Steve-Z.com

A large chunk of the crew recently moved into a big house out in East Boulder. At the housewarming party my friends at Green Guru brought out a big stash of their vinyl supply to make a giant slip and slide! I lent my photo skills to capture some of the water sprayin’ body flingin’ action! We started things off with some races: kinda like slip-n-slidercross.

While it was possible to go down just on bare skin, random bumps and rocks in the field led to many bumps and bruises, as you can see me finding out right here.

Thermarests offered a much smoother ride.

Justin doing his crazy action redneck impression.

I had a 4 strobe setup that I was able to ride out to the farm with in a small backpack.  I never was really sure how the photo was going to come out, based upon how far down the run the sliders were.  Love how Billy is blacked out with water spray illuminated in his face in this shot.

Unfortunately, no ladies lost their bikini tops in the making of this photo.

Awesomeness^3

The giant tube was brought out near the end, but it didn’t offer quite the speed that we were looking for.

FACEPLANT!

Not to be outdone, I made a few attempts at surfing the Thermarest. This is the look of me being psyched that I’m actually staying up for 5 seconds.

As you can see, this was a pretty rockin’ way to spend a summer evening.  I’m sure we’ll be setting this up bigger and better in the future.  I think that a first slip n slide descent of the First Flatiron should be next on the list.

Here we are with my final Telluride post. I’m going to have to find some local fun to keep this blog going over the next month!

River and I took a little drive out of town to the micro-town of Ophir. I was quite excited to find some trashed out buildings to play in. The first building with the wildflowers growing in it is SO COOL!

There is a really cool narrow alley in Telluride. I thought it would be cool to take someones picture in it. Here is that person. Self portraits at f/2.8 with a manual focus lens are really hard!

Driving along the barren interstate at sunset, we were struck by the beauty of the rolling crop fields in central Washington. The sun was setting, and we were reflecting on a spontaneous journey gone by.  It seemed like the perfect setting to take some new Facebook profile pics!

That’s all for Chapter 5. You can check out more photos from the trip on Mel’s blog.

We watched the sun set from the Paradise area of Mt. Rainier National Park. Apparently Paradise is the snowiest place on Earth, of the places that regularly measure that sort of thing. That’s cool. The light on the mountain at that time of day was pretty washed out, which is less than cool. So to make up for my incredible disappointment, I used the tilt shift to track the focal plane of this rock wall, which is wicked cool.

We got there a little early for the sunset. So we had to spend some time hangin’ around.

And then. Twilight.

We continued our journey north out of Seattle. I was sneaking my way around the coast, looking for a spot to enjoy the water. I noticed this cool old fishery on Puget Sound, and knew that this was the spot.

This area was populated with some really sweet homes. They looked great on this sunny day. I’m not so sure how they would look socked in by months of fog! This would have been a great location for shooting some high school senior or maybe a fashion shoot.

On the beach, Mel found a souvenir. I named him George, and he became our mascot for the rest of the trip since Glendale couldn’t be with us this time around.

Hi. Steve here. I have a ton of new photos and posts to publish from my latest adventures. But first things first. I gotta change the name of this website! This is a blog of personal photos and adventures, and as a result it is a steadily morphing entity. As I evolve as a human and as a photographer, the look and feel of the site needs to change with me.

“The Dark Side” was a name that I impulsively came up with a couple years ago one late night when I was changing both of my blogs to my new ProPhoto WordPress blog template (great template, there is a discount coupon at the bottom of the page!).  My professional websites took over an all-white theme, and I thought it would be fun to have my personal site reflect the opposite of that. So I just started calling the two, the Light Side, and the Dark Side. It was never really a well thought out plan, I will admit. One was white, one was black. One was professional work, one was personal work. It was really supposed to be temporary, but, I’m pretty busy with all the tons of things to do with this photo biz, so I just never got around to changing it, mostly because I never really thought of anything else to call it.

What is the purpose of this site anyway? Do I really need it? Does it really matter?

