Today was planned months ago.  The image ideas and how to execute them had been thought about over and over.  It was going to be tons of fun and hopefully produce some really awesome images…images of some really motivated and exceptionally fit individuals hittin the Appalachian Trail…

…looks like we’re going to have a few more months to plan that out.  Doh!  Someone in the PA government decided it was time to close Winter’s Trail (one of the on-ramps to the A.T. in NEPA).  Yeah, we were confused… but mark one down for scouting!  This past Tuesday morning Mike D, Mary and I got a super early jump and headed up to the A.T. to be in position for sunrise.  The plan was to be ready when first light hit, assess what we’d have time to do and come up with some shot ideas based on the possible…with a touch of the nearly impossible.

So that WAS the plan.  When we drove up around 5:30 and found Winter’s Trail closed.  Lots of fences and chains and a whole bunch of ‘go away’.  With some quick goat thinking we moved on to two other locations that Mike and Mary knew of.  Unfortunately nothing was really working for what I was hoping to shoot…and least not like the A.T. would have.

Feeling slightly less that satisfied with my early morning adventure, I headed back to the ‘Wick to figure out what to do.

Relief was found near the bottom of  beer (I know, how many times has that happened, right!)  The fine folks at Bandit’s Roadhouse came to the rescue and let us use a warehouse they own to get the shoot done.  Having just shot there on Monday, ideas were fresh and ready to go…albeit COMPLETELY different ones from what we wanted to do on the A.T.

Yesterday, less than 24 hours before the shoot, it hit me that I might try something a little different this time.  Rather than get right into the workout shots, I thought we’d work into them.  The warehouse has some awesome old offices, relics of workdays paste.  It was begging for a shoot.  I dropped Julie, Seth & Andrea the news and asked them to whip together a look for the office.  They rocked it…with very little notice they all put together some great looks.

Kat came in on makeup for everyone and the rest of our team for this shoot (Connie, Erin & Steph) played key roles in making sure it all worked.  Thank you Julie and Matt from Brandit’s Roadhouse for helping on location needs.  And major props as always to the rest of the team today…thank you all for kicking ass!

Basically I was trying for a linear progression in the images…a story board sequence of sorts.  From the dulldrums of the office to the energy and excitement of LIFE being lived.  As this was my first attempt at it, there are some obvious deviations from the time line that could have been done better.  But all-in-all I’m pretty satisfied with that part of the shoot, and I’m really stoked about the images.  We’ll take what we learned from this and give it another shot on another shoot some time soon.

Rock On!

Wanted to get a few shots from today posted before I crashed.  Today was one of those days where everything was just clicking.  I really had a blast working with Theresa & Arielle, both NOT first-timers.  Kat was back rockin makeup and Erin (the intern – I’ll have a post introducing her soon) and Allie helped keep things moving and easy going in the blazing heat and drenching humidity.  It’s always nice working with a rad crew!  Thank you everyone for helping make images like the ones here.

BIG day tomorrow!

Rock On!

Had another chance to run down to StudioOz in Philadelphia on Monday for a long day of shooting and catching up.  DanO, owner/photographer of StudioOz and I both quit our day jobs (at the same place no less) to do photography full time within 2 weeks of each other back in the fall of 2005.  In those 5 years he’s has been an integral part of our lives and our business.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to pay him back for what he’s done for us, but we’ll keep trying.

The first 6 images here are from Monday down at DanO’s – his studio is in a huge complex that makes my brain swim with ideas, often WAY more than I can cram into one or two shoots.  The second series of 6 are from yesterday.  My hat is off to all of these awesome ladies for putting up with long days and crazy uncomfortable shooting weather.  You all rocked out some great images.  Thanks for making life fun!

Rock On!

Man, 2010 is racing by!  June is here, the summer weather HAS BEEN here for quite a while already and the calendar for the remaining 7 months is filling up fast!  It’s all work, technically.  I have a pile of things to post in the coming weeks:  Shots from next week’s www.300AlmostNakedPeople.com project shoot; more band/musician promo images; there’s probably a wedding or 6 to blog about; and perhaps just a general image wrap up on most of 2009…I realize we’re almost 1/2 way through 2010…better late than never, right.

These images are from our Winter Blues Promo.  Had a blast with everyone involved!  Thank you to all these great ladies for keeping life lighthearted and fun!

Rock On!

…is this ASAP enough?

Joey & Jamie’s Vegas mind-melt gave me some time to work up a couple of posts I’ve been wanting to do.  Nooooo, not WHILE in Vegas…you can get a lot done on a 3 hour flight!  Here’s a few from Connie’s most recent modeling shoot.

How much does she ROCK for getting the hair dyed dark just to do this shoot the way I’d pictured it in my head?  Every shoot seems better than the last with her…and that’s a damn good thing!  :D  Once again, thank you Kat for rocking the makeup & general shoot assistance.

And here’s a few from the most recent band promo shoot I’ve had the opportunity to work on.  1 Hot Mess is 1 rad crew of people to have on the opposite end of the lens.  Connie and Kat rocked out the back end of this shoot as well.  When the 3 of us are firing on all cylinders, life is GOOD!  Thank you to everyone involved!

