Scott James Reeves

Scott James Reeves I’ll try to keep this short (although that might be difficult for me because I love this franchise so much). Raiders is probably my favorite film. It’s a damn near perfect movie. What I really admire is how the film drops you into its universe without overexplaining anything. The history between characters is clearly there, and you can feel it in every exchange, but the audience is trusted to piece things together on their own. That restraint makes the world feel richer and more believable, while also adding a layer of mystery. None of the other Indiana Jones films quite captured that same sense of lived-in depth. It’s that classic storytelling approach of beginning in the middle, where everything feels like it was already in motion long before we arrived. It reminds me of how George built Star Wars, a universe that feels worn, inhabited, and shaped by events we don’t fully see. The characters don’t feel newly invented for the plot, they feel like they’ve had whole l...

  I am professional portrait photographer and looooove the power of portraits. Photographing strangers is always so fun because there’s so many possibilities! Spend time getting to know your subjects. Doesn’t have to be long but try to find out something that makes them tick and then try to translate that into the image. You defs need to get closer for a classic shot but it also depends on what story you’re trying to tell. For example, I would be surprised if this person had a loud, bubbly personality. His facial expression just doesn’t tell me that. But what it does tell me is that he may be very thoughtful and maybe a bit stoic. In that case I would want to get close and have him staring into the camera with his face relaxed. Staring off into the distance doesn’t match up to the story his body language is telling. He seems a little uncomfortable. This all could be totally off the mark because it’s all soo subjective but thinking about what their vibe is can be helpful. Technicall...

  First things first…if you don’t know… The  Star Wars Special Editions  are updated versions of the original Star Wars trilogy released in 1997 by George Lucas to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first film and to update the movies with new visual effects and changes. Many people strongly dislike the changes that George made. I, however, hold these particular versions close to my heart (I may be the only 40-year-old that does, haha. People around my age hate them). I recommend reading up on all the changes, there were quite a bit. I went with my mother and brother to a showing of Space Jam on a cold Saturday in November of 1996 and I had no idea that there was going to be such a thing as a “Special Edition” coming. The trailer came up and all the hairs on my arm just stood up. I was ECSTATIC. It’s still the most electrifying moment of my movie-going career. People went NUTS. Nothing today even comes close. And sitting there in the theater for the first time seeing A...

Here’s the deal. Don’t worry about what kind/style of camera that will produce a good portrait shot. Worry more with settings and composition with your current camera. Don’t have one? Use your phone. You should have manual/pro settings. Explore them. See what certain ones do and how they interact with others. Then read about/watch videos about composition. Play with the settings. Don’t be in a hurry. Try b/w and color. Take your time and have fun. I use a rebelT1 and nifty 50. Very cheap and works fine. I am no pro and don’t get paid. I guess if I had made lots of money I’d have those red stripe lenses and 10k cameras. Don’t need it for personal pics.   You'll get your best portrait photos by shooting constantly and knowing how to compose an image. If your layout is strong and you shoot a lot you'll get WAY more great pictures of people than people with crazy expensive gear, lights, and aesthetically blessed subjects. The big bonus thing I can tell you outside of that is to jus...

It depends on what type of headshots you're looking to do. Acting headshots have a fairly standardized set of expectations that's different from corporate, and both are different from modeling, and all of those are different from small business/author/artist shots. The general ideas that are more universal are to have the subject well lit, and separated from the background. It should be distinct enough to be easily recognizable as the person in a small thumbnail of the photo, but there's not too much else similar. Overall you can use one of your lights for a key-light and the other as a rim-light or fill, but even then there's a lot of variation depending on how you want the end product to look. There's too much variation just within headshots to give one solution. Backgrounds are another factor- Sometimes a solid backdrop is best, but for other styles it works better to integrate the subject into the scene. Sometimes a bokeh blurred background is fine, other times ...

Scott James Reeves photoshoot in Seattle, Washington  I visited Washington for the first time a few years ago and I can honestly say it's the only place I've ever been where it truly felt like I belong there. For various reasons I'm not willing to pack up and leave the place where I've invested my life and career for the last decade, but if there's anything I regret, it's not traveling there before getting myself firmly ensconced where I am now. I am homesick for a place I've never lived. The PNW kind of has two sub-regions. There's the coast that is generally mountainous, rainy and green. Lots of dense forests filled with conifers and deciduous trees. Then there's the interior that is semi-arid, generally more flat and/or canyon like, and sunny. The interior does have mountains too, but they are the Cascades. So they aren't like one continuous mountain range moreso clusters of really big singular mountains. The interior tends to be a little more...

I just feel like the city is the perfect representation of everything I (and most humans, I presume, love): There's art, there's music, there's fashion, there's architecture, there's food, there's nature, there's people…Paris has a little bit of everything, for everyone. And even if you're not really a fan of any of those things I've listed, you'll still likely find out something to fall in love with within the city. I’ve always found the “rude French” or even “rude Parisian” stereotypes to be bullshit. Never had problems more than any other big city. My theory is that a lot of Americans are from smaller towns and don’t know how to behave in a city, whether in the Americas or Europe. But Europe is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for them and they usually want to go to Paris because they’ve always heard about how great it is. And then they get disillusioned because they do something stupid and someone scolds them and they take it personally, and they t...