Steve Thornton Imagery

This Fashion Editorial style image was shot near LAX (Los Angeles Airport) and was part of a video project shot by a German crew on me. Every 2 years the world’s largest camera show is held in Cologne, Germany. About 180,000+ people attend from more than 160 countries. In the second largest venue (the largest was Canon’s) there was an event called the “Leading Photographers of the World” and the producer had invited 5 International photographers to speak covering a range of types of photography: wedding, fashion, advertising, rock & roll and on Saturday, swim wear & lingerie. I was invited to speak about Fashion. The reason the video crew was in LA to shoot me & my crew is the “Leading Photographers of the World” wanted to hand out DVD’s of all 5 photographers and have both an interview and how all of shot our work. They give the DVD’s to attendees of the venue after the photographers spoke, which was 3 times a day. There were thousands of DVD’s handed out and I have received e-mails from some of these people thanking me for sharing how I shoot.

The rest of the story is, I was in Milan, Italy and flew to LA via NYC to shoot this project & after a 28 hour day I finally got to bed in LA. My 2 checked bags missed the connection in NYC so I did not have all of my gear when we shot the first day. So we had to shoot a couple of shots the next day too and this image is from the second day.

Shot with a 16-35 Canon zoom lens, using a FourSquare lightweight softbox and a LightTools grid. The two strobes are Lumedyne 200 w.s. And both packs are set on the highest setting, 200, in order to overpower the sunlight. On some of these shots I also used a Sunbounce Mini reflector. Go here to see a larger image.

This fashion image was taken as part of a project for a fashion client in Colorado on a cold winter afternoon. This was the 5th set up of this session and even though was shot during the day, is illuminated primarily by strobe light. This allowed us to control the light direction, fall off and quality. By doing this we are able to deliver an engaging image that makes people stop & look, something important in branding of a single product or a wide range of products made or licensed under a common brand name.

Go here to see a larger version and read how this image was created.

If you would like to use this image, or any of my images for mock or comp use, please just ask. There is never a charge for this service. Any educational use is permitted without charge, unless published, but please ask first. All commercial use is available only with a limited copyright release prior to use from the copyright holder, Steve Thornton. Thanks for looking!

While I was in the Atlanta Airport’s International Concourse waiting to board a Delta plane to Milan, Italy, I got out my camera and started to shoot.The Atlanta airport, in addition to being the busiest airport in the world with 5 runways, is Delta Airlines home base. All the planes you see in this shot, including the 2 in the air taking off, are Delta planes. This image was shot with late afternoon light in the rain. I just waited until most of the clouds hiding the sun thined out a bit then waited for a Delta plane or two to take off. The wait for the clouds to get out of the way took a quite a while, waiting for a couple of Delta planes to take off did not take long at all. 

Go here to see a larger image.

If you would like to use this image, or any of my images for mock or comp use, please just ask. There is never a charge for this service. Any educational use is permitted without charge, unless published, but please ask first. All commercial use is available only with a limited copyright release prior to use from the copyright holder, Steve Thornton. Thanks for looking!

This fashion-body image was taken in a studio in Nashville, TN where we were shooting a series of images for a client. On every project my producer always keeps a watchful eye on the styling crew to make sure there are no delays and to help solve any problems that may come up. In doing this it insures that the work keeps flowing and as a result we were 30 minutes ahead of schedule. My producer had also structured a staggered model schedule to help hold down costs to the client, so I did not have the other models needed to keep shooting and lunch had not been delivered as yet.

I’m not normally a body at rest, so I asked the crew to grab some lighting gear and set it up in front of this wall. We balanced andadjusted the light and then asked Chris to pull off his shirt. Initially I was shooting with Chris standing but then decided to have him squat. My styling crew pulled a pair of boots and had him take off his running shoes and put the boots on. Because I wanted the boot to be not in such deep shadows, I had crew bring in a lighting addition to gently add fill light but not to the point of making it flat, but to just help it read a bit better. In 15 minutes and 45 shots later we were done.

