My journeys into the desert are usually one of solace and being one with nature. This last trip was quite different.
I was asked by the Vegas Pictage User Group to speak to them about WordPress and Search Engine Optimization for photographers.

WordPress and S.E.O. are a couple topics I’ve been speaking about more and more. It’s really been so much fun teaching and sharing this kind of knowledge with others. I feel like the whole thing is snowballing into something really great and a wonderful expression that I enjoy more and more.
As I move into creating a new business as a web developer/designer/marketer, the workshops and teaching it all makes sense.

The future of William Bay Photographic Arts
Since I’m forming this new web development business, the though may arise “will you still do wedding and portrait photography and a business too?”
And the answer is yes.
But, the great part is that no I get to be very selective about who I want to work with, and I get to do things ‘my way’ without any compromises to my artistic vision.

This year is one of freedom. And I’m in love with that.

William Bay is a Las Vegas Workshop.

This first image was taken from this really great engagement session here in San Diego.
The other image was from a wedding in Ramona a few years back.

Another photographer who I really admire gave me some encouraging words after the competition and reminded me that my clients paid me for my creativity, they loved the photographs, and I get to do what I love and grow and stretch my creativity.

I guess that was the best lesson in photography I learned that night.

William Bay is a Photographic Humble Pie.

There were those that were out chasing deals today. I am very Thankful that on this beautiful day after Thanksgiving, I was not one of them.
I was out, practicing my skills and spending a day photographing some really great clients Eric and Erinn for their Engagement Session. We started in Imperial Beach in the morning, took a break at mid-day and met later on at the La Jolla Reefs area for the golden hour.

After we wrapped up I grabbed this shot of the Windansea Shack and the Agave spire in the sunset.

I love San Diego.

William Bay is a Black Friday Sunset.

I love winter time in San Diego. The sun gets low enough in the sky for the full day, and I can photograph almost all day long if I want to. The above photo was taken at about three o’clock in the afternoon at Windansea Beach. The rich surfing history has always made it one of my favorite beaches in San Diego. The palm-frond shack behind me has been there since the 40′s and has always fascinated me for the brotherhood that surfers share. Some surfer built a shelter for his brothers to gather and story-tell about travels and life, waves ridden and poundings received.

This is more Neutral Density compositing I’m working with. The first photograph was 15 seconds long which allowed the waves to blur out into a hazy soup, and the clouds moved slightly as well. The second photograph was 1/15th of a second, and I didn’t have a beautiful model to stick in the photo today, so I stepped in.

I need to check my lens and see if I broke it.

William Bay is a Self-Portrait, Windansea.

I’ve had an idea I’ve been toying with in my head for awhile, and I wanted to try it in real world application. Yesterday was a gorgeous day here in San Diego, perfect for a day of fun experimentations. I grabbed my big tripod and headed out to Sunset Cliffs to play in the afternoon light.

My experiment was with Neutral Density Filters. ND Filters (for short) are simply filters that block a certain amount of light while taking a photograph. That allows the photographer to make very long exposures during the day which could be used to indicate a passage of time.

As you can see in these shots I used the ocean to show that passage of time. Both pictures are 20 seconds long. With such long exposures the ocean takes on a blurry, hazy, ghost like appearance which can be very cool. A friend of mine, Cole Thompson, is a master at this technique and has an impressive collection of coastal photographs that put these two pictures to shame.

One of the reasons I started playing around with this is because I’ve wanted to begin incorporating this technique into portrait work.
You might ask: “How can I take pictures of people with 20-30 second exposures?”
Easy! I take two pictures. One with the ND Filters on, and one without, and combine them later using masking techniques in Photoshop.
As you can see in the photo below; I took a picture of this Fisherman named John without the ND Filters at 1/45th of a second. And when he stepped away to bait his hook out of view, I took another exposure at 20 seconds.
With a little Photoshop work, we now have a fun photograph that would not necessarily be possible otherwise.

I’m really looking forward to using this technique on everything from family portraits to my own style of fine art environmental portrait work for individuals, and who knows… Maybe even weddings that take place on the beach, or formals after the wedding. The sky is certainly the limit.

