NEW Beautiful Full Page Photo for Volvo Erie's Ad I Shot.

I walked over to my grandmother's house to eat this Sunday evening and picked up the Erie News Paper's WQLN guide insert for this October and I was leafing through the first five pages, stopped and said, "Hah!  ..That's my photo!?  Oh yeah, I did that over this summer!"

I shot this particular background of the Burger King Amphitheater by my client's request.

It's filled with rich blues and greens, thin happy little clouds, raging flames, and Erie's beautiful bay in the background.

If you love pretty, colorful, shinny things (like I do) then you'll enjoy coming across this calming full page color ad too!

When Earth is Beautiful and You Aren't

"I could stay out here.  Stay out here and never come back.  ...Well, of course if I still weren't in Erie, Pa and this wasn't a place that became cold 9 months out of the year.  THEN, I could stay out here forever!"

That and similar thoughts like those were running through my head as I set out on a kayak for the first time in my life this past summer.

I began this project, because I figured I was going to be out in nature on a kayak, so why not photograph the experience?  Mixing the best of both worlds is really what photography and life is all about when you can dictate it to be so. 

The whole time I was out in the lagoons I felt like I was photographing desktop background images for like a windows 98 operating system haha.  A few of the views reminded me of just that.


Here's what I came back with from the week I explored the lagoons:

P.S.  I used a really crappy camera to take all of these images above.  I'm not even kidding, there's a chance someone in your family owns the camera I shot this with.  Didn't use a D-SLR at any point.  I just processed them to meet my needs and expectations.

All is Fair in Love and Whiskey: Part 2 of 2

What I was trying to say with this piece:
The piece itself is a musician feature.  The images were built up as if a typical rock n roll article were written with in it.  There is no article that goes with this.

Ultimately, its about a punk rocker.  I tried to capture that punk image with environments that were grungy, dangerous, and distressed.  Ally ways, busted cars, and rainy roof tops can accent the subjects attitude towards the world, and speak in volumes without him even using.

I began the feature with a two page spread, black and white photograph (Black and white cause its a two page spread. 

I was originally going to photograph the model playing guitar in the same ally way to move the piece along and have some casual shots roll through with the beat up brick as the background.  ...To be honest.  I just felt its been over done.  So I told him to sit tight for a minute and I walked around the corner.  No more than 100 feet away was an old beat up BMW with a shattered back window and glass all over the place.

...I simply had to have this location.

I really just wanted shots of him playing guitar like there was a full on show going on outside with an imaginary responsive audience.  I feel people are most comfortable when they're doing what they love to do while in front of the camera.  It's moments like the ones up above that separate the subject from the shoot and bring them to life in my images.

In the far upper left corner of the shots above you'll see an entrance to a narrower back ally.  I used a wide angle lens to embellish how narrow the scene really was ("Walls are closing in" kind of look) and focused on bringing out a more subtle, introspective look for the outro shot.

The alternative roof top photo outro took place about 50 feet away, just across from the back ally above, at Urraro's art gallery.  I went over there and asked if it would be cool to get up on the roof to take a few pictures and they were totally down with the idea.  A big thanks to them!

I feel the dreary weather really helped bring out how much I beat this shot up when I took it back to my desk.  I grained the hell out of it for a real coarse look, made some bend marks, stains, and scratches across it.  Slightly blowing out facial highlights for an extra "Careless" look.  My theory is that so long as you know what you shouldn't do, you're allowed to do what's wrong if you mean it."

How philosophical punk of me...

And here's some extra shots that just kinda ended up in the mix: 

8 Years Later They Filmed The Road Where I Took My First Photos Ever.

The Road was filmed in Erie, PA back in 2008.

For the most part it looked like they just used the Peninsula, but in the last half hour of the movie I noticed a clip of the father and son walking down a boat ramp.  I live less than 5 minutes from that boat ramp! It's located in my hometown, Lawrence Park.

I was soooo happy to see that location being used in a major motion picture production, because I've always felt that place had strong aesthetic potential.  

This piece of work below I had taken at that location was back in the year 2000.  My first year in photography.


Note:  (This boat loading concrete slab below was out of the video frame above, it was 30 yards to the right.)

However, I came back to this location the winter of 2010 and found a shopping cart already there.  The shopping cart was a major icon in the movie.  The father and son traveled with their belongings in it, through particular shots of the movie!

1.  

I know for a fact that it had not clearly hit me while shooting (in 2010), that this was in fact a found still life representing one of the great characteristics of the movie exactly where it had been filmed two years prior! 

It was extremely coincidental for both placement and found object  to have occurred at all.


I mean...  I wouldn't be looking for a shopping cart at the bottom of the lake cliff boat loading dock, ya know?


Had I realized this at the time I would have shot it like the scene captured in the film above.
But it didn't entirely matter, because at that point in the movie they were using some sort of makeshift cart to carry what they had around.  So it would have been a continuity issue on my end regardless.


