Okay, … one last post from our Hawaii excursion. On our final scouting day on Lana’i we took UTV’s (Utility Task Vehicles) to the back side of the island. We traversed the Munro Trail (in the rain) and went down a remote trail that even the locals were balking at – especially given the wet conditions. This took us to Naha Beach which we shared a panoramic photo of in our last post (center photo). From there we traveled up to Club Lana’i. Now deserted, the location was a day resort, where folks from Maui would come to “get away”. It is really quite beautiful. There are talks from the new ownership on the island to potentially revitalize the resort or repurpose the area into some other type of destination. But while we were there is was easy to imagine the run down structures in their more glorious days. A fun weekend destination more for locals and those “in-the-know” than for the average tourist. If you ever make it to Lana’i it is worth the trip on a beautiful day (which it could be there, even if it is raining in Lana’i City). And there is a much easier route to get there than the one we took, with some other points of interest along the way! Any local can point you in the right direction! Aloha!

When we were on a recent scouting trip to Hawaii, we took the opportunity to shoot a few Super High Resolution Panoramics. I always enjoy being able to do this when the opportunity presents itself! The only drawback is that it is so hard to appreciate the grandeur of the scenes on the web. There is just not enough screen real estate to be able to show all of the subtleties and spectacular detail. The images below get as large as 2GB in file size and are equivalent to an image that would come out of an imaginary 250 megapixel camera! We have pretty large displays in the studio and even those only start to show the massive amounts of detail we get! So enjoy these teeny tiny versions and imagine yourself in these amazing locations!

We recently did a shoot for Darling Magazine. I have to admit that I had not heard of the publication, until they called. The article we did was on essential oils.. the shoot got a little messy, in a good way!  Darling is a quarterly magazine and SUPER high quality. At the shoot the photo editor brought a copy of the then current issue and I was REALLY impressed with the paper, printing and just overall presentation. It really is a very refined publication. This last Sunday we went to the launch party for this issue down in the industrial area of east L.A.. It was a fun evening of drinks, music, socializing and people watching! But check out Darling Magazine, it really is something special!

We just did a shoot last week for one of the largest technology companies in the world, based here in Southern California. Something that came as a bit of a surprise as we were doing it was how many people confessed they had never seen the inside of a computer hard disk drive. We deal with a LOT of HDD’s these days because of the volumes of data we produce, and the need to have a lot of redundancy for our image archives.

It was a great reminder that just because you experience something on a regular basis, does not mean it is commonplace for ANYONE else. So share the things you know about and ask others about their passions! Little wonders can be found everywhere, let’s discover them together!

We had so much fun shooting with the folks at Manduka, we thought we’d share a few more shots. Across this multi-day shoot we had shot a variety of profile portraits of folks that use Manduka products. Then we also shot the new product line for 2014. To get many of the larger shots we had to rig the camera a story and a  half up in the rafters in order to get the proper angle of view. We then triggered the camera remotely from down below. It was a bit odd not being “behind the camera” for the full day! But it also allowed the Creative Director, Rand Denny, to have a little fun!

We have had a lot of chefs in front of our lens lately! Recently we got to play with  Salvatore Sodano, Executive Chef at Nikita Restaurant in Malibu. Chef Sodano was so amazingly gracious, accommodating, easy to work with, oh…and Fun! (I think the photos might show that…) We also shot some of his beautifully plated dishes (which tasted as good as they looked!). Check out some of the other incredibly talented chefs that we’ve had the great fortune to work with here.

While people often comment on how lucky we are to do the things we do and go to the places we go for many of our projects (and trust me, we are!), there is often a misconception that we are sitting poolside with a cocktail instead of executing what is in reality the real “work” involved in doing our job right. Case-In-Point… when we recently scouted for a project that took us to Hawaii, a friend of mine commented; “when you get the good ones, you really get the good ones!” What my friend did not understand (until I told them) was that we were working, longer hours in fact than when we’re at home. There is a sense of responsibility to do as much as you can, to get the client as much as possible. And while we certainly take “the moment” to soak in and appreciate where we are and what we are surrounded by, I tend to be predominantly focused on delivering for the client. Plus, not only are you doing the work at hand, you also have to manage (remotely) the normal day-to-day stuff that is going on back at home. Very seldom on location projects is there a day off (except for the rare weather delay). It’s usually go, go, go… but I love that! But as an example, on this (and a subsequent second scout) I never hit the pool, never even touched the ocean! Too much to do! Now.. let’s be clear.. you can’t get much better than working in Hawaii, or the Caribbean, or Europe, or…. well, let’s face it… working on location – anywhere – is a great perk of the job we do, but more often than not, I think of it as reconnaissance for where I need to come back to really escape and soak in ALL that a location has to offer.

We recently did a shoot for Manduka. A very eco-friendly company that makes a wide variety of yoga products. The whole team was wonderful to work with and we had a great time on the shoot. We met a lot of interesting people who use their product as we shot profile portraits of each of them as well as photographing a wide range of their new products. You can check out their wares as well as more of our imagery for them at Manduka.com.