Vacationing Tarantulas

Senorita goes diva on me and ends our shoot

So... A couple of weeks back I'm in Vegas for two days, assisting on 2 shoots with a couple of UFC guys for an "unnamed" magazine's cover. We show up the day before the shoots go down to scope out one of the locations (The photog had never shot at that gym before). That night me and the other assistant head out to a restaurant down the street from our hotel for some grub. Anyway, to make a short story long, on the way back my fellow assistant noticed a strange object in the parking lot a few feet away. The moment I turned my head to take a gander at what my bewildered companion was pointing at, said object began climbing up the curb it was sitting on! Now, I'm not a big fan of spiders, but I'm no sissy either. I don't "freak out" If some little 8-legged-insect-muncher runs across the wall in my bedroom, I just squash 'em and go on about my business. But, this has to be the biggest spider I've ever seen (in the wild anyway). It was huge! The thing was about as big as my hand.

Needless to say, I ran across the parking lot to grab my camera from the hotel. I'd neglected to bring it because I figured "nothing interesting could possibly happen between our hotel and the restaurant; good call on that one James.

Now, with camera in hand, I headed back to the parking lot across the street. I was quite sure that the "moment" had passed and that the giant monstrosity I'd so lovingly named "Senorita Hairy Legs" would be long gone by now. Well, after scanning the parking lot for about 20 mins. I turned to walk back to my hotel and caught something moving with my peripheral vision. Low and behold, there she was just a few yards away near a curb at the edge of the parking lot. I quickly moved into position and snapped off a few shots before the little bugger got irritated and ended our portrait session. She abruptly told me the shoot was over and that I'd need to contact her publicist if, for any reason, I wanted to re-shoot. Diva.

The Moral: Never go anywhere without a camera... EVER!

Her good side

Where I found her

"We're done here, I'm heading home"

Tarantulas like to vacation in Vegas for a little debauchery and glamour just as much as people do... who knew?!

Web Updates, Cool Assisting Gigs... Busy Summer

I've been pretty busy since my last post, so I figured I'd do a quick update to let the few of you who actually read this thing know what I've been up to lately.

First off, I've just added two new galleries on my website. "Salton Sea" and "Scratch".

The Salton Sea gallery is pretty self explanatory; it's a series of shots I took during a camping trip out there last year. The first and last images in that portfolio are each light paintings that I shot the last night I was there. They're pretty sweet if I do say so myself, so hit the website and check 'em out! Alright, now that I'm done stroking my ego... back to the business at hand.

Outtake 1

Outtake 2

This lucky little fella made the cut, so you can find him and all of his hommies at www.jamesfarrally.com

The portfolio titled "Scratch" is a little less obvious, but I think it's a pretty cool title that makes sense the moment the first image appears. It's a collection of photos I've taken of DJs during live shows along with a few images of the clubbers gettin' down. I'm pretty stoked with how it all came together, especially how well the gallery flows. Any thoughts or differing opinions are always welcome, so check it out and don't hesitate to get in touch and share your thoughts.

DJ Islas works his magic at Boulevard 3

Scratch Table Phones

Costumed clubbin' for a Halloween party at The Abbey

It's all in the hands... DJ Steve Aoki

This is for those nice Mac folks who don't know what color to paint the apple on their fancy little computers. DJ Guillermo Arce


So... What next? I think I'm going to work on a gallery of images from the live shows I've shot over the last couple of years. Below are a couple of shots I'm considering for this portfolio.

Halifax guitarist, Chris Brandt, on stage at the Key Club

Scott Ellis works the Drums for She Wants Revenge at the Avalon

Aside from all the work I've been putting into updating my website, I've also been assisting all summer. Since I left my regular day job in the spring, I've been scrambling to keep the cash flowing. It's a little unnerving to take that leap into freelancing without any assurances or guarantees that you'll be able to work enough each week to feed and clothe yourself. I've been pretty fortunate so far this summer by staying busy enough to keep my bills paid. One of the benefits of freelance work is the potential to land a pretty sweet gig every now and again. One specific shoot I'd like to share is a fashion gig I assisted on a few weeks back. The photog was shooting several editorials and a campaign launch for a large Make-Up designer, whose new line will be featured in Target stores in North America and Australia. We shot for 4 days in Palm Springs at some really suave joints, one of which was the former residence of Frank Sinatra! That's right ladies and gentlemen, I've chilled out on a couch... in the same room where "Ol' Bue Eyes" used to work his mojo! We did a few shots with the recent winner of Australia's Next Top Model at this really swanky pad. This is also where we shot the launch party on Saturday night. It was a really fun and interesting event, as well as a great learning experience too!

Speaking of assisting, lately I've had a few people ask me about how I go about getting hired as an assistant. So, when I've got a little more time, I think I'll dedicate an entire post to some of the methods and resources I've used to get work since going (back) to freelancing this last spring.

Til next time!

Website Update!

Hola folks!

I'm pleased to announce that I've just completed the first of several updates to my website.

www.jamesfarrally.com

I completely revamped the "Uncle Sam's Archive" portfolio. I used Adobe's Lightroom to retool some of the existing images and also added quite a few new ones to the mix. Personally, as far as post-production quality and image selection is concerned, I think the new gallery is a lot better than the older ones. Now all I need to do is fine tune the presentation order and this one will be done... at least for now! I'm so obsessive about my photography that I'm sure I'll want to "improve" these same images again in another year or so. In a world where your tools are continuously being upgraded, it's easy to get caught up constantly reworking old projects instead of letting go and moving on to something new!

Speaking of upgraded tools, Adobe has just released Lightroom 2.0, which can be purchased directly from their website for $299 ($99 to upgrade from version 1.4.1). So naturally, I now have to start all over again with my navy gallery and rework all the images I just uploaded... Naaaht! (Say it like Borat)

All jokes aside, the new version does look like a pretty sweet upgrade with some nice improvements over the first one. I'm especially interested in the ability to make localized adjustments, think Burning & Dodging.


Another interesting new feature is the ability to work with images archived across multiple drives/discs without the need to load what ever device they happen to be stored on.

Very cool stuff indeed!
More info available here.

But I digress; so, now that I've updated the Navy gallery on my site, which one should I start on next...

Lifestyle?

or Trash?

Okay, so maybe I don't actually have a whole portfolio of "trash" shots, but I do have a pretty extensive collection of neglected, uninhabited, and ignored spaces in my archive. The pictures from my Salton Sea trip come to mind. I'm also considering galleries for my Portraits, Music, and Personal work as well as a possible travel portfolio. I'm torn because I don't want to put too many galleries on the site, but I have a lot of images in a wide variety of areas that I'd like to show.

Ugh, decisions, decisions... Thoughts or opinions anyone?