Last week I was teaching a photographic workshop in Florida. I flew home Friday in order to photograph Stephanie’s wedding on Saturday. It was a perfect day and the weather was wonderful! The wedding was at the Salt Lake Temple in the morning and the lights and clouds were perfect!
Here are some of the preliminary images from just my first level of processing. More artwork will go into the images as they are getting prepped for the album design.
Her reception was at the Ogden Airport at the Kemp Jetway Center. It was a fabulous location for a reception. I grew up around planes and even studied as a kid to get my pilot’s license by age 14 (though I didn’t have the money for the flight hours and never got it). I love airports and therefore had a great time creating moody images using the planes and the location. Here’s one of my favorites from that location, using the runway and mountains as a background at twilight!
BryCox – Stephanie’s Wedding 3
When the album is designed, I will for sure post it here. In the meantime, if you would like to see some Stephanie’s engagements, you can check them out here: (Stephanie’s Engagements). There is a wonderful painting there that you will love to see!
Thanks everyone and until next time, America!
— Bry
This weekend I went down to Moab, Utah for a bit of relaxation and to create some new art images of Southern Utah. It really stormed on the way down as well as the few days I was there which created some amazing lighting and some fabulous skies! Here’s some of the preliminary images I’ve been working on.
This first image I created on the way down there. I just loved the storm clouds and my inspiration on framing this was based on many of the paintings I’ve seen of my favorite painter…my cousin Antony Cox (AntonyCox.com).
If you look at his work, check out the paintings he did from 2000-2004 with his really low or really high horizons. I’ve always found that intriguing. So when I saw this scene, I thought of Antony’s paintings and framed it in a similar way. I also love the rain falling onto the mountains in the center and how all the lines in the clouds point to the rain. So cool!
BryCox – Moab 1
This is one of my favorites! It is of an old church. I love the colors, the cool background and the warm foreground. Storms create amazing directional lighting that shines under the storm clouds and light up objects. I was very excited to see this and had to stop and photograph it. I love how there’s a touch of blue in the church too that ties it all in.
BryCox – Moab 2
I’ve been a regular visitor to Moab, to visit Arches and the other National Parks looking for great images, and have rarely seen such a great sky for photography. Aside from exposing images just right, the weather is really key to great scenics in my opinion. Static images may seem amazing in real life, but pale in comparison after they are photographed.
I think all photographers have been disappointed when they’ve looked at images they tried to create of some magnificent scene — I know I have. My conclusion is that something else is needed other than a great scene, good composition, and a perfect exposure. But rather something has to make the inanimate objects seem more dynamic, and that comes from great directional light and interesting weather. These extra ingredients have to be there as well in order to add drama to the inanimate objects. That is what makes the image of the church as well as these other images so fun for me to look at — all of those elements are there!
So here are a few exposures from Arches National Park.
BryCox – Moab 3
Again in Arches…
BryCox – Moab 4
And here is me at Delicate Arch — one of the most famous arches!
BryCox – Moab 5
And one of me under the arch. This particular area is usually packed with visitors because it is so famous, so people have to be creative in how you frame and cut the image to give the illusion of being there all alone.
BryCox – Moab 6
When I narrow the images down to the final art prints, I’ll process them out separately for the best color and depth possible, and then add my unique touch of artwork to them, custom print them and offer them on my art site, BryCoxArt.com. Maybe I’ll put a post up here on the blog when they are ready.
I’m very excited about Brittany’s bridal shoot. Her wedding is still to come and will be in Denver next month, but here are some of the images I’ve been working on for her that will be apart of her bridal display at the wedding.
BryCox – Brittany 1
I love this long horizontal image — not only the lines, but her eyes too! Stunning!
BryCox – Brittany 2
Here is a fun image using a very unique background that I adapted (not originally created for a photographic background), lit with a glamour style, and processed using one of my custom cross-color processes.
BryCox – Brittany 3
And finally, here’s a great image that I started to light as a silhouette, but then turned her slightly for a little more powerful angle. I loved how this session went. This is just a sample of all the great images! I’m very excited to finish this order and to photograph the wedding. It’ll be a great day, Brittany!
It was really fun to photograph a good friend of mine, Laura recently. She is so beautiful and fun to photograph. Here are a couple of my favorites from the session!
Bry Cox - Laura 1
This first one above really shows off her eyes and smile. It is gorgeous. And this second image below is just fun and sassy.
Bry Cox - Laura 2
She hasn’t seen these yet, but I think she’ll love them! She looks great and I think her inner spirit really shows through in these images.
Well I’ve been out of town a lot lately, and have gotten behind on the blog posts, but I have a lot to put and am not sure if I can get it all up before more cool shoots come along to blog about.
But for now I have to tell you how excited I am about these images from Stephanie’s engagement session. This first image is a painting that I’ve been working on. It uses a new technique I’ve been working on and utilizes some of my brand new brushes that I’ve developed for photographers.
Bry Cox - Painting for Stephanie
I love the feeling of the entire image, how great the couple looks, the vibrant surreal colors, the abstract shapes in the trees and grass…. I’m very excited to get this finished and on canvas!
