Aaron Riveroll | Photographer

No matter what we do in life, I think we all need to have some sort of reason or purpose for doing it.

Now, I don’t mean to get to all philosophical this early in a blog post…but I was just sitting around here thinking about a possible blog or podcast topic and this popped into my head…

As I sit here in my studio space, I can’t help but notice all of these magazines I have piling up. A lot of them are just because I like magazines with pictures of hot chicks…I mean, who doesn’t? But I couldn’t help but realize that I am published in quite a few of them. There’s something really cool about holding a publication in your hand with your work or seeing a photo that you took just chillin’ there in the public eye. It’s pretty cool.

Now, I understand not all of us have the fortune of being published like that (and believe me, I consider it a huge honor and fortune), but that aside, I think we should all have a purpose for doing what we do…and as a photographer, that means having a purpose for what we shoot.

Not all of us do this for a career. I know a lot of us do this for fun because we love photography and we love the art of creating something. But even if we do this for fun, it’s good to have a purpose or some sort of goal we are working towards. After doing this a while, I can honestly say that going out and shooting just for the heck of shooting is fun, but sometimes you get to a point where you are struggling to find a meaning behind it.

Not every shoot has to mean something. Sometimes we just need to pull our camera out of our bag and shoot something just for the sake of shooting. But it’s nice to have a purpose. Shooting commercial work and print work, sometimes it’s really easy to find something…you have a client that is directing your vision. You know what your images are for, where they are going, how they are going to be used. But you can still achieve the same result without having the backing of creative directors or clients.

Whether or not you have the ambition or desire to get published, push yourself to get publish-quality images. Develop projects with your favorite models and shoot it…maybe collaborate on a series or some sort of coffee table book. There are so many services out there where you can self-publish. Books, calendars…the list is endless. Or why not put together some images to submit to publications. At the very least, there are local publications that can use various forms of art work…and you’ll never know unless you put yourself out there. Or just simply take your photos to the local print lab and get some prints made up. Hang em on the wall…

I have several of my shots in my office and at my house…my buddy Mike Prado (Pradofoto) has work hanging all over his studio. Not only is it pretty to look at, it’s nice to have it displayed for clients and others to enjoy. Pictures shouldn’t be locked up…they need to be out for people to look at.

Or put them in a portfolio book. I don’t even know if people use these anymore, but I still have a print portfolio. I haven’t updated it in a while, but I still use it. Like I mentioned earlier, there is something cool about being able to hold a print in your hand.

With this move to digital, I think we have lost a little bit of the magic of actually holding one of your prints in your hands. It’s a totally different experience. Sure, digital is a great way to share your work with more people, but having your work in print is pretty special and even if your images aren’t for magazines, go and get some of your work printed out and I think you will enjoy it a little more.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that.

Happy shooting. ☺

So models these days seem to be all about the behind the scenes photos.

Whether it’s snapping a shot in the mirror, grabbing one of my infamous Blue Steel shots, or grabbing some of the posing madness.

I have to admit I love behind the scenes photos and videos of my shoots.

Here are some things to make them look better.

And here are some links:

• Zacuto Zgrip iPhone Jr.
• Some of my behind the scenes videos

As you all know, I like to rant about my pet peeves… Not just the stuff that other people do, but also the stuff that I do. And I think the fact that I do it bugs me even more, so I find ways to fix it.

Sometimes, even though it goes against all of my rules, you have to edit more than one shot from a look. Sometimes you need to edit two shots from a look. Sometimes you need to edit 20 shots from a look. Perhaps you are doing a series or a web gallery of some sort and you need several images from the same shoot, probably even the same look or pose. The thing that bugs me the most is not having a bunch of the same image… What bugs me is the inconsistency that often ensues. Even though an image is from the same shoot, either through shoot conditions or photographer error, the images just don’t look the same. And they’re from the same flippin’ shoot!

Images from a series should look like they are from a series; meaning they are exposed the same way, edited the same way, color corrected the same way. And this all starts at the beginning… When you’re shooting. You should be shooting on manual; which is to say your exposure, color temperature, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture should all be the same for every shot. You may have to make small changes as you go, but for the most part the end goal is the same.

And when you take the photos off your camera, you should be making sure that when you work with them, you are working them in a group. For instance, if you are editing in Lightroom, make sure you make all of your adjustments the same. Lightroom makes it easy to copy develop settings from image to image.

If you are bringing the images into Photoshop for retouching, you obviously are going to retouch one image at a time… But before you finish up, maybe open up the previous images for reference and look at them side-by-side, just to be sure they all look the same.

If you work with actions, make sure you write down your recipes, sequences, or the order that you run your actions in. This will help you keep the same workflow from image to image.

