UPDATE 12.10: The final prints have been made and hung in the clients home. I’ll add a photo below of the main print, which ended up being a 70in framed heirloom canvas. The two other scenes were both made as 36in heirloom canvas for other areas of the house.

What a great looking family. And they did a great job as this was no easy task. I just had the privilege of making a portrait of all forty two of them. I won’t say it was easy, but I good a hearty challenge. The planning started well in advance, meeting with Mr & Mrs Chamberlain and then visiting their farm various times to layout and plan the portraits. I even chatted with a few of my mentor photo elders before photo day, discussing options and getting ideas. When the time came, I didn’t even have an assistant, but planning ahead made things come together almost perfectly.

I love a sunset portrait, but this is not a sunset and I still love it. Much of the family was coming from out of town for the weekend and due to schedules sunset simply didn’t happen. We planned for the light we expected to have and made it work using appropriate fill light in the foreground to balance the scene. After processing, the result was this beautiful portrait made round 9:30AM, followed by a few smaller ones to complement it.

I thrilled and thankful to God for the results. Mr & Mrs Chamberlain were in today to make these final choices and I’ve started the printing and framing process, preparing these for their wall. I’m eager (as I’m sure they are) to get these on finished and hung. You can click any image for a larger view. Enjoy… Gav

by Gavin Seim: Midnight Seattle is an HDR photo I made of the Seattle Skyline. It went to the PPA International Print Competition this year and was awarded a Loan Collection merit. For those not familiar with PPA, this is a good thing. I’m told it will be be published in the international Loan collection book as well showing at Imaging USA 2011. This is the first year I’ve entered at nationals. I must confess, making the Loan Collection was really on my wish list. While this is the only of my four prints that merited, I’m still a happy, thankful camper. For those interested in HDR, check out my up coming HDR workshop on the Seim Effects site.

- Click here to see the full gallery with all cars -

by Gavin Seim: I was asked by the organizers of the first annual Soap Lake Box Derby to come down Saturday and make photos. The city closed down the main street so that the many kids (and some adults too) could race these stunning little coasting cars down the hill. They call this soap box racing, but these cars are anything but mere boxes. They put a lot of work and craftsmanship into making these rides and they had a lot of fun racing them. Their hope is to make it an annual event.

These are a few favorites, but there’s many more. You can click the link above to view photos view every car and driver where you can find your friends and family and even order prints.

Facebook Photos: A web copy is free if you order any print. We’ll make up a nice web version and post it to the Facebook page, so you can easily share your photo with family an friends. Just email Gavin once you order. We’ll make them up and get them posted for you.

Stars of Coldest Night.

Amber Waves of Beer.

The Coming Darkness.

Here are my four State competition entries. It’s been a load of work, and yes I know I’m into black and white this year. The challenge with competition is analyzing your images in depth, attempting to determine how they’ll merit not only on an impact level but on a technical level. Choosing and prepping can be as hard as actually taking the photo. State and national competition judges are fussy, to put it mildly.

Just to explain the format you see here. In State and International competition you can only enter up to 4 prints in a year. They have to be on a 16×20 print, so if the image is not that size, you use the remainder of the canvas like a border (as you see here). Prints are judged by a panel of I believe four. You can watch from the audience, but they don’t know who made the image. They score from 1-100 (more about scoring elements here). 70′s is an average pro image. If you get in the 80′s it’s getting really good, and the 90′s is phenomenal. Occasionally someone makes a 99-100, though it’s not common. A 100 would be a perfect image (though I’m not sure there’s any such thing).

I’ll be talking about this more on the next Pro Photo Show podcast. I’ll see how these score. Then I’ll take the ones that do best (replacing any of they score low) and send them to the PPA International competition. Whether I win or not does not matter… Wait who am I kidding, I want these to take home every possible award and be better than anyone! Seriously though no matter where you place in competition, it’s a healthy exercise that forces you to challenge your skills. Whether I Do great or just OK, I gained more experience… Gav

My wife and I were recently on our way back from Vancouver where I had been teaching a Lightroom workshop. We ended up getting to the top of Snoqualmie Pass around nine or ten in the evening. There were wispy clouds, a nearly full moon and the lights from the ski slops reflecting off the peaks. It was incredible. I stopped and spent about an hour working with different angles and compositions.

It was amazing because while there were clouds, beautiful stars (a little hard to see on your computer screen) and a great moon. A combination that’s not always easy to get up here in the mountains. Here’s some of the results. My favorite is this first one, a panorama of the two peaks that I’m calling Whispering Peaks. Chances are it will make the cut form my Signature Canvas collection in the future and will probably be going to competition as well. You can click any image for the larger version. Let me know what you think… Gav

Our new baby girl is here. Ariana was born at Holy Family Spokane on Friday the 27th at around 11PM and my wife Sondra did a great job. So did the attendants at the hospital. There were some concerns during the pregnancy which is why we ended up in the hospital instead of at the local midwife birthing center where we wanted to be. She was just 5lb 9oz, but long for her weight at 22 inches. Baby and mommy are healthy though and that’s enough for me. I’m thanking God.

It was fast. Much faster than I expected. Crazy story though. We headed to Spokane and I was doing 10mph over on the nearly empty interstate 90 and got stopped by a State trooper. I’m thinking “no officer would be a jerk enough to give us a bad time when my wife’s sitting next to me having contractions and we’re trying to the to the hospital” I was wrong. He was totally a jerk, gave us a bad time and held us there nearly ten minutes. Finally he let us go, walking off in a huff and saying we may get a ticket in the mail.

Anyways off we went to Spokane and Ariana came about 90 minutes after we arrived there. Sondra was not even fully checked in. Even as fast as she came, turns out Ariana was in a less common position that made the birth slower than normal. We were told that had she been in the more common position we probably would delivered on the way to the hospital. Now I confess was not very patient with the officer who held us up, but had that baby come in the car it would have been worse. His boss would have gotten quite a phone call from me.

Here some photos I’ve grabbed over the past week and a little video of Ariana & Cy (our 20 mos old). He’s been a little jealous since mom is so taken up by the new one. I’m trying to make sure I give him plenty of attention though and overall is doing great with her. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers along the way to this baby… Gavin

Sondra is looking dang good for having has a baby fifteen minutes ago.

]]> http://seimstudios.com/ariana-marie-seim/12/05/2009/feed/ 9 http://seimstudios.com/welcome-to-the-new-seim-studios/11/18/2009/ http://seimstudios.com/welcome-to-the-new-seim-studios/11/18/2009/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:14:06 +0000 Gavin Seim http://seimstudios.com/?p=407

If you’re reading this you’ve found the new site. I’m happy to announce the launch of the fresh Seim Studios portal. It’s been a long time coming.

Seim Studios is now the portal for all Gavin’s photography and projects. There’s still lots of other sites, bit you can get to everything from right here at seimstudios.com.  Posts and content from the old Seim Photography blog have also been migrated here and from now on this is the place for general news and updates on my projects.

Of course there will still be separate blogs related to my other sites. All those are listed on the hompage.

Here’s to the future… Gav