This next series is a nine-image composite of the couple. I love how in love they are and am excited for their wedding!
Bry Cox - Stephanie's Composite
Composites are great for couples I think to show motion, and emotion. I designed up two for them, this one above and this treo below.
Bry Cox - Stephanie's Treo
Well that’s it for now. I’ll get some more of my projects up quickly! I’ve got a lot of new things to show.
A few weeks ago I posted a very unique image of the Salt Lake Temple which has caused a lot of excitement. Many people asked it was available for purchase. Well I have it now, ready for purchase as a custom 20×36 inch stretched canvas gallery wrap. It looks absolutely gorgeous.
To kick it off, I’m offering the first 10 for $300 off, and am also including free local delivery or FedEx Ground shipment to the lower 48 states.
I know that by offering the first few at a big discount that many of your friends and families will see it displayed your homes and want one for themselves.
Bry Cox – Mountain Tops
This image is called “Mountain Tops” due to the composition and as a reference to the Old Testament use of mountains as a symbol of the temple. Here’s how it looks from the side.
Bry Cox – side view of Mountain Tops
In getting “Mountain Tops” ready to release, I also decided to release and offer another image that has only been seen at my studio but has always created a big buzz — “The Sacred Grove!” It’s amazing how great this looks close up! It’s also been fun to have a religious piece of artwork that only certain people recognize as well. Some have simply thought it was a beautiful scenic, but those who know, appreciate it on many levels and are stunned by it.
Bry Cox – Sacred Grove
This is available as a 24×36 stretched Canvas Gallery Wrap and I’m doing the same thing with this: offering the first 10 for $300 off! This too also includes free local delivery or FedEx Ground shipment to the lower 48 states.
Both are available at my online store which is BryCoxART.com, or can be ordered by phone by giving me a call at 801-728-3317.
Last week when I was teaching at the photographic workshop in New England (see my last blog entry), I had the honor of meeting painter Jeremy Sutton (JeremySutton.com). He too was there to teach a course at the workshop, but his was on painting.
As both of us were instructors, we arrived a day early to get set up and have dinner together and with the other instructors and the NEIPP staff. I had never met him before, but knew his name and had seen some of his DVDs years ago. I was excited to finally meet him.
As we talked, we were both excited about the fact that we both had the same fresh approach and philosophies to creativity. Though we use different mediums and have different terminology to explain it, it was fun to find that they were so similar.
I’ve dubbed my creative philosophy and style, “Jazz Photography,” based on me being a jazz musician before becoming a photographer, and using the same approaches from playing jazz to creating photographs — that is having a high technical background but being able to block the technical thinking, allowing that part to function perfunctorily in the background in order to really be able to improv and be creative.
Jeremy, being a painter with a strong technical background, uses a similar approach, pulling on his love of jazz music and his background of swing dancing, relating it all to his individual brushstrokes. He even listens to jazz and talks about dancing as he paints.
BryCox - Sutton painting 1
Jeremy had an idea of combining our groups one night for about 30 minutes in order to talk about the similarities of our creative processes despite the differences in mediums. He decided that doing a live portrait would work best for this, and I was honored to have him chose me to paint. This image above is Jeremy painting me live.
BryCox - Sutton painting 2
It was quite an experience to be painted live. As you can see from this image above, he lit me with some consistent and directional light (the lamp) and is working digitally with a digital pad and pen (called a Cintique’, $2000) that is pressure and directionally sensitive. His work can be seen on the projector behind us.
BryCox - Sutton painting 3
He worked very abstractly, laying down colors and shapes that didn’t look like me or a person at all, but instead were swirls of color and shape, both positive and negative. The entire process only took 20 minutes, and near the end it began to come together where we could all see the face emerge from the abstract.
I am extremely pleased with the painting. Here is the final result:
BryCox - Sutton final canvas
I absolutely love this! As an artist, I find it incredibly interesting and very artistic. I love the use of color, the shapes, and the loose feeling of the brushstrokes as well. This was not created from a photo reference, but live, right in front of me. It was an incredible gift!
Being a musician, I love to write and record in my free time. This to me looks like an album cover for a future CD! I think I have a new project on my hands. 🙂
As my current clients know, I’ve offered painted portraits on canvas for many years using a portrait I create as a reference. Some of these can be seen in past entries on this blog (here is one example, or type “painting” into the search bar near the top of my blog to see more examples from the past).
However, I am hoping to learn and incorporate more of Jeremy’s style and techniques into my work to be an even better painter artist. I’m excited for what that will bring to my work.
I just got back from teaching a photographic workshop called NEIPP in New England. I had a great time and the group was wonderful. The location was beautiful too, located on Cape Cod in the town of Hyannis (on the ocean below Boston).
This was my view, looking out each morning from my hotel room balcony.
BryCox - Hyannis Room View
Here is my class out in front of the convention center. I’m in the center, front.
