A Nice Place to Live.

This building doesn’t look like this anymore.
This is film from a long time ago. As near as I can tell it either came from a Yashica TLR or a Bronica S2a.

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.

A Nice Place to Eat.

I had lunch with a friend in a quaint little spot in the Fan yesterday. I desperately want to go back and shoot something else there. The space is beautiful. This little angle doesn’t do it justice.
And the food was amazing too. If you’re ever in Richmond, eat there.

And Now, the News.

Awhile back, as part of a project I was working on with Joe over at Brainchild Collective (@Bcollective on twitter), we caught up with Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles on twitter), a newscaster here in town who’s one of the coolest personalities on the air today.

We wanted to represent him a way that wasn’t the boring shot of a newsman with a microphone so we elected to have him serving breakfast, along with the news. To someone in the shower. I mean, isn’t that what you want? The news as early as possible? Besides, don’t you like Corn Flakes?

We shot a fair number of other things that day, but I liked this best. We also shot this over the summer. Back when it was warm. And we saw the sun… Ah, memories.

Maybe eventually Richmond will dig out. We’re hoping that Jim Duncan, Andrew Freiden, and Tom Patton have something good to tell us by the weekend!

Oh, and check out these guys, all updatin’ their site and all! ‘Member the shoot with them a few weeks ago?

snOMG!

That’s what they were calling it in the twitterverse.
It’s snowed here two weekends in a row. I spent the time bundled up with the fam since my daughter’s only interested in talking about the snow.

I did manage to sneak out (and almost freeze my fingers off) this past Saturday to sneak a few pictures. It’s funny how such beautiful stuff as snow can bring a city like Richmond to a grinding halt.

There was ample sledding at local Forest Hill Park.

The local playground didn’t look as inviting as usual. More like something out of Silent Hill.

There’s just something about a bit of blue filter and a snowy road scene that just evokes desolation. You’d never know the sledders were just down the way.

I thought the images looked a lot like pieces from a film so I borrowed some post process techniques and made them look like this.
Thanks for visiting. I’ll try to update more frequently.

The Patrick Henry Charter School.

There’s an old Richmond Public School near my house that the city decided to close a couple of years back. It’s a beautiful old building and I’ve used it as a backdrop for shoots before, like this one and this one. So when the people who are spearheading the effort to make the charter school a reality called and asked if I had time to help, I was happy to oblige.

They had a cleanup day a couple of weeks ago and invited me to come. I didn’t have to dig anything up or move any dirt. My job was just to photograph stuff so that they had images for their newsletters and website.

They had a set timeframe and ended up with a whole passel of volunteers to help brush the dust off a facility that the city doesn’t use anymore. I’m really excited to see how their curriculum shapes up and thrilled to see new life in the building.

MAE at the Canal Club.

I don’t get to shoot many concerts (or “shows” as the cool kids call them these days) but I did the other day get a chance to see a band I’d heard of in the last year and really liked. What made it especially fun for me was that I got to take pictures.

(Dave)

I’d been under the impression that there would be a strict photography ban. My understanding of concert photography is that most artists let the photogs in for the first few songs – 3 maybe – and then the photographers have to disappear. Moreover, those photographers aren’t allowed to use flashes and the people in the audience are usually searched and told not to bring their cameras. That’s how it was when my wife took me to see the Police in Atlanta two years back.

(Zach)

The MAE show was different, though. Not only was the venue, the Canal Club here in Richmond, a small enough place for the fans to be right at the edge of the stage, but there were flashes going off the whole time. I watched as folks recorded the whole show on their phones. Even more interesting was the range in the demographics of the audience. I expected to be surrounded by a bunch of twenty-somethings but was pleased to see several thirty and forty-ish looking people. But none of this was what truly amazed me.

What was absolutely amazing about this concert was the devotion of the fans. I stood next to one fellow who’d seen the band six times. “My first show was back in ’03,” he said, matter-of-factly. He didn’t look a day over 23. There were girls singing the lyrics, matching Dave Elkins note for note. Their eyes were closed, their heads thrown back and occasionally, a fist was thrust in the air for emphasis. They knew the all the words to the songs from the EP the band released last Tuesday. For these people, this music was more than just music. It was life. I loved every minute of it and captured as much as I could.

Once the main performance was over, they moved upstairs for a small acoustic benefit show. They’re donating the proceeds from their online sales (I think) to different charities, one in every state. How many bands are that forward thinking? You can see more about that endeavor on their website.

As for me, I scored a tshirt before I left and I can tell you with certainty that I plan to make it back to see them when they come to town again and back to the Canal Club for a show from time to time.

Oh, and be sure to follow these people on twitter, if you’re into the twitterverse:
MAE
The Canal Club

Take That!

The mosquitoes in Richmond are unbelievable this time of year. A half dozen of the brazen little twerps follow me into the house every time I enter.

I managed to teach this one a lesson and left his carcass on the glass to serve as a warning for his friends. Unfortunately, I don’t think they care.

Winter Scenes.

Temperatures over the past weekend and into this week have been in the upper 70s. Without photographic evidence, one would never know that Richmond had been brought to a veritable standstill.

I have some of that evidence:

A Snow Day.

Richmond is just not equipped for large amounts of snow and, as such, the city shut down after we got dumped on yesterday.

I took a few minutes before trying to convince my two-year-old daughter that the snow was fun – she didn’t believe me, came crying back to her mother – to shoot a few images. What’s funny is that as soon as I got outside, I remembered what I’d been told about how snow lied to light meters, telling them that there was more light than necessary. The first Polaroid I shot was way overexposed. I had to underexpose two stops to get these to work. They’re unremarkable, but hey, they’re pictures of snow.

This one is actually exposed correctly as I shot it the night before, while the snow was coming down. The shutter was open for 8 seconds, give or take, at its widest aperture.