Come to the Light.

Sometimes you shoot something with a digital camera and look at the display and think, “Nope, but I’ll keep it anyway.” It’s a luxury film doesn’t give. This was one of those shots.

It looked blown out and I dialed the exposure back a little — I’d been thinking of this when I was doing it — and kept on shooting. It wasn’t until I uploaded the images to my hard drive to look at them that I realized that I really dug the shot. I toned it a little in Lightroom and cropped it some before I put it here.

It’s funny how that happens.
*shrug*

xx, xx.

From the first round of edits out of a shoot I did yesterday with the daughters of some friends of mine. They’re all grown up!

Shades.

Workin’ on some other stuff, but I figured I was on a roll.

A buddy of mine was interested in a new twitter icon. I thought we’d try badass for one version.

Local Boys Make Good.

Reality television abounds. It’s not like you need me to tell you that but if you don’t pay attention, new shows appear that make you wish you paid closer attention.

One of those shows that’s both sensational and revolting is Hoarders, a new bit on A&E. The show spotlights people across the country who keep too much stuff, and that’s putting it mildly. These folks often refuse to throw things away. Their houses become suburban trash heaps, where all manner of things are just stuffed into rooms or piled high as the ceiling.

That’s where they guys at Clutter Cleaner come in. Clutter Cleaner is the brainchild of Richmond entrepreneur Matt Paxton. He and his crew (Colin, Woody, and James) show up and help people decide what to keep and what to toss. They toss a lot. They worked mostly locally until the folks at A&E found out about them. Now they fly all over the place and do it.

I got to spend some time with them working on a few images they needed for their website and heard some amazing stories. One was about a man who was storing his own poo in plastic bags in the attic of his house. Another was about a woman who had collected so much stuff that she’s forced herself to live in her kitchen. It’s as creepy as it is fascinating to hear about and see.

Ooh, Baby Baby!

When I pasted these together in Photoshop, I couldn’t stop thinking of this song. Dorky, I know.

Anyway, my wife held a baby shower for my sister at our house and I grabbed these really quickly before the shindig started.

I hope her husband takes pictures of their child as he or she (They won’t find out who’s coming, which drives me nuts!) grows ’cause nothing’s funnier than seeing who you and your parents used to be.

A Hitchin’.

I should say that I don’t often shoot weddings.
Honestly, I’m as nervous as the brides and grooms are up to the day the event happens and I’m always afraid I’ll start watching the ceremony instead of documenting it. I never do, but it’s one of the things I worry about.

I put that fear aside a little while ago and shot a wedding with Joe’s help. We got some AMAZING results. Since it was a Brainchild Collective project, Joe’s doing post on the images, but this one is surely one of the best.

I’ll pop a few more up when I get them.

For what it’s worth, the ceremony was here, and this was the post about their engagement pictures.

It’s a Shirt, It’s a Tux…

Shot a funny senior portrait the other day:

It’s a bike jersey. Here’s hoping he gets the image past the censors. 🙂

Kick It!

My Father’s Day presents were twofold, and both cooler than anything I could’ve asked for.

First off, my wife and children saw to it that I merged into the information superhighway’s fast lane by getting rid of my old phone and getting me this behemoth.

To make matters even better, my wife took the kids away for the afternoon (to my mother in law’s house where a killer dinner was prepared, but that’s a different story), allowing me to catch up with an old buddy who kindly let me shoot some portraits of her.

We had a place to shoot and had some nonstandard portraiture lined up, but when I got to her house, she had this amazing couch. We moved it outside and began. We got a lot of really good shots, but this is one of my favorites.

No Peeking.

Another shot from the recent shoot with my graduate friend. Those two MFAs look pretty sexy on her, no?

Framed.

There’s a local camera store that used to be one of the best fringe places for film-based photography just west of town. I used to go in there from time to time looking for esoteric pieces of stuff: a filter here or an adapter there, nothing really serious. The last time I was there, I scored a lens that was manual focus, but was “faster” than any of the others I own for my digital camera.

The other thing I bought was this frame. It cost me four bucks, I think. I had planned on shooting an image like this one when I came across this post over at Swiss-Miss.com. Someone responding in the comments pointed out that these kinds of images are pretty standard fare for parties. I thought it’d be cool anyway.

I’d originally shot this just to play around because I start to feel like I’m not really making photographs if I don’t shoot film from time to time. Interestingly, the more I look at this, the more I like it. In fact, I’m thinking of getting a few more frames to try the idea again with different people. I really liked working with this model as well. She’s as graceful and kind as she is beautiful.