Wow!  It’s been a full month since I’ve found time to update this.  Life is absolutely cruising by this year.  It’s amazing and mind blowing at the same time.  I’ll try to step up the updates ASAP.

Connie and I spent the past weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada shooting a wedding for local rocker and all around good guy Joey Stevens.  Neither of us had been there before and we’re both pretty confidant we’ll be hard-pressed to experience it like that ever again…if you’re up for bunking that theory, please, by all means, put us to work!  What an intense and other-wordly time it was.  Thank you Joey and Jamie for asking us to be there and for doing 1/2 the work to get these rad images.  It takes the EVERYONE involved, form subject, to lighting, to cameraman to make images that tell a story…I could NEVER do this on my own.  Connie rocked the light rig like a sherpa on the rocks and blasting wind; we get stronger as a team with every shoot and it really is such an amazing perk to this gig!  Thanks babe.

I love my job!

Spending this rainy Sunday editing and getting things around for next week; the last few have been a whirlwind of activity.  I think summer showing up early put things into high gear before I was ready.  Oh well…”here’s to being busy” I guess!  :D

The Berwick Mural Project got underway fully this weekend with the start of Alley Art.  I made it for about an hour and a half of painting, but Connie and a few others put in some spirited 6+ hours of constant painting.  The wall is fully primed and things are moving on that.  It’s cool watching this come together.  Connie has put a tenacious pile of effort and time into making sure this moved forward.  Congrats to my main homie!

This Wednesday night is also the first of the Small Group classes we’re holding in the studio in the coming weeks.  There’s 1 seat left in each of the 3 evenings if anyone is interested.  Connie and I are pretty excited to be doing these.  She gets to host, I get to jibjab about photography all night – it’s like when peanut butter & jelly first hooked up!

Here’s a few band shots from recent…always enjoy working with musicians.  Mixing arts is becoming a new hobby for me I think.

Like these guys do – Rock on!

It’s no secret that I like social media.  I like it because it’s fun and because it works…it’s definitely different than all other forms of advertising, which are mostly passive.  Social Media is NOT passive.  It’s engaging and dynamic.  I look at it as part of what I do to make my business go round.  I make and edit images, I know I should always try harder, I learn something new every day, and I social media…it’s just one of the things I have to do in the course of my life.  It doesn’t hurt that it’s actually fun for me too.

So, as I sit around and try to make social media work for Studio D, it dawned on me that I’ve been completely blind to the opportunity to use A Perfect Blend as a little test business…it’ll help me better understand what works, what might not, and how to implement different ideas, AND!, it’ll help my mother-in-law’s business as well.  She doesn’t have time or even the interest in adding more to her plate, but I can…and besides, it’s fun!  :D  (yes, I’ve said that)

In reality, Connie and I will be working on this together…

So here it.  All you have to do is get a Twitter account (I mean, that is, for both of you that don’t already have one, right?) and follow @BerwickBlend.  If you can, send the tweets down to your mobile device so you always have it at the ready.  Starting April 1st, a week from today, we’ll start tweeting from the @BerwickBlend account.  We’ll let you know what soups are up for the day and what the daily special is…how many times have you called in at 11:30am to find out that Arden’s BBQ or the Chicken Caesar Salad just sold out……ya, that sucks?  We’ll also be giving away a free drink every day.  We’ll tweet a code…then it’s a foot race to be the first one at the counter with the code.  On the surface, it might look like this is a pretty small group of people to aim at, but these are exactly the people that make this business possible.  Without the support of the businesses and downtown locals, A Perfect Blend wouldn’t exist.  That said, we’re not forgetting that some people like to visit Berwick AND eat all in one eventful day.  So we’ll also be tweeting, occasionally, for a free lunch for the first person to retweet the daily special.  We’re going to start a little slower on this one, perhaps once a week.  But I do see this becoming more regular in time.  Don’t worry that you have no clue what the last couple of sentences meant…get the Twitter account and follow, and then ask me on the phone or here in the comments how to do something.  I’m happy to explain.

This is planned for the long haul, so don’t sweat it if you don’t have it all figured out by next Thursday.  Over time we see this as a great way to let as many people know, as easily as possible, what The Blend has to offer.  And on top of it all…this is fun!

I’m such a dork!  :P

Just taking a quick second to say thanks again to Carla & Billy for having us out last fall to cover their big day.  Connie and I had a blast with both of them, their families and their great wedding party.  A little different than the normal post, but quite a few of these are Connie’s shots.  She doesn’t shoot a lot, but when she can it’s always a treat to see what she does.

This is a wedding party that knows how to ROCK!  Sun up to sun down they made sure this was Carla and Billy’s BIG DAY!  THIS is the kind of wedding party you want!

Obviously this is from a a bit back.  My hat is off to everyone involved for their patience while I got these done the only way I know how.  Thank you! Congrats & ROCK ON!

Also, thank you again to everyone that has emailed, txt’d, facebooked and otherwised me about the photography classes.  Your responses and enthusiasm have been very inspiring!