Bry's NEIPP Class 2009
I never really blog about my workshops except to say that I’m going or just got back from one. But on this occasion, the photographer who worked as my assistant photographed me in action, so now I have something to show all of you.
Many of the workshops I teach are only one day events, but this was one of the full weeklong workshops that I teach all over the country. I love doing these multi-day workshops because I have the time to fully go through my entire workflow. I talk about creativity, lighting and posing people correctly for their face and body shapes. I demonstrate real shoots of real people (like this image below),…
Photographing a model
…and then we work on those images from beginning to end, as I demonstrate my Photoshop techniques and digital workflow.
BryCox - Me teaching Photoshop
Everything I do is on a projector so everyone can watch and work along with me.
BryCox - Teaching PhotoshopNEIPP Class
And here is one of the final images, all finished. This is of one of the models, Bonnie.
BryCox - Model demo of Bonnie
And here are two of my models, Kristen & Jocelyn, who were sisters. I love this composite! It was very cold outside and windy and this was a creative exercise to demonstrate how to take something that’s negative about a shoot (in this case the cold and the wind) and use it as a positive to create something wonderful and magical.
BryCox - Sisters Kristen & Jocelyn
At the very last night, we had a big formal dinner with all of the instructors and all of the photographers in attendance. At the end of the dinner each group roasted their instructor in front of everyone.
My group roasted me by acting out their wildly exaggerated impression of me in a photo shoot. It was pretty funny and I have to say that it was pretty dead on too. I was speechless! A fun night!
I really liked the people at NEIPP. It was a great group and I feel it an honor to have been asked to go teach there. I made some new photographer friends too which is always fun, because the more I travel, the more I run into photographer friends from all over.
If anyone reading this is a photographer and would like to attend one of my workshops, check out my workshop site for more info.
I was very happy to create this portrait of Mr. Ron Micheli — the official portrait for his upcoming run for the Wyoming Office of Governor.
Ron Micheli
I love creating great portraits of people. One of the joys I get from being a portrait artist is creating from scratch using nothing but light, a two-dimensional image that not only captures how a person looks, but also the inner spirit, glow, and personality of that person. I want people to look at my images and feel like they already know the person while having never met them.
Despite all the very technical aspects that go into creating a portrait and lighting someone just right, I actually think one of the hardest things to do as an artist is to capture a person’s true personality. That’s why I love creating portraits, and I think that it is what really sets me apart in this industry.
That feeling of knowing a person’s personality in a portrait is crucial in an photograph like this, and this image has it! It contains the warmth, kindness and thoughtfulness that Mr. Micheli showed me when I first met him. I had only talked to him for a few brief moments before we stepped into the camera room to begin the session. Though we talked nothing of politics, I could tell from his manner and his kindness that he would be a fresh and honest relief to the world of politics. I wish him well!
What a fun morning. Today, Nicole and Ammon came in to see their final wedding album design, as a large slideshow projection in the theater, here at the studio.
It is such a beautiful design and I’ve been excited for them to come and see it. Here is one of my favorite page spreads from the album. If you are unfamiliar with my albums, this spread represents two pages, like an open book.
Bry Cox – Nicole’s Album
Their wedding was held at the Salt Lake Temple with their reception at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. They are a great couple and have been very fun to work with.
To see their entire album in slideshow form, click here. I think you’ll see that they are very photogenic and very much in love. There is a lot of sparkle in these two which really makes the album amazing!
This Saturday, I’ll be at the Gateway Wedding Show, located in the Grand Ballroom next to The Depot at the Gateway. The show goes from 10 am to 4 pm and it should be a lot of fun. I’ll be bringing some new albums and some new beautiful samples to show.
Bridal shows are a great way to see and compare different photographers and other wedding vendors very quickly, and I’m excited for you to come and see me and what I do, and to compare the quality and value against anyone else.
If you’re getting married, stop by and say hi. It’d be fun to see you.
Well, my Portland job is finished. It went really well. I fly home today and should have flown out a while ago, but I got bumped and am waiting now at the Portland airport for my next flight.
One thing I’ve always liked about the PDX airport is that it is one of the few airports that has free and working WiFi. That is a nice service for sure, so today I’m taking advantage of that and thought I’d put up a few more images from my coastal road trip I took earlier this week.
Bry Cox - Heceta at a distance
This image above I created on my long walk up to the Heceta lighthouse (on Day 2). It was such a serene moment to come around the path and have it open up to this scene!
Bry Cox - Looking off Heceta
This image was taken from the lighthouse looking down. The mountain in the distance is where I photographed the lighthouse during the day time on Day 3 from a distance along with the image of myself.
Bry Cox - Heceta Panorama
Here is a pano of the lighthouse before the sun set that night.
And earlier that day I photographed an entirely different lighthouse on the way to Heceta. This lighthouse is called Yaquina and I used my friend Bryan Welsh’s long lens to get this from a distant beach.
Bry Cox - Yaquina Lighthouse
Well I’m getting tired of sitting here in the airport and need to walk around, stretch and maybe get some food. I hope you all like these images. I know I had a great time creating them and am very excited to see them printed.
