Happy St. Pat's

Green beer, green clothes and The Pogues. This holiday is easy for me to handle!

Virginia Kendall

I think I've probably gone for more hikes at Virginia Kendall than anywhere else. What amazes me is that I can still find places at the park that I hadn't been to before. I went there today with my friend Lindsey. I love taking photos like this - you hold out the camera(with wide angle lens), and shoot into the sun with the flash on. Sometimes when I see someone shooting with their simple camera into the sun I tell them to turn the flash on. They look confused. Some people understand what a silhouette is, some don't!

Snow Blur

The other night I had to take my parents to the airport at 4 in the morning(or at night depending on your perspective). After the little taste of spring weather we had here in Akron I was shocked when I walked out my door and saw the biggest snow flakes of the winter - pictured above at 30mph. As a life long resident of Northeast Ohio I should be smart enough to know that we aren't even close to being out of the woods yet. Its a crapshoot this time of year - it could be 65 and sunny or 20 and a blizzard(not to mention everything in between).  Lets hope for the former!

Blue Hen Part IV

I'm not sure what "part" this really is - but I've tried to photograph Blue Hen Falls multiple times. Its kinda my photographic nemesis. The last time I went the falls were covered in ice and snow and not very pretty. The time before that they were just a trickle -and the time before that the sun was too bright to get a long enough shutter speed to blur the water. This time I was prepared. It was a rainy day and I knew the clouds weren't going anywhere, between the snow melt and rain I knew there would be a good flow, and I had a new perspective in mind to really bring out the scene.

I snapped this with myself and the tripod in the river slightly - which was a little nerve-racking but ultimately worth-while. Blue Hen, I knew I could make you look good - now for Brandywine Falls Part III.

More photos below...

Cascade Locks

Cascade Locks is one of my favorite places to walk in Akron. I've been going there since before the towpath was built - the trail used to be on the other side of the canal from where the above photo was taken.
The last time I went before they had put the towpath in I shot a roll of film with my Minolta XG1.  I was glad I had captured the park before it changed - or so I thought. Turns out this roll of film is how I found out my Minolta's film door was no longer sealed - the roll was exposed.  Bummer.  At least I have my memories.
More photos after the jump..

Rogues' Hollow

Today I went for a hike near Doylestown in Chippewa Township. There is a small park run by the Rogues' Hollow Historical Society with an old Mill. The photo is of the remnants of the dam that used to feed the mill race. I found a rock to set my camera on so I could use a slower shutter speed to get the motion blur of the water. The bridge by the mill is referred to as "Cry Baby Bridge" and is supposedly haunted. We ran into the man who tends to the property(and lives in the restored mill) and he said he's been there for 17 years and nothing ghostly has ever happened - and he mentioned that Ohio has 27 "Cry Baby Bridges". I found an interesting article on the history of the area here.

Muscle Bake

Yesterday my girlfriend, Laura, and our friend Lindsey decided to get together and cook muscles. I had never had muscles before so I was excited(and maybe a bit nervous) to try something new. Since I'm not of very much use around the kitchen I decided to document the feast with my camera.

I put together a little photo essay of the "experience" - meet me after the "jump"!

Down in the Valley

This photograph is from the Towpath Trail in the Cuyahoga Valley. I started hiking in Peninsula with the goal of getting this far(to the Turnpike Bridge)because I was on a time table(had to get to my parents for dinner). It was a hike that was tougher than I expected - slipping and sliding in the snow takes it out of you after a while.

I added a lot of saturation and contrast when I was processing this photo to give it some pop - it looked really flat directly off the camera. It was my favorite shot of the day.
Two more photos after the jump.

Trouble Books and Gabe Schray

On Saturday night Gabe Schray and Trouble books both played a record release party for their respective forthcoming CDs and LPs. They both can be purchased by clicking on the links that follow - Gabe's Effective Demonic Experiment & Trouble Book's Gathered Tones. I was glad there was some large artwork up on the walls at Square Records - it made for an interesting background. I had brought a light stand with me and hoped to set a flash up high for more interesting lighting but I got there a little too late and didn't have time. So I just bounced my flash off the ceiling and I think I got some pretty decent photos.

