photographs on display

i'm really excited to announce that i've got 15 photographs hanging up at 816 Pint & Slice (a restaurant in downtown fort wayne) from now through december.

it's a pretty cool setup they have there - every month they give local artists a chance to display their work, free of charge or commission.

so if you're in the area looking for some pizza, stop by, get a bite, and take a look!

816 Pint & Slice

816 South Calhoun St.

Fort Wayne, IN

abstract glow bracelet art

recently i made a couple of purchases - a new camera, and some glow bracelets.

first the camera. after researching point-and-shoots, mega-zooms, and d-slrs we picked up a panasonic lumix fz35 because of some of the features it has. mostly i wanted to have manual controls, image stabilization, hd video, and long(er) exposure times. so this one was the winner.



second the glow bracelets. i saw them at michael's - 15 for a dollar. there's no passing that up - i'm still very much mesmerized by the neon glow of glow sticks/necklaces/bracelets.

when my two recent purchases - and my boys - joined forces one night in the backyard, this was the result...



and this...



and this...



the exposures were somewhere around 8 seconds and i kept the camera moving to keep the background (neighbor's house, fence, etc.) from registering on the picture.

let's hear it for free flowing creative expression! woohoo!

drum roll please...

i've finally put some finishing touches on my new gallery including some new 35mm 'street photography' shots. i think i'll call it finished for now.

also, i just got some large format slides back from the lab (woohoo!) so as soon as i get my photo budget out of the red and well into the black i'll purchase this and post them in my gallery.

~

as a side note, i have to say that finding this was a miracle. for a while the only reasonable way to get my 4x5's scanned was by using one of these. byu had one that i used while at school and i was able to rent time on one in nyc for a reasonable fee but since leaving ny i haven't had access to one. thanks epson for bringing high quality, large format scans into a reasonable price range.

boston, and other news

can i just say, i love my new camera. it's so compact and user-friendly. that might sound weird considering it's size, but compared to my old camera, this one is a real champ.

anyhow, last may (sorry i'm a little behind on my posts) we went to boston to see my brother-in-law - and the city - before they moved away. just before we got boston we stopped in at the vine lake cemetery in medfield, massachusetts. my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great (that's 9 greats) grandfather, james allen, is buried there. he was the first of my allen ancestors to come to america - somewhere around 1637. he was also one of the original 13 founders of medfield. it was a pretty cool experience to learn a bit about him and then see his gravesite.

i brought my large format camera and took some shots of james allen's headstone.

here i am, about to photograph acorn street in boston. i'm not quite sure how the picture will turn out because of the crazy light - an overcast day would have been better but hey, you can't really schedule that when you're just visiting.

we also stopped by the sacred grove in palmyra, new york on the way home.

and now for the first bit of news, i got a new (used) lens!

this piece of work is the calumet caltar 90mm f/8 lens (woohoo!). i sold my other camera and was able to get this wide angle lens with the proceeds.

it's not the top of the line lens, and f/8 is a little slow for this type of lens, but it is a good lens and also an enormous improvement on what i was using before.

and as for my website... it's coming. i hate to promise but hopefully it will be up by this weekend. cross your fingers.

heads up!

if you head over to my website and find this, don't be alarmed. i'm just in the middle of transitioning to a new site. hopefully it will be up by the end of the week. thanks!