Seattle Photography by Matt McDonald
May 05
by matthew in Macro, News 0 comments

May The Fourth Be With You photography

I started making May the Fourth be with you content for fun a few years back and now I am creating small marketing campaigns for Star Wars Day each year. It’s a fun way to get creative, to say the least. My first creation was making an animation of the Space Needle using one of my time lapses. From there I have created all kinds of content like Yoda enjoying pizza and beer to celebrate and unraveling a mandarin orange using the force. And the past two years I have created fun photos with Grogu with my dogs and created a little story to go around it on the Toy Photographers website. The Seattle burger joint Dicks even featured one of my photos. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dick's Drive-In Restaurants (@dicksdrivein) The Seattle Times featured my Amazon Death Star photo even. I have really enjoyed this process of working with toys to create organic marketing photos that spread through social media to help promote a product, movie, or TV show. If you are interested in finding a unique way to promote your business don’t hesitate to reach out.
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Aug 16
by matthew in Macro, News 0 comments

Getting Creative With Toy Photography To Get Through COVID

The COVID-19 Pandemic has been devastating on multiple levels. Death, sickness, people losing their businesses, out of work and more. I luckily have been gainfully employed still and busier than ever building websites for people. If I am not creative with my camera I kinda lose my mind and have started to lean into toy photography to keep the me creative. It’s been a lot of fun and I have leaned a lot about photography in the process. Take a look at some of the photos I have been capturing below. You can also view more of my toy photos at ToyPhotographes.com and Macrotoy.photos.  
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Jan 21
by matthew in Macro, Uncategorized 0 comments

Levitating With Yoda

I have had some contract jobs for toy companies and products over the years. It is always a great way to get out of the box and get creative. I recently captured some photos of the SH Figuarts Yoda action figure for the ToyPhotographers.com website. You can view the full article here and more pics below.
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Nov 24
by matthew in Macro 0 comments

Macro Product Photography With Bumblebee The Transformer

I enjoy macro photography, so I decided to have a photoshoot with a Takara Tomy Masterpiece Transformer in celebration of the new Bumble Bee Transformers movie coming out in December. It was a fun side project to work on my product, composite, and long exposure photography skillsets. I started out with some basic portraits atop a roof in Seattle. Then moved on to making a composite photo while battling the Seattle rain. I posted a few of these on the Transformers subreddit and got a lot of critiques and feedback on the photo. Turns out there is quite a large group of collectors out there and companies making Transformer toys. The Transformer collectors were great letting me know I forgot to put stickers on and wasn’t actually transforming the toy properly. They also came up with some other ideas for photos like the classic 1970s cheesy double exposure photo concept you can see below. The photo I really had in my mind was a long exposure composite photo with the Seattle skyline in the background, which I was hoping would give it a Cybertron kinda feel. The first couple tries went OK, but To really get the photo U had […]
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Aug 01
by matthew in Macro 0 comments tags: beaches, flowers, macro, macro photography, seattle, toys

Wandering a Seattle city block with a macro lens

The first two weeks of July I was on a road trip filming, driving and not sleeping very much. It was a rad experience and I got a ton of great photos and video for an upcoming series and magazine from DB Skimboards. Long hours and no-days off are all part of the job and that is why down time is so important. The only issue with downtime at my job is I still want to capture photos everyday. I finally got a few days off and decided in-between sleeping / relaxing I would only use my Nikon D7100 and 105mm f2.8 macro lens. It was fun to focus only on the little things with a camera. I started off capturing some flowers right outside of my apartment in Capitol Hill while walking my dog Charlie. Flowers are an easy subject to capture with a macro lens and usually a crowd pleaser. I know I look like a crazy person when I stop walking my dog and sometimes lay on the ground to capture a photo of a flower and/or weed, but it is worth it. The cool part about this post is everyone of these photos was captured within […]
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Apr 05
by matthew in Landscapes, Macro, Seattle 0 comments tags: flowers, longboarding, macro, seattle, spring

