Ryan Phillips Blog

A few weekends ago I headed up to San Francisco to shoot Avnish and Sheila’s engagement session in my former home town. It was an amazing trip and these two were fantastic on camera! First off though I’d like to give some props to my new Audi A3 turbo diesel. Coming from the largest SUV on the road at 11mpg anything would be amazing but my new whip at 45mpg got us to San Francisco on about $36 of gas! Alright now onto some pics. We had a perfect day considering that it was winter in San Fran. These guys just ooze style so we had a stellar shoot!

Finally….the wedding pics of San Francisco Giants Pitcher Dan Runzler’s wedding to Sports Reporter Michelle Phalen. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to blog! It was a beautiful winter day in Palm Springs and the Miramonte is an amazing venue to get married at. We had a killer engagement session the day before in the desert and were still excited to shoot the next day. They had a great crew with them and the whole weekend was so much fun.

Love these guys! We had so much fun in Santa Monica from getting kicked out of the Huntley to shooting on a giant chicken car, we pretty much covered all the bases in a standard Ryan Phillips shoot. Enjoy!

Here are a few shots from a recent family shoot for baseball star Todd Ziele and olympic gymnast Julianne. McNamara (first ever American gymnast to earn perfect 10.0 at the Olympics)… They are all about the kids so per usual refrained from being in the pics. We headed down to Garrett’s studio to shoot a few pics.Their kids are all suprememly talented from sports to music. Their son Garrett is opening for Stone Temple Pilots this summer- keep an eye out for this one. Lastly, Their youngest one can do a running jump into a headstand freeze – hurt my neck just looking at it! (see below)

So there has been a lot of press lately about the Gretzky card vs the Kardashian card so I thought I would lay it all to rest. For starters the Toronto Star report is accurate for the most part. The photo was not some “leaked photo” Paulina was simply sharing her family photo with friends and followers. They are all very close and despite her “bad-girl” persona, she is very down to earth and very close with her family. People love to create a scandal out of nothing.

So here is the real photo / the photo as it is manipulated for the holiday card ( i.e the snow) / the gate-fold cover of the dog / and the alternate shot that we didn’t use. Almost every shot I took has the family laughing and smiling and having a good time however the concept of the card was to have their dog Louie on the front and open to a Burberry Ad-esque (moody) shot of the family with snow. It was meant for a close friends and family and the obvious A-List celebs that they are associated with. It does not go out to that many people and wasn’t meant for public consumption. Every year we do a different concept and have a lot of fun with it. Shoots like these are fairly common in L.A. although this was a full commercial production in order to pull off the concept.

For you Photo Geeks out there, it was shot with a Canon Mark 1D and a 50mm 1.2. The front side is lit with a 43 inch Mola Dish on a Profoto D4 pack. The top light is a 1×3 Profoto strip light with crates attached to another Profoto D4 pack. The alternate shot was lit with 2 heads with stock 7 inch reflectors on them but we added tough spun to the front to soften it up. I shot across the pool but had I had more “ground” to work with would have added the 43 inch Mola to the front side for fill. There were a few other lights behind the couches to light up the background.

A big thanks to my close friend Mike Hedden for helping me pull it all off! 

The Final Image

The Final Image for The Card

The Alternate Image That Wasn’t Used

Louie – The Best Dog I have Ever Photographed, Even Their Dog Knows How To Work It!

Paulina

Trevor

There are fabulous couples and then there is Lisa and Kemper. Besides the fact they are overly intelligent Type A’s with amazing careers, they ooze style, have wicked senses of humor — and they’re extremely fun to shoot! They are the type of couple you would want to hate for being so perfect but their best traits are that they are insanely nice, warm and deeply in love with each other. I thought I was in for a casual shoot at Griffith Park Observatory, when, at the last minute, the park was shut down due to wind damage and we needed a Plan B. Plan B? There was no Plan B! After scrambling for alternate locations, I found out Kemper had a “beach house” in Malibu that we could use.

I wish I had video of the scene, but it was straight out of a movie. Beach house doesn’t really describe this amazing place over the water in Malibu. I had a few minutes to look around before they arrived, and we were running out of daylight fast! I walk outside and see Kemper and Lisa pull up in her Porsche. Lisa steps out with a half drained bottle of Roderer, mountains of fab designer clothing, and a stylist from Vogue, who will from hereon be referred to as “The Geoffrey.” The Geoffrey does many of the top people including Anna Wintour herself. I could get very used to shooting with The Geoffrey. I would have killed for more than the hour of daylight we had left and 5 more outfit changes, but it was not to be. We chased the light all over property as best (and fast) as we could and walked away with some stellar shots! I also got to see my first real “MTV Moon Man” which was located next to a case full of Emmys (which I have seen before, but never that many in one place). I am looking forward to their wedding at The Reserve Club in Palm Desert this summer — it is sure to be spectacular. For now, enjoy some pics….

Malibu Gothic vs. American Gothic

I love working in Hidden Hills, the light is amazing and the properties are so unique for this area! I had such a good time with the Hainer family! Everyone was ready to shoot…even the horses! OK, well not everyone, it took some time to warm Anders up since I was taking him away from his beer and his game but he was a good sport… although totally intimidating. World Champion downhill skier…check. World champion race car driver… check…. AND did I mention he manufacturers all the clothing for Under Armour. Total stud…I pitty the poor slobs who come to court his daughters

We have another shoot scheduled with all 8 horses and the dogs, I’ll let you know how that one works out…

The Kolbe family is another one I haven’t seen in a few years and one of my favorites to shoot! However it started off rough when my star performer Lauren who is all over my portfolio basically gave me a lot of what you see in the first picture. It took a while to get her warmed up but she still made the A-Team. Her brothers were easy…but the 2 dogs, 2 horses and angry donkey were another story. I am still pretty sure the donkey was trying to kill me…

It was a fantastic shoot and as you can see….out of control fun!

I haven’t shot the Goren’s in a few years and it was amazing too see how much the kids have grown up. They both got gold stars for behavior! Coupled with perfect light on a private estate in Malibu it doesn’t get much better…

I just got back from Palm Springs shooting the engagement and wedding of San Francisco Giants pitcher Dan Runzler to Sports Reporter Michelle Phalen. We started off with a killer engagement session in the desert. Here are just a few pics from that but more to come when I get to them in a week or two. The next day we shot their wedding which was so awesome to watch. I love destination weddings when you have a tight group of old friends and everyone is so involved in the wedding weekend. It was 4 amazing days AND I got to shoot with one of my closest friends the extremely talented Mike Hedden from Evoke Photography who helped me out. Stay tuned…