Travelin' About

'Tis the season to get yourself a new headshot. I'm running a special right now for a 15 minute session to include a 5 x 7 print and a digital image for $65. We can do it inside or out and you will get at least 15 images to choose from.  Call me at 845 527-7608.    

  Perhaps it's because I spent a lot of years in the newspaper industry, but I just HAD to check out the six-floor, jam-packed NEWSEUM in Washington, DC. Located at 555 Pennsylvnia Avenue, smack dab in the middle of everything that is cool to see in DC, the Newseum is an interactive museum dedicated to journalism, photojournalism, how we approach the news, who has given their lives in pursuit of telling the truth, and what events have rocked our world.   We started our tour with a look at actualy pieces of the Berlin Wall.  We had been to Berlin and seen remnants of the wall, that only came down in 1989 - a short 25 years ago - and got to read and hear about the influence that that wall had had on the German people. The wall separated family and friends for 29 years - those living on the East side were under a strict communist regime and were forbidden any contact with the outside world. Many died trying to get from the East side to the West. Mind boggling to ...

Really nice media coverage on my current show at Strange Brew: The Horn

  Why is it I always seem to learn the hard way? I thought it would be awesome to have my photographs up at a hip coffeeshop, so I inquired how to make that happen.  Strange Brew is a really cool venue for music, food, relaxing and getting some computing done, so it should be a nice place to show my landscape images, right? Well, yes and no. The venue has two very large rooms and my photos actually look very small there. And there are always people working away at their computers, so it is a bit uncomfortable to wander up and down the rooms to see my 35 images.   And many of my images look lost in these two large rooms I was offered. I should have printed them as large as I could, but I wasn't sure how they would all fit. And it's a very ecclectic collection, with images from New York, New England  and a lot of newer images from Austin, Texas.   So, I started this blog a few weeks ago to invite my friends to see the show, a...

Tickles So, I had fun providing headshots for the women in a band called Miss Jones and the Furrballs a few weeks ago. They market themselves as a "hilarious musical show band guaranteed to entertain," and they are an absolute hoot! They have each taken on persona and it takes them a sincere amount of time to get made up into their different characters. Glitter They were wonderful models, as they are naturals for posing. We did some group shots but, unfortunately, one of their band members dropped out and they needed a group shot ASAP since they need posters for an upcoming performance. Cry Baby I suggested an outdoor shoot since the weather (and lighting) were perfect and they jumped on the idea to try and pose in an iconic Austin setting.  Now, our challenge was, it was a Saturday night and we had to deal with Austin traffic and a parking challenge.  That said, I believe we found a few good locations. First, we found a nice retro background outside ...

My daughter suggested I'd love to try a Gospel Brunch. I envisioned large, robed ladies belting out traditional Baptist hymns while I tried to swallow down a buffet of breakfast, lunch and dinner (that's NY style) and everyone getting up and swinging ans swaying yelling Halleluia! Wrong.  Well, maybe there is one like that somewhere, but Gospel Brunch at S trange Brew in South Austin was a lovely, relaxed, Sunday spiritual experience.  The Purgatory Players perform every Sunday from 11-1. The setting is a darkened coffee house where they have a large selection of coffees and teas, milk choices (Hemp milk, anyone?), breakfast tacos, pastries and an amazing sandwich menu.  Jeff Plackenhorn explained that the regular Purgatory Players were down three members on the particular Sunday that I was there - one was on the road, one was sick and one was playing elsewhere - so they had guests Stan Smith (pictured on the right, who sounds a lot like Dylan and plays o...

  I have to say, I have the best job in the world - getting to shoot all kinds of fun events where people are happy and celebrating and generally looking their best.  A five year old birthday party at the brand new Austin Aquarium   sounded, at first, like the perfect gig.  Brooklyn is a beautiful young lady who I had photographed before so I really looked forward to her party.  The only problem was, the Aquarium was dark, over crowded, and the children were far more interested at looking at the fish tanks than my camera, leaving me with only their backs to photograph. But this is where being an experienced photographer comes in handy.  I was prepared with the proper lighting set up - my flash on a bracket to give plenty of light and prevent red-eye - and a battery pack on my hip so that the flash would fire continuously.  I was able to get to the opposite side of the tanks most of the time, to try and capture the awe of seeing these bizarre ...

First of all, I learned that not everyone know what "doing a 365" is. It is posting a Photo a Day for 365 days, generally started at the beginning of a year by faithfully shooting a worthwhile image every single day and getting it posted somewhere for people to follow. I had planned to post it in this blog...I discovered Facebook was an easier avenue and provided me daily feedback. And I am so grateful to my loyal fans. Thank God for that feedback!!!! I was often surprised at which photos got a lot of "likes" and which ones seemed to get very little response.  One of my biggest challenges is always "selecting" what is worthwhile and what is not.  For example, I had a lot of fun with bubbles last year, but even today could not select which of these is my favorite bubble image.   Doing the 365 made me explore new avenues to get creative. I played with smoke and fire and drips – things I had always thought about but never before had made the effor...