Last week my good friend Mark Hamilton as me if I would like to come along with him to take pictures of his brother-in-law restored truck project.  We all met for breakfast at Peddlers Restaurant in Ironton Ohio.  I was introduced to Marks brother-in-law and found him fascinating.  He has a passion for detail and a real love affair with restoring old vehicles to there off the show room condition.  One of his recent projects is the truck shown below.  Now to be honest I can really appreciate the hard work it takes to completely dissemble a vehicle and re-build it from the frame up.  Since in my personal experience everything that I have ever tried to fix on my personal vehicles has resulted in breaking something else, be getting burned or injured and never saving me any money what so ever.  So I really place my mechanic and my personal doctor on the same pedestal.   When we arrived on location it was on old Jeep dealership.  A good friend and past co-worker Gary Chapman use to own the dealership and I had actually purchased a truck from him on the vary location of our shoot.  Gary had sold the dealership a few years ago right before Jeep closed a lot of there locations.  Marks brother-in-law was renting space to store his two restored trucks on the second floor.  The floor was completely open except for a four wheeler and a couple of jet ski's on trailers.  There were large windows all around the walls.  Luckily the weather was very overcast and that helped reduce the hard light.  We decided to do the shoot without artificial lights even though I had my entire lighting rigs in the back of my car.  Bringing all that equipment to the second floor was a bit more than we had time for on this assignment.  ...

Setting at Tri-State Airport dinner having breakfast and waiting on my plane. I was thinking how am I going to unplug my creative side of my brain for the next 5 days and plug back in my technical engineering brain. As many up and coming photographers we have to fund our passion with a real job that pays. Most of you that know me know that my daytime job is an information technology specialist for the federal government. So they are sending me off to Atlanta to what they call Boot Camp. Five days of intense training that last all day and into the evenings. And at the end a test to become a Microsoft Network Engineer. Addmiddily this is something that I could have used years ago but if all goes well I will retire in 13 months. Who knows what the future brings and I may find a need for this certification in my retired years. But for now I have to set photography aside and focus on the task at hand. I did not even bring a camera of any kind with me. Oh wait, I still have my cell phone but will most likely...

Mike Hensley and I hit the road on Sunday April 3rd, 2011 for our pilgrimage to the great capital of Washington DC.  We had a dual agenda.  One to be blessed with a bit of wisdom from the masters of light photographers David Hobby and Joe McNally and the other agenda was to take the iconic picture of the Jefferson Memorial with all the Cherry Blossoms around the tide pool.   Monday April 4th.  We headed out early and caught the metro from Alexandra VA where we were staying to the mall in Washington DC.  The day started out perfect for photographers.  The slight remainder of  a large storm on Sunday night left the skies overcast but no rain.  We also found that the Cherry Blossoms were unaffected by the storm and were at there peek.  There was hundreds if not more photographers out that day and I think every time I lined up to take a shot they all lined up behind me to grab the same shot.  I must have looked like I knew...

 

I must first admit to my own short comings.  I find it far easer to start project and to actually make them a reality.  I never really consider the amount of hours and work to accomplish the task just full steam ahead.  I drive myself like this all the time so I really do not expect to change now. So my latest concept is to go unannounced to a small town in the area and photograph a documentary of the town.  I draw my inspiration for this project from a number of sources.  One is a book entitled "The Oxford Project" which in many ways duplicates a lot of my idea. I also drew my idea and inspiration from a television show called Northern Exposure that run between 1990 and 1995.  Ed Chigliak who was the film buff documented the lives of the local residents.  So I want to do the same. I am also seeking to find out what life is like in a small American Town.  One that is not really close enough to another larger city to be influence by there businesses and culture.  A small town that has everything but still...

 

To keep this from sounding like an advertisement for Apple. iPAD I will start off by saying that I really did not like the iPad due to the technical hype that was being printed about it.  I still admit that Steve Jobs restricted a number of features simply out of his arrogance.  The iPad does not play FLASH content.  That means that a great deal of video and animation content on the internet will just not display.  We now know that you can Jail Break the device which basically means modify the operating system so that it will in fact play Flash content so it was not a limitation in the design but in fact a decision made by Apple.  It also does not have a USB port.  But you have to keep this in mind, this device is basically a large version of the iPhone or iTouch.  However, I think it is migrating to its own world into it's self. Now that we have that out of the way, I have not missed the USB port.  Yes it would be nice to have external devices such as an external drive.  And I do find the lack of Flash irritating on occasion.   But this is not intended as a computer or a netbook.  This device is a utility in its own right....

My comments, things that I have leaned and wish to share, or random thoughts.