Get Off of My Cloud

This is a pic, not a photograph, of my friend Wes.

To Clone or Not to Clone

On Saturday night I was out shooting some photos for 'A Man For All Seasons' at the Highland Theater. He got a call from a friend Kieth - his band the Trouble Books needed a photo for the music magazine Skyscraper.
They just wanted a simple shot so I sat them down at the bar. I liked the photos but felt that the background was a little bit too busy - so I cloned out some of the signs.

I would never do something like this to a shot that I consider more journalistic....but here I think it is justified, the article will not be about the Highland but about the band.
I know that this will still drive some of our readers crazy - as I found out in a debate about cropping - so I look forward to the comments. I sent the band both versions so they could make the choice.

The magazine wanted the shots in black & white - I liked them in color and posted one on my flickr page.

Jenn and Liam

My friend Jenn asked me to shoot some photos of her and her son Liam. She wanted a nice portrait for her mom.
I did get some "nice" ones - but I think these are more fun....

Houseguest/Real Dogs

Here are some photos from the Houseguest shows I went to last weekend.
These were a couple of nights where my wide angle lens really came in handy. Its a Sigma 10-20mm f/4. Both shows were packed and the Matinee is a fairly small bar - without a wide angle lens I wouldn't have been able to get anything very usable.

The bottom left photo is The Real Dogs....

You can view the rest of the photos from the shows here.

Tickling the Ivory

I took this photo to do internets promotion for the two Houseguest shows I mentioned yesterday. I figured I'd throw it up here because no one ever posts on Saturday....and I love Houseguest.
Last night they played their first record, "High Strangeness" and tonight they will be playing their second, "Welcome, All That's Difficult". Both of their records(pictured on the keyboard) were put out on Black Key's Pat Carney's record label Audio Eagle.
I used two flashes shot into umbrellas to light this photo - one behind me and one behind the camera. I'll post some of the show photos tomorrow...

The Real Thing

The other day I received an envelope full of pictures from last farm season in the mail. I took magnets and stuck some of them up on my fridge. While I love the ease of digital photography and its distribution(ex. shooting a band playing a show one night and having a link to the photos on their Myspace page the next day)its still really cool to flip through prints with your hands.
As far as I'm concerned having a few digital picture frames around can't compare to the real framed print.
I just read Time Magazine's article How To Save Your Newspaper and also saw a review of Amazon.com's Kindle 2, an e-book reader. I can easily imagine paper copies of newspapers disappearing in my lifetime and the death of the CD seems just a matter of time.(While CD sales were down last year vinyl record sales were actually up) Being thirty years old I pretty much straddle the technology divide - but for me nothing could ever replace a photo on my fridge, reading a newspaper in my rocking chair, reading a novel out back on my swing, or dropping a needle on a vinyl LP.

Unrelated: Amazing Akron band Houseguest will be playing shows tonight and tomorrow at the Matinee in Highland Square. Tonight they play their first album(and Chief Source friend Wes Dodd's band The Real Dogs will be opening) and Saturday night they will play their second album - I'll be there both nights shooting photos...

Abe's 200th

As you probably know, today is the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is one of those people that become more impressive the more you learn about them - the truth is more interesting than the myth.

This photo was taken a few years ago of the mantle in Goodyear founder F.A.Seiberling's office at Stan Hywet Hall. You actually aren't supposed to take any pictures inside of Stan Hywet(I know this because I had been told to stop about ten minutes before) -but at the time I was on a Lincoln kick(I had just read a collection of his speeches) and when I saw this office I had to snap one. I shot it in full-auto mode with the pop-up flash, I just wanted the photo.

I was just checking out the government's Lincoln Bicentennial site and I saw a great show on PBS last night called Looking for Lincoln.