To me, it does. I love photography. I’m passionate about it, and addicted to it. I love taking photos when I’m on my adventures. Sometimes the photos are just travel snaps. But once in a while I get a really cool shot, the kind that I’d like to hang on the wall of my house. So I feel the need to put them out there and share them with the world, rather than have them live a cold and lonely life on a computer hard drive. I want them to see the light of day. I’d like to set up a cart where they could be purchased . . . but that’s a whole nutha project.

I need a new title that is more representative to the photography work that I publish here. In all reality, there isn’t much that is Dark about my photography. I’m more interested in beauty than sadness. I do have a quirky sense of humor, no doubt. I love what I do and I do have some pretty cool adventures where I have a lot of fun. The Dark Side had some people thinking that they were going to see horror movie stuff or something! So I need a title that is smart and clever, and possibly hints that this is a photo blog featuring photos from my travel, biking and snowboarding, and other random photos I take in my free time. There is also occasionally some technical and educational info for photographers, although I don’t seem to manage to find the time to publish a quarter of the articles that I think of in my mind. How do I sum all of that up in a title? How do I sum up 39 years of me in a couple words?

Until I come up with a cool new title . . . I’m just going to have a clean white sheet of paper.  The Great Title-less Blog! I just couldn’t stand the old look any more and had to change it immediately! I made a Facebook comment about changing the name; in a dream world someone will come up with a clever name for me! I’m not counting on that though. My best ideas usually come from an unexpected moment of clarity, and will just pop into my head when the time is right. As for now, I’m going to throw out the idea that I’m ready for the new name to come to me.

As for the photo . . . It’s just a funny self portrait that I took on my recent trip to Washington State. My chin is all distorted and enormous due to the distortion of my Nikon 14-24mm lens. I love to take beautiful pictures. But I also like taking funny and somewhat distorted pictures as well!

If you actually read all of this, thanks. I hope you keep coming back for years to come, as this blog will still be around, although the format may completely different. Evolution is like that.  Cheers, Steve Z.

OK, I really need to post some shots from my trip down to the Great Sand Dunes that now seems like about forever ago! First picture of me taken by Melissa Welsh.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Boulder County needs more burned down derelict buildings so that I can have more locations for photo entertainment!

Also remember, there is nothing more entertaining than an afro. OK, maybe a mullet.

I have lots of difficultly buying a product that just works. It seems like when I purchase something, there is only a 50% chance that I will be able to have it work, function, or look like it is supposed to on the first try.  There doesn’t seem to be quality of products any more. We live in a disposable society, where products are actually designed to fail so that you will be forced to buy a new one in a few years.  Additionally, many are just scurrying about with their tails between their legs hiding from The Recession. Consumers are searching for a cheaper and cheaper deal all the time without thinking about where the costs are being cut.

Photography is a luxury expense. As a result, many photo pros running top notch businesses are feeling the crunch of the economic downturn.  No one really understands why it costs so much to run a photography business these days.  I don’t blame them one bit.  I really didn’t have a very good idea when I started doing this either!  There are so many hidden costs that it never ceases to amaze me. And as long as I continue, more and more costs keep surfacing.  My latest is it’s going to cost $1000 just to adjust and calibrate my cameras and half of my lenses.  How much would the already expensive equipment have to cost for the quality to be perfect, so that I didn’t have to make these adjustments and repairs? Sure, I could just deal with my cameras the way they are, but I’m committed to having perfectly calibrated cameras so that my images are perfectly sharp.

The real lesson here, is that quality is just plain expensive.  Just take this photo of this screw for example. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but there are no true threads, just metal rings!  When did it become difficult to buy something with screws that actually had functioning threads?  There were screws like this in two  sofa tables that I bought to display my albums in the studio.  I really don’t have the funds to buy them from Design Within Reach, so I bought some cheap bolt together ones from Target online.  The first ones showed up with brush marks and hand prints under the clear coat on the wood.  Then the second set showed up with non-functioning screws.  Luckily I had screws from the first set, so I could put the tables together.  So while I got a cheaper deal, I still had to waste a bunch of time assembling, disassembling, calling, reshipping, etc.