Under Construction

This blog and all the other pages on this website are based on blogger templates but unfortunately blogger plans to no longer allow users to upload to external FTPs. Never mind the technical mumbo-jumbo - I bring this up because I'm going to use this as an opportunity to revamp and improve this site. I'm going to add photo galleries and redo the navigation - its a work in progress. The first thing you'll notice is that I've created a new banner. I only have it up on the blog right now but it will soon grace all the pages when they are redone.

The above photo was an accident from earlier today when I was shooting portraits for the banner. I liked the reflection of my old camera in my new one.

The Unguarded Moment

Today I went to the Joseph Saxton Gallery of Photography to check out the exhibit of Steve McCurry's work called 'The Unguarded Moment'. Steve McCurry is an award winning National Geographic photographer most famous for his photo titled 'Afghan Girl'(visible in the exhibit poster above). All 50 of his prints on display showed beautiful color and detail. They're portraits of people from the Middle East and Asia - with a focus on showing "a person caught in the broader landscape that you could call the human condition". It was truly an amazing collection of work. The Gallery also had many other photos from their collection on display.

I'm glad I went - I've wanted to make an effort to get out to see more things like this. There really is a difference between a page on a website (or a magazine) versus seeing a large, beautiful print in person.

Behind the Eight Ball

I know I've posted photos of pool playing at the Matinee before....but I had to share this shot of Wes - because it is awesome. We were out that night because my friend Mike had flown in from Seattle for a funeral. I shot this without flash at an ISO of 3200 - which is kinda cool because my older camera was limited ISO 1600. My Canon EOS 7D goes all the way up to 12,800 - though the images get quite noisy at that point - but sometimes a noisy image is better than no image.

30,000 Clicks

This is the first photo I uploaded to flickr back on June 13, 2006 - taken with a borrowed Canon PowerShot SD400. Today my flick 'PhotoStream' received its 30,000th view and I was taking a little trip down memory lane looking at some of the older stuff. Its amazing to see my niece and nephews grow and to see the vast improvement in my digital photography skills. Hopefully I can look back in another four years and see just as much improvement....

No More Borders

A Friday night in the Winter of 1996, hanging out with the gang in Pete's basement, we'd already had band practice and watched the same skateboarding video for the 100th time, what next? I know - let's hit up Borders. Borders wasn't a store then, it was a hang out - we'd stand in the magazine aisle for hours reading all the band interviews (and occasionally buy a CD), not to mention probably run into other friends from school. I don't usually mourn the loss of a chain store, but I'd be lying to say I'm not nostalgic about the Montrose Borders. Yesterday I decided to head over there to check out there store clearance sale(30-50% off)...and maybe more so to say goodbye.

They Say Its Your Birthday

On Saturday night my family celebrated my sister and brother's birthdays, which are only 3 days apart. I've written before about how family events are great low pressure situations to practice getting good event-type photos. In the above photo I was concerned with capturing this moment and I didn't realize my focus point was off(it may not be too noticeable at this size but becomes apparent when viewed larger). Good thing this wasn't a decisive moment at someones's wedding....

Blue Hen Bust

I went out for a hike at the Blue Hen Falls trail in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park the other day. There are two pretty cool water falls there, Blue Hen and Buttermilk, and I thought that they might make for good photos all frozen up. I was wrong. Blue Hen Fall's ice formations just weren't that picturesque and Buttermilk Falls just looked like a hill covered in snow. The photo is just above Buttermilk Falls - the foreground(and where I'm standing is actually the river) - it was really the only photo I was happy with from the hike. I think I'll have to head back out there when the falls are starting to melt....

Recording Part II

...and now the exciting conclusion to yesterday's post....

The photo to the left shows the lighting set-up I used for the above photo. The top photo is my friend Justin about to lay down an acoustic guitar track - I added a black & white gradient layered at 90% to get the color on the photo. I'll be posting even more of these photos to my flickr page today.

Shallow Depth

Today I was at a recording studio at Tri-C in Cleveland to shoot some photos for a friend who is working on a music project there. He needed some photos of the process to go along with it. The studios up there are absolutely beautiful.

Anyways - when I got home and started to look through my photos this one immediately jumped out at me. It turned out pretty much exactly as I hoped and I edited up a copy before I even finished looking through the rest of what I shot. I achieved the narrow depth-of-field by shooting with and aperture of f/1.8. It was lit with my flash & shoot through-umbrella up and to the left. I will probably have a part 2 to this post with more studio photos tomorrow - but I was too excited to finish more editing and posted this for now....