Full Weekend

Erin and I didn't have a bunch of plans heading into the weekend but we ended up really getting around and doing a lot. On Friday I went out for a bike ride and met Erin at the Civic Theater for Pechakucha Akron. Saturday morning I rode with Ben and Andy to Erin's Winter Farmers Market at Old Trail School and from there we rode to check out the new Brew Kettle in Hudson(Erin met us after work.) In the evening Erin and I drove out to Rittman Orchard's Bent Ladder Cider tasting room and stopped on the way home at Wadsworth Brewing. After a lazy Sunday morning we drove to Cleveland for a snack at Croquette Patisserie, camera bag shopping at Dodd Photo, and then checked out the Jazz Age exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Lastly, we had dinner at my parents house on the way home. All in all a pretty awesome weekend!

Mounds & Bikes Video

The latest in my "Road Trip" Video series. This time we explore the Great Serpent Mound & Fort Ancient while enjoying a few hikes, bikes, and camping.

Halloween Charity Ball 2017

On Friday I shot the Halloween Charity Ball for the fourth year. It is always one of my favorite events to photograph - people in costume having a good time. This year the event raised money for Pechakucha Akron and Stewart's Caring Place. Roxymoron played the VIP room and there was the DJ and costume contest in the other. I had a blast as usual and dressed up in my annual thrift store women's costume.

Pre-Historic Ride

I've always wanted to explore some of the ancient American Indian sites in the southern half of Ohio so Erin planned a short trip for us that combined that with some cycling. She found us a rustic cabin that was only a few hundred feet from The Little Miami Scenic Trail - a paved bike path that ran right to the Fort Ancient Park. On our second full day we drove to the Great Serpent Mound - viewing that has been something I've wanted to do since my Ohio History class in elementary school. I didn't shoot a ton of photos on the trip but like the last few get-aways put more effort into making a video that will be posted in the next few days.

200 Plates

200PlatesSummitLake from Reimagining the Civic Commons on Vimeo.

Re-imagining the Civic Commons held a three day studio for the cities involved in Akron. One night they collaborated with The League of Creative Interventionists to put on a community meal at Summit Lake. The meal took place next to many of the park-like upgrades that have been funded by the program. It was cool to see the diversity of the group that sat down and ate together. This is a short video/slide show I made of the event.

Timecat in Colors

Every third Thursday throughout the Summer The Devil Strip and City of Akron sponsored concerts at Lock 4 Park. Last week after shooting a different gig downtown I made it to Lock 4 Live in time to catch Timecat. It was a fun to make some photos with all the different colors from the stage light show and with the LEDs that the Knight foundation had installed in the park.
As much as I love Autumn the winding down of these Summer events bums me out....

Dayton Video

Here is the road trip video from Dayton. It is a combination of footage from my GoPro, Mavic Pro Drone, and Canon 5D mkIV. Canon gets a lot of flak from all the internet commenters - but I'll tell you what - I barely have to touch that footage to make it look good. Also - with the new YouTube redesign I can't figure out how to resize the embedded videos. You should go "fullscreen" anyways I guess....

Dayton

Erin and I decided to load up the bikes and get one more Summer road trip in. We picked Dayton because neither of us had been to the downtown and the bike lanes, trails and brewery scene looked strong. As my friend Rick said, "An experiment in breweries making any place a destination". Which, I do find to be true, and not just because I travel other places to try out their breweries, but also because every time I do I usually meet people at the breweries who know Akron(or Cleveland) because of our brewery scene. Breweries and bike infrastructure are tourist draws. Every time there is an article in Akron about improving bike lanes or adding trails there are always so many negative comments - bike lanes make our community a better place to live but they are also a draw. I've yet to ever have someone tell me about how they enjoyed visiting a city because the traffic flowed so well or that there was really good parking. It is always about friendly, walkable neighborhoods, cool local shops/restaurants/breweries, and great parks with hiking and biking. Anyways - if fast cars and strip malls with up front parking are your thing there are plenty of suburbs for you.

