Economy got you down?  Looking for a new career?  Well, this man can help.  David Boushey is one of the top stuntmen in the industry and the founder of the International Stunt School in Seattle.  If you dream of a life in the movies and have no fear, David can teach you how to jump off buildings, set yourself on fire, punch someone in the face and all kinds of crazy stuff the well-known actors won’t do.  In fact, the International Stunt School is thriving these days thanks to the bad economy.  Lots of people are looking for a career change, and the film industry thrives when times are tough because everyone is looking for an escape.  Enrollment is up this year, and David is in talks to create a reality show about the stunt school.

On set, David asked me, “What’s my motivation for this shot?”

I told him, “Once a week for just half an hour you have a regularly scheduled time for yourself.  You always go to the same cafe, and you get the same drink and read the paper in your regular seat.  You don’t talk to anyone, and you certainly don’t like people talking to you.  While you are reading, you hear someone yelling.  You try to ignore them, but they get louder and more frantic.  It seems like they are yelling at you.  You try to ignore them for as long as possible while your frustration and anger grows.  Finally, you turn in the direction of the person screaming and snap off, “What the hell do you want!?”

I have started experimenting with video on some of my shoots for editorial clients recently, and this is a short I put together on how to throw a “picture punch”.  So far I have really enjoyed working with video, and I hope to do more in the coming months.  If you are reading this in a blog reader you may need to go to the John Keatley Blog to see the video.  This was not my first lesson on how to throw a punch from one of my photo subjects, although my first lesson was about punching for real.

I have another short video in the video section of my website of David telling a story about almost getting chopped to bits while filming a movie at sea.

Here are some links to the camera equipment I used for this shot.

Camera:
Hasselblad H3DII-31 w/ 80mm lens
Lights:
Elinchrom Ranger Battery Pack and Head x2
Profoto Acute 2 2400 kit
Light Modifiers:
Profoto White Softlight “Beauty Dish” Reflector
Wescott 45” Umbrellas
Elinchrom 7” grid reflector
20 degree grid

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Keli Carender goes by Liberty Belle on her blog “Redistributing Knowledge“, and she is credited with starting the Tea Party Movement.  She burst onto the political scene last summer while attending a town hall meeting hosted by Democratic Washington Congressman Norm Dicks.  She made a speech and waved a $20 bill in the air daring Norm to take it from her and use it as a down payment for health care reform.  I wasn’t familiar with the Tea Party Movement when I got this assignment, but I thought it would be awesome to shoot Keli in a way that would look like an old painting from the Revolutionary War era.  Thankfully my art director, Benjamen Purvis at Seattle Met loved the idea, and I was also able to get Keli to go for it too.  The hardest part was tracking down a period dress from the right era.  I should also mention Keli is actually a member of a comedy improv group called The Beta Society.  That obviously was a big help when asking her to dress up in costume since she is used to this sort of thing.  I don’t expect it would be very easy to get Nanci Pelosi or John McCain to wear a costume for a shoot.  Although that would be amazing!

*UPDATE* – This image was published in the 2011 Communication Arts Photography Annual competition.

Equipment Used:
Hasselblad H3DII-31 w/ 80mm lens
Profoto Giant 150 Silver Reflector
Wescott 45” Umbrella

If you have been wondering what to do with your evening on March 8th, wonder no more.  It’s open mic night at Comedy Underground.  But if that isn’t your cup of tea, you could go to the Seattle Center hear me talk about my photography and ask me those burning questions you have been wrestling with (photography related of course).
Seating is limited, but admission is free.  This will be taking place at:

Studio H, TPS
4th Floor
Center House, Seattle Center
305 Harrison St. Seattle, WA 98109

March 8th is a Monday, and the start time is 7:00.  There are still about 25 seats remaining, and you must RSVP (HERE).

As an added bonus, photography consultant Amanda Sosa Stone has been kind enough to donate a couple copies of her book The Photographer’s Survival Guide:  How To Build And Grow A Successful Business which I will be giving away through a drawing.

I am going to see about recording the talk, so if you are out of town, or not able to attend, feel free to leave your questions here in the comments and I will do my best to address as much as I can.

I hope to see you there.

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It’s almost time for my two favorite professional sports.  Lawn darts, and baseball.  Just kidding!  Soccer and baseball.  Although we may be watching lawn darts if MLS and the union don’t come to an agreement soon.  Aside from that, it is pretty exciting to be a soccer fan in the Pacific Northwest right now with how the Sounders have taken the country by storm.  The first game of the 2010 season will be played here against Philadelphia, the newest expansion team to MLS.  And don’t even get me started about next year when the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Portland Timbers will join MLS.  Those rivalries will be amazing!

