Design Your Mind

I am moving my bloggery to Flickr. I like it better. Sorry to my like 2 followers.

Flickr

Wow! These past few days have been crazy paced. I haven’t stopped to smell the roses in a while, mainly because I have been busy “CraigsListing”, hanging with friends and taking pictures. When I say “CraigsListing” I am referring to the act of using Craig’s List (rather successfully for me actually). I have been posting my gear on there and getting almost an instant response to it all. Within 15 minutes of posting I will get a hit and have a meeting setup at a local coffee house. This is a good thing, very good in fact. I have been able to trade up both times. Traded my 16-35mm f/2.8L for a 24-105mm f/4 clean across and my speedlight for an 85mm f/1.8. I needed these lenses. NEEDED THEM! (Cookie Monster voice).

The past few days have comprised of me testing out my new gear. Hence why I have been so busy. Busy = fun and smelling the roses is for the birds.

Sidenote: Something interesting I’ve noticed about this blog; I seem to only post photo related content on it. I want to clarify that I am a graphic designer who takes photos and not photographer who is a part time graphic designer

I’m sure we’ll chat,
Aaron Trigg
www.doughboyconcepts.com

All last weekend I was down in Southern Oregon hanging with friends and family. It was a much needed little break. The occasion was my niece’s birthday. She is the big 2 now. She is getting so big so fast. I cant believe my eyes.

While I was down there in Grants Pass I was able to do a few photos shoots. I’d figured I would share the shots from the weekend with you guys. Let me know what you think. I think they turned out rad, but hey, that’s my biased opinion.

Click here to my Flickr Photostream.

If you follow the link above, there are so many more where these came from. I mean like a lot. Oh, and there are photos from the concert I went to at the Sherwood Coffee Company. That was a fun show to be at.

Cheers,
Aaron
www.doughboyconcepts.com

I can’t believe how much better my lighting class has made me understand light. There are a lot of principals and theories that I did not know about which I wouldn’t have been able to understand unless dealing with it on a personal level. Understanding the ‘family of angles’, how shadows cast and the inverse square law do not just absorb into your brain without hands on practice. All college text books are filled to the brim with knowledge that can teach you anything but you can’t demonstrate an understanding of something just be reading it and taking a test. That is why I enjoy my lighting class. We will read from the book a few fundamental lighting principals and then practice them all day in class. It can’t get any better then that.

My latest assignment I have been working on for class is glass. For some, this is the most difficult type of photography, which I totally agree with and can sympathize. My teacher keeps telling us, “If you understand how to light glass you can light anything.” It is so true! There is nothing that glass won’t throw at you; shadows, glare, reflection, the whole gamut and the kitchen sink.

These few pictures are my attempt at lighting glass and demonstrating the light techniques I have learned. Enjoy.

The water bottles are not glass but they use the same principals. Its fun to make things that are so boring into things that are extraordinary.

Cheers,
Aaron

I have been so swamped with school that I forgot that I even had a blog. Believe me, when you go to school for as long as I have you kind of forget about everything else. Everything seems to just get pushed back or swept under the rug to allow school to become priority. In this case, a little bit of both has occurred making blogging nearly impossible.

What have I been up to?
School, plain and simple is what I have been up to. I have been struggling in my classes this quarter because of how boring they are (Aaron struggling? No...). I am not use to being so bored in class to the point of falling asleep. It has never happened to me. This quarter though I cant seem to keep my eyes open in two of my classes; 20th Century Design Theory and Caves to Cathedrals. As for my other two classes, Intro to Sustainability and Photography Lighting 102, I could not ask for more. Intro to sustainability is a straight forward but interesting class. I could sit in that class all day and learn about biomimicry and ‘cradle to cradle’. All that stuff  is interesting to me. I like to know what impact I am having when I do the things I do. As for my photo class, of course I love that class. Its what I do. Here is some of my homework if you would like to see:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/doughboyconcepts
Look for the lighting assignments.

Anywho, I'm going to get some grub.
Aaron

I must say it has been a long time since I felt butterflies in my stomach. Playing in many bands and being on stage for a good portion of my life could not have prepared me for my first official photo shoot with a band that I truly admire and respect. This weekend I had the privilege of shooting my friends Alex and Tom from the band The Crash Engine, a local hard rock band.

The boys had a few ideas for the shoot but it was basically up to me to fill in the blanks and make their ideas come full circle. We headed out to North Portland (Mississippi District) in a hurry because we were running low on light. Alex and Tom wanted to use a tagged wall they found for their first location that read “Leaving hipster-ville. See you next time”. To be honest when I first saw the site I was puzzled as to how I was going to light Alex and Tom while still making the wall interesting. More importantly I wondered how I was going to power my lights. I ended up asking the Spanish speaking homeowner from the house behind the tagged wall if I could run extension cords from his front porch. He had no clue what I was talking about but agreed anyway.

Fumbling over my lights and camera from my nerves, I managed to come up with a solution that complimented both the guys and the tagged wall. I set an AB800 with a shoot through umbrella to the right of the camera and another AB800 directly to the left to add a sort of rim. With the lights at 1/1 ratio I set my camera to ISO100 f/10 at 1/125, and the shooting began. I was surprised at the results of this lighting configuration which gave me a confidence booster (Hey, maybe I can do this).

By the time our first location was spent of photos we had completely ran out of sun light. It was officially night time and there was no point in shooting the other location. I suggested that we head over to my school’s studio for the remainder of the shoot to salvage the time we had left. This turned out to be smart choice for me because I can better control the light in my school’s studio and still give Alex and Tom some great looking photos.

The lighting configuration I used in the studio was text book. I had an AB800 suspended above the guys with a beauty dish center of the camera. Then an AB800 left and behind with a green gel along with my EX580II pointed towards the backdrop. Pretty standard but effective. This setup lent its self to be very versatile and gave me plenty of great shots of Alex and Tom to choose from.

After the last shot was taken we headed out to McMenamins for a burger and a few brews and that was the end of my first official photo shoot. Please, if you have any questions/comments let me know.

See you around,
Aaron Trigg

Feel free to click on any of the pictures to get a better look