underwater dog

Was playing around with an underwater camera recently trying for some underwater/above water shots of the dog in a lake. This is an idea I’ve tried several times– I’m still not crazy about my latest results, but I’m slowly getting better and coming closer to the concept I have in mind.

Jasper is a pure-bred black lab– he also holds a point better than many pointing dogs. Even underwater!

Part of the problem with the under/over water shots is that water magnifies everything, so the perspective is always a little off. My goal is to get some swimming shots like this, and I’d also like a shot from underneath the dog as he swims. I tried a few of those but the mask and snorkel set-up I was using sucked– the mask leaked no matter what I did and it was tough to go deep with a mask filling up with water.  I know people use empty glass fish tanks for shots like this too, but I didn’t have one of those handy for this trip!

Pete Springer Photography Portland, Oregon

how I spent my summer vacation part II

Whoo-hoo! I was finally able to upload images! So here’s an eyeful from Waldo Lake.

Why photographers shouldn’t go camping… actually used my 580 on a stand for the above shot.  I wanted something unusual that also captured my personality.  I tried an umbella too, but it blew over and crashed my stand, umbrella and 580 into the lake.  The 580 still appears to work though.

Aaaahh… solitude.  Shot this using a PW as a remote release.

Again, 580 in the tent.  Now are you starting to see why photographers shouldn’t go camping?  They bring all their gear– and worst of all– they use it!

Elbow Lake sunset here– a short walk from my campsite on Waldo. Elbow Lake itself would be a destination in most areas– but at Waldo it’s just another lake on the trail.

Another starry night shot.  Can’t do it justice with a camera though– there’s just something so alive and awe inspiring about really being under all those stars– cue Moby “We are all made of stars”…

Tired pooch and calm lake.  I used the polarizer to see the bottom– which is about 20 feet deep here!  That’s how clear Waldo is.

Same deal here– that’s deep water but you can’t tell ’cause it’s so clear.

Not so deep here but a really cool inlet on the north end of the lake I’d always wanted to explore.

I just had to wait until sunset the final night– made for a long, late-night drive home, but damn– those skies are so worth it!

Pete Springer Photography

*website appears speedy again!

boring without photos

My host for these photos (pbase) is having big time issues at the moment (and for the last couple of days) and won’t let me upload photos. The servers for my website were down all night and now the site is running slow as molasses… so I can’t get any pics to post without it taking six hours. Guess there’s always ripway, but my previous attempts to link there haven’t worked (it is a free site…) though my favicon is hosted there.

Told you this blog was boring without photos… I did the post on a handful of cool vacation shots last night too, so check back for my “fun with a polarizer” and “underwater dog” photos!

Slow as molasses website for the time being… should be faster by afternoon

how I spent my summer vacation…

Waldo Lake– four days camping and canoeing and swimming. More to come, just returned late last night so this is a quickie post to get some images up.

Love the stars at night– could see the whole band of the Milky Way across the sky.

The first two days, the lake was mostly waves– then it got calm as could be.

‘Course that always happens on the day you have to leave…

Pete Springer Photography

three more

Can’t resist posting a couple more random shots from the latest shoot. This shot above printed as a beautiful double page spread for my 11×14 book. Yeah! ‘Course it’s probably cropped here…

You’d never know what we went through to get these shots– hauling TONS of gear, clothes, food, water, make-up, chairs, etc, etc down a 1/4 mile trail through the woods then down the beach away from the crowds. We all had our hands full as well as packs and bags– my damn battery pack strap cutting right into my neck– thanks for the unpadded strap Paul Buff. I want you to carry that thing on a real life shoot. But the shots… well looks like another day at the Oregon coast…

Pete Springer fashion photography Portland, Oregon

beach sneak preview

Here’s a very, very quick preview of the beach shoot this past couple of days. Yeah, I flipped this shot ’cause this blog crops my horizontals and I haven’t figured out how to make it not do that.

