WTF is wrong with my beauty dish?

Shot this self-portrait this morning using a beauty dish and something must be broken on that BD ’cause there ain’t nothin’ beautiful about this photo!

Seriously– took a big spill on my bike yesterday. Hit a snow patch, the bike stopped, and I sailed face first over the handlebars. SLAMMED my face in the snow. Unfortunately, the remaining snow in Portland isn’t the deep, fluffy, powder of last week. It’s icy and peppered with gravel. Not exactly the kind of place you want to slam your face into. I really don’t recommend it at all.

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, OR

beauty/fashion photos

Still diggin’ through my archives as I update everything and ran across these photos. They’re from my first ever tethered shoot– a workshop with Claudio Basso. We were shooting Fuji S3’s– and the skin tones are amazing. My one issue is the workshop coordinator (Will Crocket) is convinced that only shooting 8-bit jpegs is the way to go. But to be honest, I’d sure like to have the raw files these days– as improvements are made in raw processors it just seems like a good idea to always have raw files.

After all, even careful shooters don’t always get everything right in camera and that extra bit of info (raw vs. an 8-bit jpeg) can be very useful.

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, OR

location fashion photograpy

Been digging through my archives quite a bit lately as I update my website. Here’s are a couple of cool fashion photos I dug up over the weekend. Sure wish I could have skies like this for every shoot!

The irony about this particular shoot was that we almost called it quits before getting the really, really cool sky shots. Both the MUA (Madeline Roosevelt) and me were sneezing, my legs were covered with grass allergy bumps, it was hot, I was sweaty and we had to haul everything up to a bluff to get the final shots. I almost didn’t do it… now I’m glad I did! Sometimes just that extra little bit of effort makes all the difference.

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, OR

studio fashion

Using the holiday to catch up on my post work and just ran across this one of Andrina.

Pete Springer Photography Portland, Oregon

updated beauty portfolio

Updated my beauty port on my website today. Been diggin’ through past photos looking for quality images and ran across a shoot I did with Tessa (main images above) last year. MUA Terri Lodge.

Pete Springer Photography Portland OR

oh yeah

Received my first check this week for one of my photos being published by Conde Nast! Conde Nast is the publishing power-house behind Vogue magazine among many other popular fashion magazines and books. Sure hope this is one of many, many future payments from them!

The payment is for an image of mine that will be used in a textbook to be published by Conde Nast about retail business in the 21st Century.

The irony is that I’ve still paid WAY more to Conde Nast over the years than they’ve paid me– I’m a subscriber to both American Vogue and British Vogue and have been known to buy a variety of other international Vogue titles from time to time. But still– it’s way cool to open a letter from Conde Nast expecting a bill only to find a check instead!

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, OR

UPS vs Fed-Ex

So when you absolutely, positively must get it there on-time– the winner is clear: Fed-Ex!*

As you may have noticed from my previous posts– Portland had a bunch of snow recently. Like any great delivery company, Fed-Ex slapped on chains and is out there delivering packages. Wish I could say the same for UPS. But there hasn’t been UPS deliveries to my address for three days now! And it’s not the conditions or snowy roads, the brown vans simply are not out there delivering. I normally see dozens of them on the road during the day, and I haven’t seen any today. Or all week, for that matter. It’s raining right now and the main roads are bare pavement. So where is UPS?

Unfortunately, I was scheduled yesterday to receive an xmas gift destined for my parents. It wasn’t delivered though due to “adverse weather conditions”. Hmmm… someone forgot to tell that to Fed-Ex. Fed-Ex was out yesterday and today. It’s a day after my scheduled delivery and still no UPS. Sure wish I had shipped Fed-Ex!

* UPDATE *
Package not delivered because, ah, well let UPS explain:

PORTLAND,OR, US
12/24/2008 5:08 P.M. EMERGENCY CONDITIONS BEYOND UPS’ CONTROL
12/24/2008 8:37 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY

Now I really, really wish I had shipped Fed-Ex. The Fed-Ex driver even waved to me today (I was on the street recording audio of tire chains– fed-ex puts chains on all four wheels of their delivery vans so they were perfect for audio). UPS — you really let me down.

Why am I going on and on about this? Well– the package I was waiting on had three of my landscape photos in it– stretched canvas gallery prints. It just ain’t the same giving a loved one a sheet of notebook paper with a copy of their print on it and saying, “Sorry, UPS stopped delivering to my area — all week. I’ll give you a really cool framed gallery print whenever UPS decides to resume deliveries.”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: today (dec 26) UPS tracking says the delivery has been re-scheduled for next Monday! Why it’s not being delivered today, I have no idea. I guess UPS is taking the entire week off.

* READ THE COMMENTS: turns out FedEx hasn’t been as stellar as I thought! In my defense, FedEx was delivering in parts of SW Portland last week. But it looks like they skipped other areas. The postal service was about the same– I had residential mail delivery twice this week.
Pete Springer Photography, Portland, OR

looks like a white xmas… least for now

It’s snowing again this morning. This is a shot of my house yesterday. Lots o’ snow! So much it’s making the house lean. Aaaahh… nothing like a 16 mm wide open on a FF body, eh? Unfortunately, the forecast is calling for rain by this afternoon. No way will all this melt by tomorrow, but rain on snow is kind of sloppy.

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, OR

can you tell it’s winter?

Happy Solstice and welcome to winter. Shot these icicles today right outside my back door. There’s still well over a foot of snow on the ground and I can still snowshoe around the neighborhood! But it has to eventually melt and what a mess that’s going to be!

Portland Oregon photographer Pete Springer

arctic blast!

Pete Springer Photography Portland OR