Here's the final version of the tilt-shift stop-motion film that I worked on with Creative Communication & Design in Wausau. This took literally thousands of still frames to make. It was a super cool project to work on and great people to work with. There are some really cool things coming out of their creative department.

In a celebration of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, Stage North organized a torch relay from Ashland to Washburn on Friday afternoon and I was asked to grab a few photos of the event for posterity. It was really quite the undertaking. More than 30 runners took turns carrying the torch for legs of the relay which ended in front of Stage North. There an Olympic Caldron (AKA a weber grill full of lighter fluid on a 12 foot pudium) stood waiting to be lit. After ceremoniously setting that ablaze (with out any of the technical difficulties experienced in Vancouver), everyone went inside to watch the "Official" Opening Ceremonies on the big screen in the theatre.

And like any worthwhile athletic pursuit, the event was followed by a party at the bar complete with spinning records and heavy drinking. Behold the incredible power of the Olympiad to inspire us all to greatness.

After lots of shooting out in the cold lately, it was nice to shoot some indoor portraits late last week. I haven't worked with any children's photography in a couple months and Finn, the model for this particular shoot, reminded me of two very important things: (1) toddlers are way faster than you think and not predisposed to staying exactly where you put them and (2) kids can look good in a photo regardless of what they're doing. Smiling is cute. Crying is cute. Drooling is fantastically cute. Kids can't lose. Pretty much anything is free game. This is not true in all types of photography, like bridal photography for example. While a sobbing bride may be heartwarming in some specific contexts, drooling is almost always a no go.

Anyway, this was my second shoot with Finn and both times we've gotten some really good stuff. Here are a few more of my favotires from the most recent shoot:

Yep. It's definitley winter. Today is the first day in about a week that the mercury climbed out of the single digits. The snow has been beautiful and I've still been getting out to make a few photos. This kind of cold makes everything a little harder, but I think that's what I love about winter. I like the challenge. Even little accmplishments in the winter seem to have more weight. Everything feels a little more like an adventure (see above). Here are a few of my recent wintery favorites:

I shot photos for our local theatre, Stage North (click here to check out their site), this past Saturday night. It was the final weekend of an amazing production of "You Can't Take it with You." Lots of great people involved in the show. Absolutley hilarious. It was fun to watch and fun to shoot. Here are a few of my favorites from the evening:

Had my last Senior Portait session of 2009 this past weekend. Stephanie and her mother, Penny, drove up from Drummond for a shoot on Sunday afternoon. It was a clear, beautiful day here in Ashalnd. It was also about 8 degrees. That, if you're not aware, is cold. Real winter weather makes photo shoots a lot harder. Things freeze up, parts break in the cold, fingers get too cold to push the shutter button. Winter shoots are hard on the camera, they're hard on the lights, they run batteries dead in no time flat, but, most of all, winter shoots are hard on the subject. Stephanie was a trooper. 

Now, keep in mind, I was wearing long underwear and about 42 layers of polyethelene and fleece for this shoot. Stephanie on the other hand was wearing a long sleeve shirt and jeans. Afterall who wants to look like they're on an arctic expedition in their yearbook photo (Okay, okay. I would have loved to look like I was on an arctic expedition in my yearbook, but I've always been a little ...abnormal, shall we say.). She would sit in her car while we got a shot set up and then hustle out, peel off her winter coat, and try to look warm for a few minutes while I snapped away. Then back to the car to warm up for a little bit. Not a perfect system, but we got some pretty cool photos. After about an hour and half outside, we went inside for a couple studio portraits. Here are a few of my favorites:

Okay, maybe that's a little over dramatic. To be fair, almost everything is backed up elsewhere, squirreled away on DVDs or hidden on the remote corners of my computer. None of my professional work is lost, but my personal photos are mostly gone. Go figure, I protect everyone else's photos, but not my own. Smart move. Trips to Ecuador and El Salvador, Colorado, Wyoming, Madison, the family farm, all lost into the ethers. Bummer. Worst part: I know better.

I know hard drives fail. It happens. They break, get lost, get stolen, whatever. That's why you always have a backup. About a month ago I had my mouse arrow poised over the "add to cart" button on a set of three identical drives. The perfect redundant system. One for travelling and working from the road, one as an at home backup and the another for occasional archiving in a fire-proof safety deposit box. Now that's a good system. So why didn't I do it? Because I'm cheap.

As we speak some friends in IT are frantically performing the equivalent of harddrive CPR on the little fella, but it doesn't sound too good. We're basically looking at a total flat line.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

"Shock him again."

"It's no use doctor...he's gone. Call it."

"No, damn it! We have to at least try. Give me 60 joules this time. When I look his mother in the eye, I need to tell her we did everything we could."

ZAP! Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Quiet sobs emanate from the corner where I'm curled into the fetal position slowly rocking myself.

"He was so young. Why God? Why?"

I should find out Monday what if anything can be recovered. Wish me luck.

We're back from almost a week in Alpena, MI for Thanksgiving. I swear if I lived there, I'd be right around 800 lbs. We ate constantly for six days. Steaks, turkey, chicken, pie, potatoes, more pie, another potato, pasta, ice cream, another half of a potato. I think I even ate a paper clip that was sitting on the table next to my plate at one point during the feeding frenzy, but it didn't phase me. Amazing food. In between rampant boughts of stuffing my face, I did managed to snap a few photos.

Above is one of the outtakes from a shoot for our friend Heather. Her yearly Christmas Card features a photo of her and her dog, Tucker. I think Heather and I were pretty much on the same page about what we were going for, but Tucker had a widely divergent concept of how the photo should look. We were thinking a nice little shot of them sitting on the rocks looking at the camera. Tucker seemed to think that an action shot of him catching a goose and tearing it to tiny little goosey pieces would make a far better Christmas Card. While I agree it may have been a striking image, it's not quite holiday greeting material. Eventually, a small change of location and reason (by which I mean a squeek toy held above the camera) prevailed and we got a few good frames. Here's the best:

Here's another shot from this summer that I just got around to archiving. I don't have much to say about it, I just love the colors in this image. This was taken with a tilt-shift lens from the roof of a parking structure in Wausau, Wisconsin. Origininally designed for architectural photography tilt-shift lenses can be used to correct for converging verticals and other perspective related distortions. They can also be used to create this effect commonly referred to as miniature faking. Kind of cool. This was part of a project I did with an old friend from college. Craig's a designer with a firm down that way. Always a blast to work with him.