Another wildly successful and totally exhausting workshop at Paul’s Junkyard is now in the books. A blast was had by all, but sleep is still at a premium. The heavily customized “Max Malini” TV prop RV lit like crazy. Lime and purple-gelled flashlights on the interior, red-gelled flashlight from outside. Interesting how the puckers in […]

Tacos from the Dark Side
Dennis Valente serving from a torched, blown up movie prop catering truck during a workshop at Paul’s Junkyard. It was truly nasty inside this thing, filthy, stinky and loaded with sharp edges ready to disembowel you in the pitch darkness. It’s great to work with people willing to put themselves in difficult positions like this […]

Pauly the Muscle
This is Paul, the owner of Paul’s Junkyard near Lancaster CA. He’s in front of a movie-prop 1948 Packard, one of a group of ’40s cars shot up for the movie “Gangster Squad” to be released later this summer. This was done before moonrise–without any added lighting it would have just been a black silhouette. […]

The Lizard King Checks His Blind Spot
Portrait week continues with Ron Pinkerton, behind the wheel of a movie prop RV at Paul’s Junkyard. Ron was an excellent model, he could sit perfectly still in an awkward position like this for days. He’s like a lizard on a rock in the sun. Combined with all his Doors references, coming up with this […]

Satori in Taurus
While teaching last April’s workshop at Paul’s Junkyard I enjoyed making light painted time exposures of all the students. It lets me make certain to have some good one-on-one time with everyone and they really get to see how I work, first hand. I’ll be putting a few favorites online this week. Here’s Tom Bennett meditating under […]

Fall 2012 Paul’s Junkyard Night Photography Workshop
Yes, it’s true: Joe Reifer and I are holding another night photography and light painting workshop this fall! 3 days and nights of learning and shooting in our intensive and ridiculously fun format, totally unlike any other night photography workshop. September 28-30. Tuition is $900. Registration is now open. We opened it to our priority registration […]

The Final Stop
The subway cars at Paul’s Junkyard. September 2011. A spot for you just opened up for the April workshop in this amazing junkyard.

No One Escapes The Claw
This rusty armored car circles the drain at Paul’s Junkyard. Shortly after this was taken it succumbed to the claw and shredder. Yellow-gelled LED on the claw and red-gelled strobe inside the vehicle. Lots of flashlight on the exposed engine too. 202-second exposure, long enough to get some nice movement in the clouds. We had […]

Night Portraits
During the alumni October workshop at Paul’s last year I did portraits of the students in the junkyard. Here’s my favorite five. Shooting people with hand held and continuous source lights is tough because most humans can’t sit still long enough and end up blurry. But with some experimentation and compromise I was able to […]

Count Olaf’s Eyes
Here’s the Lemony Snickett movie prop Chrysler Imperial limo again. This custom dashboard is utterly unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a junkyard before. This was an intensely complex set up. Because the passenger area is huge in a limo I had plenty of room to set the tripod up there and point the camera over […]