A Moment of Silence.

One of the coolest things that a camera can do is lie about the instant it captures.
Take this image, for example. They look like they’re calm and like they’ve been sitting there for a long time, contemplating whatever it is that lives in that tank (it’s a family of river otters, but that’s beside the point).
Only some of that’s true. Right after this, they were clambering to get down. Just before this, they were hooting and laughing at the antics of the otters.
This moment of silence was precious more than a millisecond.
And that’s why it’s beautiful.

The Beginning of the Project.

This is an iPhone photo from behind the scenes of the big project.
It’s up.
And running.
Have a look and then come back and lemme know what you think.

The Steam Effect

Something Wicked This Way Comes.

This is not part of the project that’s starting TOMORROW, but it’s an outtake from one of the images.

Join me and a group of my buddies in looking at our summer project: The Steam Effect

The Fruits of Many Labors.

Finally.
I’ve been working as a director for this large scale project and we’re just now getting to a roll out stage.
There will shortly be a website I’ll be able to share with you.

These are gonna be cool. I promise.

The Middle of Nowhere.

I got together with a group of nerdy friends over the weekend to create a few large scale images. The difference this time is that I wasn’t the principal photographer. My friend, Richard Upshur was. I grabbed a few with my iPhone, and will post a few more as I get around to processing them.

For Your Viewing Pleasure.

This is Todd Raviotta of Natural Science Productions. He’s worn a bunch of different hats in Richmond over the last ten years. He’s been a filmmaker. He’s been a director. He’s been teaching at the Governor’s School and VCU. He’s been the mentor to a number of aspiring filmmakers who call Richmond home. And that’s the thing. When you wear so many hats, it’s easy to forget what you want to do, what you love.

This summer, Todd’s assembled a crew to work on a new film. He’s directing again. This weekend at Gallery5, he and his crew are holding auditions for their newest project, Every Guy Ever. It promises to be a good time, as all of his other films have been to date.

If you’ve got a heart that wants to act, come out to the auditions on Sunday. If not, you’ll just have to wait.

Decisions, Decisions…

A buddy of mine needed a new twitter profile pic. Somehow, I’d been lucky enough to shoot the last few she’d used: one of her exercising, one of her looking fabulous at work, and another of her looking mysterious walking through a parking lot so a new one wasn’t so far out of range.

I opted to parry her two greatest loves against one another: running and sweets. She’s not the first woman I’ve known who openly points out that exercise is mostly important because it allows her to eat the way she’d like. The other routinely talks about her own blog.

Anyway, here’s the newest iteration of @OhGrohs.

All By Himself.

Usually when the front man for a band strikes out on his own, it’s because the band has dissolved. Watch any of VH1’s “Behind the Music” episodes (do they even air those anymore?) and you’ll either hear that the band members parted ways to “explore solo interests,” or that there was a “descent into drugs… and alcohol,” and always in that grave voice of the VH1 voiceover guy, who’s almost as annoying at the Bravo guy, but not quite.

Happily, neither of these was the case. This was Chad Ebel (more honestly, his silhouette) of the Richmond band, The Florentines. He was working alone, but I understand that a few of his band mates were in attendance.

The occasion was Live at Ipanema, a once a month salute to local artists – musicians and photographers alike. This month Chad was the music and I was the photographer. It was really cool to be able to move around the space to wherever I wanted to get a better view of the headliner. I suspect that this is what a backstage pass is like. Kinda.

The lighting in Ipanema is sparse. It’s great ambience for a show but it made picture taking harder. I was happy there was enough background light to make this shot work.

You can read more about the show here, at the blog of an out-going buddy of mine.

Her Ladyship.

This is Shawn, who happily joined us on our steampunk escapades through the old factory. She was great to work with. I’m anxious to get her back in the greenhouses just ’cause I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff that may be a little less costume intensive in those spaces. The light wasn’t this warm, but it really did wrap around the space like that.

Gettin’ A Grip.

I borrowed these from Joe the other day to play around with them.