notes from the range
what I've been working on & what I've learned
Hi everyone, trying something new today - here’s an odds-n-ends breakdown of what I’ve been up to the first few months of the year. I’ve never done one of these, but I’m inspired by Heather Loegering’s diary series. Let’s hit it:
🧱What I’ve been working on
🔊Shot a project for Mackie speakers
I got the opportunity to shoot stills on a recent video production for Mackie, a loudspeaker company based in the Pacific Northwest. It was really fun, and by far the biggest production I’ve ever been on. Big thanks to Cory for the opportunity to join the team. Here’s what I learned:
Working with a real, actual gaffer/lighting tech was a real eye opener. For my whole career (coming up on ten years) I’ve run all my own lighting, so I’ve never experienced working a person whose job on set is lighting asking me “so what do you want the lighting to look like?” It showed me that another skillset one’s gotta learn if we want to be able to work on sets like that is clear communication of what we want the aesthetic to look like, where we need more light, etc. I’m so used to just fiddling with lights until I get it how I want it. This was different. But cool.
Product photography is hard. I respect the heck out of people who specialize in this. Flipping through images and making selects I had no clue whether I’d done a good job or not. And I bet there are product photographers out there that have it so dialed in, but feel more uncertain when it comes to people.
Live view/tethering for the client on set was useful. We had an iPad wirelessly synced up to my camera so that the client could see exactly how the photos were coming in as I was taking them, so they were able to give me feedback along the way, think “can you make sure you get a wider shot of that?” Capture One is the primary way pros do this, but at least for Sony, there’s an iPad app that makes syncing wirelessly pretty seamless.
💡This lighting gig for Aputure
For this project, I wanted to try to do my familiar lighting tutorial format, but use some of the budget to make it better - so we booked out a really cool auto mechanic’s shop, brought a bunch of lights, and hired a couple really talented video guys, Andy and Brian (tagged above).
The more I experiment with continuous light, the more I like it. This particular shot, I wanted to recreate the glowing briefcase scene from Pulp Fiction, but scale it up to car-sized, so the trunk’s where the mysterious light source is. It’s fun making the vision come to life.
📚A big portfolio refresh
I was long overdue on getting my portfolio updated with everything I shot in 2025. Felt good to get it all dialed back in. The two biggest things I changed, and one I still need to:
✅ Rebuilt my ‘work’ section to show all the commercial projects I’ve shot, even if they were spec shoots. I want clients to be able to go to one place to see what I can do.
✅ Created a new ‘range’ section that groups by theme, I.e. denim, western, etc. The goal here is, if somebody from a jeans brand turns up, they can see all the relevant work I’ve shot in one place.
🚧 Still need to cut down some of the images on the front page. I feel I may be putting too much out there.
🎥testing live webinars
This was a total experiment, I wanted to see - would people want to take time out of a Sunday to join a livestream? I’ve run two so far:
They certainly weren’t perfect, but we had ~25 people for both, here’s two things I learned:
This format plays. I was super happy that many people joined, stuck around, and asked good questions. I don’t know how often, but this is something I want to do more of.
Stream delays: When I stream thru Riverside.fm, it seems like YouTube is always about 60 seconds behind. I’m not really sure how to mitigate that gap, but I want to.
If you attended either and have any feedback, or you just want to recommend a topic for a future webinar, reply to this email, I read every one.
🧑🏫My first live workshop
Holy smokes, this was so cool. I got to partner up with Glazer’s, the primo camera shop in Seattle, and give people a crash course in how I shoot portraits with flash. We had photographers with tons of experience (Eric Tra showed up!) as well as folks that were newer to the craft.
What was so fun about it was seeing it click for people. Flash can be a little intimidating, so a lot of photographers shy away from it. But once you get the hang of it, man, it feels like a cheat code for more interesting images.
I’m not sure what the future pipeline looks like for IRL events like this, but in general I am supremely bullish on it and I hope to do more of it.
📝Breaking down recent posts
Simple setup here, big continuous LED light source above Bailey’s head. This studio’s really unique, it’s got several lights mounted on the ceiling, which isn’t super common but you can get a similar aesthetic with a single light on a C-stand, above your subject’s head and pointed down. If you go that route, make sure you use several sandbags - safety first.
Same studio, another simple setup: Two continuous lights, with fresnels as the modifiers, pointed at Emily. One on my left, one on my right, so there’s minimal shadows. What I think is interesting here, and I’ll use this setup again, is how well it mimicked natural light at golden hour if you get your color temperature right.
Tried and true flash setup, tutorial here. One off-camera flash, triggered wirelessly, held in my left hand at about a foot or two above eye level. Nothing fancy.
🎬Videos you might’ve missed
An infinitely scalable strategy for creative improvement
Four books that might help anyone going through a rough patch
Cool fashion work I bookmarked this week
Is film expensive?
And lastly - behind every great beach shoot:
🤝Last 2 things
1. I’ve got my top 3 presets I use every day for sale here
2. I’m seeing if a couple people are interested in 1:1 consulting calls, reply to this email if interested
Y’all have a good one,
Garrett
