I don’t typically mix family photos and my professional life, but I really like shooting on this farm.  Hinchley’s Dairy Farm and Tours is a yearly tradition that we have been doing for 5 or 6 years.  Tina Hinchley invites the general public onto their dairy farm to learn about what happens on a dairy farm.  You can get up close and personal with dairy cattle, goats, geese, ducks, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, rabbits and turkeys.  In the fall they have Halloween themed activities like pumpkin picking with hay rides.

Over the years we have see our share of baby animals.  With over 100 cows, it’s not a stretch to say you might see the birth of a calf on your visit.  My kids like to feed the goats and pet calfs.  It’s also a chance to pet very friendly farm cats – I don’t partake (I’m allergic).  This year we had the pleasure of seeing sheep shearing.  It looks like very physical work – and for the sheep, a tad degrading.

It’s a relaxed environment and the Hinchleys let people make themselves at home for the afternoon.  We live in the suburbs, and it’s nice to connect with a different way of life.  If you have kids it’s worth a visit.  It’s only a short half hour drive from the Madison area.   My wife and I muse about the idea that we could take a different turn in life and move out to the country.  For now, an occasional visit will have to do.

One of the first types of paid jobs I started doing was art documentation.  Last week I got a message from an artist and professor at UW Madison – Jennifer Angus.  She teaches in the design studies program.  Her work is very immersive.  Her work  typically involves large installations using decorative patterns to cover the walls.  She is a skilled screen printer, and I am used to seeing some screen printing all over the walls.  This installation was different,  not different in the scope of her work, but there was no screen printing.  Just bugs.  Lots of insects  - with vibrant wings and exoskeletons pinned to a blue wall, making a pattern reminiscent of  Victorian parlor wall paper.   There’s an interesting tension happening.  If any one of these critters buzzed my head, I might wig out and swat at it.  Instead, the insects are pinned to the walls, creating a pleasing pattern. I’m sure some critic has said all of this more eloquently, that’s not my job. I get to light the space and make it translate into photographs.   The beauty and sadness of a good art installation is they are often temporary, so documentation is necessary.

I really enjoy shooting artwork, I have shot performances, sculptures  installations, paintings, prints and drawings.  I don’t outwardly advertise this service on my letterhead and printed matter, but here’s a blog post.

Joel and Katie got married at the beautiful Schlitz Audubon Center and had their reception at the South Shore Pavilion in Milwaukee, WI.  It was a great day.  Early fall weddings are hard to beat when the weather is nice.  This wedding was my first encounter with paper lanterns.  I was shooting a dwindling reception hall, one of the bridesmaids told me to come outside.  Everyone was busy betting on a horse race game and sending paper lanterns over Lake Michigan.  I have a great time working with Joel and Katie, I wish them the best of luck.

Grace and Herb were married September 1st, 2012 at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, WI.  I have known Grace and her kids for a few years now.  Grace and Herb are forming a new life, household and family.  The weather was perfect, no sweaty suits, just sun and breeze – a nice change from mid summer.  They has a small intimate ceremony and the next day got all their family and friends together for a picnic.  Congrats Grace and Herb!

About 6 years ago I bought my first 4×5 camera.  It was a crusty worn looking Graflex Crown Graphic.  I used that camera throughout grad school, and in the process learned a lot about making photographs.  There is a processing film aspect, but most folks cut their teeth on 35mm and it’s not a big stretch to process sheets.  What I liked about using the Crown Graphic was the pace.  You can’t fire off a sequence of shots and pick the best out of 20.  There is a fair amount of deliberation that occurs when you have to compose and load each shot.  The ground glass is probably the best way to set up a shot in some ways.  Everything is upside down and backwards.  In a way it makes you ignore the context ad focus on composition in a more abstract way.  That’s not to say you can’t click off a shot hand held.

Over time I have accumulated a set of Graflex Cameras of various sizes and I have used each one.  I find myself less inclined to use them these days, paying clients don’t appreciate the slow pace and high cost.  So my 4x5s only see a few sheets here and there.  I do return back to such processes if only to just reconnect with the simplicity of making single exposures and experimenting in the dark room.

I get a little anxious when I think of the fact that film is slowly fading away.  Last spring my favorite color slide film became a precious commodity.  Kodak Ektachrome 100vs is gone…  sad, but it’s no surprise.  Digital technology is pretty hard to beat.   Even 5 years ago it was obvious that the practical applications of film were pretty limited.  My local lab runs E-6 once a week and who knows how long that will last.  At least I have a darkroom.  Maybe it will become integral to my business when the time is right.  We’ll see.  Black and white will probably always exist, and that is a comfort to me.  I’d hate to shelve these cameras and just look at them.

I’ll be the first to admit, I have no idea what this stuff does exactly. I do like challenges.  I took on this client as a consulting job. They want to do their product photography in house to some capacity.  The trick is, their stuff is either tiny, or transparent or both.  I helped them come up with some possible setups for their lights and camera.  In the end I wound up not only helping them learn how to make better images, but when push comes to shove, they can call on me when they need help.  I enjoy teaching and sharing what I know.  I also like problem solving.

I am looking to take on more commercial clients who could use some help developing clean visual representations of whatever it is they are selling.  If you know someone, or are such a business – contact me!

Last week I got the chance to take senior photos for Reinaldo. He’s graduating next spring at Stoughton High School.  We spent a couple hours trying a few locations and we came up with some great shots if I do say so myself.  Reinaldo admitted that he likes being in front of a camera – with good reason, he has a great smile and it was great to chat while we worked on his portrait session.

The crock-pot of creativity. This project has been on a low simmer.

When you have a lot of time to work on something – you use it.  This project has been in progress for well over a year now.  Not because it is super time consuming to make it, it’s more like, it takes time to make these images and my life consumes my time.  I have a lot of things on the stove and I have to stir the pots that make money a little more often than the others. I do want to share a new selection of images from this series.

I sat down a little bit ago to further this series along and produced a few new variations.  I like it when things evolve.  I have no idea what the end product will be.  I don’t think I need to commit to a strict style yet, as the actual exhibit is 2 years off still.  I started the series with the intention of working mostly in the darkroom, and that may still be an element for some images.  As time progresses, I learn things through the process of making and creating and it informs and changes the way I approach existing ideas.  That’s the fun part of the creative process.  I started the series by making some “sketches” in Photoshop -  which I wound up liking better than my ‘purist’  darkroom prints.  The digital creations started to introduce some interesting graphical variations.  Every object has been carefully masked – any when you carefully mask something, you wind up with a really nice silhouette.  Why not use that?  The silhouettes are further distill the photographed objects to a more basic – but still recognizable form.  How far is too far to deviate from a visual theme?  Am I allowed to try color?  I say yes, and in the end if it looks out of place, I can omit it.

I write about all of this partially to maintain a blog and to keep things fresh.  I also like to read about other people’s process, so I figure it’s worth sharing my own.  I have also noticed that writing what I am doing creates a snapshot of where I am in the process.  It is a benchmark.  I keep a lot of this stuff up in my head and it’s nice to organize it and distill it into words, sentences, and paragraphs.  Never underestimate the value to stopping to write about your work.  I used to loath writing an artist statement and now I think it’s more useful for me than it is for the audience.

Ha ha… because it was for a pool supply company, get it?  Dipping toes, getting my feet wet.  Dumb jokes aside.   I am always on the lookout for new opportunities.  I was searching some of the online resources for freelancers and I got connected with Doheny’s Water Warehouse.  They needed to update some of their catalog and online images, and they had some parameters.  I met with their design team and knocked out hundreds of images in the sunny heat of Southern Wisconsin.  I have to say, for a day of work, I had a lot of fun working with everyone from the art director and models in down to the hired muscle (who toted around buckets of chlorine and unboxed products).

I am a small business and I am looking to establish relationships with more small businesses. If you have a need for consistent aesthetically pleasing shots of your products and retail space, drop me a line.

This year has been a year of milestones. I have been freelancing for a few months. That’s not to say that I have been busy with a ton of jobs. That will take time. In the meantime I have been working on polishing my skills and looking for clients. Those two activities don’t pay very well on their own, but it’s all part of the business. I needed some income in the meantime. I don’t like bleeding savings until things start to pick up. My wife found some job postings that would work with my schedule. One of which is delivering donuts at night. It’s not my dream job, but it is easy, active and it gives me time to think. I have been delivering boxes of donuts all over the Madison metro area for a few hours each night. It’s hard work, but as they say – you gotta do what you gotta do. I have more exciting things coming down the pipe. It does make me curious, what are other photographers doing if they aren’t full time yet?