Vintage Inspired Photo Shoot

As I mentioned in my previous post about creating these Weddingstar photo shoot videos, they've proven to be great tests of just what a small creative team can accomplish on a small budget.  These photos shoots are completed in the course of a day, which includes all the setup, photography, and video work.  Of course, the video editing and additional photography for singling out the products takes a bit more time.

Still, creating these promos is as much a test of versatility as it is anything else.  With limited space and time these shoots are rather intensive when it comes to capturing as much variety as possible.  We constantly adjust our lighting, play with the setups, trade out various products, and experiment with layouts that will work in both print and web based formats.  It's actually a lot of fun.

Sparkle Inspired Photo Shoot

Recently at Weddingstar, where I work as the in house web media editor, we've taken to creating themed table setups to photograph for ad campaigns.  As part of this, I've shot some footage of these small setups to highlight the products we used as part of the theme.  

I'm actually rather fortunate during these shoots as I get to focus specifically on the photography and video, while it's one of the talented graphic designers that comes up with the theme and staging.  It's impressive what can be accomplished with such a small creative team, not to mention, that projects like this are allowing us to put more of our skill sets to use (not just individually, but as a company).

Mount Rushmore Snapshots

I took these snapshots of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial on a 2007 road trip to South Dakota with my friend Andrea. One of the coolest things about visiting the landmark was getting to explore the area around the site. Most of the shots I've ever seen of Mount Rushmore are a lot like my first snapshot. It looks huge, but really you have no idea what the area surrounding the monument actually looks like.

Another cool thing was learning about how the monument was originally meant to show each president from their head to their waste. You can kind of get this impression by looking at Washington with his collar and shoulder. I've attached one of the archival photographs showing the miniature model of the original concept to give you an idea about what I mean. 

In addition to all of the photographs I took on this trip, I also shot a ton of footage. Check out one of my original Rushmore edits below.