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Cold & Colorful Outdoor Shoot with Nikola

I had a very fun shoot with Nikola outside, despite the frigid 12º-15º temperatures. Nikola was especially great to shoot, and she was a great sport too – never complaining about the freezing cold. The cool, foggy air of downtown Salt Lake City made for some beautiful backdrops and I wanted to accent that with some creative lighting skills.

We battled the cold and took advantage of the beautiful foggy air, accenting it even more with some specialized lighting techniques to add a color shift and punch to the images. For instance in these first few images, I lit her in a way to make the skyline behind go a deeper blue. That contrast between cool and warm colors really makes her pop out, and it accentuates the cold feeling of the night.

These close ups are killer! I love her subtle expression, the look in her eye, and the color makes the image all the more interesting to me.

Here we have a mix of cool and warm colors again. It adds depth to the photograph, and makes the image feel more three-dimensional. Most photographers in comparison sadly use a very “flat” style of lighting. Their images are often muddy, dull, or blown out. The problem is that a photograph is already flat, and a flat picture on flat paper doesn’t have as much impact. I work hard to create dimension. I want to draw people into the images I create and make them stare and feel as if they could step into the photograph. That extra work I think gives images more of an emotional impact. I hope people can see the difference in what I offer.

These laughing images just show how much fun these photo shoots are. You can tell it’s cold, but you wouldn’t believe how cold by this genuine smile.

Finding some cover from the harsh wind, we stepped into this stoop for a few photographs. I really like the colors and textures and how they mix and blend well with her.


Shooting along this brick wall was great. I love the color harmony, and Nikola’s gorgeous hair ties in beautifully.

While speaking for Adobe at the national photography convention (ImagingUSA) this last week in San Antonio, I felt blessed to have a packed ballroom of about 1,000 people. I used these images in my demo on stage, and part of that demo was creating this trio below from scratch. I really liked the genuineness of her laughing images, so I combined them into a framed trio design to tell a story in three images. 

And finally, this serious image is just killer.

Thank you to Nikola for the fun shoot and her good-naturedness despite the freezing cold Utah weather. Often this time of year I’m shooting in the warm studio, but for this shoot I really wanted to create something different. And we got some incredible photographs by utilizing that cold air with some really creative lighting styles.

If you’re in need of some awesome photographs (even despite weather problems like frigid cold), give me a call at 801-728-3317. I’d love to create something awesome for you.

And until next time, America.

Bry Cox in Glacier National Park at Fall, September 2016

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I recently returned from a trip to Montana and Glacier National Park with a couple friends. Driving the ‘Road to the Sun’ road, there were too many things for me to want to stop and photograph, so the compromise (if you can call it that because I think it was the best idea ever) was for me to stand up out of the sunroof and photograph as we drove. It was a frigid and cold day, and I loved the cold air blowing against me, the unobstructed 360º view, and the ability to absorb everything and shoot photos.

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And I found it really fun and a creative challenge to shoot motion blur images as we drove. It’s a technique a good friend, Julieanne Kost showed me once while we were riding on a train. She’s absolutely perfected it, and her images are emotional and phenomenal. Here’s a link to her work, JKost.net, and a link to her recent book, Passenger Seat.

And I have more of these images on my Spark page (linked above), but here are a few of my favorites.
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The fog was beautiful at the top of the mountain, perfect for our hike, a 9 mile loop along the Highline trail.
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Normally on this trail you can look down the cliff and see the ‘Road to the Sun’ about 100 feet beneath you. As we started though, we looked down into just fog. It was quite beautiful.

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And the higher and further we got in, the more the fog changed. I shot quite a few panoramas.
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In this image below, you can see the trail close on the left as it hugs the mountain side, and also the road beneath us on the right of the photo.
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On our hike back, you can see the trail cutting along the mountain behind me, and the road down beneath that at the bottom.
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It was an inspiring and awesome adventure. The colder weather made for a great hike and even more gorgeous scenery. The fall leaves were out, and the park’s busy season was over so we had the mountain and our trail practically to ourselves. To see even more photos in a very cool responsive presentation, click the window at the top or click this link.

And if you would like some beautiful fall portraits of either you, your family, or your high school senior, now is the time to get it booked. Here in Utah, the fall colors have hit and we have a very limited time to catch these beautiful colors up the canyons. Lighting is the key to making you look your best, and that’s what I do. Give me a call at 801-728-3317.

