Triangles and sailing in Buzzards Bay

Leaving a triangle at the corner of a photo can be distracting...

Unless the whole photo is filled with them!

We were taken out for a sail on a wooden boat on Buzzards Bay, just off of Cape Cod. The wooden boat is owned by a friend, and captained by some new friends. Brian and my parents came with. It was a cloudy day, and the wind patterns were all over the place as the air mass shifted to make room for an incoming tropical storm. Barry, I think.

The boat is named Valora, and she's steady as a rock. When we finally found some wind further out in the harbor, almost to the shipping lane out of Cape Cod Canal, the boat seemed as though she puffed out her chest, with the sails filling and the deck leaning away from the wind as we picked up speed. The piece that sticks down into the water through the hull was pulled up so we were a shallow boat, able to navigate well in the sandy waters of the bay.

And then -- and then! -- Lu showed me how to use the tiller! I stopped taking pictures for a while and Brian took some of me with a smile filling up my face. They showed me how to tack! And the boat didn't skip across the water - she positively flew. Smoothly, responsively. I think I remember hearing 7 1/2 knots.

If delirious happiness on a Sunday makes a difference, I'm in for a good week.

Really Pink

Photo shoot on Mother's Day with Caroline and her mom.

I got to meet them a couple of years ago when I photographed Caroline at 8 months or so. We went to a park in town and she and her mom played and looked at flowers - and cried (just Caroline) - and then played again. All in all, a really satisfying shoot.

A year later, we got to do it again. Same park, but now Caroline was playing on the jungle gym - and was VERY into playing peek-a-boo. We made a book from the photo shoot and gave it to her father for his trip to Russia. Got a note a few weeks later from him saying it was the most amazing thing ever, and made him really happy.

And Mother's Day rolled around and we did another shoot - this time in the studio. Caroline is talking, active, curious - and very pink! She and her mom goofed around and played some singing games, and then her mom stood behind me to help get this shot. You can see that Caroline's gaze isn't quite at the camera lens, but she's got a very open, engaged look.

Lighting - Umbrella to my right, fairly high. Umbrella to my left, low and to Caroline's side, giving wrap-around lighting that's balanced by the light on the right. One of these days I'll get around to finding a softbox... and finding out what "key lighting" means...

Zoomy building

State Room, Boston - Out the window with a Lens Baby! St. Patrick's Day, actually. I think the State Room is on the 30th floor or so. And the lensbaby, used with the f/2.8 ring, distorts everything nicely. The photo makes me feel like I'm looking at a teensy model of Boston, but there are enough details so the building feels much more massive simultaneously.

Before Harmonie and Matthew's wedding, which was the first wedding where I used a lensbaby. Much happiness from the couple. Wait, I'll find one from the wedding too -


I just took another look at Gregory Heisler's website and it's still awesome. Inspiring. I like his portrait gallery headings: Quiet, Vibrant, Simple, Dynamic, Strange, Contextual, Time Covers... Time covers!

I remember looking at the photos on the covers of Time before I ever became a photographer, and thinking how evocative and straightforward they are. And I've looked at them more carefully since getting more involved in following and controlling lighting. Something amazing happens with the pair of highlights on the back of a subject's face. The highlights tend to focus my attention on the rest of the well-lit face, but let me think about what's outside of the frame, too.

So I'm inspired, and I'll see what I can do with the next shoot.

Sonik

Man, I forgot about this one. You know how, every once in a while, you troll the web for things you've done? Found this one on the Revolving Museum website, makes me happy. A shot of Caleb Neelon - Sonik - hanging out with the rude, crude, and pants-peeingly hilarious Big Nazo man puppets. Caleb's swank suit goes well with the green head guy's green head.

I think this is the shot Caleb that bought the rights to to use in his book.

This was maybe 3 years ago at an art opening hosted by Jerry Beck, mastermind behind the Revolving Museum, which at that point had relatively recently moved to Lowell.

