I had my second year photographing the Wanderlust Festival as it came to NYC. This year it was in Brooklyn at Prospect Park. It was a day filled with fitness, fun and education. The yoga classes were amazing and so were all the teachers and special guest speakers. Jake Laub, the photo director for the festival, tasked me with covering the 5K run. It was the first year they were doing a mini marathon run and they wanted some good images to help promote it. Luckily I had my 70-200 f2.8 lens with me to get some good photo coverage. It was a lot of fun and I loved the happiness and smiles on all the people as they started the run as well as towards the end. Take a look at some of what I captured.

-Stew-

Yoga In The Park at the 2013 Wanderlust Festival in NYC

I had the pleasure to experience the and photograph the participants at the Wanderlust festival this year on the west side of Manhattan. There were so many yoga enthusiasts and practitioners that attended. There were several large class groups through out the day. Some people came for one class while others attended all of the classes.

I have photographed yoga in a studio setting many times. It is easy to concentrate on one person and get the pose and form correct. But being in an outdoor setting with so many people was very different. The challenge was great. It was nice to see my skills and way of seeing applied well to this photographic situation. I was happy with the results. Even taking 300+ photos I had a good 100 that I felt were very strong. I picked my shots and kept the surroundings in mind the entire time I was there.

Overall it was a great experience. The people at Wanderlust were great. They accommodated me and got me a bracelet/press pass so I could walk around move freely. I also gotta say the free samples of food and drink from the vendors was pretty fantastic too. Sadly I was so busy I only got to enjoy that part towards the end of the 6 hour shoot day.

Here are some of the shots from that day. =)

-S

Hello again. Or should I say hello to the first time on the new revamped website. There have been many changes since the last time. For one this blog is new. It will allow me to better keep people updated on what I am doing and learning. The website has some new portfolio galleries as well as expanded portfolio galleries. I have been shooting so much more in the last year and have really expanded what I have been doing.

Right of the bat you will notice the website address has changed a bit. The word "the" has been removed from the old "The House of Indulgence". This is basically due to the web domain becoming free. I guess the old burning man group the used to own the name for their camp burned out and faded away.

My concentration on Fitness and Lingerie photography are still strong. I have been photographing more yoga images as well as athletes. Some great opportunities to photograph professional wrestlers and boxers allowed me to explore some new territory with my camera. Plus to bring those athletes into my world of lighting and seeing. The lingerie work I have been doing is more set driven and more mood based. The clean catalog look is still a favorite of mine but being able to work with the model and create an intimate setting with sculpted light really gets me going. I am very proud of the newer work I have created.

The signature dark, moody light sculpted images are all over my work. I did pull some specifically to their own gallery. Sometimes a project does not allow to be driven by sculpted light alone. So I chose to make a gallery that was strictly filled with images that reflect my dark lighting look. I find it funny that I use more lights to create this look than any other. Film Noir is a big influence on me and I have studied how they use several lights to illuminate specific areas of a scene to create the mood they desire.

Another new portfolio has been the "Photoshop Composite" gallery. This is a gallery I am really excited about. I have been using my new found skills to create some killer images that I totally love! Back when I was in art school I always wanted to be a book cover illustrator. It is in my blood. I have done photo shoots for DVD movie cases and printed novels before. This is the first time I have put several images together into a final composited image. It has been really great to flex my old art school illustration skills and put together a "painting" with photo elements.

Take some time and cruise through the galleries and see what is new. It has been quite the experience to review my catalog of photos and pick the best of the best. New clients and new jobs have allowed me to really build my work and collaborate on some great new photos. Every assignment allows me to learn and grow by working with my client and bringing their vision to life. I am a firm believer that we are the sum of the people we meet. Luckily for me I have met and worked wit some really awesome people.

-S

I went to the Ben Willmore's Photographic Artistry with Adobe Photoshop full day seminar recently. Wow! That seminar was pretty awesome! Now there were plenty of things that I had learned over time reading the NAPP magazine but this seminar brought a lot of it together for me. It was great to see all the different techniques that Ben uses when putting several elements together into one single composited image. It was nice to get confirmation and validation on techniques that I was currently using. The new techniques for some of his methods were pretty cool. Ben showed how to accomplish some tasks in a quick and easy way. The best part was being given a booklet with all the information so I did not have to take lots of notes.

I would totally recommend this class to anyone who uses Photoshop or is a graphic designer. The class was worth every cent and really opens you mind to new possibilities and ideas.

-S