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!

Saturday’s overnight rain didn’t seem to slow anyone down this weekend.  It was refreshing and a nice break from the recent crispy heat.  Things dried up and the party picked up right where it left off.  When the sun went down I dropped most of the gear and had some fun with ‘left-hand extended’ off-camera flash (OCF).  If your shooting gear supports it I’d recommend playing around with it when you can.  It takes some getting used to, but it’s a lot fun and can really change up shooting situations that aren’t ideal.

Another amazing BriggsFest! Thank you to Richard and all the Briggs for rockin a better time every year!

…and to my boy Dan Hess…always bringing the party hard…security be damned! Yahtzee Mutha-F!!k!r!

That was a damn wet night.  But the rain held off until plenty after the music stopped, and the deluge quit just before the place started buzzing again this morning.  Yesterday was a perfect ‘BriggsFest Day’: Plenty of sun, fun, people, music and food.  Here’s a few from yesterday and this morning as a recap…

Lots more shooting to do today! 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!

We spent the last 5 days in Colorado visiting some friends that moved from Berwick. Caught a Rockies game, hit up a museum and had a blast catching up with them. We’ve now moved on to Sedona, Arizona…the force behind this trip. This is the first family reunion my mom’s side of the family has ever put together. Apparently my grandmother thinks Sedona, AZ is 1/2 way between the East and West coasts! lol Just kidding…she’s a rockstar and my favorite person in the world to torture and tease. She takes it like a champ and dishes it back like a pro.

Anywho, this is just a quick update while we’re on the road. When I can, I’m making progress on the editing (those waiting, I thank you massively!).

…Firstly…

I need to officially thank everyone that showed up at the www.300AlmostNakedPeople.com shoot on the 13th. Besides the nerves and stress that I was ‘enjoying’ we had a great time and got some cool images. Hoping to have those done up soon.  Big props to Ben T. and M.J. at the Press Enterprise from stopping down to cover the event…and then for the amazingly awesome FRONT PAGE article in this past Sunday’s P.E. Thank you both for helping to get the word out!

Tara and Leah Mangan blew everyone’s mind with the cake of cake’s!  Thank you both mucho! There’s so many more people that NEED to be called out…once I have the images ready, they’ll all get the props they deserve. I’m definitely looking forward to doing it all over again soon. I’ll be posting more info on that as it becomes available.

Other things:

The Berwick Mural Project is rockin big time already. Alley Art is making major progress and the YMCA retaining wall will be in full swing once we return to PA. The blog is a touch outdated, but I’ll be making that right in the near future. We’ll be posting ‘artist profiles’ soon so everyone can get to know the great people MAKING this a reality. As always, we’re looking for volunteers all the time. Whether you can paint or not, there’s plenty of ways to get involved. Touch base with Connie through the BMP blog if you’re ready to be part of something HUGE!

Things To Do In Berwick

Check out this cool new Facebook group started by Berwick doer Steve Hampton. How smart is this…whether you’re looking for, or know of something to do in Berwick, share it here. Props to Steve for making this convenient and totally useful community board.

…and lastly…

I’ve got the goods on ANOTHER community art project that will need LOTS of people…about 100 I’d say. That’s all I want to dish on that right now as we have a few things to finalize, but if your interested you can talk to the man himself that came up with the idea. Berwick native, Zach Bremmer. Bro doesn’t even live here anymore and is rockin the creativity for the hometown. When I have more info set in stone, I’ll post it for sure…until then, dig it out of Zach if you can.

That’s it…time to go prospect for gold…Uncle Steve scored some yesterday and I need a tan, so why not!

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!