2009. Best...year...ever. (part 1)

Here it is, the last day of 2009. I'd like to take this opportunity to show some photos I haven't put up before and talk about some of the amazing things I've had the privilege to experience this year. Of course if you haven't seen them, you can find more photos in the "Archives" page.

January. The Inauguration Of Barack Obama. Traveled down to D.C. with my cousin Ralph, got up at 3 A.M. and took a PACKED train into the city to stand on the National Mall (20 degrees without the windchill) with 1 million of my fellow Americans to watch the swearing in of the first African-American President Of The United States.

I can't describe to you the feeling of looking around during the oath and seeing people young , old, rich, poor, of all shades waving flags, cheering and for that moment being united behind the truth that they held self evident. That all men are created equal and now it wasn't just empty rhetoric. America was fulfilling it's promise.

I remember noticing a middle aged African-American woman standing directly in front of me crying with a wide beaming smile on her face and realizing I would never know what she felt at that moment.

February. Danielle had a concept she had been kicking around for a while that our friend Ryan Ashley helped make into a reality. We named it Self Made Man.

We didn't have enough space in our home studio to get the distance I needed to get this shot so I had to open up a window and shoot this standing on a step ladder outside my house through the window. Kudos to Ryan for being a trooper and not even complaining about the February winds blowing right up his bum.

Space issues aside, the home studio space has been a great investment and we're quite proud of the work we've been able to get out of it.

Late in the month, Danielle and I decided to get married. We both swore we'd never do it again but we decided we could make it the way WE wanted it this time without conforming to anyone else's expectations. And we did.

March. Did a fun photo shoot with the Grand Valley U dodgeball team.

But most of the month was spent getting ready for the wedding. O.K., maybe that's not quite right. We didn't actually do a whole lot for it.

We got Rev. Charles to officiate because, well, I wouldn't have had anyone else. Our good friend Randall offered to take the photos (and bring cookies). We had the ceremony at our house with the girls, our parents and a couple of witnesses to make it legal. We designed it to have everything we wanted and nothing we didn't. Sarah and Lily took part in our hand fasting and picked out the ribbons themselves. Afterwards, we met friends at Founders for our quasi-reception and headed out the next morning for our honeymoon. Which brings us to...

April. For our honeymoon we decided to take a road trip south and see where it took us. We spent a day in Louisville, walked around Nashville in the rain, went to the Mammoth Caves, and generally just had a great time together.

We also did a couple photo shoots later in the month. One with Fallon and Danny that became "Class Warfare" , and we visited our friends Ken and Gabe and did quite an *ahem* unconventional portrait of them in their living room.

May. As the weather started getting better we got more active. Did 2 more shoots with Fallon and Danny which produced what we call the "Romance" series that includes "The Proposal" and "The Courtship". Both shoots proved to be quite an adventure but for different reasons. We shot "The Courtship" in the woods behind Danielle's parent's house on a weekend that must have been the middle of a mosquito family reunion. I've never seen that many mosquitos.

The shoot for "The Proposal" was challenging for a completely different reason. Because of our schedules we had to set up the shoot shortly after sunrise. There was frost on the grass in John Ball Park when we arrived to set up. Not the greatest weather to have water poured over your head in or to stand in a tree with not much more than a piece of fabric wrapped around you.

Don't know if it was the cold, the height, if she was in a stressful pose, or a combination of factors that triggered it, but about 10 seconds after getting Fallon down out of that tree after the last shot was taken she passed out and had a seizure. Next time, more safety precautions.

I also got back to shooting concerts this month after a bit of a break. Dragonforce and Queensryche at The Intersection and photographed Static X at The Orbit Room.

Queensryche was especially important to me because they were my favorite band as a teenager. I used to listen to Operation: Mindcrime like I was reading parables into some kind of religious text.

I'll take a break here because the next few months need blog entries all to themselves. Still to come, festival season! Rothbury, Lollapalooza, Festival Of The Arts GR, more big name artists and what I'm sure is an admission of a criminal act.

Get the shot.

When it comes to photography, if you don’t have unlimited resources (and nobody I know does) you have to find creative solutions to create the images you’d like to make with what you have. Essentially, once you drop the shutter and capture that image, how you got it there is not important. So think about the image you want to want to create and then think about how you’re going to pull it off. If you start from your limitations your images will show it. Trust me, nobody wants to hear how good an image could have been if you’d just had that latest camera, better lighting, different lenses, etc.. It’s boring. Get the shot. Then tell me how hard it was.

When I was first starting out I didn’t have a tripod or off camera flash units so when I wanted to shoot something indoors or at night outdoors I learned to lean against walls, telephone poles, use the self-timer, anything available to steady myself and the camera. It made me develop my technique for handholding long exposures instead of using the equipment to compensate and come up with creative solutions for lighting a scene. I was forced to figure it out. Just last night I had a example of this. I was trying to get a shot of a flower in the middle of a street downtown and I literally had to lay on my belly in the middle of the street (Don’t try this one at home kids!) to use the pavement to steady my hands, moved my eye back away from the viewfinder to keep the vibrations of my body from moving the camera and use the light from the headlights of the oncoming cars to illuminate the street and backlight the flower. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to encourage people to endanger themselves for a picture but I’m saying if you see a shot that you really want to get, figure out a way to get it. Because, to me, in the end that’s what matters. Did you get the shot? Not did you look cool doing it or “almost got it but at least I stayed dry”, or “If I’d only had a zoom I could have gotten closer”. After you get the shot you forget how uncomfortable you were getting it and if you didn’t get it and you don’t care then what are you carrying that camera for?

For inspiration, check out strobist.com. They have just a ton of articles about how to creatively use lighting and how to create your own lighting on a budget. For example, the photo I call “Window” was taken using a single 100 watt light bulb with a dish type reflector clamped to the ceiling of my garage. No fancy flash setups, umbrellas, or soft boxes. Just one light bulb and a window.

Some photographers refer to themselves as “available light” photographers. Usually meaning they shoot without modifying the light that already exists in a scene. Seems pretty limiting. I heard a photographer say once, “I’M an available light photographer. I use whatever’s available to me. Monolights, speedlights, fluorescents, sunlight…” Whatever it takes. But get the shot.