To say that their products are awesome would be a mild understatement. In addition to fully customized built in LED and fiber optic lighting systems, they also make a really cool sky dome that can be individually made to order, including super cool elements like full day/night cycles, shooting stars(!), and astronomically accurate constellations and starfields. You have to see it to believe it. The effect is really breathtaking.

They have some pretty amazing installations around the country and around the world. Lucky for me, this one was close to home. Miguel’s Cocina is the newest restaurant in San Diego County (as of this posting). The food is really good, and the atmosphere is fun, festive, and still sophisticated.

Numinous was responsible for an amazing fully integrated lighting system, controlled wirelessly from an iPad (photos coming!) with full RBG control of the LED bar lights, recessed up-lighting, super cool fully dimmable flush LED downlighting, cabinet lighting, etc. The list goes on.

Today’s goal is a new website. Maybe not so small but really meaningful, and worth the work. After several months of deliberation, and looking at options to code it myself, hire it out, or go with a pre-coded solution, I signed up with A Photo Folio.

I’ve used Zenfolio for quite a while for proofing and delivery, and I like it reasonably well for that purpose. I also tried very hard to like Photoshelter as a complete solution, tried LiveBooks on for size, and never really felt that they hit the mark close enough to warrant the investment. So I built my own main site and WordPress templates from scratch (twice), and kept it up the hard way. Then, earlier this year, I discovered A Photo Folio. A real contender was on the table, just as I was crossing a professional milestone, and coming upon a looming goal: updating my website.

So I will officially be undergoing the big transfer and update over this weekend. I’m thrilled and excited, to say the least. Look here for the new site in a few days!

Oh, and, anyway, the picture.

This is Bella. She was my constant companion on a backyard photo shoot a few weeks ago, and she found the tennis balls that I keep in my gear bag as umbrella shaft bumpers. (That’s another story of course.) She would get one out of the bag, toss it around, lose it in the pool, and stare at it like this until it practically levitated back to her. I swear I’ve never seen so much focus and willpower in my life. Of course, I’ve never had a dog dig into the bottom of my gear bag before either. The tennis balls were at the bottom, buried under a bunch of clamps and other stuff.

So I need to buy more tennis balls. This one is now the property of Bella, the Jedi dog. She got that ball, without getting wet, several times, and she never once looked back at me for help. Now that’s focus.

Earlier this year, I let Chris Jordan, owner of Designcorp, talk me into putting on an educational presentation for members and guests of IFDA Southern California. Now, two or three times a year I also get tossed up in front of a Toastmasters group (I am married to one), for certain humorous grace-under-pressure challenges at their various holiday parties. So I’m definitely not shy, but I’m also more of a talk-forever-about-whatever kind of person too. So this turned out to be a real challenge.

Over the last two months, I’ve been putting together what I think is a really solid educational hour (and-a-half if I don’t trim it back!). I’m really excited, because after tossing it around three or four times, and a couple complete restarts, it has finally gelled. I gave the talk to myself with a recorder, and played it back. Not too bad!

In between a few jobs over the next seven days I’ll be tuning up the pace, writing the accompanying take-home materials, and generally getting more excited every day. I hope to see you there!

Here’s the link:

Photography, Portfolios and Presentations

I decided to get out of the office on Saturday afternoon and do some work from a nice little coffee shop, Cafe Ipe, a new place down on Highway 101. It’s nice, friendly, bright and welcoming. My good friend Cristina let me in on the secret a few weeks ago, and it looks like the secret is getting out. But that’s not actually the point.

The point is that Julie Cowley stopped in to play for a little while. Not only is she a joy to listen to, but somehow she managed to sit precisely in the most gorgeous window light in the entire place. So as soon as I finished up with what I was doing, I introduced myself, and took a few photos of Julie doing her thing. Honestly, I think she’s got what it takes. I look forward to hearing more.

We have come around again in a ten year economic cycle where property owners are sprucing up their buildings to attract higher rents, and they are actively working to show some class. This is the interior main floor lobby area, restroom, and central atrium. The ceiling work is probably the most expensive feature here. Those converging arches are no mean feat.

I still want to go back and get some nice exterior photos too. By the time I left, due to another side track while shooting these, it was dark outside.

This was photographed over the course of three separate visits between Christmas and New Year, in order to get a variety of light on the building exterior. The total delivery was 20+ images, and these are my personal favorites. Really with a building and location like this, it’s possible to go back a dozen times and still get something interesting and different each time.

This is Eve, she turned two this year just a couple of days before Christmas. We took the studio photos in November, and I went out looking for interesting scenes to incorporate for a couple of weeks after that. As you can see, she’s quite the ham. She loves to dance and she’s very curious!

Here’s a fun selection of the studio shots. My plan was to shoot the backgrounds at sunrise and sunset, or with heavily directional light from one side (like a streetlamp casting light into a wooded area). So, this time I set up the Elinchrom small octa at toddler level with only the intermediate diffuser and a dish reflector behind that. There is a big 3×6 reflector on the right adding fill, and two strobes behind cutters to fill in the seamless.