And until next time, America.

Band Portraits for Ryan Shupe & the RubberBand

This week Ryan Shupe & the RubberBand put on a show outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, and we used the opportunity to shoot some new band portraits. These kinds of images are used for posters, marketing, web sites, and overall band promotion.

Band portraits need to be iconic, visually interesting, they need to show the vibe of the band so that you know what a live show will be like. Band portraits need to show personality, they can’t be mundane or normal. So all of that means that band portraits are no different than any other portrait I create for people – they need to have exquisite lighting and emotion.

For this image, I envisioned the band on stage with Ryan up front looking right into the camera. I wanted instruments showing and also all the feel of the stage with the stage lights and smoke – except it’s not possible to do a shot like that during the show with an amphitheater full of people. It had to be shot during the day before the show. So I set it up, lit the scene, and shot it knowing I’d be recreating from scratch the entire “feel” of the stage later in post production.

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Above is the final version after all the digital work. And below, is an animation of my progress. In the animation it may come together in just a few seconds, but it didn’t take seconds to make.

Notice how in the first and completely raw shot, the skin tones and lighting on the individuals is perfect, but it’s in the middle of the day. It doesn’t look like night and there are no stage lights. From there I slowly build it up, painting in from scratch the stage lights, the atmosphere, the smoke, as well as the effects of the colored lights on Ryan, his jacket, on the band, and on the walls. I’m constantly asking myself, how would this light affect the scene? Where would it be visible? Because of where Ryan is standing, he is being lit with the most diverse set of colored lights from various places. How those lights all skim across his black leather jacket have all been painted in.

The result is something both real and natural to the eye, but also is a shot that could not have been created otherwise. It’s an impactful image.

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This second band portrait was created to look real and natural, to be impactful, and to also show the energy of the group. But it wasn’t originally shot like this either.
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To create it, I individually lit and shot each band member separately. I then took the best of each individual and put this together, lining up each brick and line in the background to match the bending perspective shift created by my camera’s angle and lens choice. I really liked the wide angle feel and the bending of the bricks created by that. There was a lot of very small and detailed painting needed to get all of these image to seamlessly blend together, and for shadows to fall where they should, and for the creation of shadows and mixing shadows. But the end result is a really cool and iconic band picture.
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Here it is in color too before the final conversion to black and white. This color image could work for a lot of purposes when color is required, though in the black and white I did multi-tone it so that it grabs the eye even in b&w.
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I was also hired to shoot some concert images during the show later, and I’ll get to posting them soon too. But for as much time as these took to create, I wanted to post today about these these band photos and what really goes into sometimes just one or two commercial images.

There are lots of commercial needs for great photos, some that require almost no Photoshop and post-production and some (like these) that require a lot. My specialty is lighting and emotion and I’m on the Adobe software team training photographers all over the country on advanced clean and natural Photoshop techniques. So for all your commercial imaging needs, give me a call at 801-728-3317. Tell me what business you’re in and what you’d like and let’s make it happen. Let’s create some iconic images for your business that make you shine.

And until next time, America.

Great Smoky Mountains

I just got back from speaking to photographers at the Tennessee Professional Photographers convention outside of Knoxville. Before I flew out, a few of us got up at 5:00 am to drive to the top of the Smoky Mountains to photograph the sunrise. Because of the rain storm, the sun didn’t rise as expected, but I did get some great moody images.

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It was a beautiful morning, but I wasn’t prepared with gear for rain or scenics. I only had my sport coat and a small travel tripod. I used the rain cover for my camera bag for my head. I was happy to later see that one of the photographers with us, Al Gordon, shot this image of me. I really appreciate it because I never get images of myself working, and I like this image.Me-in-the-Smokys-700p

On the way down the mountain, the sky started to clear a little and we pulled over to get this series of mist and fog rising in the distance. Cox_SmokyMts-172-Pano-b Cox_SmokyMts-152-Pano

It was a great group in Tennessee, and I loved the area we were in. It was especially nice to get out and take these scenics before I ran off to the airport to fly home. Thanks to everyone who came to the event, and for everyone else, I will soon have these up on my art site, BryCoxART.com.

Until next time, America.