Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Walkin’ in Nashville

April 20, 2010

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So, the song is “Walkin’ in Memphis” but I was hanging out in Nashville last week and it was such a beautiful day in a new city I’d never been to before.  I had a bit of time to kill before my presentation at the Nashville PUG (Pictage User Group) and mom and I decided to stretch our legs up and down Broadway – I guess it’s like the Peachtree Street of Atlanta!  Lots of cool architecture – from Gothic to Modernnashville040810_0037nashville040810_0010nashvert6

Check out the cool gargoyles on this church!nashcomp1

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And then just some fun observations. Anyone need a newspaper?  Anyone?nashville040810_0033

The morning after the PUG, we got up at our hotel early and headed out to try to see at least one more area of Nashville.  We had to be back to Atlanta by 6 AND there is a time zone difference so we had to boogie a little.  I’m so glad we ended up going here – the historical Parthenon of Nashville – located in their Centennial Park.  I was blown away with the history of the building.  It was originally built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, 1897 of temporary building materials.  The community loved it so much, they opted to have it reconstructed with permanent materials starting in 1931.  The addition of the Athena statue inside was added and more restoration completed between 1982 to 1990 and 1991 to 2001.  I was under the impression it was a much newer structure!  And you can also rent it for special events!  Wow, they were setting up for one when we arrived:

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The museum inside was very informative and interesting but I also had a lot of fun with perspective, shapes, and shadows. Just playing around felt so good!nashville040810_0059nashvert4nashvert3nashvert2

After we left the museum, we had just enough time to wander around some of the gardens.  The tulips were so bright and colorful – we didn’t want to leave!

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We’re hoping to make a trip back soon.  Probably pass through Chattanooga and stay over in Nashville to get the full experience next time!

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History: ‘96 Olympics in Atlanta

January 24, 2010

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My part of history:  the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta marks my first ever professional photography assignment.  I found these images back in October when I was building the new web site.  I have to thank Steven for even being able to retrieve the files!  The software used to scan this chromes from my shoot is completely outdated and obsolete now (wow, another marker of feeling your age!  LOL!).  I was simply working my photo lab job and opened my big mouth – and got this job:

I always went out shooting.  I was compelled to shoot anything that caught my fancy and try to make great images.  I’ve always loved architecture at night and would even take photos with a high-end point and shoot camera I had, just practicing and learning.  Of course, this was the film days so it took a bit more practice than digital does now.  One of my favorite buildings that’s beautifully lit in Atlanta is Resurgens Plaza in Buckhead.  I had taken a series of night shots of that building and they were on display in my photo lab – to demonstrate enlargement sizes to the customers.

So when lighting designer, Robert Shakespear, came into my lab and was disappointed with his late night shots of his lighting design of the NationsBank building for the ‘96 Olympics, I tried to tell him how to get his shots.  I explained he needed to be shooting at twilight, when there was still color in the sky but the building lights were on and pointed to my Resurgens shots.  He was also not getting more than a single strobe firing off in the cage-like spire of the building, so I began asking him questions about the sequence.  He suddenly looked at me and said, “If you can make my building look good like that, I’ll hire you right now.” He went on to say that he needed to fly back to home but also needed to get images to Japan for a publication by the following Tuesday. This was Thursday and he was panicked.  I accepted the challenge (like I frequently do) without hesitation — or any idea what I was getting myself into.

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I went out right away, that night, as soon as I got off work.  It was summer so luckily I had a little bit of time before twilight.  However, it was also difficult to get to Olympic park very quickly due to what they called the “Ring” – a perimeter around the park and venues that you were not permitted to drive into and could only use public transportation.  Nonetheless, my mom joined me after she got off work and we headed to the park to see what we could get that night with just 35 mm cameras.  This was going to be shot on medium format for a higher resolution but this was my scouting trip.

Saturday, I went out for the actual shoot.  I had a Yashica-D (twin lens, medium format) and a Bronica I borrowed from my boss. Well, I thought I was well prepared.  I had two pro cameras, right?  Wrong. The Yashica was ancient and some oil had frozen up the shutter blades.  It was clicking “open” but not shutting. Essentially, I got some pretty freaky shutter drag images on that one. The Bronica? Oh boy, I learned the hard way that it’s shutter wouldn’t even work without a battery!  It’s battery was long dead.  We gave up for the night, packed it in and walked back to Sci-Trek where our car was parked.  As soon as I got home, the phone rang and my panicked friend was so happy to hear my voice.  He told me a bomb had just gone off in the park and he was terrified I was still there shooting.  I couldn’t believe him and turned on the TV.  We all know what happened that night and that three people died as a result.  We left because of camera malfunction and I had been so mad.96nationsbankunder

The park was then closed for several more days to investigate the bombing.  I still had an assignment to complete though!  We went all over town the next three days looking for locations to get the Atlanta skyline images Robert needed.  Our best find was the parking deck next to the Marriott Marquis.  Beautiful spot for the isolated building shot.  But the final close up shot was the doozy, the end all, be all shot that he wanted.  And how I got that is also amaaaaaazing.  My mom worked for Bellsouth for 40 years before she retired in ‘02.  At this point, security is at an all-time high but she took me to the Bellsouth building right next door to the NationsBank building (now the Wachovia building) and asked if we could go to the top floors as she was an employee.  The security manager explained what we wanted to one of the top execs – and he escorted us right up to his very office!!!!!! The resulting shot is below. 96nationsbnkclose

I was finally able to get back into the park the Tuesday it re-opened. This was also deadline day.  I had to shoot, process, scan and ship all in one night. It was crazy!

