Mindy Gledhill is in town this weekend. She is playing at the Mountain View High School Theater. I will be there…
Saturday, November 15, 2014 (7:00 – 9:00) Mountain View High School 2700 East Brown Road, Mesa, AZ 85213
If you have not heard the music from her new album, you absolutely must hear it! I spent a weekend in the studio with her as she was finishing up the vocals, here are a few of my favorite images from the studio.
This interview with me from Blurb Books just ran via PDN. I thought you might be interested in the content of the interview as well as the great discount for blurb books. Enjoy the interview…
Blurb
Photographer
Spotlight:
Jared Platt
Jared Platt is a commercial photographer, portraitist, and educator based in Arizona who regularly runs workshops and webinars for Profoto and CreativeLive. He’s also an Adobe® Lightroom® devotee and a strong believer in the power of photography to tell stories. When he recently appeared on a CreativeLive segment, he impressed us with his thoughts on music, rhythm, and the photographic story arc.
Why is storytelling so important to you as a photographer?
Photography is storytelling. Some people tell a story in one image, which is always awe-inspiring, and some people tell stories over a series of photographs. But, all photographs have the aim of telling a story. Whenever I am taking a photograph, whether it is at a wedding, on the street, on a commercial shoot, or of a child, I am always looking for the story I want to tell in that one image—or series of images. I have an intense need to tell these stories that I see to everyone who will see my images, because I believe those stories will touch them, matter to them, and make some kind of an impression on them.
How does Lightroom help you with that aspect of your work?
Lightroom is essential to the process of selecting and editing the extreme volume of work I have in front of me constantly. A photo historian, the late Bill Jay, used to remind me that a project (no matter how perfect it was) was of no value until it was completed and available for people to experience. Lightroom helps me get superior work completed efficiently, so I can share it with the world and get busy telling the next story. Companies like Blurb, who connect with Lightroom, have made the process of sharing stories with the world even easier. Producing a masterful photo book is within any photographer’s reach.
How do you use books in your professional life?
As a photographer in the digital age, I transmit images via Facebook, blogs, websites, iPads, and FTP servers. But there is something extremely special about quality paper, printing, and binding. My clients receive physical proof books made by Blurb, which I create directly in Lightroom. I never tire of hearing the exclamations from my clients about how beautiful their books are and how much they love them. Books are also essential in selling my services to future clients. Photo books and magazines are so comfortable and accessible to the client who is relaxing in the studio showroom, and as the client is looking through the book, the book is selling them on my vision and educating them on my style.
Whatever your passion—whether you chose it, or it chose you—turn it into a book with Blurb.
Take 20% off any print book order. Use the code PDN11 at checkout.*
And naturally this is related to storytelling…
Making a book takes the opportunity for storytelling to a whole new level. With multiple images spread over days, months, or years, it can come together to make extremely poignant statements. Add titles and graphics and text to the mix and you have limitless opportunities to connect with people and help them see what you see. I think when people say, “This is beautiful,” they are really saying, “I see what you see, and what you see is beautiful.”
How does your personal work differ from your client work?
There is no difference between my personal work and the work I do for my clients. I let one inform and alter the other, so, as my personal work shifts and expands, so does my commercial work. I am simply a visual storyteller. I tell stories about my clients’ lives, products, and events, and I tell stories about my life. I hope they are all interesting to the viewer. If they aren’t, I need to improve.
If money and time were no object, what project would you most want to take on?
I find creative people fascinating. Money and time are always an object and yet I am still on a quest to photograph and interview creative people of all types, from all genres of creativity, to experience their energy, understand their methods, and tell their story. So if money were no object, I would continue full steam ahead telling the story of the creative mind. In a creative way, of course…
At Blurb, we celebrate creativity in all of its myriad expressions. Photographers like Jared embody the creative freedom that our self-publishing platform enables.
Learn more about Jared Platt
> Jared’s website
> Jared’s Child Life book
Photography by Jared Platt
Tell your story with photography in a beautiful book and save
Take 20% off any print book order. Use the promo code PDN11 at checkout.*
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*Offer valid through December 31, 2014 (11:59 p.m. local time). Valid for printed books only. A 20% discount is applied to your print book product total with no minimum purchase required. Maximum discount is USD $100, AUD $100, CAD $100, EUR €100, or GBP £100 off product total. This offer is good for one-time use, and cannot be combined with volume discounts, other promotional codes, gift cards, or used for adjustments on previous orders.
Abbey and Clint were married in the Mesa, Arizona LDS Temple. We shot some portraits with them the day before the wedding. I was pleased with the enter shoot. Here are a few of my favorite images from the wedding portrait shoot and the wedding day itself. Enjoy.
This next image is one of my favorites. Most of the time you are taking a portraits, but for very brief moments during the shoot, you catch their true personality and expression. That is what I live for as a photographer… the perfect little moments. Most of what I do leads up to these little moments in the portrait session.
All of the portraits are lit by Profoto B1 Off Camera Flashes. The sun you see peaking through the trees is actually a B1 off camera flash. Looks great! When the sun isn’t cooperating, make your own sun.
Now this next shot, the sun is actually the sun. FYI. But I love this shot. The bride’s mother said it looked like they were in the garden of eden.
