DIY Hotel Room

We walked in, looked around, and then looked at each other. And then we burst in laughter. It is still unclear to me why Hotel Nadia (Amsterdam) had such high reviews on TripAdvisor. The room was the smallest little thing we've ever seen, with DIY craftsmanship woodwork everywhere, super thin mattress with ridges you could feel all night long, a bathroom you could not turn 180 degrees once inside, and a floating mini fridge. What a treat!

How To Turn Geeks Into Models

Believe it or not, geeks make the best models. With a little direction, a promise to keep it short, and some amount of danger, the peoplez of the geek tribe can turn from engineers to models in a matter of seconds.

Trick One: Apply Pressure

As I was taking this photo, the guard was already telling us we need to leave. He was literally standing ten feet from the group, with his finger on the trigger (ok, this trigger thing is a complete dramatization, but you got my point). The guys from WibiData knew this shot was important and they really wanted to get this over with. The stress of the situation made them let go of their fear of posing and put them into "do or die" mode. It worked! They looked great, and I pressed the shutter the very second it happened.

Trick Two: Don't Forget The Third Dimension

Posing two people who are not romantically involved requires special skills. You want them stand close to one other, yet you don't want the result to look like an engagement photo.

If you stand the two subjects side by side facing the photographer, you can not get a good upper body crop. The cropped image would have two heads on the very far sides of the frame, with a big whitespace in the middle (which gets even bigger if the subjects have broad shoulders). You also can't ask your clients to "get cozier" - they need to be close, yet they need to keep a professional distance.

Perspective comes to the rescue!

When the 3D world gets projected onto the photograph, one dimension gets flattened -- the depth. By staggering your subjects, you can get their heads closer to one other in the 2D world while letting them keep a work appropriate distance in the 3D world. Don't forget to significantly narrow the aperture to keep both subjects in focus and you're ready to fire!

Trick Three: Rely Heavily On Your Software Friend

Geeks are great at synchronizing threads within a computer process, but not at synchronizing what they wear. If they don't wear matching colors, turn to your friend Photoshop. Your friend can also take care of the lack of makeup (which geeks rarely wear), dewrinkle their clothes, whiten their teeth, remove pizza stains and Star Wars logos from their shirts, and much much more.

Leave a comment if you have additional geek posing suggestions!

My Dog Went To Stanford

If you think your honor student is smarter than Fluffy, think again.

When Girls Hit The Town

When two ladies hit the town and bring a camera along, the results are predictable: they share a lipstick, they buy matching accessories, meet with friends, and pose for pictures. I had a lot of fun with Dana in Zilina, Slovakia last weekend, even though the weather was not nearly as nice as the weather in California. Coming back home to San Francisco felt like going on a tropical vacation... except I had to go to work the next day. :)

No Scrap Here!

I spent some quality time in London two weekends ago. Nat and Jon live in a warehouse along with twenty-five other people. Their life style is definitely picture-worthy: