The Dark Side

So while I was cruising Soho, I happened across this shop that builds sick cruiser choppers. I have no idea what it’s called. This guy was hard at work welding and grinding and didn’t really look like he wanted to be bothered. There was even a gate to keep out onlookers!

Welcome to Part 2 of my tilt shift tour of New York. I arrived in Manhattan’s Penn Station on one of the warmest days so far this year. Outside there was the longest line of police cars that I’ve ever seen. I have no idea what that was all about.

Next I went to Central Park to see if half the city could fit in the park at one time. I think they can!

Well, I’m sure you thought that I’d have more interesting photos of the city than this. I don’t. Hey, you can’t win them all. I did take a lot of pictures of trees though. I know, I know, I go to Manhattan and take pictures of trees. I’m funny that way.

We woke up on Monday to some snow in Colorado . . . AGAIN!  Chad and I headed up to Evergreen for the Shoot With Beckstead workshop.  Four days of classroom and on location shooting with models.  I think I’ll post the images from the workshop on The Light Side, since they are looking REALLY AWESOME!  So for now, a shot that I took out the car window on the way into Evergreen on Monday morning.

I had a lot of fun taking pictures of my nephews. I’m still enthusiastic enough with photography that I’m always shooting when I have willing subjects. It doesn’t get any more willing than this! Look at these poses!

The playground in Frenchtown NJ is classic. It has lots of old-school playground features. You know, the kind that kids can get seriously injured on, lik merry-go-rounds and see-saws! It was like being in the 70s again!

After the playground we got smoothies near the Frenchtown Bridge which crosses over the Delaware River.

So far all my images from this trip have been in color, and fairly ‘normal’ to boot. We are going to rectify that situation for the last photo.

On the second day, the sun came out and we were able to go play in the yard. Grammy’s house is a cabin in the woods.  So we headed out to take some family pics for the photo album. Things started out a little slowly at first.  Travis wasn’t super exited for the posed shot at first.  Evi is just a big ham and was ready to go from the get-go!

I didn’t want to burn the kids out with too much posing, so I decided not to set up strobes, even though I really wanted to! The sun was bright and it was mid-day, but I just wanted the boys to have some fun.  So I pointed them at some small trees that they could climb and shot away!  These next shots are with the 85mm 1.4 shot wide open.  I love the background blur!  Well, other than the crazy mad adorableness of the nephews.  Can you believe that spell-check says that ‘adorableness’ is a real word?

After I ran out of ideas of how to trick the boys into doing things that I thought would make great photos, we headed back onto the porch. Next I decided to trick them into smelling the flowers so I could take ridiculously cute photos of young boys stiffing flowers. You might think that I would be beyond that level of cheesiness, but clearly I’m not! Can you believe that spell-check says that ‘cheesiness’ is a real word?

Last up we have some extreme close up eye photos! I love these! The Nikon tilt shift is also a macro lens. Handy. :>)

On my trip back East, there were two distinct parts.  The first was family time in PA.  The second half was NJ and NY.  My grandmother lives a train ride away from the city, so I stayed there and took a trip to NY.  I went to Manhattan for a day.  I didn’t want to bring all of my gear, so I decided to pick one lens, and shoot the whole day with only it.  That’s a tough decision for a gear head like myself!

So I decided to bring the most difficult lens I have, the 45mm tilt shift (Perspective Control PC-E in Nikon speak).  The difficulty provides an interesting challenge that I enjoy a lot!  This lens allows you to change the focal plane so that it is not perpendicular to the camera sensor.  So what this means is that you can make areas of the photo in focus (or not), that are not necessarily the same distance from you.

This lens is experiencing a fad-like popularity right now.  It’s somewhat easy to take a subject, like a person, and blur everything around them.  It’s only somewhat easy because you still have to manual focus the lens!  But you can get the effect and still be ignorant of how to use the lens to it’s full capability.  In this series of images I angled the focal plane to create visual ties between parts of the images.  So as you look at the images, pay attention to what parts of the photos are in focus, and what parts are not.  Trippy huh?  :>)

And if you aren’t interested in the technical mumbo jumbo . . . just enjoy the scenery from the most infamous parts of NJ! Haha!

Well it’s Sunday and I’m back in the office after an epic wedding last night at the St. Julian. We were singing along to acoustic guitar in the lobby of the St. Julian at 2 AM. It was THAT much fun!  So I’m here in the office looking out the window on a pretty day after yesterday’s gloom.  I am pre-blogging the remaining photos from my trip back East last week.  So look for daily fresh blog posts while I’m out of town the next few days.

I will be in Evergreen attending my first ever photo workshop.  I’ve always been a self-learning type.  I’ve never taken any formal photography training in my life!  But I’ve decided to take a 4 day workshop taught by David Beckstead, called Shoot With Beckstead.  David has been rated “top-10 wedding photographers in the world” but someplace-or-another.  Regardless of the accolades, I really enjoy his composition and fashion editorial style.  I’m interested to see how he lights his subjects in my local high alitude environment, since he says he rarely uses strobes.  I use strobes a lot, but sometimes they are a hassle, and I’m interested in techniques where I can take the ‘easy route’ and avoid ligthing setups altogether.  The program looks good, and the price and location are right, so I jumped at the chance.  My second shooter Chad is going to be attending as well, so I think it’s going to be a really fun getaway, and I’m ready for a heafty dose of inspiration just ahead the meat of the wedding season that lies ahead.

