See more here: link

Sophia.

More photos here.

Carly

Shot this Sunday. Took three tries! More here.

Shot this last night with one of my favorite models.

Jordan

Jordan, originally uploaded by austinspace.

A beautiful woman, a river, a day off: photo heaven.

Talieh

Talieh, originally uploaded by austinspace.

Talieh was referred to me by a friend. She needed some basic head and body shots to submit to people in the movie biz, but we also managed to do some simple portraiture. Really, she needs no adornment as she's a very elegant beauty. This shot, taken with my new chair from Pier 1, was after we did the headshots and I got down to one light--the composition is simple but the result is without flaw.

The shoot went well enough that we plan to shoot again very soon!

Emily

Emily, originally uploaded by austinspace.

High key lighting on a girl with absolutely no blemishes. Lucky!

Gabrielle

Gabrielle, originally uploaded by austinspace.

In praise of Gabby, who is the perfect model. No ego, endlessly creative, and so, so photogenic. This is backlit, using my two Alien Bee 800 lamps without the strobes.

Crystal

Crystal, originally uploaded by austinspace.

I don't know how we found this most perfect light, but this shot just thrills me. Crystal wanted to do a Fall shoot and I've always wanted to shoot along the trees on Manito Blvd on Spokane's South Hill so we went up there on a Friday afternoon. The day was cloudy so this little bit of sunshine was very, very welcome. Within a couple of shots it was gone. Luck is the phototgrapher's friend...

Adrienne Mondrian

Adrienne Mondrian, originally uploaded by austinspace.

I've been painting a lot of women lately. I should be painting my house.

I had the idea of taking the simple geometric shapes of Piet Mondrian's work and applying it to the curves of a woman, and was lucky when Addy agreed to be the canvas. Even luckier, my friend and model Kaitlin agreed to come over and paint Addy.

The process took about 2 hours to complete, from head to foot, using washable paints from the kids' craft section of Walmart. Keeping my Flickr safe for all viewers, you can't see the amazing job Kait did here, but you can appreciate the otherworldly look that Addy brought to it. If only every photoshoot was this creative and fulfilling!

Suzy

Suzy, originally uploaded by austinspace.

Argh. Suzy is one of the most stunning women I've ever photographed, but she is also one of the most frustrating. It's hard to take a photo that will please her. This one barely passed her inspection! I consider it a challenge to find out what she really wants (she has some model aspirations) but it's hard when the subject is so vague.

In this shot she's actually lying on the floor of my studio, where I recently got a sheet of grey background paper donated to me by my buddy Eric as payment for finding a model for him to shoot. He also gave me confidence to use my Alien Bees strobes, and it's been kind of weird but exhilarating to shoot brightly lit models these last couple of months.

I think Suzy's a classic pinup model. What do you think?

Kaitlin

Kaitlin, originally uploaded by austinspace.

I might have a touch of SAD--Seasonal Affective Disorder--to go along with all the other crap of getting older. Photography in the winter gets harder and harder for me to bring myself to do, and though I can always shoot in my cozy warm studio, there is nothing like a warm summer evening when the light gets perfect and even the insects dance in delight.

This shot of Kait was taken in July, but thanks to so many photoshoots the last three months I'm just now editing all her photos. Fortunately Kait is one of the coolest people I know and doesn't mind...too much...how long it takes me to go through the photos.

I think part of the beauty of this shot is the fact that my lenses are always dirty, causing the light refraction in the lower two/thirds of this pic. Ha.

San Diego Comic-Con

San Diego Comic-Con, originally uploaded by austinspace.

Silver at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. We've shot each year for the last four years after I spotted her as the Corpse Bride and she found the photo on my Flickr stream. It's always a pleasure to see her and her friend Kit at the Con, and no matter how crazy and busy it gets there, we manage to find each other.

This shot is taken between two large blue vents on the upper level of the Convention Center in San Diego. The light when she moved there was just perfect. People compare it to the painted comic book art of Alex Ross, and though I agree with the lighting, Silver is way more beautiful than the version Ross does of Power Girl.