Consistency is so important… It lets clients know you are able to nail the shot 100% of the time. They hire you for your style and skill, but they want to make sure you can achieve the same look on demand. By making sure your end product is not only quality, but also consistent, you demonstrate that you can deliver. And creating a polished end result is the mark of a professional.

When it comes to workflow, the fact of the matter is everybody does things a little bit differently. But the one thing that we all have in common is that were always trying to shave seconds off our process. Nobody wants to be stuck at home on a Friday night editing photos for hours.

Although sometimes, we end up doing just that.

I’m not going to lie, aside from the obvious questions about lighting setups and whatnot, the one thing I get asked a lot (and the questions I love to ask other photographers) are mostly related to workflow. How can we speed things up? How can we work smarter, not harder?

Depending on your thought process and what you shoot, the debates about shooting RAW vs JPEG have been around forever. Everyone has their own opinion on this. I, personally, like to shoot RAW. I like the flexibility it gives me in post… I mean seriously, haven’t there been times where you screwed up exposure or color temperature and wish you just had a little bit of flexibility in bringing it back to reality? RAW does that for me. The problems with shooting RAW are obvious: large file sizes and processing times. Normally, even with my computers, which have fairly decent and fast processors, it would take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes just to bust out a proofing gallery for the web from a typical photo shoot.

I feel that proofs are essential for the client to see what was generated… But not just for the client, for the makeup artist, hairstylist, wardrobe, and model… It’s important for everyone involved to be able to see the work that was generated to see what was done right, what was done wrong, things to improve on, etc. But 30 minutes just to generate a bunch of proofs is pretty ridiculous. That’s 30 minutes I could be already starting to work on images… But instead, I’m waiting for my computer to finish processing images, and that’s no bueno. Fairly recently, a no-brainer concept came to me. It’s something that our new dSLRs have been doing for quite some time, so it’s not that revolutionary.

What was this magical solution? Shooting RAW plus small JPEG.

I’m not sure why I didn’t think about it earlier. Instead of writing just one file, the camera writes two files: your basic large, RAW file and a small JPEG. The benefit of this is you get your editable RAW, but you also get an already resized JPEG version that you can e-mail, post to the web, generate a proofing gallery, etc. It’s already small, so your computer doesn’t have to process it from RAW file. And it’s already a JPEG, which means your computer is not actually processing image information, only resizing it to your specifications. You could shoot RAW plus medium or large JPEG also… But I feel that a small JPEG is big enough for proofs and sharing. You don’t really need anything bigger than that… If you did, you might as well just shoot RAW and generate a JPEG from that. :)

What’s great about this is because the images are written together, when you import them into a program like Lightroom, the images are bundled together. That means that when you rename them, the RAW version is named with the same name as your small JPEG. Keeping things straight is important for me.

Now, if you don’t like shooting RAW, this probably doesn’t mean much to you. Also, if you shoot sports, events, and some weddings, where shooting fast and furious is important to you, this also may not mean much to you. I’m not going to lie, because the camera is writing two images instead of one, the processing time to get it from the buffer to the card is a little bit longer. It’s not much longer, but it’s definitely noticeable, especially when speed is important. However, if you’re shooting fashion or glamour, or even portraits, speed is not necessarily a huge factor… And if you can save some time in the end, it’s totally worth it.

If you’re looking to shave some time off of your post process and if you’re someone like me who likes to share photos quickly right after a photo shoot, shooting RAW plus small JPEG will definitely help out.

One of my favorite parts of being a photographer is getting to meet all kinds of people. Not just the models…even though that is a lot of fun. ;) But I get to meet a lot of people in general.

This past month, as many of you probably already know, I photographed several bikini contests for all of the Hooters restaurants in Southern California. At one particular contest, I got to the restaurant early, set up my equipment, and was sitting down to a little bit of editing and dinner before the contest started. A gentleman who had watched me set up decided to come over for a little bit of conversation. He was a photographer as well; and he started to talk about how anyone could be a photographer these days. He also went on to say how Photoshop makes him a better photographer. He said, “It doesn’t really matter if you take a bad picture or not…you can always fix it in Photoshop.”

I let him talk for a few minutes before I said anything… he went on to say how cameras are so good these days that even if you take a bad photo, you can still make it look good in Photoshop and he admitted that oftentimes he really didn’t care how good the pictures were coming out because he knew he could fix them later.

I’m about to tell you what I told him… I’m not really sure about you, but I’m pretty damn lazy. I don’t like doing more work than I have to. If you have ever seen me on a photo shoot, I’m usually sitting on my ass. Well, not really…but sometimes.

Fact of the matter is if you get something done right the first time, you don’t need to go back and fix it. This is why I strive to get it done right in the camera the first time. That means making sure my lighting is set up correctly. Making sure everything is metered and color corrected. Making sure my camera has the proper settings activated. Basics.

