goodsell amplifiers #1

i recently had the pleasure of doing a photo shoot for Goodsell Amplifiers. Richard Goodsell is a good friend and I had been wanting to do some work for him for some time. he approached and indicated he had an idea for a shoot and offered me the chance to shoot it. i start with this shot because it was the main concept he came to me with. he told me we had access to Tree Sound Studios and wanted a shot of a guy playing guitar while two models had a pillow fight in the background. hmmm...sounded interesting and i was game.

we scouted the location and i knew it was going to be a challenging shot because of the size of the two areas we had to shoot. the windows into the recording room made it even more difficult from a lighting persepective. eliminating the glare was too much to overcome in one shot with the time we had available. we thought about different ways we could accomplish this shot but it didn't have the feel Richard was looking for. on the day of the shoot, we almost abandoned it until we decided that we would shoot two separate shots and composite the image. Richard was still skeptical of the idea as it seemed too much trouble.

i had the incredible honor of being assisted by Craig Tanner that day and he showed Richard how a composite could be done in photoshop on our iMac. Richard was sold and off we went. having decided on the two shots, the rest was pretty easy. George from Atlanta Discount Music looked great playing his guitar and fit the customer demographic very well. the girls gave me a lot of emotion and had a fun time with their pillow fight. the shot of the girls was taken before they had the pillows but i liked how Tamra seemed to be saying "hey, what about us?" as George was rippin' it.

this was certainly the most complex photo shoot i have done. the post processing on this shot was significant and pushed my photoshop skills beyond my current capabilities. it made me realize i need to work on getting better with photoshop as much as i need to get better with my photography.

i will share more shots form the shoot and share the experience in future posts. this shot was very well received and i can't wait to see how it gets used by Richard. Keep your eyes peeled. You can also see it on his website at www.superseventeen.com.

ahhh...it feels good to be back here. creating images like this and telling you about simply rocks. thanks for looking.