Finding Your Dopamine Fix
Fifty-five million likes don’t matter – creating photos you enjoy taking does.
Most of the photos I take, you – dear reader – will never see. And that’s fine.
Great video.
video
Terrible Fate
Behind the scenes video on the making of Majora’s Mask: Terrible Fate.
(Maybe go watch the original first – it’s something.)
There’s no doubt that a small group of talented people doing something they love is all the reward needed. “Fan-made short film” is often shorthand for “better than anything else out there.”
Master of Camera
Beautiful little film about Italian camera repairman Gian Luigi Carminati.
With the new wave of analog, I bet many Americans could do a good side business fixing analog cameras.
Christmas Cookies
Every year for Christmas my wife makes these great molasses cookies – a ton of them, with homemade frosting.
We take a day and decorate them in our favorite themes and characters, and then we share with friends and family over the holidays. It’s a great little family tradition.
I’ve missed working on video stuff so much since leaving Albion that I grabbed my Canon 6D, a 50mm lens, and took some video and photos. It was fun to edit footage and make a little film again. The process is one of those flow state situations, and I do miss it.
In photography, think about photo projects or series as opposed to single images. So many of us simply capture little snippets of video of family, friends, and outings. With all the (free!) tools at our disposal, it’d be fun to see more people put in the effort to making video stories, not just clips.
My Appearance on JTV
Something a little different today.
I was on my local JTV broadcast of The Bart Hawley Show on Friday, talking about my portrait project Artists In Jackson.
Bart (and his wife Karen) were nice enough to have me on the show. So much of what they do at JTV is community boosting that my project made a lot of sense.
“Famous” in my hometown is good enough for me.
Albion Anagama Documentary
Ken Shenstone, owner and operator of Albion Anagama ceramics kiln in Albion, Michigan, is the focus of my new documentary, Albion Anagama.
Ken (with Anne Beyer, blurred behind him) gave me full access to his pottery studio last fall, and I followed his team through the whole kiln firing process.
The Albion Anagama kiln is the largest of its kind in the United States.
Give it a watch, and let me know what you think!
Albion Anagama
I made another thing.
It’s a documentary on the Albion Anagama, a ceramics kiln owned and operated by Ken Shenstone – the largest of its kind in the country.
Albion Anagama was my last big project for Albion College, a documentary about community connections and creativity, and how two Albion alumni (Ken and Anne Beyer) run this crazy kiln on the outskirts of town.
They fire up the anagama kiln once a year, and we covered it for the college last fall. I interviewed Ken and Anne as they were starting the kiln process, and followed them through the whole project.
The story is right up my alley: couple of artists, tucked away in the countryside, making great work with this esoteric process that goes back thousands of years. Ken’s studio is a great setting, the people were fun, and watching the magic happen was something special.
In the film, Ken and Anne talk about the process of ceramics, what it takes to get the kiln fired up, the kinds of art they hope to make, and what kind of legacy Ken hopes to leave behind. It’s a lot to cover in 30+ minutes, but we did it.
Making Albion Anagama was a lot of fun, and I can’t thank Ken and Anne enough for seeing my crazy idea through. This film was a different animal than my last venture, Bringing Back the Bohm: It features two people instead of a half dozen, and follows one project from start to finish as it happens. It’s a story on a smaller scale, but it’s still a good story.
Now it’s available for everyone to see. Please give it a watch. I’ll bet you’ll learn a thing or two, just like I did.
Group Of Seven
Great photo project where the McGuffins go in search of the landscape locations from the Group of Seven paintings.
Now that’s my kind of treasure hunt: Lake Superior, beautiful country, hiking through the bush, taking photos of these national treasures.
Portrait Editing in Lightroom
Just for fun, here’s a behind-the-scenes portrait editing session in Lightroom I put together using a photo from my Artists In Jackson project, featuring painter Colleen Peterson.
This is a simplified editing process, but I don’t spend a ton of time on each photo. I have my process down pretty well.
Contrast, exposure, sharpening, and VSCO. Just that simple.
Enjoy!
Albion Circa 1995
One of the great parts about my day job is working with talented students on fun projects, like our recently-launched Albion 1995 throwback video.
The idea? What Albion College was like in 1995, told through music and technology.
The team did an amazing job starring in this thing, grabbing vintage (”vintage” – oy, I remember 1995!) clothing, and being good sports. For my part, it was all shot on an iPhone 5S, often using the VHS Camcorder app for the ‘95 scenes.
Check out the full video.
Rate Albion Professors
Pretty proud of how this (and the previous video) turned out: Albion College faculty read mean comments from Rate My Professor.
Appreciate all the faculty who (a) had a good sense of humor and (b) were willing to participate.
Bringing Back the Bohm
Proud to present my debut as a documentary film maker with Bringing Back the Bohm, the story of a dedicated group of community leaders coming together to restore a closed and dilapidated theater in Albion, Michigan.
Last fall, through my job at Albion College, I had a chance to photograph students learning about the theater’s restoration process. Elizabeth Schulteiss, the executive director of the Albion Community Foundation and lead cheerleader of the Bohm project, and I talked about how several documentary offers had fallen through.
