Wedding and Portrait Photography: Bay Area

2011-12-06T10:34:00.001-08:00

Eliot Khuner Photography makes it into People Magazine, Dec 12, 2011 Issue

Our book Hot Guys And Baby Animals has hit the big time. Let me know if it is selling outside of the US.

The photo is of the review on page 37, sitting on the Dec 12, '11 cover.

Audrey and Carolyn (the producers) are featured in the article. My name is in tiny type where you will never even notice it.

2011-12-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving 2011

That's twenty-six people - all related by marriage or blood.

I am thankful that my mom and my three siblings are all alive and healthy this Thanksgiving.

We were at my sister Kathy's home in Berkeley

My family at my sister's home, Berkeley, CA

Destination Wedding: Cancun, Mexico

2011-11-29T00:04:00.000-08:00

Destination weddings give me a chance to spend several days with the couple, family, and guests.

And, of course, the locations are spectacular.

Wedding Photography at Dreams Tulum in Cancun, Mexico


Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Isabelle: with and without smiling

2011-11-28T18:28:00.001-08:00

We all want to know: Should I smile or be serious when I have my portrait done.

Isabelle, whom I photographed in the studio a few weeks ago, has given me permission to post a serious expression and a smiling portrait.

Isabelle - no smile

Isabelle - smile

Five Star Chefs...

2008-05-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

I photographed the annual Meals on Wheels fund raiser at the Greek Church in Oakland on Friday, May 2, 2006.

Here are some of the chefs working on the meal:

Another Photo of Mom

2008-05-04T17:37:00.001-07:00

Happy 95, Mom

Physics Explains Underexposure

2008-04-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

One of the most ubiquitous problems in photography has been the mystery of underexposure, or, in layman's terms, "The picture, she is so dark."

Causing lost shadow details and muddy highlights, underexposure is the number two enemy of photographers, second only to abysmal wages and poor math skills.

During the twentieth century (that means the 1900s) several hypotheses had been advanced and shot down. Joerg Hilti, the Austrian jurist, had proposed in 1919 that photons slowed down whilst passing through the lens, and thus struck the film with too little force to make an impression. Einstein eventually put the kibosh on that theory, but it remained part of formal photographic education well past 1940.

In 2005 astronomers reported that dark matter, which was first synthesized by Fritz Zwicky in 1933, is far more prevalent than ever. The ever increasing and menacing dark matter has been proven (extremely proven, in fact) to be the cause of underexposure in the photographic fields. To put it simply, dark matter gets trapped between the lens and the film (or sensor) and then lodges in the receptor sites during exposure. This blocks some of the lighter and friendlier photons. The cause of dark photos had been found

These effects of dark matter have been overcome with digital sensors. In mass production since early 2007, dark-matter-protected sensors eliminate the dark matter underexposure conundrum.

The new CMOS and CCD sensors feature receptor sites that are too narrow and foreboding for dark matter to enter, leaving room for even the weakest photons, thus boosting the effective exposure to what it should have been all along. Film, still made by hobbyists in the hinterlands, cannot be adjusted to compensate for dark matter. This may may relegate film to the ash bin of history.

With digital capture in ascendancy, the dark problem is essentially solved. As one bride in Ohio or Illinois said, "My wedding pictures aren't as dark as I feared." And she was right!

Look Who I Found When I Came Home!

2008-04-27T23:24:00.000-07:00

It was Ben and Charlene, hanging out in in the front yard.

Just kidding. This is actually my vacation home in Norway.

Nope, this is an engagement session we did in San Francisco in March.

Here are a few more images.

Jewelry Photographs

2008-04-26T16:32:00.001-07:00

I recently photographed the amazing jewelry of Keren Barukh of Oakland, California.

The similarity to portrait photography is that the subject (in this case jewelry) must be lit to bring up its distinctive features. And, distracting elements (in this case clothing, face and hair) must be lit so that they add to the photo, rather than distract or detract from the jewelry.

In this case, Jillian is not just the model, but also a client of mine.

Another model was Courtney

Hiking With Dad - Retrospective

2008-04-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

My father, Felix Khuner(1906-1991)

I took this photo in, I am guessing, 1968. I took this with my first real camera, a Canonet QL-17, that my father had brought back from Japan in 1968.

We were hiking in a National Park - I think it was Mt. Lassen - and my father stepped in a creek with his right foot. He stopped to dry his shoe, and I got this shot.

I was a photojournalist forty years ago!

What Will You Be Doing on Your 95th Birthday?

2008-04-25T21:02:00.001-07:00

Will you be teaching a dance class?

My mom was teaching her regular Thursday class as the Senior Center (not at the Senior Edge, I guess?). Because her class was celebrating her 95th birthday, she asked me to come by and take a group photo.

They had a cake for her

Happy 95, Mom! - Like she'll ever read my blog.

