What a fun, fun project. Over the course of a few days, the whole Brockit crew gathered models, arranged scenes, and conned unsuspecting tourists for a series of shots to feature activities in downtown Houghton. We pulled out all the stops; handheld reflectors, rear sync flash in the woods, multiple photographers, etc. At the end, we have about 700 images for our good friends Dave & Karyn who are working on the project for the City of Houghton. No doubt that you’ll see these shots on large posters (see the sneak peek below), in visitors guides, websites, etc. Thanks for the fun project guys, and thanks especially all the accomodating restaurants, shops, bike clubs, dogs, hikers, interns, housemates, etc. To all the models that signed the releases -  we’ll get the full gallery posted with all the shots for you to enjoy as well. In the meantime, look for yourselves in downtown Houghton windows…

How does the song go: ‘its a small world after all…’ ? It totally is. Ramona Capilitan, PR at De Waerdse Tempel in the Netherlans is using a shot of Alan Parsons for his promotional material this week. The small world part: I just left Amsterdam about a month ago, shot Alan and his crew a couple years ago, and my daughter and Alan Parsons’ lead vocalist PJ Olsson’s daughter are playmates. Funny…

Ramona, dank u wel for the business and the VIP invite. Alan, Godfrey, Manny, Steve, John, and PJ, have a great show! Hope to see you guys soon.

Amy got married on the 28th and we captured her moments from noon until midnight. Red carpet is always challenging to match with flash, so I elected to leave it in the bag and just crank the ISO on the D3 a bit. Oh yeah, and it looks like I finally fried one of the SB-800 strobes and I didn’t feel like programming one of the other slaves to act as master. We’d have time for this later anyway… I’m not big on formal group shots, and tend to do these in a relaxed and artistic style vs. stuffy and ‘look at the camera and smile’. Its just not my style. My preference for a setup and shot is below with the mine ruin, sunburst, and casual poses. I admit that I did throw some strobe into this to carefully fill shadows without creating more. Nice job, Amy. You had a beautiful day!

Congratulations to Audrey for landing a super-sweet commission job for an art distributor doing a project for a China located Hilton. 14 7-foot hand-made beaded creations are going up in an executive meeting room which none of us will probably ever see unfortunately. We shot one of the creations in the studio and outdoors. The shot below is my favorite though; the artist and her work. Nice job Audrey – what a fun project.

Ah, yes; we did decide to go. Earthworks Music – Family Camp. This rocked. Although I admit we were a little frightened when we pulled in, we quickly got comfortable and opened up immediately. A long weekend full of incredible food, friends, music, art, and extremely comfortable community living. Kora got a chance to do some violin work with the musically gifted Daisy May, and we all learned from each other. The pop-up camper of course was its usual awesomeness of habitat-on-wheels, providing shelter with a DOOR; what luxury. Hope to see you all at Blissfest and Harvest Gathering.

This set of photos for Finlandia University were shot with explicit direction for a set of ads. This is further example of how we are just never in the studio… its all about location and being flexible with a tight timeline. Of course its also about hiring interns who can double as models too; thanks Emily. I hear the library shot below made some regional papers as well. And, doesn’t the freebie 1994 Mercury Sable (aka EA22Y) just really make the statement in the high price gas shot? ah yes… it does. Thanks for the work Karen, hope these work for you; we had fun with the whole project.

Sorry to our client for the wait on the spring shots of their property, but spring comes a LOT later here in the middle of Lake Superior than it does in Kentucky. Cold weather kept the grass from growing and leaves from opening for quite a while, but once it did - the grounds crew made this place look stunning! Thanks to everyone there for letting us roam freely, and of course accommodating us during the winter indoor shoots. The shot below has a pretty good sky for being f/10 in order to expose the shadowed building. Nothing on the front of the glass either; I’m not a fan of ND or polarizing filters so…

We’ll keep her anonymous, but this client joins the many beautiful belly shots that I’ve done over the years. Emily and Meghan helped with poses and arranging fabrics which is always a massive help and the model / client did her thing by looking naturally beautiful. This was an interesting day to shoot in one of my favorite places as the light was unusually diffused with some overcast skies but still reasonably bright. I shot a couple stops lower than I usually do and resisted the urge to bring the exposure up in post-processing which is especially notable in one of the shots below. Subtle light and a slight underexposure made some of these quite interesting though. Nice job, model, and thanks for working with us a week from your due date; we’ll be thinking about you.

