What we've been up to...

In the little free time we have between jobs, we like to create personal work; photographing small local businesses or interesting people that inspire us.  Take a look through some of our recent shoots and to see more go to www.danbrouillette.com

Larry Roots is an exceptional artist and gallery owner of Modern Arts Midtown which is located at 36th and Dodge. His paintings are a great representation of his interesting look and personality. A true artist. Go check out his work and stop in at one the first Firday of the month gallery openings.

Bernie's Pizza was a small pizza shop in Millard run by brother and sister team Bernie and Marilyn. They were in business for 45+ years and recently had to close their doors due to an increase in rent. Their handmade pizza was amazing and will be sorely missed in the community.

Joe's Karting is an indoor karting track located in Council Bluffs. The karts aren't your normal amusement park karts... these things can go up to 45 mph and can leave some rubber on the track. Helmets required.  Nothing like the smell of gasoline and the rush of air on your face to get your adrenaline pumping.

Sundance 2015!!

For the last week I have been in Park City, UT for the Sundance Film Festival. I was part of a team of photographers, editors, and darkroom technicians that photographed nearly every cast to every film that made the Sundance Festival. More than that, we all worked to create a library of images of some of the biggest names attending Sundance. We were lead by photographer, Victoria Will who has worked at the festival each year since 2010 and does an amazing job directing talent and making this all come together.

After meticulously setting up our tiny little studio in the back of a repurposed ski shop on Main Street in Park City, we were bombarded with actors, directors, producers, and their entourages.

We shot digital images of all of these people which will be seen for years in newspapers, magazines, and all over the web but what I am most proud of, is the tin types we created of these people. A tin type is a photographic process that dates back to the 1800s and involves a lot of chemistry, loads of light, and patience (but not too much or it wont work). Basically, you take a piece of aluminum in the dark room and coat it with a substance called collodion and then placing it into a bath of silver nitrate which makes the metal plate photo sensitive. You then put the plate in a holder and place that into the camera. When you are ready to take the photo, you remove the dark slide, thus exposing the plate to light, pop the flash and bingo...you have an image on the plate.

Next, you take the plate through the darkroom processes and the best part is seeing what you captured. It's like magic!

One of the crazy things about this process is that we typically only got one shot to get it right and when your window to work with each actor or director is about 5 minutes, there is not much room for error.

Now for the good stuff...here is the link to Esquire who picked up many of the tin types so you can see the results of all of our hard work! I am pretty proud of what we accomplished so check it out!

Esquire Sundance Gallery 2015

Want to be a 2016 LOOK Model??

It's that time of year again! Although the calendar just struck 2015 we are already looking ahead to the 2016 Seniors. We are searching for the perfect 2016 LOOK Senior Models who fit our vision, style and personality. A LOOK Model is not just about pretty looks or popularity, it's someone who is confident, has an upbeat attitude, and is ready to have some fun in front of the camera and great style never hurts! Do you have what it takes or do you know someone who does? Get at us and we can send you more info on what it means to be a LOOK Model. But hurry... our 2016 Senior LOOK Model spots are filling up fast!!

P.S. Guys are welcome too!!

2015 LOOK Models

LOOK Portrait does senior models a little differently. We don't call every kid in your class or send out 5,000 postcards asking anyone to be a LOOK Model. Instead, we search around and find juniors that fit our studio and our vision. This year we selected an exclusive group of 14 juniors from seven schools around Omaha who we were thrilled to work with on custom model shoots and senior sessions. These girls ROCKED IT in front of the camera! There are so many great images it was difficult for us to choose... We're excited to present the top images of our LOOK Senior Models! 

Somewhere in Southern Kansas

Sometimes, while driving, the most random things will catch my eye. I saw this sign while heading across Kansas and kept driving. I saw the gas prices, stuck in between numbers, and thought it was funny and kept thinking about it and how it reminded me of my favorite movie; No Country for Old Men. Five miles later, I turned around and went back and shot this alongside the highway...with a real camera. Not my phone. Glad I did it :)

Iowa State Football Poster

See that I am an Iowa State alum and a HUGE Cyclone sports fan, it is an honor every year to get to photograph and help create the ISU Football poster. This year was my fifth year working on the project and it is one of my favorite posters we have made yet! Take a look and let us know what you think!