My Mom at Eighteen

2008-04-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

My Mom's High School Graduation Photo

I did not take this photo. I am guessing that the person who took this photo isn't around anymore. But look at the gift the photographer gave us.

Photographs are our gift - the photographer's and the subject's - to people in the future.

You may think you are just hiring a wedding photographer or some photographer to do your family portrait. In the best of all worlds, you choose a person who will create images that will tell your children and grandchildren who you were way back then. How did you feel? Who was close to you?

"Thankyou Mr./Miss photographer of 1931 who took this photo."

I want to be Nadia Boulanger

2008-04-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

I don't even know who Nadia Boulanger is, but I LOVE the name.

Sandals

2008-04-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

My mom is a name dropper. She used to tell this story about my older brother's footwear, and how we were so ahead of the times:

"Remember when Jonathan wore sandals, and that was before everyone else was wearing sandals. He was the first. He did it before everyone else wore sandals."

An impressionable youth, six years younger than Jonathan, hearing my mom tell that story many times, I really believed what she was saying. And I felt pride. I would see a guy wearing sandals and I would think, "Oh, but my brother, my family, was the first." [I am not sure if I really think with commas, but using commas makes me feel important.]

This year my wife and I are working on this problem. I want to have conversations without my mentioning that I was the first to do something or that I or my family has a connection to a famous person.

We have come up with a technique: Whenever I mention some connection I have with a famous person, she or I say, "Sandals."

Don't we all know that Pride is a sin? Don't we all know that murder and Pride are not good? It ain't the latest self-help fad, buddy.

It's not that it's a sin, but that it is alienating, it breaks the connection that conversations are, ideally, supposed to create and strengthen. And, it alienates me from myself. When I mention my connection that elevates me, I am not as present. I am less my authentic self, and just a jerk compensating (failing to compensate) for my inadequacies.

Connecting with others feels good. It's the opposite of alienation. When I don't feel connected, name dropping makes it worse, not better.

Help me Stop NameDropping

2008-04-20T10:39:00.001-07:00

Just to make sure we are all on the same page: name dropping is mentioning a well-known name in conversation. For example, "I remember when Barack, back when we called him Barry, and I were teenagers and used to get together on Sundays and look for typos in the NY Times."

Or, "Ah, the Prius. You know, back in '62, we were the first ones on the west coast to have a car that didn't use gasoline - it ran on orange peels and shredded clothing. We were the first."

In a word: Pride. The sin of pride. Trying to alleviate anxiety and alienation by self-aggrandizement. I am guilty, extremely guilty.

I don't like myself when I do it, yet it has been a staple of my life. I even namedrop in my own inner monologue (dialog?).

My wife Anne is the opposite. She is humble, self-effacing, a goddamn saint, if you ask me, and her modesty makes it easier to hang out with her - she's not trying to prove how special she is all the time.

In the past few months, we have been working together to stop my namedropping.

Will you help me too?

Much thanks.

ps: note to blogspot.com - Please update spellcheck. Barack is the correct spelling of our next president - ONE R.

The Phone Guy

2008-04-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

My wife and I, being dissatisfied Comcast customers, were forced to switch from Good Old Analog Phone Service to Comcast Digital Voice. I want to apologize to Pac Bell (it doesn't exist anymore, right?) for switching to Comcast Phone a few years ago. However, they made it too expensive to switch back, but that's another story.

So, a few weeks ago Comcast came out, in the form of The Phone Guy.

While he was installing the modem, I snapped a few portraits. I sent him some free 8x10 prints - after all, he wasn't really Comcast, just an employee.

Days of Chocolate

2008-04-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Rene Bien of Plan B Home Design Company and Renaissance Gift Baskets, I photographed Charles of Charles Chocolate.

Yes, I did eat lots of chocolate over the months Rene and I worked together photographing gift basket items in my studio/office.

My Gulch in Gourmet Ghetto

2008-04-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

This is where I shop for cheese and tea, where I have the occasional Chinese lunch. Not shown, the famous Monterey Market.

I encourage couples interested in using my services to visit during the day so they can include a visit to the Hopkins & Monterey shopping area in their Berkeley stay.

I am just two or three blocks from Solano Avenue. I'll either go out and shoot it today, or go through my archives.

Actually, it would be easier to drive two hours, shoot for two hours, and return, rather than search through my files of personal photos.

April 2008 Update

2008-04-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

I've been away at an extended dinner, so I have not been blogging.

Actually, I got busy with album production, and just forgot to blog.

Yesterday, April 13, I photographed the Berkeley Opera fundraisers at the Town and Gown club in Berkeley. Helping me out was Casey Cheung" It's fun to hang out with another photographer and and work together.

Wagnerian Soprano Christine Brewer performed, accompanied by my brother, Jonathan.

Work is piling up, so I will try to blog more so that I don't spend too much time working.

