WENDY HURST PORTRAIT

Orem, Utah | Visiting the Colonial Heritage Festival is my favorite way to celebrate the Fourth of July. The festival is entirely run by volunteers -- which means when you meet somebody who's part of the festival, you know they want to be there. What they do is not easy. Some of them are on their feet in colonial-style shoes for hours at a time. Some wear full colonial garb like coats, petticoats, stockings, the works. July in Utah is sweltering hot. This year, we're even in the middle of a heat wave. And yet, there they all were with smiles on their faces and willing to let me take their picture. I have a lot of photographs from this festival at this point. Many of them are similar (still awesome, but similar). So this year I wanted to do something different: my portable studio on site. Bringing a portable flash is on location one thing. Bringing a backdrop that has to traverse a full size public park in the sun and wind is entirely another.  The Portable Studio Off-Camera Fl...

Salt Lake City, Utah | "We're not really 'together'," explains a Falcon cosplayer, motioning to the cosplayer-Ant-Man next to him. "We just met here 15 years ago and keep finding each other."  FanX is a crowd-shifting feast of colors and creative craftsmanship. Imagination comes to life as everyday cosplayers emerge from their creative spaces as pop culture characters and celebrities. Collectors collect. People-watchers watch. And photographers...photograph.  I'd be remiss not to celebrate with them.  More portraits are at my website, wendyhurstportrait.com

WEST JORDAN, UTAH | "We take wood that would be wasted, someone's time that would be wasted, and make a little toy so a child's mind won't be wasted." Founder Alton Thacker, 85, keeps a special wooden pointer at the desk to share his favorite memories on the wall. Then he introduces me to the workshop. "And if you stand here," Alton declares with a twinkle in his eye, "you might see a car fly by." The two volunteers seated at the shuffling band sanders grin as I take a cautious step forward. It's the last leg in the factory tour of Tiny Tim's Foundation for Kids toy shop, where Alton and dedicated volunteers carefully craft scrap wood from a local cabinet shop into toy cars for children all over the world.  Scrap wood donated by a local cabinet shop keeps overhead costs down. Qualified and willing volunteers run the machines that cut, sand, and router the wood into shape. It's dusty in the workshop. Woodworking tools hum constantly ...

Sarah Abraham, Model & Activist "Turn the lights out and see what happens. Sometimes it's a gift."  Gregory Heisler is iconic in the photography industry. His manner when designing photographs for 70 different LIFE Magazine covers and many an advertising campaign since the 1980s goes beyond just lighting a photograph. When he works with an individual, he seeks to create an experience that brings context and feeling together into a photograph that invites a viewer to "sink their teeth into it." Of course his advice was specific to lighting a photograph, and it's excellent advice, but it also perfectly described in words what I've been grasping to convince myself: it's time to do what's next. I've been working with a colleague to organize group shoots for other photographers for the last 18 months. My portfolio has grown, my skills have grown, and I've learned a great deal about how to negotiate the obstacles of that world. But in d...

I'm not a stranger to shooting outdoors. Counterpoint: Using a backdrop outdoors is definitely strange to me. But if we never got to know strangers, we'd never make new friends. VIEW THE WHOLE GALLERY The Utah Renaissance Faire is a plentiful measure of meager extravagance, an opportunity to escape modern everyday life and appreciate times long past through costume, music and dance. The scent of mutton floats through the air, disturbed only by the swirling of juggling batons and the spinning of aerialists on fine silks. Children laugh, boots scuffle, and ribbons whirl. For a photographer the event is a goldmine of colorful fantasy. For a photographer with a backdrop, though, it poses some obstacles. Shooting indoors eliminates many foes of a photo studio. Wind, rain, direct sunshine, distraction. Outdoors anything can happen. I wanted my studio to fulfill three simple goals: 1) Small enough to fit and relatively blend into a crowd, and 2) 100% mobile on a ...