I feel like a lot of times, photographers use Photoshop as a crutch. All of the things you can do in Photoshop are pretty snazzy… and they just keep getting better. Technology is awesome. But we shouldn’t have to depend on it to be a good photographer. You should just BE a good photographer to begin with. And if you know what you’re doing and put forth a little bit of work at the onset, your pictures will be all that much better when you bring them into Photoshop.

Listening to that man talk, I couldn’t help but wonder what his photos looked like. I wonder what he sees when he looks in the back of his camera. More often than not, people are amazed at how good the photos look as they are flipping through them on the back of the camera; pre-Photoshop. Oftentimes, photos don’t even NEED to be retouched. Sometimes people say, “you have an awesome camera.”

lol.

I’m sure a lot of you photographers have gotten that before. Yes, my camera is nice…But it’s not the camera. The fact that I know what I’m doing. :)

And that’s the goal: making your photos look good from the start. Know what you’re doing. And put forth the time and effort to get it right the first time.

So, I found a few seconds in my hectic day to blog about a little something. A lot of people think that one of the most basic shoots you can do here in Southern California is a beach shoot. And quite frankly, it is pretty easy to head out to the beach shoot a gorgeous bikini model. But there is a little bit more that takes place behind the scenes… And the key to getting great shots is being prepared. Even if that means a little basic homework beforehand…

Here’s a little video I shot at the beach a while back on what I do to get prepared for a beach shoot, weather-wise.

Here are some links to some of the things I mentioned:

• Oakley Surf Report
• The Weather Channel
• Surfline.com

It’s rare when I can go out on a shoot with JUST a camera and have it be so laid back that it becomes a “two friends hanging out” session rather than a photo shoot. Occasionally, we’ll take a picture here and there…but it’s an effortless sort of deal. In the end, we have some pretty awesome pictures…but we mostly just had fun hanging out.

Last week, I had a shoot just like this with my beautiful friend, Camille.

We spent the afternoon at Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, shared the sunset, and took some pretty pictures. With nothing more than a camera and no lighting equipment whatsoever, she lit up every single frame on her own.

It’s can be a challenge sometimes to use “natural light,” and to use it CORRECTLY…but it’s a challenge that all photographers should do now and then, even if they have all the lighting equipment in the world. Don’t get me wrong; I LOVE shooting high end glamour with strobes and gorgeous models. Knowing how to use lighting correctly is a challenge in itself…but I will always say there is something about taking a picture and being able to capture a great image with nothing more than a good eye and your camera. That’s where it starts.

It also helps when the person you are shooting is just so naturally beautiful. These shots I got with Camille are probably some of my favorite images ever. I hope you enjoy them too.

Again, I am going to do my best to try and keep up with this blog thing. I swear I’m not a slacker!:)

Another recent Hooters photo shoot I did was with Chelsea from Hooters of Riverside. She came down to the beach for her calendar submission photo shoot and we got some amazing shots! More on that in a second. I have to just say that occasionally, I suck and make mistakes. Lord knows I ain’t perfect… :)

Now, I’ve mentioned several times that you can’t let the client know about your mistakes or screw ups. You have to know what you’re doing at all times, or at least LOOK like you know what you’re doing. And on this particular day, I had changed camera bags from my usual Crumpler shoulder bag to my DaKine camera backpack. I like the backpack better than the shoulder bag, especially when I’m doing a shoot on location or at the beach because it’s easier to carry all of my camera gear plus lighting equipment on my own. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Crumpler shoulder bag, but it’s a little awkward and heavy. Like your mom.

Well, I had managed to get all of my essential camera equipment into the backpack…except for my CompactFlash cards. Dude, I didn’t even have one in the camera! At this point, everything was set up, but I had no memory cards and I was totally stressed because I had forgotten something so small, yet so essential. I had no idea what I was going to do! Chelsea was getting finishing touches on her hair and makeup and was pretty much ready to shoot. To drive back home and get my CompactFlash cards would have meant losing about 45 min. to an hour of shooting time…not to mention looking like a moron and making my model wait for me. I tried calling friends to see if they could run me out one of their cards, but reception on the beach is terrible and no one was answering their phone anyway. I told everyone I was going to run to my car for a sec…and as I was running back to my car I remembered something. The stereo in my car has the ability to play MP3s. And these MP3s were stored on CompactFlash card. I grabbed the card out of the player, ran back to the beach, reformatted the card, and was ready to go.

The moral of the story: don’t forget your CompactFlash cards. I was really really lucky that day. But don’t ever let your clients see you sweat either. Wear deodorant. :)

Now, about the shoot. I have to say that Chelsea was amazing to work with. For being her first photo shoot ever, she was pretty damn awesome. She definitely brought her A-game. I was totally impressed. You could tell in her attitude and conversations we had in preparation for the shoot that she was really serious about what she was doing. She went and hired one of my best make up artists for the shoot as well as getting a bunch of brand-new, super cute Chynna Dolls bikinis to shoot in. The end result were pictures that I can see definitely being published somewhere. Needless to say, we will definitely be shooting again soon!

