Bucket

Everyone responded favorably to the Studio B/RPG teaser so I thought I would post a full-length music video I made for local rock trio, Bucket, last year. The live footage is from Republic and the other location was a friend’s building in Petersburg.

Bucket is a band I co-founded with Lewis Harris and Mitch Taylor in 1992…. that’s right, twenty years ago! Hard to believe it’s been that long. I moved to Boston the following year and Bucket fans have since referenced different eras of the band’s history by which drummer was involved. The latest incarnation, represented here, has Ricky Tubb on skins.

Lewis and Mitch are two of the best songwriters I’ve ever encountered. The band is not active at the moment, but if you ever hear of a Bucket gig you should definitely try and catch it.

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The Pictures Are Moving

I’ve recently been getting involved with local radio show Studio B. Good friend, Jay Smack, started the show 17 years ago (gasp!) and has used it as a platform to promote local artists ever since. Through three format/station changes, Studio B has remained a reliable constant in the otherwise fickle world of local radio programming. The show airs every Sunday at 11:00pm on its current home, 102.1 the X, and should be on your radar if you have even the slightest appreciation for actual musicians writing actual music and playing actual instruments. A new Studio B website is in the works and, given the show’s value to the RVA scene (it’s been said that Jay Smack does more for local music than local music does for itself), I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an expansion into other media in the near future.

Shooting video for the show was a lot of fun, but I’ve also had the pleasure of performing on Studio B with Tom McCormack (pictured below with Smack during a 2009 broadcast) and playing, engineering, or producing on records featured on the show at one time or another. I’ll be the first to say the New Media is very cool but, for a guy who grew up in the 70′s, being played on the radio is still hard to top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This past week, Studio B was recorded by Daniel Deckelman at Snake Oil Recording and featured stalwart Richmond heavies, RPG. I’m going all cheesy-rock-critic dropping “stalwart” and “heavies” because these guys truly are both. I shot very little footage, hence the mercilessly short edit of their new song, “Southern Girls”, so be sure and check out the new record “High Loathsome” which I believe is being pressed on 180 gram vinyl at this very moment.

This video can be seen at RVA.com this week as well, where you’ll also learn a bit more about the new RPG record.

 

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Shooting My Food

I’ve been doing a lot of Chinese cooking lately. This is an incredible pork dish along with some baby bok choy.

I should probably stop shooting my food, though… especially while the fam is waiting for their meal!

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In Defense Of Tungsten Lighting

Once when I was a kid, my mom dropped and broke a thermometer. I remember the two of us chasing a wiggly little ball of mercury around the carpet with a piece of cardboard. She didn’t let me touch it, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t turn on fans or open windows or throw away the clothes we were wearing or triple bag, seal with tape, and dispose of all cleanup materials. But then it was the 70′s; we also never wore seat belts, so what did we know?

I only bring this up because with a ban on the incandescent light bulb beginning this year, mercury is often cited as the main reason for criticism of the new CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) design. While meddlesome government regulation and dire warnings about breakage do cause me some concern, I must admit my real issue with the ban is much more selfish than that; it’s about color temperature.

It’s bad enough that CFL’s contain mercury, are weirdly misshapen, aren’t dimmable, create RF interference, spew ultraviolet light, can’t handle voltage spikes, and make us look like shit in the bathroom mirror, but what will we photographers do without that warm tungsten filament glow? I prefer to keep my daylight outside and my warm tungsten in, thank you very much. In fact, I really love it when both warm and cool light sources are successfully combined in the same image. This shot taken at the bar in Kuba Kuba is a good example. I used tungsten balanced film to capture a clean, true-to-life image of the subject under indoor lighting, while the daylight filtering in behind was rendered a dramatic blue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sure lighting technology has advanced in leaps and bounds and between CFL’s, LED’s, halogens, and whatever else is out there, consumers will probably have no problem finding warm, pleasant lighting for living rooms and hallways, offices, bathrooms, ovens, car interiors even, but sometimes I’ve just gotta bitch.

