Here’s what I love about google plus. My audience (1268 as of this writing) is global! So I have dudes like Phuc here checking out my stuff from Vietnam. I love that. And with the help of an online translator, I can thank him for checking out my stuff. FB hasn’t given me a global audience at all. In fact, only once have I needed an online translator on FB and that’s just because even my basic spanish sucks.

G+ also adds like 20-30 followers per day to my account! Holy smokes! FB maybe adds five new fans a week for me if I’m lucky. My immediate reaction to g+ vs FB on followers alone is a total thumbs up to g+. It’s replaced twitter for me because it’s that easy to use (easier, actually) and there’s no character or formatting limits on g+.

portland photographer pete springer

A couple of years ago, I made a trip to Miami just to explore and check out the scene. I did a couple of photo shoots and drove out to Key West and all that. This past year, I decided to delve deeper into south Florida and I’ve made three more trips so far. It’s a fascinating place. A lot of weirdos (like Oregon!) but much warmer. LOL

Seriously, each trip has been better than the last and I’ve been absolutely lucky by meeting some of the nicest people. It’s crazy but I have this really strange knack for going to different places and meeting really cool people. On this trip, Selena, Sonny, Ewa, Jonathan, and Devin — all of you are so great in really unique ways. Thank you for working with me.

My biggest disappointment on this last trip to Miami was I had a pair of twins lined up for a sunrise shoot. Confirmed a coffee meeting to chat details and went the the meeting in SoBe. No show. Texted one twin. Got a reply they thought meeting was next day. That was the last I heard from them.

So yeah, that was a bummer. Luckily a model I had shot earlier in the week was available for a sunrise shoot that day. Thank you Ewa for saving the sunrise that day!

We tried to go to Crandon Park south of Miami but encountered the a total dick security guard. Turns out it’s easy to sneak into the park before it opens (@ sunrise) but there’s no where to park. Park for just a moment and a rent-a-cop, er, county ‘park ranger’ rolls up and starts writing a parking ticket. That was a bit of a buzz kill too since the rental car company had made me sign a waiver that I’d pay all parking tickets. I pleaded “tourist” with the rent-a-cop, but no kidding, he didn’t believe me. If he heard my attempt at spanish, he would have believed I wasn’t from Miami.

Anyway, the model in this photo wasn’t involved in any of that. She’s someone I saw on FB through a mutual friend. I liked her look so contacted her and we arranged a shoot. Sometimes rollin’ the dice works out!

Model Devin

swimwear photographer pete springer

Here’s the video version of the “unboxing” of my Emergency Beach Kit. It’s a marketing kit I’ll be using to target twenty of my dream clients.

Credits: graphic design Tamera Haney, Bliss Design Boutique, photographer Pete Springer

I’ve been working on this beach emergency kit for a while. My goal was to keep it low budget (that sort of happened), unique, and to target twenty of my dream clients. I start mailing out tomorrow.

Assembled twenty of these kits today. It’s been a process of several months putting everything together though. Thongs had to be ordered five at a time from a dude in Quebec who had limited supplies. The thongs had to get logos on them. Sun lotion and advil and clear plastic cases had to be ordered. Booze needed to be purchased. The correct size shipping boxes had to be found. A graphic designer needed to design the postcard and packaging (and hold my hand throughout – thanks Tamera!)

Then there’s the list of clients to send to. A kit like this needs to be targeted to be worthwhile. No sense sending out to potential clients who might not even be interested. Agency Access (including Jennifer, my campaign manager who has encouraged me every step of the way) was indispensable in this project.

And if it sounds like I’m reading off a list at the Ocars, it’s because this is the biggest marketing campaign I’ve ever undertaken and it wouldn’t have been possible on my own.

There’s a video of the unboxing of the kit processing right now on Vimeo. I’ll get a link to that posted soon.

In the meantime, if you need this kind of creative spirit on your next photography project, you know who to contact.

Credits: graphic design Tamera Haney, Bliss Design Boutique, photographer Pete Springer

Trying out some retouching techniques from a workshop this weekend by Quavondo and Pratik Naik.

This is my first solo retouching attempt post workshop. It’s a photo I shot back in July. Obviously I have a bit to learn still in terms of retouching. But nine hours of a great workshop with an amazing pro retoucher today definitely will help.

Model Katya, hair/makeup Jessica Belknap, dress Silkwood by Sandy Verzarschi

Portland Photographer Pete Springer

Been exploring google plus for about a week now and so far like it a lot more than FB. Started adding photos last night and the display is far, far, far superior to the compression FB puts on files. Not sure why they’re not allowing business accounts yet, but I notice a whole lot of people in the photography industry are basically using their personal g+ as a business page. No surprise there but it will be a bit of a pain to create yet another page once google figures out the business page stuff.

Anyway, g+ so far is about 95-percent men. So while I welcome any followers, my clients tend to be women, so ladies, dust off your keyboards, smart phones, and ipads and get over to g +! If you need an invite, post in the comments here and I’ll email you one (you don’t need to publicly post your email – I can retrieve it on the backend).

Portland Photographer Pete Springer

I shoot product photos too. These kind of photos are perfect for web sales, detail shots for catalogs, or anything else where you need a clean, simple shot of your product. In this case, it’s bamboo wraps (yes, the wraps are made of bamboo!) from Naturally Knotty. The wraps come in really cool bamboo tubes.

There are many, many ways to shoot products. For this shoot, that first photo has four strobes — two strip domes providing a rim light, a softbox for key light, and a bare reflector on the background. As you can see in the second shot, the background is just white posterboard. The last two shots were done with the modeling lamps cranked all the way up and the white balance set for tungsten so I could shoot at a wide open aperture.

Portland Photographer Pete Springer

Well this is bizarre. I just ran across this photo splashed all over a blog for a calendar shoot. Problem is, this photo was from a shoot I did for a different client and has NOTHING to do with the calendar. The makeup artist who took the photo didn’t give them permission to use the photo either.

It looks to me like they’re using it to pretend it’s a behind-the-scenes photo from their calendar shoot — which it is not! I have NO AFFILIATION with this calendar or the people producing it. No one in this photo went to OSU, the makeup artist who shot it didn’t go to OSU either. It’s from a photo shoot for a Portland designer last year and has nothing to do with that calendar.

I’ve filed a DMCA complaint form with google (the blog host) and sent an email asking the blog admin to remove it.

Portland photographer Pete Springer

Couple of behind-the-scenes snaps from a indie film production in north Portland. It’s called The Buskers and Lou Movie and there’s more pics on the link. The director is Alex Cassun.

It’s really fascinating for me to see the shift to amazing cinematic quality digital files from so many DSLR’s. You can now throw together a crew and a story and create a beautiful looking film! And the irony of referring to digital as film is definitely not lost on me. I’ve been a pro photographer long enough to remember the film vs. digital argument. I think we all know who won that one.

Portland photographer Pete Springer

Loved this photo when I shot it but despite my best efforts at correct white balance (top photo), there was still a green color cast on her skin tones. And a couple of other issues too.

I used individual RGB values on a curves adjustment layer to get rid of the color cast (lower photo). Then added an overlay layer and painted white and black on her eyes, plus some sharpening, to make them stand out more.

Model Sarah, hair/makeup Jessica Belknap

Portland photographer Pete Springer