See us in Men's Fitness Magazine!

As many of you know, besides seniors, the other half of our photography business is shooting for magazines and advertising clients. Well a few months ago, the editors at Men's Fitness reached out to us to see if they could run one of our photos in the April issue of their magazine. I guess you just never know when someone will want a photo of a giant waffle the shape of Texas! It is out now both on their website and in the magazine so check it out below or pick it up next time you are near a magazine rack at the grocery store!

Senior Ignite Part V: Don't mess with Jenna!

If you live in Southern California, you might have seen this girl on the sidelines some Friday night at a high school football game...and NOT on the cheer squad. Jenna was the starting kicker for her team this year and with a career long 48-yard field goal, she is not messing around. As it turns out, she is pretty great in front of the camera too! For Jenna's session, I knew she would be a dream photograph so I decided to make things a little more difficult.  That started with being assigned to shoot in a boring hotel lobby and ended with me testing myself to use lighting it ways I normally wouldn't for a senior session. We had a great time, Jenna was awesome and I think the photos show just that!

Seniors Ignite Part IV: Skyler

Dancers and gymnasts are great to photograph. They have the body control that makes everything look graceful and as a photographer, I can definitely appreciate that! When I first starting photographing Skyler's quick(35min) session outside the Westin Hotel, she mentioned she had been a dancer for over 10 years and that told me all I needed to know...let this girl move!  

Seniors Ignite Part III: Devan the Runaway Showgirl

It's always interesting to do something different and outside your comfort zone. For me, that means shooting in a more fashion-forward style. When Seniors Ignite asked me to shoot Devan and told me to follow the theme "Showgirl" I had to think of how I should approach the concept. Knowing we would be in the middle of the desert, I decided that Devan should be a runaway, leaving the strip and taking off into the wilderness of Nevada. I had a blast working with Devan and loved pushing myself to do something different!  

Seniors Ignite Part II: Dan the Man

Dan. Great name. Better dude. Dan was my first shoot in the ghost town in Nelson, Nevada. I like to get to know people before the shoot and especially during the first part of the shoot (which I refer to as "Layups" like you would do to warm up for a basketball game). During our session of layups, I could tell Dan had a sense of humor that needed to be prominent in his photos so I went that route and he totally bought into the idea. I paired up his humor with some other shots of him just looking good and I am pretty pumped about the photos!

Seniors Ignite Shoots!

After a week of editing, retouching, and working, I have finally finished all of the images I shot during my five model shoots in Nevada! I was very lucky in getting to work with such a great group of seniors who had a mix of good looks, awesome personalities, and great style! For those who don't know, Seniors Ignite is a nationally recognized organization of senior portrait photographers from all over the U.S.(and Canada!). Every February, they host a big event in a warm part of the country and hundreds of photographers attend, learn, exchange ideas, and make friends.  

This year, I was pretty pumped to be named a lead shooter.  This meant I was chosen as one of the top senior photographers in the country and was assigned 5 models to photograph, both to provide photos for the models to use, but also to teach many other attendees new techniques and give them some insight into how I work so they can expand their photographic knowledge. I packed up my lights and other gear into my carry-on bag, brought about 5 t-shirts and a pair of jeans and got to work! All in the name of photography right??

With that said, I ended up shooting over 2,000 images in two days! We traveled to a ghost town in the middle of nowhere(Nelson, Nevada) and also shot around the lovely grounds of the Westing Hotel at Lake Las Vegas. Each day this week I will post a gallery of my favorite images from each shoot starting today with Anna, from Oklahoma! This was a quick, one-hour shoot and the theme was "basics" which meant simplifying the wardrobe to bare feet, a black tank and jeans. Sometimes keeping the styling basic and just capturing the personality is hard to beat. Enjoy!

The Making of: 2013-2014 Creighton Basketball Poster

Now that the Big East season is in full-swing and Creighton is dominating most of their games, I wanted to post a write-up on the the poster we made for the team and a little bit about how we created it! First off, thanks to Joe Willman and coach Tyler Glidden for hooking us up on this job...they were great to work with and gave us a ton of creative freedom to do the best job we could! 