Re-weddification? 30th Anniversay

2007-09-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

What a pleasure it was to spend the afternoon and evening with Jill and Martin, and their two kids - (I hope I have remembered their names correctly) Sara and Liz. Jill and Martin were celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary by having a re-weddification as they called it. One might also call it a renwal of vows.

At my suggestion, we started the photography at their home - just a few blocks from mine in north Berkeley.

Along the way to their house, I passed Jane Hammond working in her garden. I stopped to say hello to Jane, who is one of the Bay Area's top caterers. Her East Bay Office #: 510.528.3530.

Fortunately, Jane new Jill and Martin, and reminded me which house was theirs so that I wouldn't have to search for house numbers.

The bride was still getting ready when I arrived. So, the kids and I created some portraits. In their living room I set up my favorite, The Wall of Light, which was my lighting for almost the entire day, in three additional settings.

The twinkle in the eye, actually the reflection of the light source, is called a catchlight. I'll write about that in another blog entry. You might want to pay attention to it's placement in my portraits.

Here are a few more:

Last Week's Bride

2007-08-18T14:48:00.001-07:00

Kendra and Brian got married at the Lake Temescal Boat House. To make a long story short, we had a good time, Brian and Kendra are very, very nice and sweet, and we got some great pictures.

If I hadn't been fighting with CS3 and Adobe Camera Raw for the past week I would have had the images online sooner. They went up last night (Friday) onto one of my online galleries.

Caution: Boring Techie Stuff

2007-08-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

Let's suppose that you make really, really fast hard drives, but it turns out that older computers can't handle the speed at which the information travels to and from the drive. You could put a little switch "Slow/Fast" so that users could set it one way or the other before they install it.

But, there is no slow/fast switch on hard drives. Instead these potentially really fast drives have a jumper (see picture)

It's not that I have a huge penny - don't I wish - but that the jumper is small.

Here is the jumper in place on a hard drive (I know it's not a SATA drive, but it was the only drive that wasn't in an enclosure).

When the jumper is in position, the data moves at half speed. But, if you pull the jumper off (it ain't easy once the drive is in the computer) the data moves at full speed.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I got a new computer. It has three SATA drives. I decided to put in a fourth. During this process I discovered that all three drives had been installed with the jumper in the SLOW position!

After I removed the jumpers the computer ran much faster. Actually, it sat on/under the desk at the same speed, sort of in one place all the time, but it functioned more quickly.

Imagine if services or products we purchased arrived only half functional, and we never even knew it?

"You mean, if I COOK this artichoke it will taste better?"

Yep, like artichokes and hamburger meat, some hard drives are not fully ready to use the moment you put it in your shopping cart.

It's more like you buy an ipod, and a year later you find out you are supposed to have TWO earbuds. Or, on your fortieth birthday you find out that all this time you could have been eating hot dogs IN A BUN, instead of holding the dog, mustard and catsup in your hands!

It's like you meet a really nice, totally in-style guy who makes photography really fun at your wedding, but after you have been married for six years you discover that the guy didn't know how to light, compose, or even get people to look good and natural.

The moral is, do your research, even down to the tiniest little piece: get me to photograph your wedding.

Give the Gift of Photos

2007-08-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest gifts you can give your children, grandchildren, and your grandchildren's pets, is photos taken today that they can explore decades from now.

My dad's family, in Vienna, often went to portrait studios, and my father saved the pictures. He would have been 101 this week, and we still have this photo taken when he was seven:

It is my job is to please my clients, make "nice" or "dramatic" or "artsy" images.

The part of the job that you may never know about, or never think about, is that we are creating presents, a treasure chest of captured emotions and relationships, for ourselves and our descendends to view year after year.

A grand child whom you will never meet will be looking at the pictures you and I created.

That's one of the reasons that I am so careful with the quality of my work. These images will be treasures for your family, they are going to store them carefully, display them lovingly. They will be the window through which they will look into who you were, how you felt, today. What a shame if that picture is a snapshot, a poorly lit portrait, an image without feeling.

Allow me, help me, give a gift to your grand children and great grandchildren.

I Love You, Mom!

2007-08-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Mom,

I love you. Thank you for supporting my photographic career, and, years ago, my dance-instruction career.

Here is the picture I took of you last week sitting at your kitchen table.

The cool thing was that we got to talk for an hour or two, and got to take candid shots.

I know, you don't like the way you look in photos, but we love you, and we like seeing in the photos aspects of you that touch us so much.

I know what you are going to ask, "Couldn't you find a nice one to put up?"

How's this one?

Love,

your youngest son,

Eliot

Why I Photograph My Hand

2007-08-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

I like my formal photos - families, couples, bridal portraits, groomal portraits - to be nicely lit. That means:

1: Main light comes from one side

2: Shadow areas are not too dark or too bright

3: Backlighting on the hair

4: Background not black, not absolutely white.

