Whirlwind Summer!

Well, it certainly has been a busy and exciting summer! I am almost halfway through the weddings, but the next three come three weekends in a row, so I will be up near Boston this weekend, then off to Portland, OR the following weekend, then to New London, CT for the third. Whew! It is exciting though, and the weddings that I've photographed so far this summer have been phenomenal. For as rainy and cold and somewhat miserable of a summer it has been around here, the days I've had for wedding photography have been excellent. Hopefully that trend sticks because my next two are on the beach...

Additionally, I've been doing quite a bit of portrait photography lately, and that's really interesting. I sometimes feel that people would rather go to the dentist than be photographed, so I try to put them at ease and get to the point where their personalities start coming through. There's an old joke amongst photographers about how you don't put any film in the camera for the first 15 minutes and I can see where that came from. Not that I can't understand, my friend and fellow photon Summer Stone photographed me for a project she's working on about New Haven and I have to say I much prefer to be on the other side of the camera! I think she was able to coax a few good images out of me, which speaks volumes to her skill!

I'm gearing up to start teaching some classes in the fall in digital photography and Photoshop Elements in Hamden, Meriden and New Haven. This will be the first time I've taught and I'm pretty excited to begin. The classes are for the adult education programs in those communities, which will be much less intimidating than walking into a classroom full of children I think!

I went to Berlin, Germany for about 10 days in July which was fantastic. It is probably my favorite city in the world, and I really enjoyed spending a large chunk of time there. It is such an interesting place and I really enjoyed photographing it. I'll leave you with my first shot from my first day there...

New Work

"My house says to me, 'Do not leave me, for here dwells your past.'
And the road says to me, 'Come and follow me, for I am your future.'
And I say to both my house and the road, 'I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things.'" --Khalil Gibran

It has been a busy last few months, more so personally than professionally but with the weather warming up, things are coming up. The summer is looking good with some 5 or 6 weddings in July and August and some travel planned. Starting with my trip down to Virginia in February, through August (and plans in the works for through October!) I am traveling consistently every other month. I'm pretty thrilled about that, one thing I was hoping to do with the flexible freelance schedule. I am sure there will be some smaller weekend adventures mixed in as well, but I'm only counting when I leave New England or the tri-state area.

I try to stretch myself when I travel elsewhere to make photographs that do not hinge on whatever exotic locale in which I find myself (Oklahoma City on Wednesday, does not get more exotic than that!). I've been trying to categorize or direct my personal work, and I think I have been trying to hard to get really specific, when what I'm doing these days is still pretty loose. I think my major body of work is based on the idea of place and my interpretation of that, the idea and the actual location. The goal is to get a piece or pieces that are at once specific and universal. I'm sure no artist has ever toyed with that concept before... I have the bones of an idea for a larger show kicking around, but I want to get some more focused work in first. I have 4 photographs that I took in Providence up at Fuel, my local coffee shop, and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out and the kick in the pants to get them up and out in the world. Now I must keep the momentum going!

Hosting Problems

The site has been going down, seemingly daily, and it will hopefully be fixed soon or I am going to change providers. Unfortunately since it is down, it is unlikely that anyone experiencing problems is able to see this. Alas!

IT'S BEEN A WHILE

I'll blame it on the holidays and everything that goes along with them, but mostly I've been busy working on projects and also getting this redesign going. I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew at first, but with a lot of persistent staring at the computer screen, obsessive googling and some help from those a bit more in the know, I am getting a grasp on CSS and other web trickery. I am glad I did it myself although it delayed things quite a bit, I learned a lot and am already getting ideas for the next redesign and tweaks I want to make to what I have now.

I'm also going to begin a series of becoming a freelance photographer posts now that I am getting into the swing of things a little bit more, as well as generally posting more regularly.

RING FLASH!

Leah came down tonight and we made ring flashes which was very exciting. We've decided to have regular meetings to experiment with lighting and today's mission was a success! I was really impressed with how well the light worked, and while the actual flash creation technique could be further refined, we got the desired effect for a relatively small investment. Of coure I was reading in the ring flash department of Strobist.com about how once one gets a ringflash, one immediately throws people up against a wall, so I guess we're in good company there since that's about all we did tonight. I like the effect it has in that situation and I like having another tool in my toolkit and I really like that next week we'll be able to combine this with some strobes and see what happens then.

In other news, I am on week 2 of being a full-time freelance photographer. things are going well thus far and I will be doing a series of posts as I go about what I did right and what I did wrong (hopefully not too many of those) and offer some advice and guidance for people looking to break into the market of freelance photography.

SHOOTING WARS

I thought this was an interesting article about women in the quite specialized field of war photography.

REVISING, REVAMPING, REWARDING!

I'm beginning the arduous task of updating and organizing the site, so please excuse any strangeness as the site goes through its awkward transitional phase. The plan so far is an updated design, larger images, better slideshows (thanks in part to Lightroom), more specific pages and easier access. Most notably, I need to get information organized for the different needs I'm here to meet, so people looking for wedding photography don't end up sorting through product photography, and people looking for fine art photography don't end up with event photography. I also need to flesh out the information I have up and just generally make this the go-to site for New Haven Photography! Can you tell I'm trying to psych myself up for this? I thought so.