Our revolving gallery in the Keweenaw Brewing Co. in downtown Houghton is ready to revolve – just in time for Winter Carnival. Between tattooed bottoms, embalming tables, and photos of our favorite scenic vistas, we’ve found ourselves apologizing a lot lately… SO – here is your chance to absolve us from any near-future “we’re sorry” posts by telling us what you want us to print at 30″. Imagine yourself in the KBC drinking an IPA, stepping on peanut shells, and wondering where you put your overpriced ski gloves. What do you want to be gracing the wall above your head? A beautiful bride on the Lake Superior shoreline? An elegant shot featuring long legs and tall boots? Aerials of the Keweenaw? Sled dogs racing through the night? Zombies? Alpacas? Look through recent content on Tumblr (NSFW), Facebook , or the website and let us know. Final selections (we can usually cram about 10 into the taproom) will be posted with a tag that says for example: “Zombies in an El Camino – selected by Adam Griffis.” Fun fun. Get your selections in by the weekend before the bartenders get irritated with us for the blank walls in there. Enjoy and thanks!

untitled photo from 'transitions'

Really – we are nice people. Nice people who don’t always take photos of babies and butterflies, but we’re not trying to offend anyone. We expect the usual hate mail from gymnophobics (have been dying to use that word) but we didn’t expect kick-back from funeral home directors. Ouch. Actually, we’ve done some pretty nice commercial work with funeral homes in the area, and we find them professional, well-dressed, and really really funny. These are all traits that probably suit their line of work well! In 2004 we were doing a collection of photos on a project called ‘transitions‘ which showed the ambiguous area between life and afterlife. Hospitals were used, as were funeral homes. While the photos have been in circulation for about 7 years, they’ve recently been discovered by the funeral services community with mixed reaction based on the emails and phone calls.

For the record: our work in these anonymous (seriously, how many people could make a positive ID on an embalming room!?) funeral homes was escorted, authorized, and reasonably respectful of the locations. We dropped only one Big Lebowski quote (“Yes sir. It is our most modestly priced receptacle…”) and we’re sorry for any offense or implied disrespect. Art is in the eye of …..

We’ve worked an arrangement involving community service to the industry which we’re optimistic about, and um… if you are ever in need of a good funeral home, we can make some recommendations…

room 603

Meghan's punch bowl! (iPhone w/ KingCamera)

Yes – its overdue, but between holiday hedonism, workshop planning, and broken ribs – well, that’s all the excuses we can come up with right now… In all seriousness, thanks to all of you that came out to our Holiday Soirée just before the holidays. Wow. We had about 100 more people than we expected, and by 8PM had long run out of parking and both the punch bowl and IPA were on their last inch of reserves. Thank you to everyone who bought scratch & dent prints off the walls. We were able to bring a nice check over to the Copper Country Humane Society as a result, and the cats and dogs there thank you as well. Special thank-yous:

Keweenaw Brewing Co. - thanks to Dick & Paul for the CO2 and the hoppy beer, and special thanks to occasional model Abby for pre-washing an entire rack of pint glasses for us!

5th & Elm Coffee – a big thanks to Boone and Frank who balanced the IPA out with some strong coffee, AND some amazing truffles. Wow. Frank will indeed make these for events, keep it in mind if you want to impress someone.

Keweenaw Co-op – our preferred studio caterer for an absolutely amazing selection of gourmet cheese, salsas, olives, hummus (is hummuses the plural?)

Office Max of Houghton – these guys let us leave their store with thousands of dollars of cameras and equipment to be able to demo at the party. Looking through the images on the cards, they were, ah… certainly enjoyed. If you need a camera locally, definitely head up there, ask for the manager, mention us, and they’ll give you a good deal.

E.L. Wright artists & landlord – did you know that we share a building with Andrea from Distant Drum, and Joyce Koskenmaki? These are amazing artists and they like our parties almost as much as our landlord.

And again – thanks to all of you for the good cheer, the laughter, and your love of art. We’re looking for another excuse for an evening party. Today *is* National Peculiar People Day. Hmmmm…

5th & Elm Truffles (iPhone w/ KingCamera)

early guests (iPhone w/ KingCamera & Diptic)

scratch & dent prints (iPhone w/ PhotoForge2)

Adam & Sandy (Nikon D700 w/ 50mm)

playing with demo gear (Nikon D700 w/ 50mm)

camera demo (Nikon D700 w/ 50mm)

photog with guests (FujiFilm X100)

really happy guest (FujiFilm X100)

the cutest guests (Canon T3i w/ kit lens)

check delivery to humane society (iPhone w/ Luminance & Diptic)

1/1600 sec at f / 1.4 ISO 1600, 50mm 2:35PM

We’ve got a fair number of fans who are pretty geeky when it comes to photography, and we get asked many questions about ‘how’ we shot something. You know us – we don’t like post-processing. We can’t remember the last time we opened up actual Photoshop, and we (and our clients) tend to think that processed / filtered photos belong on Instagram (though we’re admitted addicts!) and not in a wedding album. So – we chose this photo this afternoon to simply give the technical aspects behind the art.

