Welcome to my Blog!

Hello, thank you for taking the time to visit my blog. Feel free to send me an email or leave a comment.

I have been practicing commercial photography in Denver since 1995. Before moving to Colorado, I was working in the Detroit area. Back in those days, the auto industry was doing pretty good and I got a lot of experience working for the big car studios but my wife and I wanted to try living out west. We packed up our little cars and moved to the Denver area. After living in a tent for a month, we found housing and our own niches in the photography world. That seems like a long time ago, we now have two kids, a dog and a mortgage.

My passion in photography is creating images of people on location. I love the fast paced challenge of going into different environments and making interesting portraits. In contrast, I have also come love the slower pace of architectural photography. There is a different set of challenges and it is more about planning and coming up with a clear strategy.

Thanks again for visiting, come back often and hopefully I will be faithful to the true spirit of the blog and have interesting images and words to share. Cheers, Paul Wedlake

Blackwater – The story board

Friday, January 10, 2014

So my abilities to draw and create storyboards are horrible. I was trying to layout 6 wrap around book covers as well as 6 more shots for the inside cover page. After a few hours toiling in a note book, I gave up on the project and went outside to enjoy a little time in the sandbox with my daughter. She was making a lake with the hose and floating her delightful little Playmobil characters up and down the waterway. Inspiration struck. The first book in the series is called “The Flood.” I grabbed her Playmobil mansion, the shot list and the ipad. In no time at all we cranked though 15 set ups that became instrumental in completing the shoot later on. All the post production on the images was done on the ipad using Snapseed. Just a technical note – ipads are pretty sand proof except for the earphone jack.

The Black Water series is a set of southern gothic novels that follows the Caskey family for over fifty years. What makes the books interesting is that the female lead can change into a river monster with magical powers. The books also include voodoo, ghosts and good old murdering in-laws. Michael McDowell, the author, was mostly known for his original screenplay “Beetlejuice.”