With flat or overly contrasty lighting, skin texture and color look bad in digital (and usually film) images. So, #1 (directional light) and #2 (good lighting ratio) make a huge difference.

To make sure that my light is perfect, I photograph my hand as if it were the subject - in the same spot in the room/studio/park/universe, with the same lighting. I then check the image for exposure: make sure that it is as light as it can be without losing details in the highlights, is directional and has about a 3:1 contrast ratio.

If I can have a subject as my test, then I don't have to talk to the hand (listen to the hand?).

The advantage of the hand is that it usually shows up on time, I can always count on it, and we doing, after all, digital photography.

The above image of my hand tells the viewer

1) Directional lighting is coming from the right direction and is not too bright or too dark

2) Shadows (dark areas) are not too dark.

3) The edge of the shadow is not so hard as to bring out blemishes, but not so soft as to be without character

4) The hairlight and sidelight are perfectly balanced with the main light

5) There is no unexpected color contamination from the floor or walls

6) Color: Perfect!

7) Background could be lighter or darker, but I can fix in in Photoshop

8) The line where the floor and wall meet will be very distracting, so I must position the camera and select a lens that keeps this line out of the photo.

Having created perfect lighting that will work for individual portraits as well as groups up to twenty or thirty, I can totally focus on the people

I am present to realate to the people I am photographing. I can totally work on the relationship aspect of the photos. I can move quickly from close-up to full-length to detail to groups.

With lighting and exposure perfect, my concerns are

Relaxing the subject
Keeping contact with the people I am photographing
Establishing contact with other people I will be photographing during the day
Moving quickly and effortlessly through all the images that need to be done
Being ready to capture the unexpected moment
Creating the unexpected moment!

Every picture is perfectly exposed and perfectly lit because all the technical thinking was done with a hand from my hand.

Wedding in Berkeley - Fish Eye Lens

2007-08-04T22:26:00.001-07:00

The fish-eye lens?

You know, the curving lines that should be straight, the wide angle of view?

Some people love it, some hate it, but, ultimately, like a spice, used occasionally it makes the overall opus more interesting, more piquant.

I took these shots last Sunday at Beth El in Berkeley. Cantor Brian and Orly asked me to photograph their wedding, and I was honored to do so.

Ted Hilliard - Studio Portrait WOW IMAGES!

2007-08-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

I met the nicest, just the greatest guy a few days ago: Ted Hilliard. He'll be big some day, so remember his name.

Like me, my siblings, and one of my kids, Ted Hillard attended Berkeley High School.

But, more importantly, more meaninfully, he had come to me, a veritable stranger, to create his portrait.

The purpose of the portrait was to put a face on the business-oriented company of which he is the founder and CEO, and which bears his name.

He purposely did not wear, or even bring, a tie. And, I noted, he wore a white T-shirt under his dress shirt. I felt that this fashion statement, the shirt showing underneath, at the collar, was an important part of his persona. It reflected his relationship to his times his age, his feelings about business.

Once the session is underway, the need to, in the end, present a photograph that is a public face is tempered by the relationship between the subject and myself. (or, vice versa - my desire to connect, to be honest, to let loose, is tempered by the result the client is seeking.)

As in every portrait session I do, How the subject (Ted) and I felt, how we related, how much he let me know who he was, and how comfortable I felt knowing him, became the subject of the portrait. All photographs of people, in my philosophy, are about relationship. The relationship that I have with the subject becomes part of the image. My ability to connect photographically (as opposed to personally, emotionally, or philosophically, for example) is what gives drive, meaning, presence and depth to the photograph.

I really know very little about Ted that I could verbalize. But photographically, we had a very solid yet limited relationship. That is why I feel connectd to these images and want to share them with you. We found a level at which we could connect honestly, where we felt comfortable, a place of mutual trust.

Compare this to the photo of Bill from Proclaim Promotions (whom I photographed standing next to his wide-format printer).

Clearly, in Bill's image, there is very little relationship between me and the subject. One reason is that Bill was not invested in the portrait. He had not hired me, he didn't know me from Adam, I was hired by and sent to him by another company. Under these circumstances, it is difficult for either of us to invest in the process of connecting.

Compare this to Ted, who knew of my reputation, had seen my website, and had been referred to a mutual friend. Even though we were strangers, we had permission to connect - he was invested in the image, in the process. And, it was my job, indeed, my pleasure, to form a connection, a relationship. I was hired to use my skill to relate to him in a visual, non-verbal way.

However, he hadn't come to me to have my photographic interpretation/impression/expression of who he was of how I felt about him.

Thus, this is a 110% successful image. It fulfils his needs, it's technically perfect, and it shows the maximum amount of connection that was appropriate for this type of commissioned work.

I woud love it if Ted would let me photograph his private side some day. If he does, I'll post the results.

Family Secret! Finally Revealed!