I will hopefully be blogging images from each day in the evening so that I don’t return with a work backlog.  So look for images on The Light Side.

The boys are really into Legos. Grammy still has my old Legos from when I was a kid!

I put about 3 hours into this first one! It’s got tons of firepower, and will blow away any other ship in Upper Black Eddy.

I built this first ship for Travis. The next morning I got to the house and first thing Evi asks me, “Uncle Steve, can you build a ship for me today?” It was so adorable! :>)

So I didn’t have quite as many good pieces on this one so I had to get creative. It has retractable landing gear, and the man in the back has a rotating turret station. What this ship lacks in pure trust, it compensates with light weight and maneuverability. Travis was convinced that Evi got the better ship.

So I made a long overdue trek back east to visit with family last week.  I of course took lots of photos and am trying to dig my way out of the backlog!  I coordinated the trip with my sister so that I could see my two nephews, Travis and Everett.  My first day in Pennsylvania was dreary East Coast rainy-ness, so we all went to Chuck E Cheese in Doylestown.  I actually had some fun playing the games.  I like Skee-Ball.  :>)  I didn’t take too many pics there, but the boys were funny playing a heated game of air hockey.

I visited my ex-roommate’s house in Minturn on the first night of my ski-venture.  It was a pretty epic house! There are something like 4 to 6 18 to 22 year olds that live there.  It was such an interesting place, I decided to document.

I like the skull on the shed in the front yard almost as much as I like the illegible writing.

No trashed out house would be complete without dog doo in the yard. No one has a dog though.

Let’s go inside, shall we? Enter through the back door, around these dumpsters.

Ah, here we are, in the hallway. Are those my undies, or yours?

There used to be a cat or two. No one is exactly sure how long ago. The best part is that there is still a litter box, with poo in it in the bathroom under the stairs. I didn’t take a picture of that. You’re welcome.

Here is the ’secret stash’ on the side of the couch. That’s a ripped off cover of ‘High Times’, FYI.

Let’s go upstairs into the bedroom/loft. The ‘Hot Wings’ stickers miscellaneously tagged in random places was another personal favorite.

The Shelf. Nuff said.

And no crash pad would be complete without the kitchen sink. That reminds me, where did my trout plate go?

I’m always following the weather during the winter, tracking the big storms that yield glorious dumps of fluffy powder. I wasn’t able to get away too much this year, just too much business stuff combined with a pretty dry winter.  Well the storms finally showed up in late March and early April, and I was determined to get my money’s worth out of the pass.  So through the glory of Facebook, I found a co-pilot, 2 places to stay near Vail, and we set out for 3 days of bottomless powder hunting.

Things started out normally enough the first day at Vail. Until about 2 hours in the day I randomly shared a chairlift ride with a couple, and the girl had a piece of bridal veil material in her helmet. Turns out they were in town from Houston to get married at the swanky new Arabelle Resort in Lionshead. So we were chatting about weddings, and I mentioned that I have a shoot planned soon where I’m going to do portraits of the bride and groom in the dress and tux on skis. Tricia looks at me and says, “Can we do that on Sunday!?” Fortunately I had my camera gear with me, and I booked the shoot, thereby lengthening my trip another day. Well now I know that I need to get up skiing more often next year! And does this mean that I can write off my pass next year as a business expense?! Look for pics from that shoot soon on The Light Side.

Two runs later I went into the lodge to meet up with Io. She was talking with a man, who had a cute little girl pulling on his leg. Turns out he does energy-body work in Boulder. I asked him if he was interested in trading some family photos for body work . . . Yes! Two shoots hooked up in an hour! The next two days went pretty much as planned. I did a crazy amount of tree skiing. The next shot shows the aspen trees that lead down to the High Noon lift in the far Western back bowls. I’ve never skied them before because the slope is southwest-ish facing and is usually pretty bare. But after feet and feet of snow in two weeks, I was able to hit the chute just to the right of the lift, fresh tracks all the way. Very deep and steeper than it looks!

The second day at Beaver Creek was my best day there ever. We woke up that morning, and it dumped a foot of snow in 6 hours. It snowed crazy hard and I would have taken more pics but I was way too busy shredding. It was snowing too hard anyway. I hit tons of glades: Bachelor Gulch, Coyote Glade, Thresher Glade, Heads Up, 4 Get About It, Corkscrew, Stickline . . . my only regret is not hitting some of the steep upper glades earlier, by the time I got there they were closed. Next time I’ll know where to go first.

My last photo from this set is of a random guy who I shared a lift ride with. His beard was so awesomely coated with icicles that I had to take a portrait. Can you say, face shots?

So, I booked photo shoots, while skiing deep powder. I think it’s apparent that I need to manifest a place to live in Eagle County!

I’m still working on post some more pics from the Vail trip.  Here is a fun little sequence that I caught while hanging out in Lionshead waiting to get on the lift.  Cute stuff.

I love the sunrises in Boulder. Being the night person that I am, I rarely get to see it. A powder day is one of the few things that get me up early enough.  These pics were taken last Thurs, on my way out of town for a mini vacation. I hadn’t made very good use of my 5-mountain season’s pass this year, so I decided to make up for it in one fell swoop!  On the way out of town I was struck by this cool, solitary cloud over the mountains.  More pics and stories to come.