Autumn and Eve

Autumn and Eve, originally uploaded by austinspace.

Erin came to me with the concept, and even brought the apple and a lot of leaves which I supplemented with leaves from my front yard.

Lighting with Alien Bees in front of her and behind her. I edited out my foot, which was visible on the right as I'm standing near the apple and shooting this without looking through the viewfinder. A simple crop and image rotation finished this off.

No, she's not nude; there is a hint of the orange/red fabric above her shoulders that kept her strategically covered during the shoot.
More to come from this shoot!

Sister

Sister, originally uploaded by austinspace.

All hail natural light! All hail the Magic Hour!

Rested and Ready

Heather, originally uploaded by austinspace.

My hiatus over, I've slowly ramped up shooting again. It was good to recharge the batteries and take care of other business for a few months but towards the end, as the weather improved, I have to admit I got anxious to start up again.

Heather and I shot once before inside the studio when the weather forced us inside, so it was nice to take advantage of our Spring weather and get out for our second shoot. This is at Manito Park. Heather really wanted to shoot in these arches (in the summer wedding parties are often coming through them) and using the 10-22mm lens we kind of took it to the next level.

Aren't those shoes killer?

Erin

Erin, originally uploaded by austinspace.

This is amongst the last portraits I'm going to do for awhile. An idea brewing in my head for some time finally popped out during the holiday season and I've decided to move in a different direction photographically for the next few months. Hopefully I'll return to portraiture reinvigorated!

Erin is a delightful young woman who had had very particular ideas she wanted to achieve, and she called me yesterday thanking me again for the results. The black and white choice in these shots were to focus on the form and I'm really happy with them. She has the two studio lights on her here, the one on the left turned down low. In Photoshop I used the black and white filter with the reds and yellows turned up to get this almost marble finish.

Nicole and Jessica

Nicole and Jessica, originally uploaded by austinspace.

I've really slowed down in the quantity of photoshoots I've done lately. The combination of cold weather, new responsibilities at work and the desire to catch up has resulted in only two or three shoots the last month. This shoot with perennial favorite Jessica and her friend Nicole wass absolutely fun and so many good shots resulted from it that now, two weeks later, I'm still working on them.

This shoot was a day or two after I finally received a replacement for my 17-85mm lens that I took to a shop four months ago (long dull story, but I'm never going to that shop again) and was finally told couldn't be fixed. However this particular shot was done with the 10-22mm wide angle lens, which is why Nicole is so...lengthy in this shot.

The light on this one is interesting. If you look at colors, you'll notice how on the left side of the photo it's orange and yellow, and on the right it's white and blue. The models are laying on a futon and I'm using my two Alien Bees lights on the left, hence the more yellowy cast. On the right just off screen is a window, letting in grey/white/blue late afternoon light.

Adrienne

Adrienne, originally uploaded by austinspace.

With the weather getting better I'm not shooting in studio much, and I'm very happy about it. Mind you I like the control of studio lights, and the interesting light you can get on someone that would be hard to replicate outdoors, but nothing beats natural light.

Here we have the best of both worlds. We're in my studio, and Adrienne is looking out the window so natural light is flooding in on her. In many of my pix I up the saturation just a tiny bit to get the photo back to what I saw when I shot, but in this case I dialed it down to give it a different feel.

Adrienne is such a natural beauty that little other work needed to be done on this photo, except cropping it tightly so the Flickr police wouldn't flag it.

More Adrienne photos here.

Nicole

Nicole, originally uploaded by austinspace.

Nicole is a fellow photographer (Flickr: blush-response) and amazingly fun to photograph, which we've done twice now (here's her set on my Flickr stream) with great results. Here we're shooting at a small park on Spokane's south side that gets filled with wildflowers in May but we were a bit too early for that.

This shot was taken at the bottom of a huge rock/outcropping where we went to escape the wind. Whereas it was howling throughout the park, here we were protected by the rock and it was very peaceful there. Nothing special in processing here; nothing needed.