This beautiful Chicago bride did her bridal prep in a very dim cabin, and even in the early afternoon, the light was quite low. The camera was set with a high ISO to be safe, in this case, 1600 on a Nikon D3. The D3 is famous for low noise at high ISO, so even pushing this higher would not have been too much of a noise-risk. The lens in this shot is a Nikkor 50mm that is opened up all the way to f/1.4 – again, because it was so dark, but also because it is a compact lens, and gives a super-pleasing depth of field – buttery almost. Its not the most cost-effective lens, and we recommend the f/1.8 for most beginner / intermediate shooters, but ANYWAY…

This shot was unplanned. The previous shot was a feature shot at 1/100 of a second in a dark part of cabin (thus the high ISO!) and when we quietly ran into the bedroom for this single, fleeting moment – the sunshine in the window forced a scroll of the shutter wheel up to 1/1600 to not blow out the whole thing. The shot was so fleeting in fact, that there are only two shots of this moment, so thanks to Nikon for the fast focus and good metering. Even if the camera had been in a non-manual mode however, the electronics would have forced an exposure that would have darkened the image more than what was intended. Much like a point & shoot trying to capture a portrait against a bright window, flagship bodies are susceptible to the same flaws. Just like the ability to drive fast in the winter requires disabling the traction control system, a camera needs to be completely controlled by the photographer to get the result they want.

In terms of post-processing, the image history on this shot includes:

- import
- a profile assignment – which includes a lens profile, some noise reduction, and black clipping
- a preset assignment – which includes a caramel tone and a contrast tweak

Vignetting is not added and is deliberately removed from the lens profile to keep the flaw in the shot. The 50mm is a film lens and the D3′s sensor is FX, which is the same footprint as 35mm film – so the effect is natural.

(And what a dress!)

Email us with questions, or if this has piqued your interest in photography, join us for a workshop!

Remember our secret project this past November? This is it. We were honored to be able to provide footage for our new friends at Palace Sports and Entertainment in Auburn Hills – covering their project at Horner Flooring. Over the course of a week and a half, we spent some quality time with King from StandUP Media and an arsenal of gear – covering the process of the final stages of the creation of a new floor for the Detroit Pistons. Using a trio DSLRs and an x100, we captured panning shots, features, and interviews in multiple locations – (which is why we chose King for this job!) A neat trick was mounting a Nikon D700 with a 17mm lens to a scissor lift to capture a single shot, every 5 minutes, for 24 hours, for 5 days. No room for error once it was setup either: manual everything from focus, to white balance to make every shot for 5 days identical. The real trick however was trying to get down from the top of a 15′ high platform once we were in place. Um, yeah… hindsight… Doug and his team at Horner were great to work with, and running the interviews was a highlight of this job. Stan and his media team at the Palace were equally fabulous, and produced this 3:22 video. Can’t wait to see the floor with some players on it. Fun!

one shot every 5 minutes, 24 hours for 5 days

We’ve had a lot of interest in more workshops, including an intermediate one – so we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be offering two sessions on Jan 21! We’ll open registration up at 2PM on Friday the 6th (today.) See below for the schedule and the details, and lots more on the workshop page. Both promise to leave you smiling, exhausted, stuffed, and excited to shoot with new knowledge and skills. Just like previous workshops, we will have some of our best models on hand to serve as models in multiple scenes, lunch will be catered by the Keweenaw Co-op, and hands-on instruction will switch rapidly from “showing” to “doing.” Fun fun! So… brief details are below, and after 2PM, use the workshop page to learn more and sign-up. Put that new, confusing camera that Santa got you into good use!

workshop participant: before vs. after

- NEXT DATES -

Beginner Workshop – Saturday – Jan 21 – 10AM – 2PM (limit 10, catered lunch)

Intermediate Workshop – Saturday – Jan 21 – 3PM – 6:PM (limit 5, cocktail reception)

Participants for BEGINNER sessions bring their own camera for a hands-on, intensive session that will cover:

• basics on photography (light, depth, framing)
• mechanics of your own camera
• image processing, sharing, printing, and archiving
• hands-on exercises in-studio with live models
• mobile phone camera tips
• photo critiques, tips, and equipment recommendations

Participants for INTERMEDIATE sessions also bring their own camera for a hands-on, intensive session that will cover:

• controlling depth of field
• creative framing
• workflow and edits
• working with subjects
• advanced lighting (reflecting, diffusing, remote strobes)
• advanced controls (exposure compensation, auto ISO, flash sync, focus tracking)

Learn more here…