Flash on a bracket, f/5.6 or so (it's a Vivitar 285 with Thyristor flash sensor - modern technology from 1970). Prolly 400 ASA, maybe 1/15 or 1/20 second to soak in the ambient light. The flash freezes the motion on things within its range, and things further outside its range are not as frozen. The camera shook a little during the exposure, whether by accident or design, but it gives the image an active feeling, kind of jittery with barely-frozen energy.

Does it give you the feeling that the rest of the night was fantastic?

Vanu and Judy came to the studio for the 5/12 photo shoots. Amazing couple - she sings professionally, he heads up a prominent business. Very comfortable with each other, so sweet to work with.

3 years ago CommonWealth Magazine sent me to photograph Vanu for an article, and we've kept in touch on and off. Here's that photo. It's also on the front page of the megpix.com website.

In the studio, I used a 2-light setup. There was an umbrella at 5 or 6 feet high on the right. And an umbrella at a lower height, pointing at the background and side of the people, on the left.

For the photo of Vanu at his business in Kendall Square, I had a light on umbrella at about 8 feet high, plugged into the column on the right of the photo. The sun had just about set and all the lights in the office buildings in the background were visible. And Vanu's office had this fantastic sloped window and balcony! He's holding the company's product.

I like all the interesting stuff in the background too.

Niki Tsongas 24-hour power tour

Campaign kickoff tour for Niki Tsongas. 11 hours with a really committed bunch of people. Niki's 3 daughters were with her for most of the day.

I rode on the bus. :)

The night before, I packed the car with a light stand, extension cord, umbrella, and off-camera flash unit. Alien Bee 800 or something. Also brought along an extra body, 2 on-camera flashes, bracket, and 3 zooms - wide, portrait, tele. And lots of batteries, flash cards.

Since we took the bus from Lowell and would end up in Methuen when I was done 11 hours later, where I'd head out to a board meeting afterwards, Brian was able to link up with my mom and drive the car to Shadi's in Methuen, then head back home to keep illustrating. Outstanding.

I was reluctant to leave the gear in the car, but when common sense prevailed and I got a look at everything we'd be doing during the day, I decided to leave the cumbersome stuff behind. Eventually I took the camera off the flash bracket and shot natural light, wide f-stop. I'm pretty satisfied with the shots, and have been seeing them pop up all over the internet, so someone likes them too. Part of the gig was giving the campaign all the repro rights to the images. There's nothing better than seeing good images used well, so kudos.

Powow River Grille

At the Powow River Grille. Party. Light on a stand taped to the balcony, behind a potted plant, so nobody knocks it over. It worked well! Lighting cords snaked along the floor, additionally wrapped around the lighting stand so that if - just if - the tape let go, the stand would not catapult onto the crowd below.

Sweet, sweet waitstaff not only allowed my tenuous lightstand, they also assisted me in setting it up.

And the food was awesome.

OK, here's what else the light illuminated:

I was in the State House waiting for the Irish Delegation from Limerick to finish up in the Chamber. Didn't want to disturb. On the wall in a room behind the Chamber are some old maps of Massachusetts, red dots all over the place. One dot on Nantucket. Furthest south, furthest east, old Nantucket.

That's right, a Nantucket Limerick should go here.

Er...

Trying for Spring

I work in the barn, second floor. Out the window, there's a birdhouse, and the backyards of the neighborhood.

Cats often scoot by and birds use the birdhouse in season, so there's often something appearing out of the corner of my eye that lets me pause in the middle of typing a sentence, turn my head, and look out the window.

So I see motion out of the corner of my eye, turn my head, and see -- snow!

I think it's called a snow squall when a snowstorm blows up out of a sunny day, snows hard for 15 minutes, and then blows itself out again. Literally 15 minutes later, the snow on the neighbor's roof had melted, and we were back to sun.

I'm looking forward to spring.