the name from last season. Keith was part of the team assembled for the Opposite Series yet in the hour or so since agreeing that canceling the shoot was best he had another idea.  He wanted to bring in a body-painter, a different hair stylist, a makeup artist and two models and shoot a different concept with chicken wire and tubes… in 48 hours.

“Sounds awesome!” I said, “but let’s be reasonable, styling one model with body paint, hair, wardrobe and makeup is going to take hours and two models could take days. How about we stick to one model just to be safe?”

Literally half-a-dozen emails later he finally agrees.  Phew!  In the mean-time the original model we had booked had already made other plans, which meant I had 48-hours to book a model.  Piece of cake!  Now I just have to tell my pregnant wife who loved the idea of a canceled shoot that we were now doing an even bigger production.  Can I just say that she is the best sport ever!

Two days later the full team arrives, Chad doing hair, Brett Hamilton doing body paint, makeup by Paula Dahlberg, custom wardrobe by Keith Bryce assisted by Adam, my assistant Dani Peek (who also brought Pumpkin Chocolate chip bread and White Chocolate Cinnamon Scones!), and the beautiful and ever-willing Carly Stark as the model that is completely unaware of what she just stepped into.  After six hours of styling, and lots of wire and heavy-hair-piece induced pain for the model I give you the aptly named Glamborg. The girl that simply would not exist if not for a some pig farmers in Mexico.

Swine flu eat your heart out.

PS – Carly thought it was only appropriate for me to let everyone know her struggle did not end when the photo-lights turned off, it took three showers and a mom-assisted sponge bath to remove the evidence. Yikes!