Compelling Portraits I love shooting all types of photography but I have a special place in my heart for making compelling portraits of kids. When I take a portrait, kids or adults, I like to include a few serious faces, even if the client doesn’t request it. Especially with kids, I like to see serious…
Headshot of Pittsburgh Photographer, Timothy Cox I was shooting the other day at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh’s Highland Park area and Tim was nice enough to help out. One of reasons it’s nice to have an assistant, besides helping to lug all the heavy equipment, is because I need a stand in model for lighting…
Food Photography for the Duquesne Club I shot a location food photography project this morning for the Duquesne Club. They needed a fall setting for the recipe shot that was going into a magazine, so I brought along a rustic barn wood background and the client showed up with some autumn-colored props. The shot worked…
Executive Portraits – How I Get The Perfect Expression Every Time I normally write these blog posts with the potential client in mind, but I think if you’re a photographer, you can learn something here too. First off, let me say that these are raw, not color correct, un-retouched portraits from a recent executive portrait…
The Best Camera For Food Photography! I have to admit, I’m kind of excited about my new food photography camera. I often see on forums or Facebook pages, people asking “so what’s the best food photography camera available?” I’ve always had an opinion about the answer to the question, but just recently, my answer has…
Pittsburgh Corporate Portraits In this age of social media, content marketing, and hyper competition, every Pittsburgh executive should have several quality corporate portraits on hand for their marketing or networking needs. Headshots may be needed for webpages, social media profiles, press releases, magazine articles, annual reports, corporate brochures, and dozens of other potential uses. Here…
A Trick For Finding The Best Food Photographer In Pittsburgh If you find yourself in need of a food photographer and you have never hired one before, I have a little trick that will make your job a little easier. Your first thought will probably go to google and type in “Pittsburgh food photographer” or…
Commercial Photography Shoot for Western PA Conservancy Shooting the photographs for the Conservancy’s photo library We actually shot this photo a few years ago and I just received a PDF file from the client the other day. The original shoot was done to create a “picture library” that the client could pull from as needed,…
Restaurant Photographer What type of photography do restaurants need? Food Photography – Every restaurant, at one time or another will need to shoot their food. If it’s a fancy restaurant and doesn’t have any photography on their menus, sooner or later they’ll need food photos for an ad or a billboard. Still Life – If…
Pittsburgh Art Director Portraits While I still love food photography, I always yearn for more variety in my life and that’s why I like doing head shots so much. Life is was too short to do only one type of photography, so I really enjoy mixing it up a bit… This is a photo from…
Portraits from Beach Week 2015 The truth is, I really don’t like the beach, and that’s putting it mildly. I just don’t get it. You sit around roasting, burning and coating your body with slimy stuff, that in the future, will probably prove to be some kind of cancer-causing agent. I hate it. So why…
Food Photography of Ice Cream Cones I did a food photography shoot recently for Joy Cone Company, located near Pittsburgh Pa. Great people! We shot a bunch of boring stuff (outlined cone shots for the packages) and then we did a bunch of illustrative food photography for the sides and backs of the product packages. …
Environmental Portrait for Wood Shop News Magazine This is an environmental portrait of Pittsburgh Furniture designer Bruce Berman. I was asked to photograph Bruce for Wood Shop News, a national trade publication. This portrait was taken with a Nikon D800 and a 24-70mm 2.8 lens using just on speedlight shot into an umbrella. The shutter…
Shooting Model and Actor Headshots While I don’t shoot Weddings or Family Portraits, other than freebees for family and close friends, I do on occasion shoot model and actor headshots. And I have to tell you, I really enjoy the variety. Shooting food photography, industrial photography, and other types of commercial photography is always fun…
Photographers Giving Back Here’s a link to an interview article I did with Fstoppers:
Business Location Portraits – Different ways of doing the same thing… Here are two different ways of doing location business portraits. Option one is to shoot everyone in the same location. The advantages of this are time and money, which are pretty much the same thing. Moving from place to place to set up the…
Photography Marketing Masters Interview Podcast of yours truly… Here’s a podcast interview of yours truly. It covers: How Michael got started as a professional food photographer… Having different niches but marketing them separately… Why the best marketers win the business… The importance of good SEO… The differences between advertising and editorial food photography… The qualities…
Food Photography Shoot of Ham Here’s a photo from lat week’s food shoot. The photo itself is amazingly exciting, but at the same time, I really like it. I think that the composition is almost flawless, the lighting rocks, the food styling is exceptional, and the napkin fold is to die for… I have this…
Pittsburgh Headshot Photography Technique There’s a technique that I just recently started to use when doing my headshot photography, and I think it’s made a word of difference. Sometimes you know right off the bat if the your subject needs or wants a particular expression. Maybe the shot is for a purpose where the subject…
Photographers in Pittsburgh Photographers in Pittsburgh, especially commercial photographers, need to be generalists. I’m not saying that all photographers need to shoot weddings, but chances are that they need to be able to photograph food, industrial equipment, architectural buildings and interiors, products, and most of all, commercial portraits. Basically, photographers in Pittsburgh need to be…