2007-08-04T17:45:00.001-07:00

My dad was a musician, a Viennese musician. He played in the Kolisch Quartet, originally called "The Vienna Quartet." From 1926 to 1938 they concertized all over the world. Their most often played piece: Death and the Maiden by Schubert.

Even before I knew of their Schubertian bent, I had fallen in love with that Schubert quartet.

I have several recordings of Death and the Maiden - none by my father's quartet, as they recorded mainly Schoenberg and Mozart.
In our "studio" as we called the dance/music studio in our Berkeley home, my father's second quartet, which he founded in the 1950s, performed the Schubert C Major quintet, which Mr. Nielson, my brother's 5th grade teacher, recorded, giving us the reel-to-reel tape. Years later, when I was a teenager, I found the tape, and listened to it over and over and over.
Then I bought the LP - recorded by another quartet - and listened to that over and over.

To sum it up, in my teenage years, along with crushes on dozens of girls, I had a total love-affair with Schubert chamber music.

And, I even cohabited with Schubert music: string quartets in some form, either played by the family, played by students of my father, played by quartets my father was coaching, and even at our famous Khuner Musical New Years Party, which was full to overflowing year after year during the 1970s, even with no invitations ever being sent out.

I reflect on all the musical education that I couldn't help but learn as a youngster in the Khuner house: I knew from before I could talk that Mozart was a child prodidgy, Beethoven rebelled against the musical forms of his day, Wagner used Leitmotifs, and so on. In fact, I had always thought that the Shakespeare play was pronounced "Oh Tell Oh," [the Italian, operatic pronunciation] and that my friends who talked of "Othello" were dolts who didn't even know how to pronounce the play's title!

Our everyday vocabulary included scherzo, fortissimo, overture, aria, glissando, cadenza, recapitulation, nocturne, bagatelle, woodwinds, octet, sforzando, da capo, octave, bagpipe, and washboard.

It went without saying that Bach never composed a string quartet, that Debussy and Ravel wrote one each.

My family didn't say "Beethoven String Quartet." They said, "Opus 131." When my brothers heard a snippet of music on the radio, they competed to be the first to correctly guess year, composer, title.

But there was one fact that they - not my dad, not my mom, not brothers (and I am including my foster brother Gil, hence the plural) - never, ever told me.
For decades, as much as my family knew of my love of Schubert (and Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn...) they kept a huge secret from me.
And when did I finally learn this secret, this family secret, this piece of information that was so awful, so gross, so icky, so humiliating that they never told me? I just learned it yesterday , and NOT even from my family, but from Robert Greenberg, the professor whose musical lectures are playing whenever I am in my car.
What secret did I finally learn last night, on my way to the church

(Corpus Christi in Piedmont, California) to photograph Heather and Bill's wedding?

dramatic pause

Schubert (1797 - 1828) died of syphilis!!!

My god! When I heard Bob say it, the horror, the fact that I never even suspected it, hit me like a sizable load of building material, say, a ton of bricks, or maybe several sheets of drywall and a bucket of joint compound.
Schubert! Syphilis! Quartettsatz! The pain, the humiliation - my parents never told me! Now, at this age, to be told by a non-family member! I am humiliated!
I had to use my cell to call the couple that I would be taking the afternoon off - they could find another photographer - so that I could recuperate from the shock! (Schock?)
To think, in my family, the most horrible fate, the one we had to work hardest to avoid, was growing up without knowing how to play an instrument. Dying of VD at the age of 31? Either it was not as bad as being musically illiterate, or it was so much worse that it couldn't even be mentioned.
I have, as of yesterday, lost my innocence, and I am deeply and permanently scarred - at least for the next few days.
As for Heather and Bill? Actually, I had to swallow my emotions, and continue photographing the weddings as if the world had not just shifted a few degrees, as if nothing had changed, as if life were perfect, as if I were the innocent that I had been when the day started.

Eliot is an Idiot

2007-07-31T13:04:00.001-07:00

Do you know what this is?

Well, I didn't know what it was. That doesn't prove I'm an idiot.

I had just walked into the offices of Proclaim Promotions in Concord, and I figured these little gizmos were some promotional item - something for visitors to play with while they waited. That round thingy and the sets of plastic tabs were just hanging out on the counter, right?

So, I picked up one (see above image) and thought, "Cool - a toy!." Or did I think "Groovy - a toy?" or "Sweet - a toy?"

So I touched one of the metal disks (so nicely glued to the colorful tabs) to the top or the doohicky. I jumped when the big ugly thing started beeping (well, it had been pretty until it started beeping, which coincided with its descent into uglitude). I think that proves I'm an idiot: Why did I stupidly assume that these attractive playthings were toys, and not, say, part of a nuclear deterrent system? My nuclears were deterred, that's for sure!

Obviously the beeping and mechanical hoo-hah stopped, or I wouldn't be alive today to write this.

It turns out that by touching the red tab to Metallic Circle I was clocking some employee out - these playthings are actually a 22nd century time clock! Who knew?