Go here to see a larger image.

If you would like to use this image, or any of my images for mock or comp use, please just ask. There is never a charge for this service. Any educational use is permitted without charge, unless published, but please ask first. All commercial use is available only with a limited copyright release prior to use from the copyright holder, Steve Thornton. Thanks for looking!

This Cowboy Lifestyle image was shot on a ranch in Colorado for a client’s Christmas card. Click here to see it larger The real story here is not how I shot the photo, but what I had to do to get the photo, specifically the tree. I shot this image on January 31st so buying a good looking tree was out of the question. In looking at the ranch in this photo you can see there is not a tree in sight, other than the one being dragged behind the horse. I found out that the US Forest Service allows you to go and cut a tree for Christmas for a fee if you wanted. So I contacted the local forest service office and explained what I wanted and they approved the permit. I called another office that I was told to go to and the woman said "Yes I have your permit waiting here and we close at 4 pm".

So I drove to the office got the permit and drove to where it was suggested I go to locate an appropriate tree. I then got out the tree saw, put on my snow shoes and headed to the tree line, about 300-400 feet (60-90 meters) away. After 5 minutes trudging through the snow to get to the tree line, I spent an additional 15 minutes looking for the best tree that was not too small. I finally located the right one and cut it down. Up until now everything was going according to plan and I truly had not a clue what I was in for next.

I folded the tree saw back into it’s handle for safety, turned around and latched onto a branch of the tree and started to drag the tree out. It was at this precise point in time did I realize just what I was in for. Upon the first attempt to move the tree, it did not move. The sheer amount of all the needles and branches added up to a tremendous coefficient of drag. (A little physics term there). What this meant was I was going to have to really work hard to get this tree out. Now a little bit more information, this location is about 10,000 – 11,000 feet above sea level (3050-3350 meters) meaning what little air is left is a bit thin. So within the first 20 feet (7 meters) of really dragging this tree I am starting to huff and puff a bit. About half way back to the car (some 30 minutes after I started back) simply huffing and puffing would have been preferred because I’m now wheezing and honestly wondering if I’ll make it back to the car before dark…. if ever. I was also glad I was not needing to drag this "King of the Forest" up a hill.

I kept dragging the tree and when I got to gasping for breath I just fell back into the snow, closed my eyes and sucked in as much of the bitter cold oxygen starved atmosphere my poor lungs would tolerate. After an hour I finally was able to drag the tree back to the car. I took off my snow shoes and worked the tree into the back of my Ford Explorer. It was then apparent that the tree was 2 feet (60 cm) too long. So I closed the back hatch and opened the back window and drove back with the tree sticking out of the back window to the ranch with the heater on high. The things I do for an image.

When I was shooting this project the cowboy was complaining that the rope was painfully cutting into his leg and was surprised how much drag there was. You can see from the 3 foot wide (1 meter) scar violently scraped into the snow that the tree, with every fiber of it’s being, is still resisting being moved. I of course was not surprised in the least and after I finished shooting this got back on my horse and rode back to the barn thankful that I able to make it back alive, without spitting up blood and this job was finally over.

Gear: Canon professional digital camera, 16-35 mm Canon Zoom lens set at 16 mm, 1/100 sec, f5.6, 100 ISO and then processed using Photoshop CS5 Beta and using the Adobe RAW converter.

Note: When shooting in the snow, or just in extreme cold, take spare batteries. I have a Lightware GS6000 "Small flat stash" (don’t ask me who thinks up these names) where I put my spare batteries. I then, depending on how cold it is, put 1-4 chemical hand warmers in with the batteries. You can buy the hand warmers at Home Depot, ski shops, outdoor shops like REI, Cabela’s etc. This way the cameras will still work because the cold kills the charge in the batteries quickly.

If you would like to use this image, or any of my images for mock or comp use, please just ask. There is never a charge for this service. Any educational use is permitted without charge, unless published, but please ask first. All commercial use is available only with a limited copyright release prior to use from the copyright holder, Steve Thornton. Thanks for looking!