Behind the Scenes: Las Vegas Creative Photography Workshop Part 1

Part 1

Joshua Malik Photography 

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Our Workshop Group Photo!

At the end of July I eagerly counted the days until arrived in Las Vegas, to attend Jenna Martin and Joshua Malik's creative photography workshop. On the plane's decent to sin city, I witnessed one of the most beautiful views I had ever seen. The sun was setting and the colors of everything were so vibrant. I couldn't believe it. This is the reason why I love having a window seat when I fly. 

When I arrived at the hotel, the lobby smelled of chorine; only to find out later it was because Joshua and Jenna had taken advantage of the hotel's 24 hour indoor pool, shooting some awesome underwater photos. I was so excited to see Jenna again and to finally meet Josh in person. After getting settled for the night, we finally caught up for a bit and went over what they would be covered for the first day of the workshop. 

The next morning we gathered for breakfast.  Jenna walked over and showed me one of the beautiful things I had ever seen; DIY waffle machine. Easy to say there was almost always a line, but man, they were delicious! 

After breakfast and meeting everyone, we formally started off the workshop with some presentations from Jenna and Joshua about their work, what inspires them, and some behind the scenes deconstructions of their images. When we finished, we did a portfolio review of everyones work and did a photo exercise involving various props to choose from. 

Though it was the end of July, we had such great luck with the weather. We were lucky enough to be shooting on the coolest day of the month and the skies were partly cloudy for a nice overcast. We packed up our gear and headed over to our shooting location. 

Everyone I met at the workshop were so friendly, and I loved how we excitedly shared our concepts and helped one an other on different ideas to shoot. 

As we traveled through the desert and mountains, we finally arrived at our destination; an old abandoned gold mine on the property of an old western town and gas station. All across the property were rusted vintage cars, buses, trailers, an old water tower, barns, and a crashed plane. I remember seeing the plane before in the workshop advertisements and I was pretty excited to use it for a shoot. I just had to! 

We signed in at the museum/giftshop filled with an abundance of more amazing things. We gathered our gear, and Joshua and Jenna each did a photo demo for everyone, while I modeled for their shoots. As much as I enjoy being behind the camera, I think I equally enjoy being in front of one as well when I'm portraying a character. Something about making where you are a stage and the ability to communicate a story contained within the camera is such an amazing process that I love experiencing; though sometimes it does come with its challenging moments. 

After the photo demos, I explored more of the area on the property, going inside buses, finding a kayak with Joshua, modeling for some of the other workshoppers too. When  the sun had fallen behind the mountain, we thought it would give us some more time to shoot in some overcast light, but to my surprise it continued to grow darker, so I scrambled over to the airplane to shoot the concept I had floating in my head. By the time I finished, I couldn't see much detail on the back of my camera screen, but my histogram said that enough information was their for me to work with. We gathered all together after I finished shooting my expansion shots to shoot a group photo of us on the plane. 

As we were loading our gear back into our cars, I looked up after someone pointed out they saw a shooting star, and I saw the Milky Way for the first time in my life. The sky was clear, and the stars shined so brightly (Such a different sight from what I'm used to in Philly). At the last minute, we came up with the idea to shoot some long exposures of the stars in the background of the plane. 

I was pretty excited to do this, because I had never shot the stars before and this had to be one of the best locations to give it a try. We experimented with lighting the plane with flash lights and iPhones, trying different settings on our cameras. I had pulled out some smoke bombs I had brought with me that I picked up on a road trip. I set them off behind the plane and made the location come to life, at least for a few seconds. 

Behind the Scenes: Expelling the Opposed

It was an other beautiful day out in Philadelphia, and my two photo pals came up to visit the area for a fun photo adventure. Earlier in the day I was reading through my notebook, looking at ideas and finding inspiration on what kind of concept I wanted to shoot. I was looking through some of my old work and came across one of my fabric photographs. There is just something I love when I use fabric in my work and I was instantly inspired to do another shoot like. that. 

My friends Tom and Marisa made their way up to Philly this time for our photo adventure, and I knew just the right magical place for us, in Wissahickon Valley Park, right outside of the city. My friend and our model for that day, Steph, was luckily off from work that day and everything seemed just to fall into place. 