Anyway, here are a few shots from the shoot. Hope you enjoy!

So, I stumbled upon a really cool post over at the Totally Rad blog by Cathy Empey. A particlar passage really struck me since it is exactly the way I feel about my own photographic journey…and since I suck at putting thoughts into words, I thought I would share Cathy’s words with all of you..

In talking about finding and improving your style, she writes:

“I have come into my own; as I am sure many photographers do when they put their heart and soul into finding their focus. Some days I lack confidence, and that lets me know that its time to take it to another level. Although I feel as though I have found my style, I keep searching and improving. I feel as though you are only as good as your last session, and I strive to do my absolute best for every single client.”

Heart and soul. That really struck me…because without passion, what is the point of doing it? Always working to be the best, striving to be better than the last time, and always working on taking things to another level are qualities I truly admire and try to cultivate in my life.

Anyway, just a little mid-morning inspiration. Read the rest of the post here.

GOING THE DISTANCE BY CATHY EMPEY – GetTotallyRad.com

Yesterday, I had a great shoot with model Janice Michele up in Oxnard, California of all places. Seriously…Oxnard? It’s pretty funny just saying it, ya? :) Anywho…I met some AMAZING people…and Janice is pretty amazing herself…beautiful, motivated, and super fun to shoot with. We got some amazing shots…which, of course, aren’t ready yet. But stay tuned for those. :)

But Janice reminded me of something yesterday that I thought I’d share with a lot of you photographers and/or models who are shooting portfolio content or fun projects. This could also apply to commercial work…but more often than not, when there is money involved, people want their cut. And that’s understandable. But this is more for those fun, personal projects or portfolio shoots.

So, a few years ago, I was out in my hometown of Ramona with my good friend Ennis and our friend Laura. We were planning on doing a “country girl” themed shoot and since I had spent most of my young life in this little country town, I thought it would be a good place to start. We scouted around for a little bit until we stumbled upon this farm, complete with hay, cows, and a few barns.

We drove up the driveway and found the owner and offered him a couple Andrew Jacksons if he would let us shoot there. His response was a pleasant, “Sure!” but it didn’t come without a brief look of confusion, as if to say, “why would you want to shoot HERE?” His daughter was helping tend to the animals and she offered to move bails of hay for us or get us anything we needed. It was pretty amazing how nice and accomodating these people were for a few random strangers who wanted to shoot on their farm.

But the moral of the story is this: it doesn’t hurt to ask.

A lot of photo portfolios have gorgeous models…all shot in the same location. To me, this shows that yes, you can take a good picture of a beautiful model…but do you have any creativity to make something different? Think outside the box? Make something that someone hasn’t seen before? Yes, I realize that many concepts have been done…but that doesn’t mean you can’t do them differently…and one of the ways to do that is by trying to find new and different places to shoot. For instance, I do a lot of beach photography. It’s pretty straightforward…and there are several different locations that I LOVE shooting. But it’s the beach. It looks pretty much the same no matter where you are…but there is so much beach to shoot at and when I shoot, I always try to shoot at new places along the way. One of my favorite spots in La Jolla, California, has about a mile or so of beach…and so I try to change things up once in a while by picking different spots along the stretch. You’d be surprised the way you can make the shots look different.

So yesterday, Janice wanted to shoot in a boxing gym. She had an idea for some super sexy and colorful shots. So she called up a local boxing gym and said, “Hey, I want to take some shots in your gym!” So the owner gave the okay and we made it happen. The guy that was running the gym was super accomodating and helpful and might be hiring me for some other shoots down the road. Janice also wanted to shoot some stuff in an old fashioned ice cream parlor. So…she found one in her town, called the owner, and asked if we could shoot there. The owner said “yes,” and we got it done. The girl behind the counter was totally sweet and basically helped us with anything we needed. She made us tasty ice cream cones for shoot props…and to eat, of course…and had her iPod going with some cool tunes too. :) When the owner came in later, he was super cool, loved the shots we took, and also may be calling for future work.

I learned that honestly, it really doesn’t hurt to ask someone if you can use their store, house, or even ice cream shop for a short, fun shoot. If you can get it done quick, fast, and in a hurry, most people don’t mind the small inconvenience…and may even enjoy watching the makings of some fun pictures. :) And when you think about it, what is the worst that can happen? They can say, “No.” No biggie. No harm, no foul.

But if they say “yes,” you’ve got a fun place to shoot something different…and you usually meet some really super cool people too.