Thursday night the after party was held at a brand new night club called The Reserve, which is built in the vault of the original Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve. While these 2 days were exhausting, I had the opportunity to get to shmooze with tons of event planners, caterers, environment designers and other industry "movers & shakers". I was also given kudos by having my name plastered all over the convention's promotional materials. Check out Bizbash's Facebook album from the event and let me know what you think...

Both Amir and his daughter are extremely photogenic and were pleasure to take pictures with. Amir’s experience as a fashion model really made the gig a lot more fun and we quickly achieved the images we were aiming for. Below you can see shots from both of our shoots, as well as the billboards that he produced from them. 

A fairly tall guy with a great big smile and a super positive attitude, Steve was thrilled to have to eat not one, but two scoops of strawberry ice cream for his lunch that day. As president of The Next Level, Steve helps big companies hire and train their sales force and sales managers. A very impressive guy who was happy to do something a little different than the usual corporate cover shot. Looking forward to more strawberry ice cream soon!

Happy Valentines Day!

If this is any indication of what's to come in 2014, bring it on!

Joe's mission for United Capital is that it should be a company known for doing consistently reliable work- "as reliable as Starbucks coffee"- but the funny part is that Joe doesn't even like to drink coffee! Here are a few of my favorite shots from our brief time together:

Lucky for me Stanley was quite photogenic and provided me with many good shots to choose from. Here's a couple that I thought stood out.

As you can see below, the post-production of the shoot required quite a bit of retouching. The pictures below show a couple of images that I combined in Photoshop to produce the final image for each bottle.

While keeping my camera completely still on my Bogen tripod, I first shot an image with good detail in the bottle itself, than I exposed for good detailed in the label and the cork. I also took additional exposures for the background, and I also retouched out the various other reflections in the bottles. Finally, I combined all the images and smoothed it all out to look photo-realistic. What do you think?

If you want to order either of these great wines, please click on the images below, and it will take you to the corresponding Shira Wine product page. And if you need your products shot, make sure to give me a call!

Directing photography while trying to be a guest at Noah and Jenn's wedding was more of a challenge than I had thought it would be. However, the images came out amazing (thanks to my incredible team of shooters who were backing me up, as well as my incredibly photogenic subjects) and their album came out great too.

It's now been a little bit over a year since their wedding, and they just had a beautiful baby boy. Scroll all the way down to see some super cute shots from the 3rd floor of Cedars-Sinai. Mazel Tov and Happy Valentine's Day, Jenn and Noah!

 Mazel Tov and Happy Valentines Day, Jenn and Noah!

On the way home I almost ran out of gas (something I haven't done since high school) and I had to stop at Camp Pendleton and plea for the guards to let me onto their army base to fill my tank. True, I was only a civilian, and I should not have been allowed into their base, however they were nice enough to not force me to run dry and have to call a tow truck, with no other gas stations for another 20 miles.

Last month (10 years later!) I was contacted by Curtis Clarkson, CMYK's Editor-in-Chief, asking me to be a judge on a panel that would critique the work of other emerging photographers. You can see my critique in CMYK Magazine #54. My job was to view and judge over 100 commercial images, give advice to up-and-coming photographers on what to do (and not do) when creating images, and to share some insights on how to succeed in launching their careers as commercial photographers.

They also wrote up a pretty bio on me as well, which you can check out HERE.

We were lucky that security at the hospital didn't stop us from taking pictures around the exterior of the hospital, however as soon as we tried going in, our shoot was ended rather quickly. We then went back to his lake-front home and got a few more great images inside his home office. The colorful images of brain scans on his big computer monitor added alot to my pictures as well.

Last winter I went with my brother's family, and our parents to the Rocking Horse Ranch, in upstate New York. At the ranch, there was arts crafts, all the yummy kosher food you could eat, a huge indoor swimming pool and a ton of snow skiing and horseback riding. The kids loved it and I did too. Looking forward to going back again someday soon (once I hit the jackpot).

Growing up in Los Angeles I never really experienced winter. In my storybooks, I would see pictures of kids playing in the fall leaves and frolicking in the winter snow. I remember thinking that "those pictures were of people that drove hours up into the mountains for leaves and snow, but no one actually lives in places like that."

Last winter I went with my brother's family, and our parents to the Rocking Horse Ranch, in upstate New York. At the ranch, there was arts crafts, all the yummy kosher food you could eat, a huge indoor swimming pool and a ton of snow skiing and horseback riding. The kids loved it and I did too. Looking forward to going back again someday soon (once I hit the jackpot).

I had a great time doing the shoot for the event. Some highlights from the shoot were Dov Rosenblatt on the guitar, and some great speakers.

I really enjoyed Laura’s “No Regret” story. Laura Krafft told us about the time that she decided not heed a police officer who wanted to pull her over. Driving her dad's Porsche, Laura went on to weave her way, in and out of Downtown LA traffic, then pulled into a garage where she slammed the garage door shut and hid for a half hour, until the coast was clear.