Sometimes change is annoying. Sometimes it’s not for the better.

If it aint’ broke don’t fix it…

and it aint’.

Now if we could only decide on ‘color’ or ‘colour’.

Here are a few photos where I used the “wrong” color temperature for dramatic effect.

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Portfolio Edit, Analog Style

Recent revelations about my photographic vision inspired me to assemble a new portfolio and update my website for 2012. To do so, I made tiny prints of all the contenders and spread them out on my desk to cull and sequence. I got this brilliant idea from a video about Wonderful Machine photo editor, Sean Stone, and I can’t recommend this methodology enough to visual artists of any kind. I let my tiny prints simmer over the course of a few days, making changes here and there until finally I had whittled them down from 78 to 40 images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s so much to be said for photos you can actually hold in your hand. I guess I’m already pretty old school with my analog cameras and all in-camera, in-field approach, but would it be overkill to start looking around eBay for a lightbox?

Since I generally stuck to a food & travel theme for the portfolio, quite a few images ended up on the cutting room floor (literally!). Gary Longest of Teensy Studio made it all sparkle in the digital realm. His clean, simple format really showcases the work.

Here are some of the outtakes.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pura Vida

Several months ago my wife and I took a trip to Costa Rica. Long overdue, it was our first vacation without kids in over a decade. We visited beaches, lakes, and volcanoes; drove our little Suzuki Jimny through small towns and villages; walked around Liberia. We ate. We slept. Made love. We reconnected.

I want to go back.

Until then, there are only memories.

And these photos.

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Shedding An Uncomfortable Skin (or: How I Learned To Recognize The Sound Of My Own Voice)

Last year was a bit strange for me and I don’t mind saying I was glad to see it go. I started that year innocently enough; Having explored photography thoroughly for the better part of five years, producing tens of thousands of photographs with all manner of equipment, I had a pretty good idea of who I was as a photographer. While we never quit growing, or at least never should, my ‘voice’ was getting pretty clear. I had gone well past the basics into that area where one’s personal aesthetic can’t help but make its way into the work.

But around this time last year I took a wrong turn. In an effort to monetize my skills I set out to become a certain type of photographer; a wedding photographer. Never mind that, aside from free food and booze, I don’t really even like weddings, or the fact that you can’t throw a rock these days without hitting a wedding photographer, or that cliches in the genre are both abundant and rampant. I thought I could point my camera at mason jars, bouquets, and lollipop mustaches and bring home some bacon for it – or, better yet, some guanciale as is my preference.

The point is, as 2011 came to a close and I engaged in the kind of self-reflection a new year naturally brings, I realized I didn’t like the body of work I had produced. With the exception of one bride who said her portraits were “too stylized” (despite having been fully on board with my ideas beforehand) I made my clients happy, what few of them I had, and did manage to make some beautiful photos for them. But there wasn’t the kind of cohesive, identifiable look I saw in my work from previous years when I had been shooting for no one but myself. As I looked back over meek attempts at blogging about Love & Details as a “Richmond, Virginia Wedding Photographer”, I realized I was simply aping, just trying to tap into a market.

Now, lest you think I’m disparaging ALL wedding photographers, let me state unequivocally that is not my intention. There are some so obviously at ease within the idiom that the work they produce is compelling in a way which transcends subject. Yet, these only stand to make my point for me. They’re immersed in it. They want to be there. They’re in full voice, their vision is clear, and they know exactly who they are. What we respond to in their work has nothing to do with technique or gear and everything to do with them personally. They are craftsmen in a sea of technicians.

And therein lies the lesson. As I enter this new year I already feel different. I already feel better, lighter, more nimble… peaceful even. I’ve pulled down all my “hey, will this picture get you to hire me?” blog posts and I’m starting again, from the top.

This is for me. I want to share it with you…. but only ’cause it’s real.

 

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