Joseph Franger, 1923-2007

I am so sad to share the news that my grandfather Joseph Franger passed away of a heart attack on Friday night. He had his 84th birthday earlier this month. Grandpa Joe was an incredible man, so loving to his family and everyone around him.

A lot of my friends are going to be sad to hear this news, because every time without fail, when my friends would spend any amount of time with my Grandparents they would go on and on about how cool and wonderful they are. I couldn't agree more!

I am so happy to say though that he had a wonderful long life and over 50 years of marriage to my Grandmother Ruth. They raised 4 great kids who are all married and have kids of their own.

Grandpa Joe loved photography and was one of my biggest fans. He was always so supportive in pursuing my dreams to be a photographer. Without my Grandparents encouragement and support throughout all my school and college years I wouldn't be where I am today. I know my Grandpa used to enjoy following my blog, and he even left a comment once. :)

My Grandma has always enjoyed checking my blog too... So Grandma I'd just like to say I love you and thank you for all you've done for me.

I had the wonderful privilege of photographing my Grandparents a few years ago for an assignment at Brooks called "Studio Couple". The portrait of my Grandpa above was after I finished the shoot and I had 2 frames left on the roll in my Contax 645 camera. So I snapped off 2 frames of Grandpa and this is what I got. I love this portrait of him.

And here are just a few more favorites-

battleships are sweet

This huge battleship has been cruising around off the coast by our place for the past couple weeks. I think it's awesome because I can actually see it from our bedroom balcony. It's fun to wake up in the morning and open the blinds to the sight of a battleship putzing around in the ocean.

nerd alert

My wife Bethany is definitely going to roll her eyes at me and tell me I'm a super nerd for this blog post. So with that said, I am a self admitted super nerd.

On to the point- I just discovered that if you Google "coolest photographers" this blog comes up on the first page as the 5th result! So does that mean I'm the fifth coolest photographer according to Google? Haha. Actually it totally doesn't because the only reason it comes up is because I mentioned in a previous blog post about how I went out to lunch with two really cool photographers!

So that is Blaine's super nerd random fact of the week.

a couple shots from tonight

I have been inside working on a lot of not so fun business stuff recently... so I've really been itchin to get outside and just shoot. It's a bummer that for every minute of shooting there is 20 minutes of business to take care of! But even with that photography is still the best job in the world!

Anyway, one of the most common questions I get asked is this- "How much photoshop do you do to your pictures to make them look so vibrant?"

Well, I spend about 1 minute per image optimizing the color in Adobe Camera Raw on pictures that I post on my blog. For photos that are being published or sent to my stock agency, I spend a bit more time on them.

The 1 minute I spend on the image does make quite a visual difference, but the BIG SECRET to getting photos full of color and vibrancy is the TIME OF DAY! For the type of shooting I do, the time of day and quality of light makes the biggest difference, a whole lot more than anything photoshop can do! If you shoot the wrong time of day, it's basically impossible to make the photo look as great as it would if you shot it at the right time. Sometimes the best time is sunrise, sometimes it's sunset, night with a full moon, night with no moon, and sometimes it's at noon with the sun directly overhead. It is totally dependent on your image and the look you are trying to achieve.

During the 6 or so years I've been taking photos, I've found that my favorite time to shoot for maximum colors is about 30 minutes after the sun dips below the horizon. The colors may be very faint and barely visible, but with the right conditions the blue in the sky will be more vibrant than any other time of day.

Here are a couple photos I took this evening that are a perfect example of that prefect time of day thing.




If your interested in reading more about this, a photographer named Ken Rockwell published a page on his site with example photos an explanation of what's going on. Check it out.

cool dogs

I love these kind of dogs... the owner said one is a German Shorthair and I forgot what the brown one is. One day I will have a couple of these and the camera will never stop clicking.

snuggleing on valentines day

I was in Malibu with Jeffrey on shoot during Valentines Day... We were shooting on the famous Malibu pier when looked down and saw this, I thought it was kinda funny so I snapped a couple photos.

Sorry the blog posts have been so minimal recently... I've been keeping really busy assisting a bunch of different photographers on some really cool shoots. My good friend Peter has been shooting/directing a music video for the band Future of Forestry, it's going to be super amazing when it's done. We've been shooting on and off for the past 2 weeks, and just finished all the shooting today. I set up my camera and did a 2 day long sequence (almost 7,000 photos!) of us shooting in the studio... similar to the one I did at lake powell, check it out HERE. I'll post the new one soon.

I also recently worked with a super cool photographer from Portland named Steve Bonini, check out his site HERE

And for those of you who are hoping for some new pics... Sorry it's not going to happen for a bit because I'm going out of town Tues-Fri with photographer Jeffrey Brown to help on some really cool shoots.

So since there aren't any pics in this post, it would be a great time to check out these photographers sites, because they are all really cool!

Peter Dawson
Steve Bonini
Jeffrey Brown

And of course you can always check out me! Blaine Franger

introducing cowboy the dingo dog!

This is cowboy, my buddy Taylor's parents new puppy. Cowboy is such a sweet dog, he lives out in the country and has tons of room to run around and be a dingo dog. Even though his name is cowboy, I kept on calling him Turbo, Rockstar, and Dingo. Haha.

I shot pictures of him only for a few minutes because he almost ate my camera lens and then my battery died, but I did get a couple fun photos of him.

power lines

I don't shoot abstracts very often... but I did shoot this one recently on a little photo outing and it's kinda cool looking.

email problems

Hey everyone, my email decided to freak out big time yesterday, so if you sent an email to blaine [@] blainefranger.com yesterday or today I didn't get it. If it's important, then re-send it and I'll get it this time. Thanks!

Blaine

bethany likes her...

new Holga camera.

lobster diving with Uncle Andy

"are you posting a new blog?
say yes
i'm dying here man"

My friend Lorenzo is quoted above... he was getting antsy about me not posting for a week, so I figured it was about time I post some new photos.

A couple nights ago, after a long 13 hour day of work, I went out scuba diving from 1AM till sunrise. It's always a treat to get out there and hunt for lobster, scallops, octopus, and a thousand other underwater sea creatures that are curious what the large, loud, awkward looking, swimming thing with a really bright light is (that would be me, underwater in all my scuba-gear).
It's always nice to bring home some fresh lobster and scallops to cook up for dinner, but it's even better when I come back with a couple nice photos too.