This park is one of my favorite places in my area. Long trails, rivers, huge rocks, so many great spots to shoot at! It wasn't too hot that day, but the water felt so refreshing. When we reached our location in the park, Tom and Marisa took turns doing their shoots and I paced around to focus on the idea I wanted to execute and where exactly I was going to set up my camera. An image popped into my head from the movie The Haunting in Connecticut and I knew what I wanted. 

Back in June, I was on a road trip across the mid-west, exploring abandoned buildings. While stopped in Cleveland, I came across smoke bombs that were really cheap. I was really excited and bought a few boxes. I've never used smoke bombs before shooting, so this was something I was pretty eager to try. Since I only shot architectural during that trip, this was my first opportunity to try them out. 

We did a few test shoots with Steph before getting in the water. Once I got a chance to figure the timing with how they work, I planted three or four behind Steph, that I had Marisa ignite for me across the river.

After about 10-15 minutes in the water modeling in the dress, Steph looked over and it started disintegrating in the water! It starting tearing up and falling apart in a lot of places. None of us expected that or had even ever seen that happen before. After, we wrapped up our gear up and relaxed in the park for a bit. This was such a fun day!  

Shout out to Tom for some of these BTS pics!

Behind the Scenes: We All Break

August 18th, 2007.

I had to do it. The pain had reached an unbearable point. I couldn’t lay, sit, stand, or breathe without immense pain shooting from my abdomen the night before I told my parents that I needed to go to the hospital. Something was wrong. It started out like a stomach ache. I thought it would pass, but the pressure grew. Sweat dripped from my head as my body temperature rose. I couldn’t even take full breath without wanting to scream. I was 15.

I’ve never been on the patient side of things. I’ve never broken a bone or really had any serious injuries growing up, besides that one time in kindergarden where I needed stitches. The doctors rushed me into a room and began an assortment of tests and asked hundreds of questions. Nothing seemed to help. My spleen was enlarged and was at the cusp of bursting. There was little left to do with the clock ticking down. The operating table had my name on it for the morning and I was left to spend my first night in the hospital. 

I remember being strapped up to so many things. My fear of needles was a bit exaggerated and people kept coming into the room all night long. There wasn’t a clock in the room and I would dose off and on again for unregistered amounts of time. I’d wake up to a nurse at my bedside and with a needle ready to go, “We just need a little bit more blood.” Then, out they went. 

The next morning they lifted me onto a gurney and said I was being moved. It was so strange to be laying on this moving table throughout the hospital. The lights shined brightly overhead as they passed along one by one. I kept trying to turn over and look where I was going, but was told to stay still. I didn’t like being disoriented on top  of everything else that was going on. 

“You’ll see your parents soon after you arrive,” and the ambulance doors slammed shut. Apparently I was being shuttled over to another hospital. That’s as much as I knew. They brought me in, I saw my parents, they took more blood, measured my pee, and they ran more tests. Near the end of the day we had an answer. 

Only a handful of times do we go through something in life where we can remember everything precisely as it happened and down to the smallest weird details; plot points in our memories containing strong emotional ties to our past. We can replay those moments over and over - straight until we reach a point where we can remember the smells, sounds of what was happening. Those instances remain in with us for life. 

I’m going to be vague at this point. There were tears, there were family members standing around me. My doctor sat at my bedside and broke the news to me. There I was with an answer that broke me apart inside. I had cancer. I was diagnosed with ALL; Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

That's what this photograph represents to me. That moment. When you feel betrayed by your body. When life throws itself completely out of control. The day I shot this, I wasn't feeling 100%, and it made me think back to those days where I constantly felt sick. I've had a rough idea of this image in my notebook, but everything grew and took form that day. It felt right, even though I wasn't feeling that great, but that made this more personal to me. 

I intended to shoot this photo in a field of tall grass that I discovered deep in the forest a few months ago scouting, but when I reached the trail to get there, there were piles of chopped up trees everywhere, building a wall around the path. For a moment I was upset, then realized this location actually describes exactly how I'm feeling; broken. 

I'm 100% healthy now and I've found a career that I love.