Holy moly, the El Bulli menu at Next was … elegant? Unreal? Experiential? Theatrical? Grand? Let’s go with grand. I’m not usually one to pull my camera out and do the “LOOK AT WHAT I ATE” Instagrams, but in this case, it was totally worth it.

Click the gallery!

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Next: El Bulli

Next: El Bulli

The trick here is the same as in most low-light instances. Figure out where your available light is coming from, and since your depth of field is going to be about a nanomillihypertinymeter, figure out what your focus point is. This serves us well in several of the dishes, to highlight the main focus of the plating, but if you look at the chocolate option, I chose to make the gold leaf the focus and I probably ought to have zeroed in on the wispy chocolate bits or the mousse or the brownie. (Lesson two, gang: don’t be afraid to post your mistakes. Not a catastrophe, but if I had it to do all over again, I’d do it a little differently. I wanted to eat the chocolate, though.)

Wherein our hero makes it look like Spring without the attendant temperature.

A quick update, before I dash off to The Improv Play: in the interest of getting a more formal/variation on the family portrait, we went back out with Jess, Anthony, and Quentin, and the light was as good as you could ever want it. Of course, it was about 45 degrees and breezy, which nearly sent me airborne when I was using my zipdisk diffuser, but whatever, that’s boring Inside Baseball stuff. You want to see a good-looking family, don’t you?

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Quentin Outside

Quentin Outside

Weddings? Engagements? Senior Portraits? Pets? Headshots? Oh Boy, Do I.

SO! I was going to try to tie this into Opening Day, but my connections were tenuous at best. (“John really hit a ‘home run’ with his fiancee Jen!” [stabs self in face]). In any event, the Cubs are the Cubs, the Sox are the Sox, Hawk Harrelson is complaining about umpires &c., and Spring is allegedly here in chicago.

Oh, there we go – there’s our connection. Spring may be here in Chicago, but for a Spring engagement session, it’s chilly and windy as all get-out. However! John and Jen were troopers of the highest order, and though they’re Houston-bound for their wedding, their first Official Date was at Pizzeria Uno, and John’s time at Northwestern meant that there was a lot of Chicago in their … courtship? Do people still say courtship? Whatever.

I like the Pritzker Pavilion for the obvious reasons – metal, lines, drama, what-have-you – but also, John’s a musician, so, hey: music! We also wandered over to the Bean, and the Art Institute, and had the wind cut through us like nobody’s business. They also wanted to get a shot with the skyline behind them. I said to them, “Let’s do a nighttime skyline!” and they thought this was delightful.

There was a 1200-mile-per-hour wind off the lake by the Planetarium.

Seriously. My tripod wasn’t keeping the camera remotely steady. So, the long panorama Chicago Skyline wasn’t going to work. What to do? Elevate, and find a wind break. Down the block we went, put the hazard lights on, clambered over to the Shedd, and got this:

The skyline even does some nice Bokeh-y stuff. Not bad for the conditions.

As long as we were out, we also managed the Kinzie Bridge Drama Shots. (Click on the photo for more samples from this shoot.)

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John And Jen Engagement – April 2012

John And Jen Engagement – April 2012

Congrats, you crazy kids, you.

Quentin Roberts – Age One-Third of One Year

The greatest thing I’ve purchased for photography in the last year or so wasn’t a lens or flash or gadget, but was, in fact the low-profile softbox that I got on sale from Calumet. It. Is. Delightful. And came in handy in the somewhat tighter quarters of my office on Leland. Great for babies! Turn your strobe down low, and let the pretty light be pretty.

Click this adorable baby to see more highlights from Quentin’s shoot.

Anthony and Jess were kind enough to park it on the floor for part of the shoot. It is – to be certain – adorable. Now we just have to figure out where to put the wheelie walls and doors.