This is a picture I recently took of Kasey Keller.  Kasey is the goalkeeper and captain of the Seattle Sounders FC.  From my time with him, he seems like a laid back fun loving guy who doesn’t take life too seriously.  While we were talking on set, he said “I get to play a game and catch a ball for a living.”  It was fun to see that side of him, but going into the shoot, I wanted to capture some of his competitive spirit.  One of the Sounders games I was at last season I spent some time on the grass right behind the goal.  Qwest Field is known for being a loud stadium and the fans can carry on with the best of them.  But as loud as it was in the stadium, I could hear Kasey screaming instructions to his teammates over the crowd.  With that in mind, I asked Kasey if he would yell at me for a few pictures.  I half expected to be rejected, but he said sure and started yelling.  I won’t repeat what he yelled, but it was pretty funny.

Go Sounders!

(Here) is a post with video and pictures from the Sounders billboard I shot last season.

I made a quick stop in New York last November, and while I was there I headed over to Redux to do a video profile shoot.  They have been pumping out some great videos of many of the photographers on the roster, and you can see them all at the Redux site as well as the Redux Vimeo page.
This is a pretty cool idea, and hopefully will help art buyers get some insight into how each photographer works.  The videos should also make for some good marketing material in the coming year.

I hope everyone had a restful December, and you are looking forward to 2010.  I have really enjoyed taking some time off recently.  It has given me the opportunity to clear my head, and re-focus for the year to come.  I’m learning the importance of slowing down every once in a while, and just taking a rest.  With the way things are going these days, it’s easy to think you have to constantly be creating new material to keep up.  I suppose it is possible to keep up that kind of pace but it is also exhausting.  I want to make sure I am staying balanced so I can create through inspiration, rather than creating because I feel I have to.

Thank you everyone for your continued interest in my work.  I am working on some projects right now I am very excited about, and I am looking forward to sharing my photography with you in 2010!

That’s me on the right side, down in the corner…  I’m sure Josh was standing on his tip toes.  What a kidder.  I am kind of a sports nut if you didn’t know, so I really enjoy working with athletes.  Actually, I really enjoy working with just about everyone, but a small part of me still thinks I might have a shot at the bigs.  I guess the reality of it for me is photographing professional athletes is as close as I’m going to get.  Now that I think about it, I seem to get hired quite a bit to photograph the big guys.  It’s probably because people know if an athlete goes crazy during a shoot or becomes too high maintenance, I can use my size to intimidate them and get the shots I need.  Like when I had to smack around Craig and Paul Pumphrey on the Human Wreckingballs shoot I did last year.  Just kidding Craig!  I would never think about crossing you.  I could probably take Paul though.

Josh Smith is a high school senior at Kentwood High in Washington State.  He stands at 6′ 9” and weighs in at 270 pounds.  Not bad, not bad.  As far as I can tell he is currently ranked as a top 5 college recruit in the country, but I think that changes frequently.

The day before the shoot (which was for SLAM), Josh was in New York playing in the high school basketball All Star game.  I am sure he is excited about what is going on in his life right now, but he seemed so calm and in control.  I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in high school and get this kind of national attention.  Not only that, but how crazy is it to know that there is a very good chance that you will be pro in just a few years while you are still living a somewhat normal lifestyle.  It sounds to me like he is actually a little tired of all the attention, which is understandable.  Anytime something big happens in a persons life, such as graduation, marriage, having a baby, etc., that event becomes an easy topic for discussion for everyone around you.  It’s the big easy question that allows people to engage you in conversation without having to think about what they are saying.

In addition to basketball, Josh is playing football this year.  Some might think he is insane given his potential in basketball, but he is doing what makes him happy.  Can’t argue with that.  You have to enjoy life, and live it to the fullest.  Best of luck to Josh in his final year of high school.  I am excited to see what the future holds for him, and selfishly, I would be excited if UW was in his future.  Forget UCLA, Josh!  :)

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Clouds I can handle, but it’s the rain that drives me crazy when I am supposed to be shooting outside. Thankfully I was photographing weather experts for this assignment, and it turns out they know a thing or two about predicting the weather.