Spring in Seattle

It has been a beautiful spring in the Pacific Northwest. Every Saturday I usually venture out to one of the local parks in Seattle and here is a bunch of photos from those mini adventures. Some of the places these photos were captured at are 15th street, Washington Park Arboretum, Seward Park. And a little more detailed view of the spring colors in Seattle. Another fun thing to do at Seward Park is longboard. My girlfriend Alyne and I grabbed our DB Longboards and cruised around the loop and along the waterline of Lake Washington. You can see more of my longboard cruising Seattle series at DBLongboards.com here.
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Mar 15
by matthew in Macro, News 0 comments tags: macro, rain, seattle

Macro Photography: Up close with the Seattle rain

It’s been an unusually warm and dry winter in the Pacific Northwest, but the rain returned this weekend in Seattle and it gave me the chance to work on my macro photography. I actually missed the rain quite a bit and wandered around my neighborhood and apartment complex with a 105mm macro, focus tube and for a few of the photos an off camera speed light. Here’s the photos I captured. Follow along on: Instagram Twitter Facebook Tumblr You can purchase prints of my photos, cell phone cases, bed sheets, bags and even shower curtains on my FineArtAmerica account here: Fine Art America Prints Also, some of these photos are available for commercial use on my 500px account that you can get to by checking out here: 500pxart.com/equalmotion You can also see more of my professional work at: http://mattmcdonaldphotos.com
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Mar 02
by matthew in Macro, News 0 comments

Early Spring: Seattle Cherry Blossoms

I was kinda caught off guard this year with all the early flowers in bloom. Normally I set aside some time to capture photos and video of Cherry Blossoms, but this year I didn’t have that much time and was limited to capturing photos in Captiol Hill around the 15th street. The top photo above was unexpectedly featured on @livewashington on Instagram during a pretty epic Washington State sunset, which was pretty cool. I tried to do something other than a traditional sunset photo and it paid off in terms of getting more eyeballs on the photo and a few more followers on Instagram. Anwyays, here’s a few photos from this year’s spring bloom in Seattle, Washington. Follow along on: Instagram Twitter Facebook Tumblr Also, some of these photos are available for prints and commercial use on my 500px account that you can get to by checking out here: 500pxart.com/equalmotion You can also see more of my professional work at: http://mattmcdonaldphotos.com
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Dec 21
by matthew in Macro, News 0 comments tags: macro

Macro Water Droplets

Macro water drop photos I captured in the Alley District of Bellingham, Washington a few weeks ago. I finally had a chance to edit all of the photos from the photo session. Now that I have finally made the transition from Bellingham to Seattle I hope to spend more time hunting for new macro photos. I also plan on picking up a Canon macro lens to pair with my 5D Mark II and 7D Mark II as I make the switch (kinda) from Canon to Nikon. I captured these photos with a Nikon D7100 and a 105mm macro lens.
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Nov 30
by matthew in Macro, News 0 comments tags: macro, macro photography, Millennium Falcon, star wars, star wars legos, star wars photos, x-wing

Nerding out in celebration of the new Star Wars movie

Each week I have given myself the task to come up with some new macro photos for my macro Monday’s project. Since the new Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens Official Teaser was released and I just so happen to have some Star Wars Legos (thank you best girlfriend ever Alyne for the gift millennium falcon) I decided to use those as the subject. I attempted to recreate the scene of the Millennium Falcon flown by Han Solo and crew with a X-Wing piloted by Luke Skywalker flying away from the Death Star before it exploded in Star Wars IV: A New Hope, but as Legos. I used a long exposure photo I captured on Lopez Island, found the Death Star image and photoshopped my two macro photos into the scene. And below is the nerdiest photo project I have ever taken: After I finished spending about an hour capturing photos and editing stuff together, I started to wonder how many other people were doing the same type of thing with Star Wars Legos and action figures. I had no idea there were so many people doing this and putting in so much time. For instance, FinalFeature’s re-edit […]
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