Blog — I Am Marco

I spent my day working on my final assignments for school. Locked up staring at my computer screen for hours. Luckily, I had already planned to go out for a drive to see the sunset up on Russian Ridge. By leaving a half hour before golden hour, I got to enjoy sun rays passing through the trees on my way up

Seeing this stretch of road nicely lit in combination with dust that was thrown up by passing cars led me to pull over. The bicyclists showed up as I was leaving, almost missed the shot too because of a car passing close to the same time.

The view from the top facing out towards the North Bay. Since I only brought telephoto lenses, the only way to capture the rays correctly was to do a stitched panoramic.

After sitting on one of the rocks and looking at the sunset, I couldn't let the light go to waist. I set up my tripod for a self-portrait. Taken with 20s timer, taking 9 shots with a .5s interval after the initial one. Of all the shots, I feel like this one really captured me taking in the view. 85mm for a good amount of compression, it was also the only portrait lens I brought with me.

And your cliche sunset photo to end the day.

Location:

Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve

In my opinion, one of the best parts of social media is the ability to connect with people that you would not have met otherwise. This past Sunday I met up with Dani and Ashleigh to do a photoshoot for Ashleigh's product line. This was my first time working with Ashleigh and the second time shooting with Dani.

I always like going into a shoot with one goal in mind to improve my photos. For this shoot, I had my mind on taking photos that would both show her products while keeping my artistic photo style. Also, I tried to offset Dani when I could to prevent all of my photos from having her in the center.

Dead space isn't always a bad thing, sometimes it allows your subject to breathe.

Quick snapshot in between moving location to a different part of the beach. Wish I would've gotten at least a couple of portraits of Ashleigh(on the right).

And a couple of behind the scenes shots taken by Ashleigh. Two things to note: I like to stay low and I like to use a messenger bag to switch lenses. I shoot with almost exclusively prime lenses, so I constantly move around or switch between lenses.