Loving Surviorman...

Never were the words of Bruce Springsteen's song, 57 Channels (and nothin on) more true than today.  Between the writer's strike (they deserve everything they're asking) and endless "reality" television, that has nothing to do with reality; finding something to keep the gray matter occupied for an hour or two is getting tougher.  However, I've found my nirvana with the Surviorman series.  Les Stroud eats dirt, makes fire by rubbing two live rattlesnakes together, and builds shelters out of shoe strings and pocket lint.  Great, great stuff!  Between my short lived Boy Scouting and hunting and camping as a youngster in the Southern tier of New York, ole' Les has struck a cord.  While I never was put in a survival situation, I did loose my bearings a couple of times while out looking for a Bambi to shoot...Seriously, it's a great show to watch and Les loves nature and the outdoors.  Sure, it's a little overproduced at times and you KNOW he's never that far from a satellite phone and ER room, but it's still pretty interesting to me on making due with very little.  A little like, shooting location photography in a bad location...

So in honor of Les and his great show, a couple of wilderness pictures for you today.  It's Half Dome in Yosemite Park, CA.   Ansel, eat your heart out :-)

A couple more fall photos...

I'm always amazed how many great photos I've made throughout the years that haven't ever seen the light of day. What happens is this...The phone starts ringing, assignments need completed, print orders need filled, kids need a ride to soccer practice, etc., etc. The photos that I feel excited about somehow get lost in the sea of images on my multiple computer hard drives. I don't spend much time these days even opening the file cabinets that contain thousands of images and take up way too much valuable real estate in my office. Even if I come across a nice transparency, it needs to be cleaned, scanned, retouched, and outputed. Unfortunately, my attention span isn't that long. As I frequently say, for me the thrill in photography or assignments is the actual production and pulling out all the stops for a great shoot to come together. Once it is shot, I'm looking forward to my next shoot. Tearsheets and gallery shows, while extremely important, have never really been my primary focus. Probably much to the detrement of my checking account...

Anyway, this blog is going to be fun for me to show new work from "out of the vault" so to speak. I'm still learning the html and about linking, and ways to make posting quicker and less painful for me. Hopefully everyone can be patient while I get these issues worked out. This venue is going to be great as a way to see work that won't be found on my website. Hopefully I can keep everything fairly current. So please bookmark my blog or visit often, as I'm sure you'll find a wide variety of images and eventually writings and musings on the business.

Since my back is sore from raking leaves this past weekend, here are a couple of fall photos photographed at Moraine State Park in Butler County, PA for your enjoyment...For you techies out there, the car photo was made with a Lens Baby lens.
A cheap, plastic lens on an $8000.00 camera body. Lot's of fun!