Sharing The Roijoy

... not just a little cute squeak of a sneeze. No, this one was wet and very wild and came with a force that could just as well have parted the Red Sea! Even though my camera took most of this broadside, with my face being only 2 feet away from the extremely functional nostrils and opened mouth of this suffering little 2 year old, I still found my face bathed in a warm wet soup of Picornaviruses. I smiled while wiping down my face before drying off my camera and Lens The weekend before Christmas, I had been hired to shoot a 2nd birthday party at Ghiradelli Square when this incident happened. For a moment I thought, "I hope I don't get ill", but quickly shrugged off the thought. I even attended a "Grown ups" party later that same night and felt great. On my way home I realized that I was probably being silly to think that one tiny little boy's sneeze could take down someone as strong and healthy as I thought I was. Well, by Christmas Eve I was a mise...

I had another fitness shoot today with a model named Rico. We've worked on a project before so it was a fun and relaxed shoot with the opportunity to try a few shots for a few things I had in mind too. This shot is a single exposure from my camera and is presented here with no retouching at all. These are the pixels as captured by my camera. Obviously, I'll have to give out a prize to the first person who correctly tells me how I did it! Enjoy :)

Model: Wataya         Corset supplied by Dark Garden http://www.darkgarden.com I've completed a fair amount of yoga shoots this year but this one had exactly the kind of twist that I like. Wataya is an independent Anusara-inspired Yoga practitioner and among other places you can take one of her classes at Yoga Kula in San Francisco. Dark Garden supplied this gorgeous corset and bra. While she dressed and had her makeup done, I built the set in my studio. A few light checks with my mannequin and we were ready! Even though Wataya insisted that she wasn't very comfortable in front of a camera, we soon created a mood where it was fun for everyone and I was able to capture a lot of successful shots. There are also some pure fun shots when we did a costume change which will probably pass through my online portfolio at some point :) Here are my first and last stock image sales for the month of November.

The weather turned out to be really nice for the wedding shoot in Castro Valley on Sunday. It was a small wedding with a really lovely couple getting married. I wish them every possible good wish for their married lives! I had arranged to be picked up by another photographer so that we could drive down to the address together. Coming From San Francisco, I took the BART to West Oakland to meet. I arrived a few minutes early and stepped out of the station. It was Sunday morning and still overcast. I had felt the BART ride was a little esoteric and now I found myself standing in a kind of concrete wasteland, looking better dressed than felt comfortable for my surroundings. As I stood there attracting glances from the people who passed by me, I became very aware of the fact that I was standing in this exposed location with close to $10, 000 of gear in my bags! All I had to do was stay calm and look confident, but to give myself a tiny bit of reassurance, I found a surveillance ca...

When I went to my computer this morning I discovered, to my delight, that someone had made a rather large purchase on one of my stock images. In the image as you can see, I've included myself as one of the models. From the rights purchased I can see that the image will be used at a large size and also will be printed across multiple media. Does this mean that sometime soon I might confront myself in poster form while out on the streets? Well it has happened before when I was featured on large posters that were part of an ad campaign that was placed all over the London Underground. So if you do come across this image, let me know. I'm very curious to see what I'm promoting :) Maybe I caught some celebrity dust after shooting at Cirque du Soleil last week! I had a great day with the tour coordinator and met every single member of the touring show "Totem", as I photographed each one of them. It's quite an insight to see how this "family" of a...

The title is far more dramatic than this posting is. I've recently returned from a trip to Jamaica where I was fortunate to meet up with my father and also siblings and other relatives, who had flown over from the UK. But now that the tropical sunshine slowly becomes another memory, I am once again focused on completing the fourth quarter of 2011. Where has the year gone? As is usual from me at the end of each month, below are the 1st and last stock image sales of September. I almost didn't submit the coconut shot since it was more of a test than an actual set shot, but I'm glad I did now because it is making sales. Since coming back from Jamaica I've been busy with more product work and finished off the month with a portrait session.

Celebrating shot number 2000 almost at the end of a week of product and showroom photography! It's been a very busy week. I was busy shooting all the images that are to be used on my clients website. They are a Marble, Stone and Tile company with 4 locations in the Bay area. So far I've shot over 2000 items and you can see me celebrating in the shot above during my 2000th exposure of the job! All those individual items had to be taken down of the wall by me, photographed and then put back in place. Then each display area of each showroom had to be shot. Luckily for me, all the locations played music that I love throughout the showrooms so I just got into the zone and wiggled a little to the music from time to time. By the way, marble is heavy!! I managed to also learn a lot about marble and stone products and the owner even commented that he should hire me to join his sales team. But for now I just need to check all the images and get them all delivered. Shooting th...