Taxes

Tax season isn't so fun when you work for yourself. Not only is it the work and complications of figuring out the paper work - but I don't pay taxes all year - so I'm not getting "something back" but writing a big check to Uncle Sam. Anyways - as I started to organize my papers I pictured myself sitting there in the poker visor that Hunter S. Thompson was wearing in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas(or that Johnny Depp's version is in the movie). When I was in Vegas I looked everywhere for one but never found it - in this day and age of Amazon and eBay it took me about three minutes to find one and have it here in two days. Straight up bought it for the above photo. This is a simple two light shot - a soft box camera left and another one pointing in from the other room.

The hat was worth it - and may be a Halloween costume next Fall.  

Maple Sugar Festival

This morning Erin and I went to Hale Farm for the Maple Sugar Festival. We enjoyed a pancake breakfast(although sans real maple syrup - there were tastings outside), demonstrations on tree tapping, how the syrup is made and the other museum exhibits(the homes, blacksmith, glass-blowing etc.) We are both fairly acquainted with the the maple sugaring process and the museum - but it was still a nice way to spend a pretty, late-winter Sunday(and Hale Farm is always fun to photograph).

Exploring in the Snow

My friend Ben and I went out in the snow on Thursday evening to explore a piece of property in the Northampton area on our mountain bikes. I attached my GoPro to my seat tube for a "unique" perspective. 

I've been noticing lately that when I upload my videos to YouTube the colors come across very flat even though I've applied fairly saturated color-grading. I'm using Premiere Pro's YouTube preset for rendering but something isn't working right. I'm not sure if it is just YouTube's codecs and algorithms or if I need to be rendering my videos different. Time for some research.

Boston - The Movie

I finally got around to finishing the video from my Boston Trip in late January. I flew out there to surprise Eric on his birthday. This is some footage of us walking and driving the city - being general goofballs.

Photos from the trip can be seen HERE.

Genuine Article

Micah Kraus's artwork is featured on three different versions of the cover of the three year anniversary issue Devil Strip. I was lucky to be able to shoot photographs of him in his West Akron studio for the accompanying article. I hauled all of my lighting gear over there but his studio was so well lit that I only ended up adding a little bit of fill by bouncing my on-camera flash. You can pick up The Devil Strip all around town but you can also click HERE to see the digital version of the article.

The Biggest Box

I had a portrait coming into the studio on Saturday morning and my Friday night was free - so I decided to set up and take some test shots. I had just been covering an event where a portrait photographer was using a light modifier that I hadn't used before but remembered seeing somewhere in the studio. Before I ever found that I found gear bags with two other very cool things - one was a massive 6 foot soft box. I didn't know we had one that big. Next I found a strip box that was 8 feet long! I forgot about what I was originally looking for and started to put these together.