High times 710 Cover, Centerfold + More
Holy crap its 7/10…this year is flying by!!
I’m sooo stoked to announce my third cover with High Times magazine for the 710 issue! What’s even more dope is that two of the images selected are my favorite hash images I’ve captured. One being used for the cover and the other the centerfold! AND I got to shoot some photos for my friends feature story. Annnddd my homie Devin has a bunch of images in this issue too!
I feel so blessed to be able to work with the fine folks over at High Times Magazine. Much love and respect to Ellen for believing in me and my work to grace the pages of these magazines. It’s been a dream come true!
Garlic Cookies Full Melt by Papa Select
A winter Wooksauce photoshoot
Flynn and Alice, of Wooksauce Winery, were up in Truckee with me this past winter for some epic snowboarding. They were asking me about image quality for an upcoming article they have feature for High Times. They needed some images of themselves for the printed story, but only had iPhone images. I had also just received a Leica Q2 in the mail for an upcoming project in Jamaica.
The timing was impeccable.
I’ll share some images that didn’t make the cut for the article. I was excited to test out the camera and help out my friends with some photos —And use this situation as an opportunity to educate about the importance of having digital assets for your brand.
Think about all the time, money, energy, sweat, tears, blood, and everything else encompassed in building your dreams —and to have an opportunity to showcase that with THE most recognized cannabis publication on the planet.
Then imagine your brand getting hit up for a High Times cover feature story and all you have is iPhone images from 2017..yikes!
…not that Wooksauce’s images were from 2017 —that was arbitrary for examples sake.
Publications do have requirements for images. It’s not as simple as sending them some random iPhone image and calling it a day. They want professional quality with the needed resolution for print. The images also need to be composed for editorial use and color corrected for print.
I’ve worked with many different print publishers over the years. The more notable ones being High Times, Cannabis Now, Dope magazine, Forbes... I was a contracted creative shooting assignments, and I’ve been engaged for licensing for others. That’s given me a great deal of experience working with these different creative teams to help achieve the overall goals for media.
My experience and gear enables me to conceptualize on the fly, create compositions worthy for print, and maintain cohesiveness for the over all story line. And this was a prime example of that!
You probably know these fine people are hash makers. And hash makers like them typically work in cold environments.. Thankfully we were at 6,500ft elevation during one of the snowiest winters of late. That made for an epic snow white background to capture some portraits.
My friends house has this incredible wood paneled wall adjacent to the living room —and with a little thought on building the stage, I rearranged the house to my liking for the composition. The lighting wasn’t my favorite at first glance, but ended up creating this really nice warm, vibe-y look. It was a super fun impromptu shoot that we were all really excited about. The pictures turned out dope for their feature article!
Moral of the story, hire me to invest into your brand for digital assets.
Don’t get caught up in the “only use for images is social media platforms like instagram.” That is one of many uses for the investment of photography for your passion. Other uses are website, event collateral, pamphlets, brochures, email newsletters, packaging, office decor, education, understanding your product with a closer perspective.. the list goes on and on.
Connect with me to help create your brands image and invest in digital assets.
Yours truly - chris
Flynn + Alice
Behind the scenes breakdown
If you’re still with me, here’s a little behind the scenes of what went into creating the cover image.
Here’s the gear I used:
table
1 flag
Handprinted paper backdrop
Clips, tape, sticky dots
Quartz hot rod for stage + Rosin
What excites me the most about this image is the many layers to it. At first glance what do you see?
For me, I chose a quartz wand that represents a trichome. That trichome also makes a human like head with rosin hair. The crystal clear quartz set a few inches over the background pattern refracts in such a cool way bringing the transparent wand to life with the magical pattern filling the wand. The flower of life represents creation and connection. Two things that greatly resonate with photography, herb and myself.
This was a tricky one to light and capture without any of the mess around the room reflecting in or on to the glass.
As I build my light on any set I’m always checking on those tiny details. What is showing in the image? Can it be adjusted by position, flags, bounces, diffusion, light?
It’s all trial and error to be real —paired with experience, ya feel. haha
You can see I bounced the light into the v-flat to create a soft rounded back fill light with a large scrim panel to soften the light even further. I placed the smaller scrim panel above the subject to have the spill light bounce on to the subject. All this bounce is important to really smooth out that soft life to not have any pesky catch lights on the rosin or wand.
That half flag covering the large scrim was placed there to block off the v-flat bounce creating a huge blowout on the bottom edge of the wand.
So there ya have it! Complete bts and explanation of the process, gear, and execution.
If you found that helpful, drop me an email let me know your thoughts. I offer a limited amount of photography consulting 1 on 1 as well.
Here’s a link to my calendly to set up a call. Talk soon!