The eight-foot-tall security guard came running, "Who did you clock in our out??"

(Right, like I'm going to say, "Don't you mean 'whom'?"

"Sorry, I'm just a photographer."

"Well, clock that person back in, or back out. Just undo whatever you did, idiot."

Okay, I made the eight-foot-tall person up. It was just the nice woman working behind the counter, and she was very nice about it, and she did NOT call me an idiot, at least not that I could hear.

By the way, Bill, the owner of Proclaim Promotions, and the owner of those things on the counter, is a really nice guy. The happy, relaxed employees show that Bill has created a good workplace.

Eliot is a Genius

2007-07-31T10:43:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Monday, I had a shoot out in Concord - about a freeway exit or so from where I bought my computer, actually. I was to photograph the owner of Proclaim Promotions:

This may look like a simple shot, unless you know the environment: Proclaim's large format ink-jet printers are jammed into an area of the warehouse that is protected from dust from above and sides. Interior dividers (just out of sight above subject's head) cut the ceiling area into four sections, so that light from one section does not spread into the next section.

The tight space precluded me from using one light in each section, and I also needed to be able to set up quickly for varied shots: printers, interior work area, external area, conference room. I could not be wasting the owner's time moving and setting up my lighting gear.

The ambient light (fluorescents) were way too dim and poorly placed to get both a good image of Proclaim Promotion's owner Bill Welland with the wide format printers.

Instead I used two battery-powered, light-weight flashes on light-duty light stands. As usual, I used a wireless remote attached to the camera to set off the flashes.

Notice that he is lit from the side, giving a more three-dimensional quality to his face. That light was positioned to light two sections of the ceiling to create the good portrait lighting. The area behind him was lit by a flash out just out of picture range, set below the partition height. It was aimed across the room so that the both printers behind the subject would be lit. Since these are the printers that produce Proclaim's most important products, the printers' importance demands that they be well lit. Given the baffles, low ceiling and tight quarters, it took some finesse to get the little light to cover the background so evenly.

My client, BizX in Seattle selected five images for their web page and monthly magazine.

More interesting than the technical details, and far more interesting than a straightforward business portrait for a mainstream-style company magazine, was how it felt to be at Proclaim Promotions.

Every employee I met there was not just "nice," but happy, relaxed, easy-going. I made a huge faux-pas (to be discussed in another post) and they still were nice to me. One of their computer guys was generous with his time, explaining technical details that fascinated me.

As I told Bill, I know he is a good boss because everyone I met there was friendly, happy and polite.

Engagement Session at UC Berkeley

2007-07-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

While JR is building my new computer at Fry's, and the CEO of Renaissance Gift Baskets is waiting at my office, I am dropping off my car at Oceanworks on Tenth Street in Berkeley.

Angus, the owner, is my guy, or, rather, The Guy, at Oceanworks. He is Berkeley's most loved mechanic, and his specialty is Japanese cars. I drive a Toyota flavored car, the year and VIN of which Angus specified before I went out car-shopping (ask me about it).

Special Note: NEVER buy a car at Toyota of Berkeley. Go to the Toyota dealership by the Jelly Belly factory - Fairfield Toyota. I hope I can blog about the awful service at Berkeley Toyota someday. The underlying principle is that they can sell poorly serviced, i.e., crappy, used cars and Toyota can't do anything about it.

Angus and I went to Willard Junior High (on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley) together. He remembers me carrying my camera around school. So, we can reminisce a little about Ms. Prisk, our French teacher, and other jr. high school stuff. Do they still make Junior High schools, or does everyone go to "middle school" now? My kids went to middle school. What school did you go to - middle or junior high?

What a pleasure it was, then, when a bride-to-be, Janet called to book me for her wedding. "Angus told me to call you," she said. Eventually she told me that Angus was her fiancé.

There's a bit difference between, "Angus told me to call," and "Angus and I are getting married - please photograph our wedding." She definitely meant the latter. They were very pleased that I was available on their date for their Berkeley wedding on the UC Campus.

I love to hang out and chat. But the most intimate way that I connect with my fellow humans is with the camera. More accurately - as much as I wish that I could have dozens of close, intimate friends, I don't have the time nor psyche to be hail-fellow-well-met-best-friends-for-life to everyone who enriches my life. I love to hang out at Oceanworks and chat with Angus. But to take his picture, to engage in a photographic excursion with him and his fiancée is far more intimate, at least for me it is.

That is why I feel so comfortable totally integrating my photography and my life: when I am taking pictures of people, they are becoming, for the moment, intimate friends of mine.

Although most of my brides contact me via the contact form on my website, I would always opt for a phone conversation than email correspondence.

So, we have a happy Angus & Janet, we have a happy Toyota (mine) and a happy me (Eliot).

