Circling

Today I was tasked with capturing all of the new topiary at one of the hospitals I am responsible for photographing. It was a hot day and I took my time concentrating on getting nice shots despite the highness of the sun in the mid-morning sky. Forty-five minutes in, I spotted two birds twirling in slow lazy circles. They were using the air-conditioning smoke stacks as thermals, riding their ejected heat higher and higher into the sky. Within sixty seconds, they went from being... Read More

Delta Delta Delta

Last night, I walked past my bookshelf and glanced at one of the two spiral-bound notebooks leaning against the oversized Dan Eldon book. One notebook has a collection of terrible charcoal drawings I made in a period when I imagined I could practice my way into talented charcoal artistry. The other notebook would be empty were it not full of pages torn from my heart. Words and drawings and even a few photos and items lie pasted within like monuments to emotion drunk while in the... Read More

Endless Generosity: How to Train a Cat to Do Your Taxes

So, the old phrase, “It was like herding cats,” tends to bring either a smile or a grimace of understanding to my face. My affinity for that phrase stems from its daily applicability here at my workplace. If any of my millions of readers have ever owned a cat, you know how difficult, and dare I say fruitless, it is to train one. Yet I am asked on a daily basis to perform the human equivalent of that process. I suppose that in every group, there is one person who can... Read More

Pushing the limits

Today I let a $920 lens fall to the ground attached to a $5000 camera. I was rigging a shot on a 16 year old girl’s bicycle. The plan was to mount the wide angle lens to the front of her bike, set the camera for a 10 second countdown, send the girl on her way and have the shot taken while she was riding. With any luck, I’d get a nice shot of the girl in focus with the world around her retreating into the blurry distance. Of course, the first shot wasn’t perfect.... Read More

How am I not myself?

I am an impostor standing alone secretly regarding the twenty-five kinds of gourmet waters available for purchase at prices similar to the wine. Ironically the granola-lined asphalt of the parking lot welcomed in my turbocharged Subaru with the ultra high performance tires, three inch exhaust and carbon fiber wing as much as it invited in the naturally-aspirated Subaru wagons with bike racks, baby seats and hybrid envy. Green is still green, and the green to be made taking advantage... Read More

Dropping the soap

So you know what I’m really good at? Avoiding soap to foot impacts in the shower. I’m like the Smith from the Matrix movies who could avoid all those bullets. I think it’s a very useful skill to have. Now if only I could work on not dropping the soap. You know what else I’m bad at besides soap retention? Procrastination. My old roommate in college used to say, “Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow.” Seemed like bad advice... Read More

Check please

The good thing about life is that there are checks and balances. Everyone needs them. People like Gandhi and Patton weren’t born great. They were forged from the iron of their birth into the steel icons that still exist through the heat of position and the pressure of time. Today I’m home sick from work. A little less than a week ago, I got another full blown cold to replace the previous one that had been pestering me at a low level for four weeks. I’ve been... Read More

Rockstar

I was just emailed this question from a client for an upcoming photo shoot I will be working: Jon, do you need any special arrangements for the luncheon on 6/27? – Let me know – Thanks,(name withheld to protect the innocent) Here was my reply: I will need the following items: All gloss-black trailer with a single white star on the door, no name. The trailer should have a 12 speaker Bose sound system and all my songs loaded onto the player, and good lighting inside Ice... Read More

What might have been

My recovery from grade school began the first day of high school. It was the very definition of a clean slate due mostly to the size of the student body. Grade school involved less than 200 students, most of whom were vastly different ages. High school had more than 2000 students, most of whom were within two years of my age. Anonymity was what I wanted. My reputation from the last seven years was gone. It was heaven, but not at first. Academically and socially, I learned a few... Read More

Hot enough for ya!?

Hi blog.So I’m feeling kind of basic today. Maybe it’s the heat and the humidity. It’s so hot and humid today I saw the devil wearing a t-shirt and drinking a Gatorade. I swam into the parking garage today and snorkled to my car. I wiped off my hands and opened the door but my hand slipped and I slapped the CEO straight across the face. He tried to complain but when he went to take a breath, he drowned. And it was so hot that instead of his body falling... Read More

Kick the habit

Jerking the trigger, focusing with one eye closed and complacency with exposure are just some of the bad habits that I struggle with as a professional photographer. Where do these repetitive behaviors come from? Memory? Memories are collections of energy in neurons distributed throughout the brain connected together by things called engrams. And every night, those arrangements of engrams and neurons need to be integrated into the rest of the brain structure. An unreliable process,... Read More

The self portrait

This is a picture I took of my hand while shooting physicians on-location one day. I didn’t have a stand-in other than a medical skeleton, so I shot my hand to see how the lights were looking. But I think it would be a funny series to shoot my hand at all these different locations. And it would be a nice change from photographing myself. I have many dozens of photos of myself shot at different locations and in the studio. It’s interesting to see how my face has... Read More