As I was packing up to head out for what I knew would be a long day at “the office” I began to feel a little nervous about the dark clouds hanging over Seattle. After checking weather.com, my nervousness began to change into a good case of anxiety because they were predicting rain by 9:30am, and that was just two hours away.  Maybe I could beat the rain and get in at least one outside portrait.  The problem was I had to photograph one subject in the morning, and the second one in the afternoon.  At the very best it looked like I would only get one of the subjects outside, but the show must go on.  I headed over to the University of Washington where I would meet up with my first subject, Cliff Mass.  My assignment was to photograph Cliff and Brad Coleman in studio for the opener, and get an environmental portrait of each of them individually.  The thing that made this all really interesting was I could not get them both in studio at the same time or place.  I had to set up a studio at UW in the morning, then tear it down, and set it up again, exactly the same at NOAA to photograph Brad.  I had been planning this shoot for a couple of weeks including some minor styling and location scouting.  This was an assignment I was really looking forward to, and I would have been really bummed if the rain forced us inside for the environmental shots.

To give you a little background on the men in the photographs.  Cliff Mass was mentored by Carl Sagan while in undergrad at Cornell University.  He is the author of “The Weather of the Pacific Northwest”, he runs a very popular blog, Cliff Mass Weather Blog, he is a weekly guest on KUOW radio, and he is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.  To quote a UW press release, “He has published dozens of articles on Northwest weather and leads the regional development of advanced weather prediction tools.”  Many people in the Pacific Northwest plan their weekends around Cliff’s predictions.

Brad Colman is the meteorologist-in-charge of the Seattle Weather Forecast Office.  “A meteorologist-in-charge is the front line officer carrying out the National Weather Service’s mission of serving the American public by helping protect lives and property,” said Brig. Gen. David L. Johnson, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), director of NOAA’s National Weather Service.  ”NOAA’s National Weather Service is the official source of weather data, forecasts and warnings for the United States and its territories.  The National Weather Service operates the most advanced weather and flood warning and forecast systems in the world, helping to protect lives and property and enhance the national economy.”

Back at UW, it seemed like it would start raining any minute, so I asked Cliff if we could change the schedule a little and shoot the environmental portrait right away because I was nervous about the rain.  Embarrassed as I am to admit, it never occurred to me that I was working with one of the top experts in weather. When I told Cliff we should try to shoot outside while it is still dry, he promptly responded, “It’s not going to rain.” “It’s not?” I asked. “No. The cloud cover will begin to burn off at 10:30, and by 11:30 we will have clear skies.”  And he was right.  Take that weather.com!  Once we finished at UW with Cliff, it was off to NOAA to photograph Brad.  By the time we got there, the skies were opening up, and it looked quite different than just a few hours before, as you can tell in the pictures.

From this point on, I will include a weatherman on all of my bids.  First assistant, second assistant, makeup artist, stylist, and a weatherman.  Oh, and a falconer.  I recently learned about the benefits of having a falconer on set.  If nothing else it can be very entertaining, but that’s a story for another time.

A fun fact I learned on this assignment is Houston, New York, Miami and Boston all get more average annual rainfall than Seattle.   We win the prize for most cloudy days though…  Bummer.

Special thanks goes out to Robyn and Seattle North Face for the clothes.  And also to Mandy for painting some amazing clouds which were not used in the final.

This is a video of Cliff explaining some weather basics.  I like how he explains things in terms anyone can understand.  Plus he has soothing voice.

I am pleased to announce I was hired by Harper Collins to photograph Sarah Palin for the cover of her new book “Going Rogue“.  If you watched even just a few minutes of TV this week, or used the Internet, I am sure you have already seen the book cover.  ”Going Rogue” has not even been printed, and it is already the #1 best seller.  It still feels a little surreal to me that my portrait of Sarah Palin is on the cover of her book.  Just about every television network in the country has been airing the book cover and analyzing what it means.  Why the clouds, why the smile…  My favorite reference so far was on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, but only because he mentioned me… kind of.  He talked about the portrait of her on the book cover, and then quoted “the photographer”.  It was a fake quote of course, and he didn’t actually say my name, but that is pretty close to being on The Tonight Show…  (Here) is a link to the video.  It’s in the first 3 minutes of the episode.

