Portland Monthly April 2008 | Cornershop: Noun | AD: Pete Ivey

Noun is a cute antique boutique store in the Belmont Neighborhood of Portland, OR. The owner, Stephanie Sheldon (pictured), was super nice and really fun to photograph. I onlysed two lights for this shot. One light in the main room bouncing off the ceiling to on camera right. Another light in the anteroom bounced off the ceiling area on camera left. Kind of a classic foreground/background cross lighting technique to build contrast, but softened because the light is indirect.

Portland Monthly April 2008 | Hitlist: Pistils | AD: Michael Novak

Like the Cornershop, Hitlist focuses on local business in Portland. To illustrate the unique garden stores you find around town, Mike and I shot Pistils on NE Mississippi. These busy shots can be a little daunting, but the trick is to find your angle then simplify the styling. You want it to look neat and organized, but not sterile. Plus adding a human element always helps make an interior come to life. I used two lights again, but this time all the lights were bounced off camera left. The store had no windows on that side, so I wanted to reduce the fall off from the daylight coming in from the right. I didn’t want it to look fake either, just a nice mix.

Northwest Golf 2008 | The Gear Guide | AD: Jason Blackheart

For this studio shot, I was given a challenge. Jason asked me to shoot these four golf clubs and make it look like a Jill Greenberg shot. Since Jill shoots mostly people and monkeys, I was really excited by the idea of replicated her lighting style with a shiny metal product. I was really happy with the results and so was the magazine. I’ll be posting a tutorial on how it did soon.