What a weekend - Bridgefest, Chaindrive, Anniversary (11th), and a wedding. Brockit had a full crew with Emily & Tess shooting secondary on the trails. I shot start to finish from a number of spots including bungee strapped to the tailgate of a pickup truck to ankle deep in the swamp. As always, some terrifically photogenic racers, notably my good neighbor Chris Schmidt. The rain held out and the weather made for some good sky. Got some good use out of the circular 8mm, and flexed the D3 with some harsh light. Nice job racers; hopefully you have fewer black fly bites than I do. Thanks to Christine and the Keweenaw Brewing Co. as always for the support as well. The first gallery is up already; look for additional content from Emily & Tess in the next day or so.

— UPDATED (Emily’s shots) —

Brockit intern Emily Allen has a couple hundred shots that are uploaded into the main gallery. For her first bike shoot, she did great. Way to go, Em! All images are chronological  in order as you passed one of our crew on the trail. Please remember to thank Christine Young and the race organization for providing cost-free imagery to all racers. How nice is that!?

— UPDATED (Tess’ shots including awards and Kids Race) —

Brockit gun-for-hire Tess Steube shot an amazing amount of photos at multiple points on the trail including covering awards and the kids race. 700 shots are up from her, making our total 1247 shots of inspiring bikers - woo hoooo! Nice job, Tess. Always nice to have you along, even though you shoot with Canon… Paul Simon would be dissapointed…

CHAINDRIVE 2008 GALLERY

nice quote from a first-time racer:

Hi my name is Elliott Krizek, I just raced the 32 mile Chain Drive for the first time and I wanted to thank you guys for the great photo work that you produced. The colors and images are rich and a joy to look at. Thank you!!!

Leah was our bride directly after shooting the Chain Drive race on the 14th. Nice job bride & groom. Lovely weather and good locations for shots. You will recognize the bride and groom from their winter engagement shots, and now here they are; married and happy. Lovely job - it was a pleasure to be with you from the early afternoon until the late night fireworks (literally) in downtown Houghton. Many congratulations from us at Brockit. Some sneak photos below, including some fun ones of guitar master Mike Irish, and video king Todd Brassard. Enjoy!

One thing I love about living in the middle of Lake Superior is the dramatic weather; clouds and sun are especially fun to watch up here, and I have go no further than my back lawn, or around the corner to get shots like these. It is no secret that the other thing I love is shooting Kora. She is a natural, and she should be; she’s had a camera in her face since she was born. Long-term, detrimental effects aside, she likes it, and helps often with photoshoots. We use her as a model often; she is flexible and her talent fees are low! Of the four shots below, two are with the point & shoot (so handy!) and the other two take advantage of larger glass. As always; no PS work; as fake as the clouds look, they are real.

Jessica is a Brockit Bride for October. She and her fiancee took advantage of their engagement shots on a breezy, slightly overcast spring afternoon in Hancock before heading hundreds of miles back home. You guys are both naturally photogenic and will do great! The shots were all done with the 70-200 in natural light - my favorite formula… Nice smile below, Jessica.

A follow-up quote from Jessica to Meghan:

 I love them! Adam is fantastic, I can’t wait to see what he does with the wedding photos!

Thanks - I’m blushing…

From the earlier post, y’all (sorry, just back from Kentucky) know about the Houghton Spring Art & Music Festival. Along with others, I donate time and energy into the festival, specifically for me, into arranging the music, setting up the damn risers, making sure the show runs smoothly, then tearing down the damn risers. The effort was helped a lot by Todd & Jessie of Brassard Media who helped with poster design, distribution, and running the sound stage. Nice work! This was probably the best house (tent) sound we’ve had for the event, and an excellent, two-stage poster release; nice - nice! A few shots below for my Art Center girlfriends in downtown Hancock. Bonnie & Cynthia, always nice to do this; lets get going on next year’s plans.

Ah, this was lovely. Lori Polzin was our bride for the 6th of June, and we shot a beautiful, private wedding on the top of Brockway Mountain in Copper Harbor; shot in some local scenes, then moved southwest along the shoreline to Fitzgerald’s (Eagle River Inn) along Lake Superior’s shore. A wonderful, in-love couple, for whom Brockit intern Emily and I signed the witness lines on the marriage license. Excellent day you two, and congratulations!

Yes; another fun, challenging location to make look sexy through the lens. Working for a couple groups back in Houghton Emily and I headed 20 miles south to shoot in a manufacturing facility to provide fresh content. Everyone was accommodating, and the facility was probably the cleanest, most organized, comfortable plant I’ve been through in a while; nice. We shot with ambient light and a variety of lenses, checking off the shot list on a rainy evening. Excellent to meet you all - you got some great shots!

I never tire of shooting doctors, and for Portage Health, we nailed a couple of them in a couple different locations as we continue to provide updated content to Jessie & Karin. Always fun to work for you gals, and doctors, thanks for being photogenic. Matched gels to ambient light for these, with saves so much (all) color correction pain later. I mean honestly, who has time to adjust these things in post anyway?!