Customer Service: JR at Fry's in Concord

2007-07-26T04:35:00.001-07:00

A big Thank You to JR - head of service - at Fry's in Concord, California.

One of my computers crashed on Monday. (At first I thought it was an earthquake or that a car had hit the house. Nope, just my C: drive crashing.)

I thought it was no big deal because I have several other computers, and all my client data is backed up both on external drives and DVDs. However, I hadn't backed up the system, so I couldn't restore it - I've learned my lesson.

At Fry's I bought a floor model of a pre-built Fry's computer. I set it up in my office, fired it up, and on a scale of 1 to 10, it didn't work very well.

I drove back out to Fry's (half an hour each way, at least) where JR, the head of service, immediately saw that I had a lemon and set a full refund in motion.

And, he took me by the hand, and I speak metaphorically here, as the store was closing, and picked out the components for a screaming fast (again with the metaphor) computer.

If you have ever met JR, you will never forget him! He is like the most likable character you would ever want to meet in a movie: He's expressive, fast on the uptake, knowledgeable, and eager to be on the customer's side when Corporate isn't. I told him, "When you get married, I'm going to photograph your wedding!"

In my mind, he rescued Fry's reputation: Fry's is not a soulless clot of dissipated losers posing as sales reps, but an oasis in the wilderness of contemporary American merchandising.

So:
1) THANK YOU to JR at Concord, CA, Fry's
2) I'm gonna have a durn-fast (sorry for the technical jargon) computer
3) If I ever make a movie, I'm going to make sure that there is a JR character in it to help our hero.

CONTEST: Correctly Identify This Guy, Win a Prize

2007-07-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

The first reader to go to my Contact Page and send me a message with the name of this subject will win either an 8x10 of this image or a free portrait session in Berkeley, CA. Alternatively, you can email me: .

ISES - Wedding and Party Vendors Unite

2007-07-25T05:41:00.001-07:00

I am a member of ISES - International Society of Edible Scones.

No, International Special Event Society.

The Northern California Chapter held a Gala at Treasure Island (the person-made island attached to the naturally-made island Yerba Buena, which yields, via tunnel, to the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge) last night - July 24, 2007.

Some of the Bay Area's great caterers provided the food:
Taste Catering
Elaine Bell Catering
Paula LeDuc Fine Catering
Betty Zlatchin Catering
Melon's Catering
Patrick David's Catering
Jane Hammond Events and
Catered Too

Living in the Bay Area, I could easily be a foodie. But I'm really happiest with a chicken burrito and a diet coke. On the other hand, I recently had some meals at Andersen Pea Soup in Buellton, and I found it close to inedible. Yet, the place is very popular. McDonalds hasn't gone out of business (yet) due to the sudden upsurge in American's devotion to fine cuisine.

I'm still a sucker for a hot-carmel sundae - as long as the carmel is home-made. The canned stuff will not do.

I'm not a fan of long posts.

Home Sweet Chocolate

2007-07-23T22:46:00.000-07:00

I drove back home - too far to walk - today. It was overcast all the way up 101 (from Buellton) until I got to Berkeley. It wasn't too long until sunset, and the sun was indeed shining on the usually fogged-in Berkeley.
I couldn't wait to get into the office.
My office was, until the digital age, a darkroom. Now it's a chocolate room.
For the past few months I have been photographing chocolate for Renaissance Gift Baskets. Their web site isn't up yet, but once it is, I'll let you know where it is.
In the meantime, here is just one of hundreds of photos of chocolates that I have created in the past eight months:

My office barely has room for walking as it is still filled with chocolates and gift baskets. Fortunately for Rene Bien, the CEO of Renaissance Gift Baskets, I have had my fill of chocolate, and I'm not eating up the gifts between shoots anymore

From the Archives: Outdoor portrait of a child

2007-07-23T07:20:00.001-07:00

No, this is not my daughter. This is an image from a fun portrait session I had with a couple who found me on the internet. We used my favorite location, and this image is just one of dozens of touching moments.

Wedding PJ (PhotoJournalism)

2007-07-23T00:53:00.001-07:00

Another Wedding Photo from the '07 Archives

2007-07-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

Listening to Robert Greenberg! A Bagatelle?

2007-07-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Having a long car trip coming up (to Buellton!) I went to the library, resuscitated by library card (it had gone flat and stiff from lack of use) and browsed the "Books on CD" section.

I checked out A CD set about Haydn by Robert Greenberg.

Go online and buy a copy now! Or, go the library route. Robert is terrific! He's funny, engaging, a twenty-first century guy giving us his take on the eighteenth century. Robert is just totally delightful.

Education-wise: He includes lots of information that gives context (I love context!) to the events in the composer's life. He includes samples of music that influenced Haydn, and even includes a recipe for Haydn's favorite strudel.

(I made up the part about the recipe.)