To see more pics from the event, check out YALA's Facebook page.

Nick has written extensively on e-discovery, the other place in the law besides patent litigation where technology plays a major role. Nick's articles have appeared in the ABA's Electronic Discovery & Digital Evidence Journal and in Law Technology News, among others.

The concept of the shoot was to try to show Nick's involvement in legal research via cloud computing, and I thought that the LACMA light garden would give Nick's corporate demeanor a sort of a sort of technological twist and more surreal backdrop.  As we were shooting I also started playing with the blur of a long exposure in conjunction with the the immediacy of my portable strobe softbox.

Here are two of the iPhone shots that I took of my niece running around at the LACMA light garden. In low light surroundings, if you follow an object that's in motion, according to your camera, the object will appear to stay still while the background blurs.

One of the highlights of the day was a visit from Michael Salem, who came to celebrate his 104^th birthday with us. Michael claims that his secret to longevity is red wine and ballroom dancing. We were more than a bit nervous as the cake they brought Michael actually had 105 candles (104+1 for good luck) burning on it!

A proud father of three, and a super nice guy, Cam was more than happy to help me create some pretty interesting images for the shoot... I was glad I brought my own step stool, since Cam towers above me by a full foot!  Scroll down a bit and you'll see how the Jacaranda trees, in full bloom, provided for us a breathtaking purple canopy backdrop just outside Cam's office on 3rd Street....

During the shoot, not only did I have the whole venue myself, but I was also able to bring my own lighting equipment and lighten up the whole place with my own touch. It was pretty cool to recreate the whole vibe of the House of Blues to suit the needs of my pics.

Kathy’s warm and down to earth nature was not what you’d expect from a woman who's the CFO of such a well renowned venue. It was a great experience resulting in some great pics. Read more about Kathy here.

One of the frequent sponsors of tech co founder events is Big Man Bakes. The founder of Big Man Bakes is as “A 6 foot 5 inch linebacker-looking dude, who does this delicate baking thing that will leave you scratching your head & asking "Did the Big Fella really make this?!" Needless to say, the cupcakes are always a hit at the events.

The presentation was composed of six moderators, whom are all successful leaders in their field. They spoke about how they overcame challenges along the way, and they inspired others in their quest to do the same. Four people presented their recent ideas and the moderators gave creative critiques on how they can improve.

For those of you not familiar with the Slacker, Slacker is a brand that offers subscribers a personalized radio station, similar to Pandora, that works with artists and DJ's to bring you really original playlists for your stations. The main difference between Pandora and Slacker is that Pandora generates their playlists in a more generic techie type of style and Slacker works more closely with the artists themselves to ensure the best listening experience for their subscribers. Check their Web site for more info, or to create your own station!

Here's the Facebook link to more Slacker pics from the partay.

Tami Kupetz Stapf, David Stapf, and Jeff Nagler were the honorees at the dinner and there was a special musical performance was provided John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting.

Also of note were the super photogenic Sasha Strauss and the whole marketing team from Innovation Protocol.

One more thing, if your an iPhone junky like me, check out this sweet app, ShockMyPic, that I used to touch up a pic of Jordan.

The subjects were all fabulous personalities to work with (especially Dave McMahon and his huge smile). The shots came out great and Pepperdine's Marketing department was thrilled. Click on the links below for more info on these accomplished faculty members.

http://bschool.pepperdine.edu/faculty/spotlight/joetta-forsyth.htm

http://bschool.pepperdine.edu/faculty/spotlight/paul-gift.htm

http://bschool.pepperdine.edu/faculty/spotlight/dave-mcmahon.htm

Driving down to New Port Beach at 5:00 in the morning, I knew that I wouldn’t have much time with him. My assistant and I got down there by 6:00 (the sun was still barley up), we were set for the shoot by 7:00 and by 7:20 we were already packing up to leave.

While Mohamed was a relatively nice guy with a good sense of humor, it’s always a rough way to start off a shoot when your celebrity talent says “I hate photo shoots. You have no more than 20 minutes of my time, so let’s hurry up and get this over with.” Needless to say, we quickly zoomed thru our 4 lighting setups and Mohamed was pleased at how “painless” our shoot was. His personal assistant even told me later that week the he actually liked the way he looked in our photographs!

Now, if I can only figure out how to focus in on just a tiny piece of that PIMCO bond portfolio…

To view more pictures of this event please check out the JBusinessNetwork.

If you want to check out more images from this shoot, you can see them on Flickr.

http://www.researchmag.com/Issues/2010/January-1-2010/PublishingImages/RaphaelLapinWeb.gif

http://conflict-management.net

The Negotiation Specialist - Raphael Lapin

You can see the article and read about Mr. Lawson on the Research Magazine website. Check out the links below!

http://www.researchmag.com/Issues/2010/July-1-2010/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.researchmag.com/Issues/2010/July-1-2010/Pages/Portrait-of-a-Branch-Manager.aspx

You can read Judy's article online at Off My Noodle.