Playing Catch up. Starting with Makeovers

This week will see several posts in close succession. I am trying to play catch up. Quite a few things have been noteworthy lately, but I haven't posted. So here is one of at least three.

Prevail Salon is doing a Summer Makeover promotion through August. Stacy Buxton, proprietor, contracted me to shoot the before and after images for each winner. If you would like more info on entering the monthly drawing please click here.

The winner for June was Danielle Swift. Please follow this link to read her story, and to see more images.

New Website Content

Finally! I have updated my Website . There are now 4 galleries of images, and a new home page. I am plugging away to finish other parts of the site.

I still need to put up galleries for Fine Art, and Documentary work. I also need to complete the About page. Hopefully all this will come in the next few days.

Eye of the Beholder...

...Isn't that what they say about Beauty?


About 2 weeks ago I was driving along North Front St in Harrisburg, returning from a shoot at the Symphony Show House, when I drove by this scene. What do you see?

I see a red wall. Green Grass, yellow dandelions. White flowers on three trees of differing heights, from short to tall. And stark shadows cast by a mid afternoon, early spring sun. I also see the ugly construction site on one side, and the not so pleasant looking motel on the other. Not to mention the close proximity to a busy secondary road. I took all this in in the time it takes to drive by a 10 meter long scene at 40 miles per hour, about 1/2 of a second (at this speed you are traveling at 58.6 feet/second).

Two more views of the overall scene:






The potential for images made here was begging me to turn around. I had a full afternoon of work, but I could not resist the Siren song of all the beauty I had driven by. A quarter mile down a did a u-ey and parked in the construction site to the left. Warning about getting caught up in road side photo opps: ALWAYS watch were you park. On this day I pulled in over hundreds of rusty nails. Somehow I was able to get out of there with out a flat, or tetnis!. Other times I have almost been stuck in mud or in snow banks and once even had the owner of a farm chase me off with a fog horn! Glad it wasn't his hunting rifle.

One more word of caution, please pay attention to traffic, people think you are crazy when you stop your vehicle in the middle of traffic to take a photo. And while lost in their thoughts of you in a straight jacket, may not pay close enough attention. I have almost been hit by buses, semi's, mini vans and Hummers. Also, pay attention to personal property. Unless you ask permision don't park on it, and be carefull photographing it, that is somewhat of a legal grey area that I don't endevour to get into at this time.

Here are a few of my interpretations of the scene:







And HERE is the link to see the images a bit larger.

The Economy Hits Home

As some of you may now I have kinda been Harrisburg Magazine's main squeeze when it comes to photography for the last few years. With the downturn in the publishing industry, and the downturn in the economy in general, there has come a perfect storm of sorts. Periodicals are facing their toughest times ever. With media migrating to the web, and the economy making companies think long and hard about parting with advertising dollars, Magazines, and other print media, are faced with making hard decisions. Just look in the news these days and see how many daily newspapers have folded, or filed for bankruptcy.

Take a gander at this link: News Paper Death Watch. The name alone implies what it is all about. The first post there declares: "The [UK] Guardian announced today that it will cease print publication after 188 years and go Twitter-only. All future content will be formatted to less than 140 characters and the newspaper has launched an ambitious effort to retweet its entire archive. " Can you imagine getting your daily news in clips shorter than a Text message? Wow!

So these hard times have finally hit home, I had wondered how long it would take. Bench Mark Group Media, parent company to Harrisburg Magazine, have had to make some hard decisions lately, and trying to cut costs for image production is one route the powers that be chose to go. They are still trying to decide what route exactly they will take, I may still shoot some images for them, but no where near what I had done in the past.

I shot many a story for them over our 10 year relationship, and have met a lot of people in that time. I used to Joke that I had photographed everyone in our city at least once. I made a lot of friends and shot a lot of interesting subject matter. And created, what I hope will be, some life long friendships with the employees in their office.

Over the next few months I plan to highlight some of my favorite stories that I shot for them. I will be creating slide shows and posting links to the images here on my blog.

Onward and Upward!

4/2/2009- Update

I have just heard from the publisher at Harrisburg Magazine that I will still be shooting images for the publication. Back on a more traditional freelance basis. This is good news. I can't wait to work on my next assignment for them, looks like it will be the cover of their June Regional Guide Issue.

Death of a Camera

Two weeks ago my camera, a Canon EOS 40D, developed a fatal problem. The much talked about (on web forums) Error 99. This issue started mild. One error. Than a couple of days later a few errors. At this point I researched the problem on line and found some DIY fixes. Tried them and it seemed to do the trick. Then a few a days later the problem returned with a vengeance. While shooting a job the camera kept telling me "Error 99..." about every other shot. Sometimes I was able to go for about 10 shots or so, than it would yell at me again. By the end of the job the camera completely quite on me.

YIKES

I called Canon immediately upon returning to my office. They had me try a few things out and determined it had to come in for repair. Off it went. Bad thing was, my camera is just out of the 1 year warranty period! another Yikes. However, the Canon repair person told me that they do not advertise this, but they usually give a 90 day grace period on out of warranty issues such as this! So I was saved from the expense of paying for the repair.

One other quip about this ordeal is the fact that I have belonged to the network of Canon professional users for 5 years, CPS. They offer expedited repairs for their members, as well as loaners. Well this year they changed some of their requirements. One of which was what equipment allowed you to qualify for membership. I have lots of Canon gear, all of which qualified last year... but not this year, some of the stuff they consider too old, even though I use it all to earn a living everyday. Because of this I had to go through regular repair channels and wait 10 days for the repair/return instead of the CPS time frame of 3 days!

Well, I just found out that my repaired main camera is on it's way back to me. Can't wait to start shooting with it again!

Marley and..... Well, John!

A few years back I had the pleasure of meeting John Grogan and photographing him for Lehigh Valley Magazine. He's a very personable guy. I have to admit (sorry, John!) that I have yet to read the famous book. But a few weeks back, a very good friend and I went to see the movie. What a ride! If you have ever owned/loved pets, especially hard-to-train ones, this story will pull on every string your heart has.


My buddy and writer/co-adventure seeker Luke Rettig wrote the story for Lehigh Valley Mag. Here is a link to his site, and the story he wrote. I encourage you to stroll through his site and take in his other stories; he is quite the wordsmith, and an excellent storyteller. I went back and reread what Luke wrote. That combined with seeing the movie inspired me to finally read John's book, which I've now purchased.



So here are a couple more shots I took of John and his family's new lab, Gracie. She is better behaved than Marley was, and no less loved. I had a great time photographing both of them. I encourage anyone who has yet to read the book, or see the movie, to take it in one way or the other or both. You won't be disappointed!