If I ever sell the building,  this is probably the one upgrade that will not stay.   The canopy on the back of the building has been reading ‘Oriental Dragon Imports’ since I moved in.   I never thought it prudent to advertise ‘photo studio with lots of goodies’ til i got the security up to date.  The small ‘31′ out front has helped guide my clients to the door,  but It was time to finally give the logo a home.  For too long i’ve been saying ‘look for the silver truck and palm tree out front!’

double click to play!

It’s hard to set this stuff up even when you try!

I was digging through my archives from many years back and came across this image which was in my ‘life is funny’ pile.  I was shooting this model in a phone booth (notice there are no more phone booths round Vancouver) on the corner of 7th and main when this lady started observing from the sidelines.   Normally i like to juxtaposition a beautiful model in a grungy alley or create some form of contrast and compare in my images. . . I think this one does it.   Do you think she was posing for me? . . . maybe it was  product placement  by Coca Cola!

Well it has been some time since my last post… what can i say, it was a fabulous summer!  Topping everything off was a great Vegas wedding with all the 1970 trimmings.

This image was taken in ‘the boneyard’ . . . where all Vegas Signs go to die.  It has just about all the favorite ‘oldies’.  Renting this location for a ‘non-commercial’ photoshoot  is $200/hour. . . and there are lots of rules, so you need to be creative to get your shots since you can’t touch the signs in any way (1 foot rule).

The AC cobra was a nice prop (especially since i got to drive it), but the hot door exhaust was definitely a one touch lesson!  The caterers of the place were telling me that late evening was the best time to shoot there, but i think i would have taken an earlier time as the tall signs started to fall into shade and it was hard finding a perfect ‘light’ spot.  I personally like having more direct sunlight, because it’s easier to control with reflectors and shades.   I adjusted the color/contrast/saturation of these images using ‘overlay’ layers and the aging effect was a scan of an old crumpled dirty piece of paper set to ‘hard light’ on its own layer with some areas masked out around the bridal group and car.

Except for the astounding heat of 40 degrees, and only a couple hours of shoot time,  I was like a kid in a candy store in Vegas,  the questions were just of which fabulous location to set up.  Fortunately the Wynn was just accross the street and  provided a classic background reminiscent of victorian days.

What’s a proper vegas wedding without an Elvis impersonator?  We fondly named him ‘perv Elvis’ as he hit on just about every available and unavailable woman.

And no, I don’t do weddings anymore,  but in this instance the lure of Vegas, Harleys, Elvis lookalikes and a Retro wedding kinda tweaked my interest.