What is the cost of the cheap tables?  The margins are so tight that they are trying to remove fractions of pennies out of the cost of the tables, and the screws.  Should I always just buy designer tables so that they will (hopefully) work the first time? Should I support local merchants in the way that I hope to have my business supported? My accounting spreadsheet doesn’t really support buying top of the line studio furnishings in a business where I’m always being undercut by photographers who are willing to sell out their digital files for nothing.
Despite the sliding trend of photo studio profitability, I am working towards reaching the higher end of the market where quality is respected.  I am seeking the clients that will recognize the top quality of the product that I offer.  While some people in the world will continue to be content to display their Wal-Mart  prints with bad skin tones proudly on their Target sofa tables with hand prints and screwed up screws, I pledge to offer services that represent, support, and exude Quality. The perfectionist in me will only be satisfied offering a premium product at a premium price.

After leaving the Railroad Pass Casino, we headed out to Nelson, Nevada for a model shoot. The “ghost ranch” as they call it is kindof a tourist trap. There are many old buildings with junk all around like trashed 50s cars and planes and stuff. When we got there it was like a photographer’s convention was in town or something! Well, despite an initial bad feeling of being completely unoriginal, there were still plenty of great backgounds to be had. I’m still editing the model shoot, but here are some test shots from the setups.

Here is another outtake from a portrait shoot.  I was wrapping up an engagement shoot at Boulder’s Red Rocks Park, when this random guy flashed me a peace sign.  I really like how the composition turned out.

I spend some time the last two weekends up in Estes Park.  My friend Io lives there so I stopped by. She has a porch.  And a dog named Amber. I have an 85mm Perspective Control Lens. And a photography problem. This is what happened.

If you have your wedding at the Pastures of Plenty in North Boulder County, you just might have a bonfire. And if you do, John Howlett from Big Bang Catering will be there to get it started for you. His preferred tool is a propane weed burner. By the look on his face, I think he may have burned ants with a magnifying glass when he was a kid as well.

Here is part 2 of the Steve Z portrait in the hotel series.  Can you believe that I made you wait that long for it?  Yeah, I know, what can I say?  I’ve been busy with the big wedding month of June.  But the big crunch is over and I’m back on track to blog your face off.  On tap I’ve got lots of pics from my trip to Steamboat.  And over the rest of the summer I’ve got lots of mountain weddings, which should provide for some nice Dark Side excursions.  So have a happen 4th of July holiday, while I’ll be here blogging and working on the grand opening of the new studio space!  Yes, we are finally moving across the hall and collectively will be renting 4000 square feet of prime downtown Boulder real estate!  So keep your RSS feed up to date for the grand opening party announcement :>)

Sometimes when shooting a wedding, there is a little bit of down time during dinner. The hotel interior of the Omni Interlocken Hotel has some cool architecture. Chad and I had a good time taking some fun photos. Chad on the lens, me on the landing.

So I was walking down the street a block from my studio, and I stumbled upon a mobile art happening.  There was a crowd of people gathered around a car, and they were all painting it.  This of course, required immediate picture taking.  Upon a little inspection, here is what I found out.

The GIVING GALLERY Presents:

Running On heART: 13 Cities in 7 Days!

A cross country journey raising awareness and funds for struggling open art studios in our communities

In order to raise awareness for Open Art Studios and spread the word about their power to bring community members together we have decided to turn a car into a national community art project.

Cool!

For more information on the project, the journey, and the fun:

Website: http://www.srgivinggallery.com/

Dotate: http://www.giveforward.org/RunningonART

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DofRVAwOs8k

Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/givinggallery

Blog: http://srgivinggallery.blogspot.com/

I shot this pic in the hallway of The Breakers in Palm Beach. I thought the combination of the long hallway and the two boys was just like the twin girls who were in the movie ‘The Shining’!