Ryan Phillips Blog

My clients ask me this all the time so I thought I would share my favorite apps for the iPhone.

If you buy only one app for your iPhone BUY THIS ONE! CAMERA+
Do not just type in camera plus…it is actually camera+ and the other one is not the same thing. Once you get it, hide the factory iPhone app and use this.

A few notes…

• Make sure you adjust the settings to save to your camera roll.
• Lots of people buy this app but don’t know how to use it. Plant two fingers on the screen. One is exposure and one is focus. Set the focus where you want it and then move the exposure icon to the part of the photo that gives you the best result.
• This will solve all your backlit dark photo problems!

You will wonder why apple hasn’t bought this and installed it as the native camera app.

Shake It Photo takes amazing images in the daytime…but not great at night unless the lighting is right. It has a  polaroid look and shape. Just make sure you adjust the settings to save to camera roll WITH ORIGINAL that way you can always go back.

KitCam allows you to change lenses, film, borders and some other general settings to take more artistic photos. However, please undrstand it is not a one button process, there is work involved to getting a good shot. Hipstamatic is also really cool!

PhotoForge2 is a great app for editing your photos. The first tab is the best as you can change , exposure, clarity, levels, curves and a host of other things easily. You can see the change right there so you don’t actually have to know how to use them like you would in photoshop. Just click and drag around a little. The other thing is you can send straight to a postcard. They send out an amazingly well printed thick photo card right from your phone via the post office. We send them out all the time while on vacation. It’s nice to see real prints and not just another file you store on your computer – rare to be seen.

Lastly, For editing you can also try the immensely popular Snapseed.

Video:
8mm:This produces wonderful old school super 8 looking movies and does it very well! I personally like the 1960′s era.

Action Movie: This is really an app for 12 year old boys…but still fun for everyone.

Slo Motion: We have had lots of fun in our house playing in the pool with the cousins and shooting slo motion jump scenes.

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

A few weeks ago I was up in Bend, Oregon shooting a few weddings. The kids gave me a rare 15 minutes one night after dinner where they behaved for pictures.
(and yes by “behaved” I mean that I straight up bribed them. See bribe pic at bottom)

Bribes = Good Behavior for Pictures:

Wow it’s been a long time since I blogged. I have been so busy with PurePhoto that I have been neglecting my blog and I love to blog…so I’m back! I have a great engagement shoot coming soon of Shannon and Alex in Portland. But for now, a really cool post by my man Tim Ferris about how he made his killer book commercial.

The Trailer

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

Making of:

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

I received a great and unexpected email this week that I was being featured on Global Black Book! This has a great and long back-story but I’ll try to sum it up quickly. For a few years, I have worked for the top luxury concierge services in Los Angeles. In laymans terms that means I shot whatever they need for some fo the wealthiest people in the world. The average net-worth of these types of clients is $300 million so basically you get called to all sorts of crazy things…and you can’t tell anyone about it! One of the main concierge services I worked with was Mint Lifestyle. It was started by Gordon MacGeachy and his brother and was recently sold to a larger  concierge service. Gordon went on to produce the highly respected publication A Rare World which is distributed in the worlds leading luxury hotels. In an effort to reach a wider audience he joined Denise Moreno and started Global Black Book. The focus of GBB is to bring all the trade secrets they gleaned from years in the Luxury Concierge and Travel Industry directly to you!

To think about it in another way, Gordon has been all over the world several times and stayed in the most exoctic locations. That doesn’t necessarily mean most expensive, it means that he searches out the coolest places on the planet and gives you the insider tips on how to get on in that location. It was not uncommon for someone to call him and ask for the impossible like to have dinner at the top of the Louvre Museum in Paris with the director or plan a 4 week Safari for a family with only a 48hour notice. As Gordon says ” In this business you learn to react quickly! You need the best agents, vendors, locations and secrets in the world at your finger tips. I have learned a lot over the years and want to make it available to a broader audience than the just the world’s elite.”

globalblackbook is dedicated to being your source for insider travel and lifestyle introductions worldwide. Each piece of information keeps you one-step ahead about where to stay, how to get there, what to do once you arrive, and who you need to know no matter where you are! To learn more about the Founders click here. To start catching up on the inside track click here…

We are working closely with globalblackbook to bring our artists into the homes of their readers. Stay tuned in 2011 for more news on that…

Now on to me

Read the whole story here… “Who’s the guy behind the camera and why should you care…”

James Evans is a well known artist who primarily covers Southwest and Americana imagery in West Texas. I came across his work recently and saw some neat images. I also remembered that I had photographed him when I was in Marathon Texas about 5 or 6 years ago. It is an intense portrait of him shot outside his home early in the morning. Here is that shot…and some of James’ work…

More of it here:

Wow, where have the last 10 years gone? I posted this a few years ago but thought I would share it again with some new additions. Ten years ago today, I proposed to Carrie in San Francisco. Since then we have built a monster of a business, travelled the world together, lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Bend, Oregon. Oh…. and managed to produce two amazing kids…It has been an amazing ride!

8 years ago today I proposed to Carrie…

The scene of the crime… (Bix restaurant in San Francisco)

I proposed in a small cobblestone alley outside the restaurant in North Beach…

I knew she was the one when the 5’9 – 118 pounder ordered the…

By chance they seated us under a 60×80 framed picture. We bought the small version. It described us perfectly!

Afterwards at the Bubble Lounge we had a little celebration…

Later that night her roommate snapped a shot of us… (it was the first time we told anyone we met online…)

Carrie,
Thank you for 8 wonderful years and two amazing children. We have built an amazing life together and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. I love you!
-Ry

And while we are at it why not some gratuitous family pictures of the little beasts that we produced

I found this on my hard drive and almost forgot I even took it. My last night before Carrie and I moved back from Oregon we put the kids to bed and walked outside to find one of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever seen anywhere in the world. The sky looked like it was on fire. All my gear was packed, all I had was my Canon G11 point and shoot. I have a ton of shoots of the whole scene but this is my favorite. No trees, mountains, land etc, just pure sky. It feels like a painting and lets my mind drift back to where it was taken and how I felt. Hopefully you find it as fascinating and enjoy it as much as I do.

I am going to start posting some of my favorite photographers each week. These are masters of their craft in every way. These are the people who have inspired me through out my career. It goes beyond their stunning images and into presentation, client list, marketing and all around sense of purpose in their work. Look closely at the technical perfection. This is why they work on the biggest campaigns in the world and why their client list hires them over and over. To produce a great shot is easy. To produce a thousand great shots year after year is the real art of being a professional photographer! These photographers have their share of bad days, family problems, technical issues. It is the true professional who excels despite adversity. Whether a bride, a multi-national corporation an A-list Ad agency, the job has to be perfect and the client doesn’t accept excuses. The life of Pro Photographer can be very stressful at times but the rewards you reap outwiegh the stress. I am not going to showcase their images here, I want you to visit their sites, see how they present their work and study it. If you want to get better, they are the best in their field for a reason. Figure out why! This week’s Photographer has been a source of inspiration for me for many years. His lighting, creativity and style have propelled him from the life of a professional skateboarder and surfer to be one of the hottest photographers in Los Angeles. I am particular drawn to his editorial work but all of it is great. His editorial and advertising work has been featured in publications such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Malibu, Blackbook, and many others. He is the driving force behind the creative vision of Malibu Magazine, a loving husband, environmentalist, mentor and father of two.