Back in September, we came up with a concept for the poster. The idea was with Creighton moving to the Big East, we wanted to create something that featured the city of Omaha, the Creighton seniors, and the BRAND NEW logo for the school! Once the new uniforms arrived, Wragge, Manigat, McDermott and Gibbs came over to the studio for their portion of the shoot. We wanted the players to be the prominent piece of the poster, so we lit them in a dramatic way that made them stand out from the city behind them and added a blue gel to the kicker light to give the effect that the city glow was light the players from behind them. Here are the original shots of the four players from our studio.

We then spent a couple nights driving around downtown Omaha to find the perfect angle and time of night to get a great photo of the skyline that would fit our vision.  I probably have pictures of downtown from every possible angle (and ran into some interesting people...) but we decided on a panoramic shot from northeast of the city because it included the major pieces that make up the skyline along with the Century Link Center.

These are the major pieces of the poster. The most time consuming parts were all the finishing details, such as scaling the players in to their proper heights, adding a more dramatic, cloud-filled sky from another photo, putting a nice Creighton-blue haze over the city, and lastly, placing the logos and schedule into their places. We were pumped with how the final poster looked and hope to do something even more fun and crazy for next year!

A little bonus behind the scenes action for everyone! Here is a little collage I put together of Doug showing off his skills in the studio. Enjoy!

2015 LOOK Models!

So now that the class of 2014 is finishing up their senior year, it's time to bring on the class of 2015! This is pretty exciting here at LOOK because with a new class comes new LOOK Models!!  What is a LOOK Model?? Well, where to start...  A LOOK Model is a hand-picked 2015 senior who has a look, an attitude, a style and wants to have fun and create some rad photos with us and help spread the word about LOOK! 

Being a LOOK Model means you will get exclusive photo shoots throughout the year and images to share with your friends and "likers" on instagram, twitter, or wherever else you crazy kids want to post them.  You also get $150 off your senior photos when you book with LOOK (and really...why wouldn't you??), a free session with your friends on location, and some other surprises we aren't going to say just yet!

If you are interested and have not been contacted yet, shoot us an email, text, smoke signal, or whatever else you want and we will see if you have what it takes! Here are just a couple of last year's LOOK Model images and we have even more locations and surprises for this year!  

Sundance 2014

I spent the past week out in Park City, Utah for the 2014 Sundance FIlm Festival.  One of my best friends and great photographer, Victoria Will, is an entertainment photographer for the Associated Press and each year she is asked to photograph all the stars of Sundance.  She photographs movie stars, musicians, athletes and anyone involved with the festival.  This year she asked me to come along as she wanted to try something new!  We set up a makeshift studio in the back of a ski shop on Main Street in Park City and decided to turn back the clock and use a photography style from the 1860s. Victoria decided on tintypes, which are literally images captured on a 4x5" plate of aluminum. This involved bringing in an old school 4x5" film camera, a plethora of darkroom chemicals and a TON of light(4800watts to be exact).  We had never shot this way before but Victoria and darkroom assistant Josh did a lot of research on the process and five days and 110+ shoots later we ended up with quite the gallery of tintype photos to show! My job was to help setup, light and process the digital scans of each and every tintype photo.  Victoria did an amazing job working with the celebrities and getting some great emotion and poses out of them and we are very proud of the results! It was a great time working with all of the celebrities and I hope to do it again next year!  Below are just a few of the photos along with my very own tintype so I can pretend to be a celeb for a day ;) Hope you like them!

Anna Kendrick

Selena Gomez

Kristen Stewart

Jesse Eisenberg

Anne Hathaway

Elle Fanning

Bill Hader

Maggie Gylenhaal

Dane DeHaan

Elijah Wood

Me :)

Featured on Seniors Ignite again!

As some of you may have seen back in the Summer, we were featured on the Seniors Ignite blog for our photos of Claudia seen here.  Well, we are pretty pumped that they have featured the photos of another one of our seniors, Mackenzie, on their blog today!  Check it out here!  Enjoy!

Proud to announce...

We are pretty pumped to announce that Dan will be one of the featured leaders at this years' Senior Ignite photo conference in Las Vegas!  This is the premier event for high school senior photography so it is an honor to be selected to be part of such a great event.  Check out Dan's profile on the Seniors Ignite website here and look for more updates from this event in the new year!

New Website!

Here it is!  Full of new images from the 2014 class and this here handy blog!  Check back often for updates!