This one is all about the dress and the shoes. I like the like glimpse of the shoes.
Just a little cool drama. Sometimes I want to do something a little different… I like the drama here in this day for night look.
The details on this wedding are quite fun. I love the brown paper bag luminaries. They had great variety of them.
And nothing entertains me more than photographing children at weddings and rehearsal dinners.
On the wedding day, the clouds were threatening rain, but held back until the minute we finished the family portraits and as we started walking back to the temple, the clouds began to unload. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. We got out portraits without incident, but I got a great series of shots as the rain forced the wedding party to run for cover! Perfect!
The reception was in a local Chandler church building. But the entire room was draped in white with beautiful white feathers and chandeliers and twinkle lights. It was very well done. I played around with various overlapping compositions to describe the room, but I think this shot gives the best description of how the room felt.
During the toasts, one of the groomsmen sat next to the grooms grand-father to translate. I was drawn to their relationship throughout the reception. It was touching. Oh and I also love the light. All of the light during the reception is provided by two Profoto B1 off camera flashes on either side of the reception room.
A kiss is far more interesting in context.
I love the emotional responses to the toasts at this reception. There was a lot of love circulating in that room. I love feeling that kind of love and closeness.
During the most emotional groom’s toast I have ever witness, the groom’s grandfather stood up and made his way to the groom’s side to show his support. I don’t think there are any words to describe now touching this scene really was. So, I will let the photo do the work.
Brides make grandfathers’ face light up like nothing else.
Oh the anticipation of a wedding cupcake! She can hardly stand it…
The M&Ms were a party favorite. They had a photo of the Bride and Groom on them. It was pretty cool.
Congratulations to Clint and Abbey. It was an honor to be a part of your wedding day.
Wedding Slideshow Music by __ Courtesy of Triple Scoop Music
Photography by Jared Platt, Platt Photography
Wedding Location: Mesa, Arizona LDS Temple
We went out along the Salt River in Arizona for our webinar on TTL lighting control with Profoto equipment. In our first shots, we had our model wear a fantastically non-traditional wedding dress by Simply Bridal. Samantha, our model, was a an absolute champ. Balancing in that form fitting dress was quite a challenge in our out of the water. We had a great time and got some fantastic images. Here are the images we used in the webinar, and you can see the full webinar online, just follow this link to Profoto’s webinar page.
For this month’s webinar for Profoto, we took our crew and a kit of Profoto B1 off camera flashes out to the lakes in the desert of Phoenix, Arizona. This time, instead of shooting Canon, we were shooting with a Nikon D800 on the Profoto Air Remote TTL for Nikon. Now Nikon users can also take advantage of the TTL abilities of the Profoto B1 lights. Join me on our Profoto webinars on September 17, 2014 for a free webinar on shooting in TTL and Auto Camera Modes.
Register now: www.profoto.com/int/webinar
We spent the morning in a boxing club and event venue in downtown Phoenix, Arizona called The Duce for a complex lighting webinar for Profoto (the light shaping company). In this webinar we wanted to create a difficult lighting scenario where we had to build the lighting completely from scratch. Our boxing motif was a perfect opportunity to add a little incongruous wardrobe change, and that was a fantastically non-traditional wedding dress (provided by Simply Bridal. Although this was a stylized photoshoot, I think it proves an interesting point… that couples could do a better job at thinking outside the box when it comes to their wedding and engagement portraits. If you are a couple that is hiring a photographer or a photographer who has been hired by a couple to shoot an engagement session or a wedding portrait session, work together and encourage each other to get a little more inventive on the photo session.
Here are the favorites final images from our stylized portrait session.
You can see the entire photoshoot and a discussion about it in an hour long webinar here. Watch he brief trailer for the webinar below.
Coming up on Wednesday, August 27 at 10 am Pacific time is the latest Profoto lighting webinar with myself and the Profoto B1 off camera lights. Register online at www.profoto.com/live and tune in as we build a complex lighting scenario from scratch.
Music on this teaser is courtesy of Triple Scoop Music.
I teach professional photographers around the world the best post-production methods to help them get their job done. But there are so many more photo enthusiasts in the world, who need help organizing, editing and sharing their images and these courses are sometimes a little too pro-centered. So I have developed an online workshop for you all! Here it is…
Starting Wednesday, June 25 through Friday, June 27, I will be teaching a webinar on photo organization, editing and sharing for non-professional photo enthusiasts. If you are a mom, dad, photo student, nature lover, or anyone who has a camera and needs help navigating the organizational nightmare of saving photos on the computer, this is a great opportunity for you. The webinar is FREE. Just go to www.creativelive.com (look on the CRAFT channel) and sign up for LIGHTROOM FOR SCRAPBOOKERS. You can watch for free starting on Wednesday at 9AM Pacific Time. You can watch this on your computer, your iPad or even your phone. The course is FREE when you watch it LIVE. You can purchase anytime access to the course for only $59.
Don’t worry, if you are not a scrapbooker, that’s OK because we are talking about photo organization, editing photos and sharing them. It’s not all about scrapbooking. It is all about photos and just happens to be the right fit for people like scrapbookers who want help wight heir photos. So join me on creativeLIVE, no matter who you are and get a super easy, basic, nuts and bolts look at a workflow for personal photography in Lightroom.