William Bay is a Fun With Photography.

The other photos below are of Laura and Seasha’s wee ones. The little ones were playing in the mud puddles right after a big lightning storm passed through. And I was lubed up enough with beer to go and play and photograph them.

Enjoy!

William Bay is a The Wee Ones.

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.

William Bay is a Cinematic Lighting.

So I had mentioned that there were two pieces of great news a couple of weeks ago. The first, the t-shirts and clothing line of my photos was a huge hit. Everyone loved the shirts and they look great, I’m actually wearing my Dunes at Sunrise in Death Valley shirt now. I hope to at some point in a few months offer posters as well. I think that will be a great alternative for people that like my work but cannot afford one of my fine art prints.

The next big piece of news is that I have hired a Salesperson to book my weddings and portrait work. Her name is Sandy Hargrove. A wonderful person that has been in the Austin area for years and has a number of great connections that we are hoping to tap into.
Sandy’s background is really strong in marketing and sales, and currently runs her own business in the Spa industry. She is a welcomed addition to my business and should prove to be invaluable.

Great Shots

While I tend to market my Headshot Photography separately from my Wedding and Portrait work here, I just had to put these images up that I took today. This is Holly. She is a Conductor for a choral group in Austin. These are my two favorite photos from todays shoot. They turned out so lovely. And they haven’t had any retouching yet. Straight Out Of Camera, cropped to 8×10 and uploaded.

Thanks for looking!

William Bay is a Great News & Great Shots.

Well I recently ran across a photographer on Flickr that has combined my childhood love of Legos with my adulthood passion for photography. He has taken classic photojournal images from the last century and recreated them in Lego format. Going by the name of Balakov, he has managed to create a set of nine benchmark photographs ranging from Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “Behind the Gare Saint Lazare” (my favorite), to the ever romantic VJ Day in Times Square by Alfred Eisenstadt shown below.

Additionally, Balkov has some other great Lego creations he has photorgaphed. I highly reccomend you taking a look at his profile on Flickr. I would also take a look at the original photos that are linked to. These are images that have become societal changing, I still remember the Tieneman Square Protest so many years later because of that one photo of the singular student in front of the tanks. Photos are just a slice of time in our lives, literally a fraction of a second. And taken at the right time, and the right place (what Cartier-Bresson called the Decisive Moment), photos really can shape and impact the world.

William Bay is a Gettin’ some Leg-o.

One of the most used and, in my opinion, useless buzzwords is “Timeless.”

“We will take outstanding images so that you can cherish your timeless photos, bla bla bla.” “So-and-so wedding photography delivers timeless images for that once in a lifetime day, yadda-yadda-yadda.”

I tend to have a more refined “fine art” idea of photography, due to my background. My heroes are the old dead guys like Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and of course Ansel Adams. I learned from them what “true” art is. “True” art is what everyone confuses with the “Timeless” aspect to photography, and even then not very well. …If you follow.

Let’s look at it this way:
Photographers catch a notion that something should be done a certain way, (take the rule of thirds or any other rule of composition). Run of the mill photographers latch on to those ideas and concepts and make them dogma for their existence to have some order. Yes, deep inside every photographer is a little engineer demanding it be done a certain way. Some listen to it more than others.

Now one of those concepts is “Timelessness.” No-one breaks out of the mold when it comes to that term. It is impossible to have a timeless image. To prove the point, run and grab your parents photo album, then ask your older friends to see theirs. And for kicks check out something from the 80′s. They will all show some age, some funky fashion, and, for the owners of said albums it will bring them back to that day and reminisce about that day, what happened that morning, the crazy stunt whats-his names’s golfing buddy did right before the wedding.

These are not timeless thoughts! Neither are the photos. They are indeed very dated. As well they should be.

While photos may stand the test of time, they are never ever timeless! Remember that when looking at these photojournalistic ideas and trends. They are just that – trends and they will change. So the photos you take this year will look completely dated next decade. And you should embrace that fact.

William Bay is a “Timeless” has past its expiration date.