Mar 10

Mar 10 Photos: When Creatives Take A Roadtrip To A Desert Ghost Town

We just got back from WPPI and it was probably the best one yet. It was a particularly great trip because of the company we kept throughout! In particular, SmugMug and Flickr did something really special. They had an initiative to take a group of creatives and head out to Nelson, which is basically a cool little ghost town an hour outside of Vegas. I was fortunate to get invited! Thank you to Tina, Emily, and Alastair (tagged below) in inviting us out and putting this together!

We got together and took off in a few cars and met there. We had a group of amazing models as well as the ability to photograph each other! The landscape made for a great backdrop! When we got there, I was instantly inspired to take photos. People headed off in each direction after the initial briefing to see what they could make of the scene. The weather was perfect and the inspiration was flowing.

Here are some of my photos from the day below. At the bottom I get a little nerdy and talk about gear, processing and color grading for those who are curious. I didn’t expect to blog about it otherwise I would have taken more photos of the whole scene! But look it up online and you’ll see how cool it is.

Thank you to Flickr and SmugMug for putting this together! I can safely we say we all had a great time! I can’t wait till next year to do it again and make it even bigger, no pressure or anything.

After taking this shot of Michael, I realize it was the perfect spot for portraits so naturally, everyone wanted bus shots :D!

I was inspired by my wife Bella Kotak (SmugMug ambassador as well) and decided to throw Brandi in a little floral scene which honestly didn’t look like much in person. But bokeh to the rescue!

And it’s a wrap! We decided to wrap up and head home. However, on the way back I saw a really great scene and decided to pull over to get some landscape shots. I think everyone had the same idea and pulled over with me. We all jumped out like little ants with cameras from an ant hill and started capturing the last moments of sunlight!

CAMERA DETAILS, PROCESSING, AND COLOR GRADING

I always get asked about color grading so I wanted to give you a quick insight into how these were done.

I shot these with the Canon EOS R with the 50 1.2. I processed them in Capture One and the colors were pretty good as is. The photos on the the left are with basic exposure adjustments and some contrast tweaks. I then ran it through Infinite Color are retouching. I only had to spend a couple of minutes on each to really get what I wanted. The photos on the right are with a light round of Infinite Color. I didn’t go too far because they didn’t need much considering how beautiful the files were out of the camera. Feel free to click on them to make them larger.