One way to beat the heat in St. Louis is to take a dip in one of the many city fountains around. Oddly enough, we came across one that had been dyed a deep shade of red. I believe we were at Keiner Plaza with the 2010 Susan G. Komen St. Louis Race for the Cure®. Whatever the cause, the red dye made for some macabre images.

I love finding stuff unintentional art!

Walking to work also gives me a chance to shoot (when it’s not too cold). I generally don’t get out my SLR when I’m walking to work, but I use my iPhone a lot. I am loving this shot that I took this morning a scant 25 yards from my front door.

I love love love the visual of a blurred cab driving by. Not sure why exactly, maybe just my love of this city.

Lately I’ve been trying to grab concept and location shots on my iPhone when I don’t have my SLR, and I’ll try to share more of these. In general I’ve been grabbing shots that capture a mood, or feeling that I’d like to recreate in a more professional format at some point later. I had been hoping to do this with my G9, but have found that I’ve been having much more luck with the iPhone. Building a library of these concept or mood shots is on my list of things that I’m trying out for the new year as a foundation for upcoming personal projects.

With a little tweaking to contrast and saturation you can make the iPhone camera do some neat stuff. Once again, while gear is fun, it isn’t always necessary to have the best camera to get interesting shots.

On Monday I am going to be shooting a portrait of a partner in my firm for an upcoming publication. I have been given a photo brief from a designer in London which asks for black and white imagery, shot wide with dynamic backgrounds. The problem is that our office is exceedingly dull, and generally I get around that by shooting close and focusing on the individual rather than the office. This, clearly, is why so much of my photography taken in the building looks so similar. So this brief is exciting because it’s a chance for me to go outside of our office for a change. Unfortunately, because my subject will be squeezing in the shoot between meetings, I won’t be able to take her very far from the front door of our office in Times Square.

So this morning I went out and did some scouting for interesting backgrounds for the shots, using pedestrians and tourists as my “models”. After a half and hour or so I pretty much nailed down what I’m going to shoot on Monday. In the process I made some street photography that is working for me today. These were all shot with my favorite lens that I don’t get to use often, my 135mm prime. I love love love this lens and wish I could shoot with it all the time.

Sigh. After a while I got comfortable and was able to give some coherent instructions, but without having a goal in mind on the spur of the moment I feel like I should have had been able to do more. Considering that I almost never work with models in this capacity I assume that practice makes perfect. I have to say that working with models is excellent, and after working with real people all the time it’s nice for a change to shoot people who do this for a living and are able to give you something good, no matter how twitchy your instructions are.

Model: Vanessa Rubio

Model: Autumn Stein

I had a great time though, looking forward to more time in the studio. If you want to see more, I put all the images from that session on Flickr.