We were hoping for a cool sunset but all we got was a grey Oregon beach sunset on this day. Hauled an unbelievable amount of gear in and out of this location. Whew! Thank you to everyone– Amy & Terri, Angela, Lexy, & Emico– and most of all– Libby! It was tons of work but a lot of fun too.

Shooting on this dock in full mid-day sun– yikes! I used my AB 1600 at full power with a 30 degree grid but fairly quickly drained my battery pack. We were on deadline (we all needed to get back to town by evening) so couldn’t exactly wait for dusk.

I’m off again later today for another quick trip– hopefully will have some cool landscapes to post soon.

Pete Springer Photography

beach

Off to the beach today to help a local designer out with a photoshoot. I’m excited but nervous– sometimes it’s fun to shoot for yourself so there’s not expectations– but shooting for someone else is a bit tougher since I’m never sure exactly what they want.

Also, finished up a book about photographer Lee Miller last night– some fascinating work there! A successful career with British Vogue ranging from fashion to portrait to photojournalism– plus dating Man Ray and lots of portraits of Picasso and a lots of other folks before throwing in the towel on photography and just deciding to focus on cooking and classical music. Guess I won’t feel so bad now when I find myself from time to time wondering if pursuing photography is really worth it after all.

Pete Springer Portland Oregon Fashion Photography

finally done

Finally finished up the pre-show photos from last week. I posted a series on just the trailer park shots on dpreview, but only got two comments, even though more than 300 people checked them out. Strange… I think there’s a lot of people who just hang out on DPR to look at photos and can’t critique a shot if their life depended on it.

For example, there’s a guy who posted a totally fake looking, oversaturated shot there today and a lot of the amatuers are fawning all over it– it’s so oversaturated it looks terrible though.

Well, what do I know? So one other gripe today– had a guy actually call me and tell me my website wasn’t working because he couldn’t right-click save photos! I asked him, “So when you right-click, does a warning that says ‘(c) Pete Springer. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized Use Prohibited’ appear on your screen?”

He told me, “Yeah, but it still won’t let me right-click save them.” Hmmm… now I wonder why in the world that would be? Is it possible those images aren’t his and that someone else owns them?

link to the guy who does own them

the post-prod grind continues

I’m slowly putting the gallery together for the website, much slower than usual though, since I’m trying to have a bit of a life these days too. This girl has a lot of potential– she had a really sweet smile but I wanted a harder look and was telling her to give me an intense look and she did– maybe a little too intense.  Sometimes I tell models to give me a really bitchy look and “wham!” some models just go from smiling to insta-hard-glare-bitch-stare. I wouldn’t want to be on the other end of some of those looks in real life!

I like the concept of this shot but wish I had had more time to work on it. I think it would have been more effective in the trailer park (hey– what photo wouldn’t?), but by the time I shot this, there were people waiting for me to shoot them and I was desperately trying to find something unique about the garden. This is a concept I will explore further in the future though. But for this shoot, the bushes were about the best I could come up with on such a rushed time frame. It was either that or a garden bench and a mini-fake lamppost that looked really cheesy.

This woman had a tween-age daughter who was also modelling (hey, I didn’t have any say in the casting for this shoot) and the daughter looked at me like I was about to execute her by firing squad when I took her photo. I have never seen someone more uncomfortable in front of the camera, her shoulders were so tense they were touching her ears! After a couple frames, I asked her, “Do you want to stop?” and she nodded yes and we stopped. I don’t think I’ll post any images of her– but I do like this one of her mom. It’s tough to coax personality out of people though and I pretty much got the same look from this woman in every shot I took. Not a bad look– it’s just nice to get some variety.

just feedin’ the search engines here – Pete Springer Fashion Photography – Portland Oregon

workin’ through my images

Random samples from Saturday. I’m now just slowly working in post and at this rate, I’ll be done in 2010 or so…

Sometimes it’s tough to balance a job, wife & home, and life with all this post-processing.

Here are couple of the garden shots. The trailer park background works better for me. It’s tough to shoot a cool photo of a model in a garden, in my opinion– the background is just kind of bland. Even Kate Moss looks better in a trailer park than a garden!

Pete Springer photography, Portland, Oregon