The photo shoot only happened three weeks ago, so this is all still very new and exciting for me.  After much planning and scheduling, I put together a crew and flew up to Alaska for six days to photograph the former governor.  It was supposed to rain the entire week we were there, but we ended up getting blue skies and puffy white clouds the entire time.  After a few days of scouting and prepping, I shot for three days straight.  The last day we went to Hatcher Pass which holds a lot of meaning for Governor Palin.  I had already scouted the pass a few different times, and I knew exactly where we were going to shoot.  Every last detail was in place.  After shooting at the base of the pass near a river, we caravaned up to the top of the pass where we were planning to shoot the final location.  Half way up, I noticed the beautiful light that was sweeping across the valley, and the clouds that were developing on the horizon.  I told the driver to stop, we had to change our plans.  This last minute change ended up being the final setup we would do with her, and it also ended up being the cover image.

I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on this project.  It is not very often that an assignment comes along to photograph one of the most polarizing figures in our country.  Let alone the chance to photograph that person for her book cover.  I would like to thank Harper Collins and Sarah Palin for working with me.  This was a really big opportunity for me professionally, and I enjoyed it immensely.  I am excited to see what happens next.

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As you may already know, last November I had the privilege of photographing one of the photography greats, Annie Leibovitz.  (Here) is an earlier post about my experience photographing her.  Then just a few months ago, I found out my portrait of Annie was selected for AP25 (American Photography 25 silver-anniversary competition) which is a selection of the best photographs from 2008.  The selected photographs will be compiled in a book this coming November.  Having already written about this, I don’t want to be too repetitive, but Annie Leibovitz is in the news again.  This time, it was not because she offended someone, or got a celebrity to pose nude.  New York Magazine came out with an article this week about Annie, and the hard times that she has come into.  Not to make light of a difficult situation, but I am pleased that one of my portraits was licensed for this article.  Here is a link to “How Could This Happen to Annie Leibovitz? The $24 million question” written by Andrew Goldman for New York Magazine.  It is a fantastic story, and definitely worth reading.

With all of the news flying around about Annie, I decided to take a look at my portraits of her again.  This picture in particular has always pulled at me.  I have thought about showing it in the past, but there was something that always seemed to make me leave it alone.  Looking at it again now, in light of what is going on, it seemed to take on new life.  This was one of those moments that came and went in a split second.  I had shot several frames already, including the one I have been showing.  There was a moment where she didn’t know what to do with her hands, and maybe felt a bit self conscious about being photographed.  She quickly rubbed her eyes and pulled her hair back from her face and the moment was gone.  I can’t say I captured this image because of some magic of my own.  In all honesty, I’m sure it was an accident I caught this.  But in this portrait, I see so much honesty and vulnerability.  Something not easily captured, regardless of the subject.  A good lesson for me: a great portrait isn’t always created by controlling my subject, but rather capturing an organic moment in a controlled setting.

New York Magazine “How Could This Happen to Annie Leibovitz?” http://nymag.com/fashion/09/fall/58346/

*Side Note*  Thank you to everyone who has written me about the comments not showing up properly in Safari and Firefox.  It looks like the issue has been resolved, and I apologize if you felt that I was ignoring your questions.  I may have actually responded, but the comment just didn’t show up properly.  It turns out that white text on a white background can be hard to read.

* If you are using a blog reader, you may need to visit my actual blog to see the slide show of outtakes, and just for fun shots.

If I were starting a multi-million dollar company, I would do everything in my power to recruite Jeremy Lewis to run the show.  He was a thrill to work with, and a great guy to boot.  Jeremy is the CEO of Big Fish Games, and I recently photographed him for the May 09 cover of Seattle Business Monthly.

He seems to have found a good balance of taking business very seriously, but at the same time enjoying life with a good sense of humor.  And I think that shows in these pictures.  As further proof, I was intrigued by the fact that he is reading a biography on Charlie Chaplin, and drawing inspiration from Chaplin’s business savvy.  “In both good and bad times, he did the same thing: He made enjoyable, safe, mass-market entertainment at a great value. He was a true business leader for his times.”

It takes a lot of creativity to find business inspiration from such an unlikely source as Charlie Chaplin, but I like that kind of “outside the box” thinking.  Maybe we could send some of that kind of thinking to the Auto and Financial industries.

Big Fish Games is now the leader in “casual games” and they are quickly growing, despite the slumping economy.

“After netting $85 million in revenue and growing by about 70 percent last year, Big Fish doesn’t appear to be slowing down. This January, Lewis says the company’s subscription base grew 111 percent faster than it did in September 2008, when the stock market crashed.”  - Randy Woods and Julie H. Case for Seattle Business Monthly

Click here to read the entire article in Seattle Business about Big Fish Games, and other companies who are thriving despite the economic downturn.