I sent off for my Leather Craftsmen sample albums a month ago and have been eagerly waiting for them to come. Well they just got in the other day and I’ve had a chance to take some pictures of them today.

The first one is my Portrait examples book, a 700 Series with Rustic Brown Leather, an Outset Window on the front and Spine Hubs. Everything about this book was custom, because my portraits are always panoramic.

The second book is more modern, a 3500 series, with a very sleek black leather, flush spine and flush photo on the front. It is a flush mount style where the photos are the page themselves and each spread is one design rather than having one photo per page.

I have always heard the level of quality of Leather Craftsmen was un-paralleled and I can now see for my own eyes that it is absolutely true. These albums are works of art by themselves. There may be cheaper albums out there, but I can’t see using anything else now.

Have a look below and let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for reading.

Marlene and Brian were married on October 12th at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden here in Austin. Umlauf had recently installed a new and very lovely ceremony area at their facility, and I was fortunate to be one of the first photographers to shoot there.
The wedding coordinator was Carissa over at Flora & Fauna. She put together a first class production with incredible detail and a warm, highly enjoyable energy.
The musicians were Angelic Strings which played the ceremony on harp and violin. Michael from Angelic Strings actually started the ceremony off with a call to the guests with his digiridoo!
For the reception Cien Fuegos played some great fusion salsa/ritmo cubano music which got everyone in the mood to dance.

I had so much fun shooting, the food was great, the wine was great, the guests and the vendors were so fun to work with and photograph. And most of all we are very happy for Marlene & Brian, and we wish them the best of luck in their marriage.

Here are a few of my favorites, enjoy!!!

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I am a huge fan of cinema, and film. I’ve always been drawn to the moving picture. I get so wrapped up in them, I could watch movies all day long. Two of my favorite movies were Godfather I & II. The drama, the suspense, the violence… And the production of the movie evoked those concepts in every aspect. What struck me from beginning to end was the lighting.
It was much better in G2, but the lighting was fascinating. Along with the music, the lighting was what created the mood of the scene; when someone was about to get off’d you knew it by the dark and ominous light and shadows that were present. I will never forget the scene where DeNiro as young Vito Corleone was hiding in the stairwell as the lightbulb flickered on and off just before he shot Don Fanucci. Masterful!!!

I tried to capture that same cinematic approach in some recent photographs. In the photo to the left, the hotel room was lit from just the window to my right casting an amazingly deep shadow on Brian’s side, he is a groom, preparing for his wedding. There is such depth and drama and emotion available to the viewer that would not be there if it were a simple photograph with flat lighting.

The use of dramatic lighting goes back to the Renaissance and a term called “Chiaroscuro.” It’s effectively the relation or contrast to light and dark. It was used significantly by artists like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Carvaggio, Goya and Rubens. There are many fine examples, but most people would recognize “Girl With The Pearl Earring” by Vermeer because of the recent movie (which is a little too chick flick-ish for me, sorry).
The picture to the left is a Rembrandt entitled St. Peter in Prison. All light appears to be coming from one lights source. Possibly a skylight or oculus above. As simple of a painting as this appears to be, the use of shadow gives the painting such depth, life and clarity that had not existed before the Renaissance.

Chiaroscuro, along with the use of perspective in drawings and paintings were two of the biggest impacts on the art world to come out of the Renaissance. It is certainly one of my favorite methods in art. I’m not sure when I learned the term or saw the technique, it could possibly be when I was researching a paper my senior year on the impact Picasso’s Cubist movement had on the art world in the early 20th century.

It’s taken on a re-birth for me. A personal renaissance if you will. I want to see everything in terms of light and shadow now. Not in a good vs evil sense, (I actually don’t believe in good or evil), but in an attempt to awaken senses in the viewers that weren’t there before. To create photos that come alive themselves and reach to people.

In this photo of the girl, I worked with a real film crew using continuous or “hot” lights. The crew was so good at what they did, I would just tell them what I wanted or show them a picture of what I was hoping to get and they knew exactly how to get it. All my career, I’ve always worked with natural light, so to see the ease in which they worked these lights and the results we got, I was quite surprised. This was accomplished with just one big light to the left that was bounced off the wall to the right, leaving a beautiful deep shadow on the left side of the models body.

As a photographer you aren’t very good for your first ten years. And it may take additional time for you to find a real voice and a true focus. I think I am just now coming to that point. While my focus will always be on natural lighting, I am now very open to experimenting with lighting techniques to get the right look. It’s been 17-18 years since I first picked up a camera with serious intentions of producing art, and I’m finding that cinematic lighting, and chiaroscuro are now firmly in my vocabulary as a part of that voice. And I love where it’s leading me.

I am really excited abou the next couple of months. I just got some test footage I shot on my super 8mm camera this summer. It has been digitally transfered to edit and post online. I really can’t wait to do this with weddings.

As soon as I got home I popped it in the computer and worked on a short piece of our dogs Moen and Luke. Moen is a Lab/Wolf mix and Luke is a Chow/Corgy (chorgy for short). There is more footage from our anniversary tubing trip, that I will post tomorrow.

The technical stuff:
Film: Tri-X  (nice to be working with that again)
Camera: Bell & Howell – Autoload Filmosound 8
Telecined by Precision Camera in Austin

Music: Low Light by Pearl Jam

Moen & Luke from William Bay on Vimeo.

Occasionally in life you come across kindreds in such demure methods that really give vindication to theories such as “The Secret”, Law of Attraction, and the pairing of Quantum Physics with Spirituality ala “What the Bleep Do We Know”. Yesterday was a case in point for me.

Casually surfing on Craigslist I came upon a random ad asking for a Photographer for a project. I directed my mouse to the website sited and began reading what looked like a manifesto. I continued to read in excitment and discovered that this person was:

Giving up his possessions, moving to Austin, and restarting his life from NOTHING!!!

I thought to myself, this isn’t a just project… It’s a Life Experiment. His name is Russ Freeland, and he currently lives in Boston. However soon he will be living wherever he can in trade of art or musical performance. “Will create Art for food” indeed. Here is his site.

Russ reminds me of myself when I was getting ready to leave for Thailand after the tsunami. I stripped myself of everything but a backpack, a laptop and my camera and set off to a country I had no clue about. In much the same way that Russ is doing now.

I envy his position in some respects. The biggest rush of my life was the weeks leading up to the day I cast myself into the unknown. It was thrilling and I knew that I was really alive! An experience I hadn’t felt in months. Just listening to him talk about his idea has my blood bubbling with anticipation.
The flip side is the thought that he is experiencing something similar to what I got from a number of close friends. Those friends were concerned for my safety and unsure about going to another country.

It got me thinking why more people don’t drop everything and go into the world like Russ. Why don’t people just up and “walk the earth, meet people… get into adventures. Like Caine from ‘Kung Fu?’ ”

Are people scared? Do people feel so attached to their belongings and this raped country that they associate that stuff as them? Stuff comes and goes, jobs come and go, friends come and go, loved ones come and go. This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time. The world is full of chaos and wonder, and to think you can control a small aspect of it is presumptuous.

The best you can do is stay true to yourself, always move forward, and praise your maker by celebrating everything and everybody that he made in addition to you. The biggest impact you can have on your life is to travel like a pauper.

Maybe we will come to a point where the term Life Experiment is less used, because the majority of people are living their lives as they wish to and not because they were coerced into taking on a culture they did not want.