Here's my shots from 2010 from the exact same boat loading location from the film though:

And below I've supplied an article which talks about the director's experience with filming in Pittsburgh and Erie.  It's pretty good.  It states that they actually had really good weather while filming here and had to do quite a bit of unexpected editing to make it look worse. 

Haha, but if you live here 9 days out of 10 it looks like it does in The Road.  Go figure.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/movies/27road.html

Smoke 'em if ya got 'em!

What makes a man?  Is it the cigar in his hand, or the way he smokes it?  You’ll be finding out about these clearly important issues and several others in this three piece feature I’m working on for my website covering the topic, “What Makes a Man?”

 

You might have seen this photo floating around on Joel’s Facebook page already.  It was loosely based on a Cigar Aficionado cover.  I actually took little things from several covers they’ve put out and combined them in this shot.  I embraced the ruffles on the backdrop, because I have too many clean / solid looking backdrop textures in my portfolio I feel.  I’d like to see some more distressed backgrounds if at all possible in my future.

Until its release date, take a look at some of the shots from from the shoot itself:

Note:  The varying tones themselves really have nothing to do with anything.  I just thought it would be nice of me to break up the eye for you.

I did all of that up there...  In this down here.

Dance party 2011.  ...Should 'a been there.

Under the Milky Way

In the middle of a field clearing long past the outskirts of Erie, Pa rests an amateur's astronomy observatory, where a group of people meet up periodically with their mobile telescopes to observe the night's sky.

"Have you ever seen the moon this close?  Look!  You even see all the detail in the craters," said the owner/builder of the observatory, pulling up laptop images to my face before I even sat all my bags down.

The images he showed me were taken from a telescope with a very powerful CCD chip that can be cooled down to 10 degrees Celsius to eliminate dark flow surfacing across the images.  From what I gathered, the card tricks out the noise by making replacements through protons and electrons during long exposures.  Very sensitive equipment. 

Though the sun was already setting and we were out of reach from any atmospheric light pollution coming from most bordering cities, the clouds were at a stand still.  We continued to remain optimistic for the next hour and a half waiting for the rest of the group members to arrive.

Then, all of the sudden there was a great part in the sky stretching as far as the eye could see from both horizons.  It allowed me to get to work.  ...That's word for word how it went down.  It was pretty nuts and I'm very grateful for it. haha.

Black and White (Above):  I've always wanted a heavy foreground B+W image with star trails streaking the night's sky all around it.  Definitely a wall hanger.

Red Cast (Above):  Looks haunting.  The red cast you're seeing above is basically a "safe light."  Its used so you can go inside, see everything you need to see, and come back outside maintaining your eyes own "night vision."  It avoids waiting like 15 minutes trying to readjust to see the nights sky.  Convenient.

Cool Toned (Above):  Once I saw that tree line dipping like that in the distance I set up for it.  I don't know how well you can see it in this photograph, but if you look at the center you can see a strong cluster trail of stars rising up the frame.  That is making up a strong concentration of The Milky Way.

I aimed my rig at The North Star.  When you do that you get the big circle of star trails.  From that point you're caught on the swirl of The Earth's axis.  The lower left corner was Erie's light pollution.  Still!  All the other corners of the sky were fine though.  ...Cause there's absolutely nothing else in eastern Pa haha.

The Night Sky (Above):  I set up the tripod and aimed my camera's lens parallel with the sky.  Just like standing strait up and tilting your head back.  When you're out in the middle of nowhere like this, its as if you could just take your hand across the sky and scrap the stars with it.  I love everything about it.

The Same Night's Sky (Above):  Same scene, but an airplane flew right through the center left.  I almost like this one more just for design's sake, cause there's a single line of light just streaking through it.

All is Fair in Love and Whiskey (Part I of 2)

This is a "Behind the Shot" look into an alternative editorial portfolio that I'm putting together to showcase to particular national clients from my website.

Pre-production notes:

 Here's the youtube.com link to the "Behind the Shot" video:
http://youtu.be/KJ3lS0AxGTc

Description:
This is a back alley scene with a punker attacking my lens.

This photo is actually a two page spread opener to a mock feature article I'm creating for a punk rock musician profile.  The name of the fictitious article is "All is Fair in Love and Whiskey."

If it were real, the article itself would go on to discuss such things as his passion, love for music, and other beliefs and rules to live by.  Yadda, yadda, yadda...  Just like any other lead feature you've ever seen on the shelf.

The overall idea never really seems to change with editorial format and demand, but if you care enough, you'll try to reinvent them and stand out from others.  And that's exactly what I intend to do with my alternative portfolio pieces.

By the way:
it was like 95 degrees outside that day.
That's why I was so sweaty in my facebook profile pic.