Here is something that, despite growing up the son of a musician and brother of a musician I did not know until I learned it from Greenberg's tape: A Nocturne was, originally, a piece of music performed during an evening, open-air concert (or serenade) in Vienna in the eighteenth century. According to Greenberg, these musical events, often featuring compositions in the Italian style, were very popular in Haydn's time. As a young man, before he was the masterful composer he eventually became, he wrote and performed in some of these well attended musical soirees.

I had grown up in a rich musical environment. Our everyday vocabulary included such terms as sonata, crescendo, glissando, atonal, da capo, cadenza, recitative, allegro, spicatto and so on.

I didn't need to be told that Bach had never written a string quartet. I learned early that some "classical" music was written for dancing, e.g., gigue, sarabande, some for rich patrons, e.g., Brandenberg Concerti and that Beethoven (not Rasumovsky) wrote the Rasumovsky Quartets. But, I never knew the context, the back-story, of the nocturne or notturno.

From Greenberg I learned that this popular evening entertainment created a demand for easy-listening music centuries ago in Vienna. So, that explains why there are so many nocturnes in our listening repertoire now-a-days! I now infer the Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik ("A Little Night Music" or "A Little Serenade") or Serenade for strings in G Major, K525, was composed with one of these Viennese evenings in mind.

By the way, Nocturnes or Serenades of this sort were written for entertainment, for easy listening, which explains why they are so accessible. That Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is popular even today, 220 years after it was written: Mozart intended that it have broad appeal.

Could anyone tell me, now, what is a bagatelle?

Wedding Photographer Trapped in Buellton?

2007-07-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

Buellton? It's a few miles from Lompoc. And, it's just a few minutes from Solvang.

I'm here in sort-of-southern California (about twenty minutes from Santa Barbara) attending a quarterly meeting of the Professional Photographers of California. I have my car, so I'm not really trapped. But, we had meetings today until 10:00 PM, and Monday's meeting is at 9:00 AM - so there's not much time to plan and execute activities beyond hanging in my hot motel room. (It's hot because I refuse to turn on the AC - global warming and all.)

I figured I'd have some quality time during this trip to spend with my computer, and that I could use that time to work on the blog. As I packed for the trip I had to choose between shooting new photos for the blog or limiting myself to existing images. Since I knew the scenery would be flying by at around 65 MPH, I opted to pack along with the computer a hard drive of archived images. I would pick some favorites to post.

This is a picture of Khela taken on her wedding day. I had been inspired by another photographer a week before, whose images often featured the bride's lashes showing clearly by placing them (via camera position) over the cheek.

You can see their engagement session online: Engagememnt Photos

Free Weekend

2007-07-21T01:11:00.000-07:00

After two weekends of weddings, I get to take this on off - almost. I have to zip down south on 101 to attend a Professional Photographers of California meeting for a day or two.

So, because I don't have any shoots this weekend, I get to stay up late, hang out with my wife - whose name is, by the way, Annie Khuner:

I also get to hang out with our dog, Isabelle.

I spent today (Friday) working on a wedding album for Maren and Nick. As much as I love their wedding images - and I really like Maren and Nick too - I forgot to put their images up on my new site.

Here is an altar shot of Maren.

Below is a photo of Khela getting for her wedding at Tenaya Lodge in Yosemite.

Every hard drive - and I have almost a dozen - in my systems has an /image folder, which is divided up into portraits and weddings. Any photos that don't fall into that category just sit in the /image folder.

To "keep in touch" with what images were on my computer, I checked out a wedding folder and found this photo. I brightened up the flowers a little, but other than that it's as shot - no retouching, no cropping.

The Campanile, UC Berkeley

2007-07-18T23:05:00.001-07:00

The Sunday wedding was on the UC Berkeley Campus at The Faculty Club. The Campanile has always been a favorite of mine.

I have been using the polarizing lately to darken the sky and deepen the green of foliage

Sunday Morning - Upload to the Max

2007-07-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

This photographer spends Sunday Morning uploading thirty gigs of photos from Saturday's wedding.

While the files were copied from my CF cards to my 400g external drive, I selected a wedding image from a few years ago. This was taken at Stanford. These arches are a favorite of photographers.

Highway One north to Jenner - A Day Trip

2007-07-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

On Friday, July 13, 07, Casey Cheung and I took a day trip north on Highway one - starting at his digs out in the Avenues - I love that phrase "Out in the Avenues."

In San Francisco, the west side has numbered Avenues running North/South. These are the Avenues.

The numbered Streets are in the South of Market Area, i.e., downtownish.

Our first stop was at Muir Beach:

I'm so excited about today - Saturday 7/11! I have a fun wedding on the UC Berkeley campus - at the Faculty Club.

7/7/07 Wedding Photography

2007-07-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

Hanna and Keith got married on 07/07/07. It was a long drive from Berkeley to Almaden (south end of San Jose). I had such a good time that I hung around for an extra hour taking pictures.

I caught this moment late in the afternoon at the reception.