Now, I no longer own the originals of these chromes. They are probably in some archive somewhere?  These are old, old scans from that late night at the lab where we rushed the processing and then I raced to Delta Dash to get them to Japan on time.  And all that work?  The scouting, the broken cameras, and finally, the trip to the top of an Atlanta skyscraper?  I only got $700.  A whole lotta money to a college student! ;)

(Side note:  When the GBI and FBI asked if anyone had images from the night of the bombing, I brought them my damaged, shutter dragged film in hopes they would see something in the double exposures that would help them.  I have no idea if it ever did.)

Posted in Behind the Scenes, History, Personal, Photographers | 1 Comment »

My Favorite Things: What the Duck

January 22, 2010

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Another first for the new year!  A new blog category called “My Favorite Things” (amongst which is actually that song from the movie “The Sound of Music” – great song, great movie!).  At the top of that list and keeps me laughing and gets my chin up when I’m down:  What the Duck.  An online only cartoon that started just a few years ago and took off with our industry.  There are so many strips that have themes that hit home with us photographers – wedding photographers especially – that when I got the book “Rule of Nerds” for Christmas two years ago, it kept me laughing for a week straight (I paced myself and read just a few a day;o).  Even if you’re not a photographer, you will laugh because sometimes, there’s just some fun stuff there about interactions with people, period.

This strip is actually framed, sitting above my desk in my office. A daily reminder that sometimes, folks just don’t get what it is that I do.  My friends get it, my family gets it, but sometimes I still get this “compliment”, too!  Really?  It’s my camera’s fault that the photo was good?  LOL, the camera can make a difference, don’t get me wrong.  However, the camera didn’t know when to shoot or which way the light was best or even if there was anything TO shoot!

Which reminds me of a great quote I saw recently posted by a friend on Facebook:

“A typewriter never wrote a great novel any more than a camera took a great picture.”

Would someone say to Hemingway that he must have had a great typewriter?  Or did Shakespear have a rockin’ feather quill with all the fancy options?  Hee hee….

Check out What the Duck and have a good laugh!

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Posted in My Favorite Things, Personal, Photographers | 1 Comment »

Pictage PartnerCon ‘09 in New Orleans Part 1

November 12, 2009

I needed to title this Part 1 because I know I’m going to have a lot more to say in the coming posts (how many? who knows!?) about the amazing experience I had attending and being a featured speaker at Pictage’s PartnerCon(ference) this year. So many of us photographers that attended have used a plethora of adjectives which include: amazing, inspiring, community, sharing, and on and on…

I haven’t been too public about my presentation and my honored position of speaking at the conference because honestly, I was a little afraid. Yep. I have no problem speaking in public but I wasn’t too sure how this was going to go. It went fine – what was I worried about? More on that subject later! ;)

Most of us (all 500 photographers) wandered the beautiful, magical city of New Orleans taking photos of the many textures and sites that surrounded us. What a perfect location for photography. I am so happy that we will be going back there next year for PartnerCon ‘10! That made leaving Saturday a little easier….

What was sorta funny for me was the cemetery walks (ie. photo shoots). Growing up in photography, I abhorred cemetery walks and photos! I don’t have anything against cemeteries themselves, or death (while I want to actually be cremated, not laying in the ground), or all the usual stigmas. It was that EVERYONE was shooting cemeteries when I was a student and I certainly didn’t want to be everyone else and shooting the same thing. So when we wandered the famous New Orleans cemeteries throughout the week, I wasn’t sure how I would really like shooting there.

I’ll point out the obvious about these images:  all the ones I’m posting today are taken in infrared.  I have a love affair with infrared generally speaking, however, that passion was completely ignited when I started shooting the cemeteries with it.  The images I got with my trusty infrared camera (a Nikon 990 Coolpix I had converted several years ago) were some of my all time favorites of the entire trip!

The first thing I realized on All Saint’s Day (with Chris Williams, Will Jacks, Sarah Hodzic, Alex Abercrombie, David & Nancy Wittig, and Matt Grazier – what a group!) was how each cemetery had it’s own personality. I’m not used to that where I’m from in Georgia. Or maybe I just hadn’t noticed? Chris first took us to Greenwood where there were literally “streets” and all was uniform, stoic, clean. There were some occasional differences from tomb to tomb (these were all above ground graves) but I found a beauty in their uniformity.pcnola09_0001pcnola09_0003pcnola09_0002

Next Chris took us to Holt cemetery. A definite JOLT in your perspective going from Greenwood to Holt! Holt was originally a slave cemetery with all IN GROUND graves. And since there is occasional flooding, graves stones are damaged and repaired by hand and eh, things come to the surface…Holt is definitely quite striking in it’s own way as it’s so handmade, primitive, and frankly spookier. It feels like a definite possibility to be greeted by one of it’s residents since the whole place is so loosey-goosey. What’s to hold those spirits back?pcnola09_0005pcnola09_0004pcnola09_0006pcnola09_0007

On Friday, one of our last days in NOLA, a group of us went to another two cemeteries.  I got to “meet” St. Louis cemetery (just outside of the French Quarter) and LaFayette cemetery in the Garden District.  Once again, two more distinct personalities that I felt were speaking to me.  St. Louis was a little newer cemetery in some ways and maybe due to it’s proximity to the Quarter, a little more forthcoming with historical information in the form of plaques and tours given there.  I have just a few infrareds from there that I love but what fascinated me was the voodoo markings on some of the graves with offerings and gifts. Those are better in color so I’ll post those later.  Here is my favorite from St. Louis.pcnola09_0008

Finally, LaFayette – probably my favorite of all because of the magnolias & oaks dripping down with their branches and busting up the walkways with their roots.  Their presence felt like a hug, protecting the tombs and guarding them almost.  pcnola09_0009pcnola09_0010

More to come from New Orleans…this is just the beginning.  I’m pushing myself to post more personal work here as a few of us forget to do that now and then. (you know who you are ;o).

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