A Year of B&W

This is an expired roll of Kodak TMax that was in my camera for almost an entire year. I started this roll sometime last summer at the Akron Farm & Flea and finished it this summer at the Akron Art Museum's 'Downtown @ Dusk'. It must not have been stored very well because TMax should be very low grain - and this came out very grainy. I developed it in Kodak HC-110 dilution b.

Pokemon Go! Downtown

I'm not going to pretend like I knew anything about Pokemon Go! or "augmented reality" games - I've never had any kind of game on my cellphone. All I know is when it came out I would see people walking around Downtown staring at their phones. I though the trend had subsided so when the Knight Foundation hired me to shoot their Pokemon event downtown I kind of thought it would be a bust. Nope! Downtown was packed with roving groups of people staring at their phones! It was pretty remarkable. Erin stopped by to show me what was going on(on the screens) and I enjoyed wandering around the city covering the event.

More Fuji Color

These are a few more shots with the expired Fuji Press 400 film and my Pentax K1000 that didn't fit with the Earthquaker Day photos from the last post. Many of these were shot at Lock 3 during Stems set at the Signal Tree Festival(above).

Earthquaker Day in Color

On August 5 I rode my bike downtown Akron to the second annual Earthquaker Day. Earthquaker Devices, the internationally acclaimed guitar pedal manufacturer, held a festival again this year. There were tours, clinics, vendors, food, music and more. I brought a couple film cameras with me - I shot the early part of the day with my Minolta X-700 and a new b&w film(haven't developed those yet) and the later part of the day with my Pentax K-1000 and some expired Fuji Press 400 film - these are those shots. Most of these photos are of 'Fringe Candidate' and specifically Karl - for obvious reasons...

Eclipse

Like anything that is over-hyped I have a tendency to steer away from it - plus I had a lot of work to do. So I hadn't tracked down any special glasses, lens filters or made any plans. I also figured there would be well prepared photographers taking amazing photos - so what would be the point in my half-assed attempts. As the peak started to near I walked outside and tried to use my front facing camera over my shoulder to see what was happening. That didn't work. So I grabbed a ND filter and put it over the lens - still - just a flare. I grabbed a red filter that was laying around and doubled up - still nothing. OK - now I kinda wanted to see what was happening - I grabbed my Canon 6D(decided against pointing the 5D at the sun) and I put the two filters over the lens and set the camera to its smallest aperture and fastest shutter speed. I put the camera into live view mode and there it was - the moon moving over the sun on the back of my camera. Pretty cool. "Oh wait", I thought to myself ...."I can also take photos with this thing...."

Bubbles!

The Akron Art Museum hired me to shoot a family event they were holding - there were all kinds of activities but the main event was 2X world record holder, DrURawesome, who makes gigantic bubbles. It made for some great photography!

The Sun Also Rises

Since my gimp leg kept me up most of the night I decided to pay it back by dragging it around Kendall this morning - it had been far too long since I watched the sunrise in the Cuyahoga Valley anyways. I guess there are a few reasons I don't get out in the woods as much anymore - most of my hiking time is now biking time, I feel like I've pretty thoroughly covered The Valley with my camera over the years, I'm shooting all the time as my day job now, and maybe this one is stupid - but it seems kind of ridiculous for me to lug thousands of dollars worth of gear knowing people will look at it on tiny phone screens - so like most - I'm happy to take the iphone snap and just post it to Instagram...

Regardless - I am glad I took the time to enjoy a beautiful morning in the park - and maybe I'll print one of these big - something a phone still can't do.

Growing Up Akron 2017

I've been shooting Growing Up Akron, which is a charity event for Child Guidance and Family Solutions, for a number of years now. It is a really fun event to cover as it is held at Thirsty Dog Brewery and has a very laid back vibe. This year I brought my drone to get some aerial shots and then put together this slide show of the event.

Akron AleFest

Last year I volunteered and poured beer for the first Akron AleFest - this year I photographed it and drank beer. The AleFest takes place under the trolley barn downtown and focuses on Ohio Breweries. Great beer and food in a unique venue - what not to like?

Downtown at Dusk

Downtown at Dusk is one of my favorite weekly summer events in Akron. It takes place every Thursday - I love to go and have a few beers and mingle with friends. Last week Half-Cleveland played and put on a great show.