Keels Photography

Our daughter Margot, photographed today in our front lawn.  She wasn’t quite sure what to make of the er, “flowers”.

My friend James stopped the studio last week for a quick hello and to bounce some ideas about artwork for his CD to be released soon; James is an amazing jazz musician.  We talked photography, music and inspiration. I looked at him and then to my camera 2ft away and suggested we make some photographs here and now, thankfully he was up for it.  The backstory is James and I go back, in fact he hired me to shoot and design his first cover ten years ago.  We’ve kept up over the years and he has become a great friend always with an encouragement , an insight and a reminder how big and good God is.   He new release “Exodus” will be available soon, here’s a sample here.

Our first location shoot of the class was at an amazing movie set of an old western town.  Movies like Silverado were shot there and actors like John Wayne and Henry Fonda had card games and shoot outs.  We arrived and got right to work, it was litterally the fastest four hours of my life.  David gave a great demo on how to use a silk ( a huge diffusion canopy)  in open sun as well as where and how to use reflected light, which blew my mind.   I was soon off carrying a 7b Profoto pack and strobe head  preparing to set it up and hope fully make some images.   Found my location and talked some direction to the model and began to wrestle with my light.  David strolled over and in an encouraging way ask why wasn’t I using “the God given light.”   I think as photographers we tend to complicate things and I certainly was, this amazing south western light all around and I’m going add to it?   So with that I sparingly used the strobe but mostly reflected, diffused or used sunlight directly.  Here are some images from the day.  Thanks for visiting.