Having done video work for the college, I volunteered to complete a short documentary for the theater in time for their grand opening on December 27, 2014 – the 85th anniversary of the theater’s opening in 1929.
The project was well outside my comfort zone. A five minute video I can do, but a half hour video?
Luckily I had lots of help from the Friends of the Bohm committee, my co-worker (and producer!) Erica, and the resources at the college.
The documentary debuted at the grand opening, after a rushed few weeks to get all the interviews and editing done.
I’ll say this: it’s a heckuva thing to see something you made on a real big screen. The film has its quirks, and I see lots of stuff I’d like to make better. But the point is, it’s done and out in the world for lots of people to see.
Learn more about this great historical community theater, and catch a movie there. You can order a copy of the documentary on DVD by contacting the theater, too.
Documentary Debut
Presenting: Bringing Back the Bohm
My debut as a documentary filmmaker is now live.
Proud of how it turned out.
Delicate Home
Catch the full quote from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot here. It’s a good annual reminder of how delicate our home is.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Mirrorless Minutes
Big thanks to Jamie MacDonald and Mike Boening for having me on episode five of the Mirrorless Minutes podcast last night.
Just to prove that they’re not micro 4/3 biased, they had me on to talk about Fuji and Canon mirrorless options, and to chat about the Lansing-area Kelby Photo Walk.
Moving Through Vegas
Moving Through Vegas from davelawrence8 on Vimeo.
Las Vegas II: Terrible’s Revenge, with Chris Driver, Andrew Krukowski, and Keith Coates.
(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
Pilgramers
Beautiful series, promoting a service I adore.
And that’s the thing: you wonder whether this is an Instagram-sponsored web series. If it is, it’s not obvious. If it’s not, well…good for them.
Sometimes you need to just do stuff, and see how it turns out.
(Pilgramers – Episode 1 (Official))
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Starved Rock
Starved Rock State Park, where John and I spend a day looking for waterfalls that aren’t there.
‘We Work for Tips’
And so it went last weekend in Las Vegas with three of my good friends: Andrew Krukowski, Chris Driver, and Keith Coates.
My experience with Vegas before last weekend was more like sticking my toe in the pool. I stopped there during a rush-hour traffic jam along I-15 coming home from the Route 66 trip. Then there was last summer, when I flew in and out of Vegas during my driving tour of the western national parks.
But I had never done Vegas righteously. Last weekend I finally got the chance, and did it as it should be done: with good friends to enjoy the spectacle.
The entire weekend was like one long-running comedy routine, with new in-jokes appearing from the sights, sounds, and people of this city. We took our accommodations and had a lot of fun with it, both with the people that we saw and the location of the hotel. Staying off-Strip means you get to see that other Vegas you always hear about – the one we saw, in full color, along Fremont Street.
Ah, Fremont Street. You take the old Vegas that appears in movies, the Vegas that Sinatra and Martin knew, you put a roof over it, and you turn it into an amusement park. It was still my favorite part of the trip. The Strip seemed like a giant themed shopping mall. But Fremont Street was the Vegas that I always pictured in my head: lights, mutants, cheap booze, the whole works. If I ever go back, I’ll be sure to spend more time on Fremont Street.
No one in our little group struck it rich, nor did anything too crazy happen. The trip was four guys who know each other so well taking this spaceship of a city as it is. We walked, and took in a ball game, and saw a show, and took a trip to the Hoover Dam. And then there was karaoke. Lots of that in a bar called Ellis Island, where tourists and locals both meet for cheap (but good) beer and lots of fun.
My role in these types of trips is usually the documentarian – a role I relish. Between photos and the video above, I feel like I captured some of the best parts of the trip while still leaving those fun parts – the ones only us four guys would get – locked away in memory. That’s as it should be.
The title of the video comes from a brief snippet of Fremont Street. The showgirls, the ones on either side of the gentlemen where one whispers something in his ear, walk around ready to pose for pictures. When I stood there to get my own picture taken, the one whispered “We do work for tips, okay?” into my ear.
Nothing is free in Vegas. Not really. And that’s okay.
I Am Not A Filmmaker
I Am Not A Filmmaker « Photofocus
Such an important distinction from Scott Bourne:
Owning a camera that shoots motion-pictures, i.e., video, does not make me a filmmaker. Filmmakers have a very unique skill set that I find myself lacking. I can operate a camera, but that’s pretty much where my skills end.
It takes a director, producer, editor and many more folks to make a real film. If you think it’s easy, you’re wrong. I’ve come to realize that I suck at trying to make films. I am pretty good at capturing the footage, but I need help knowing what to shoot so that the filmmaker’s vision can be executed.
I’ve learned that I’m more of a doer than a leader – that I can executive things very, very well. But having that “vision” thing is tough for me.
Creativity comes once in a while, and some of my professional work wins awards and compliments and whatnot. But I find it far easier to implement someone else’s vision than come up with my own. They think, I make it happen. That’s the kind of setup where I thrive.
Some blessed folks have both vision and know-how. And good on them.