The wonderful thing about a small town is that people help each other out.
Word got around that there were some empty walls at the 5th & Elm Street Coffee House, in Calumet, and Brockit was asked if we had any extra prints to throw up for a couple of weeks. From our collection of mounted prints in the studio intern Rebecca, and myself, picked out a broad range of images that we thought would represent Brockit well. The nice, dark wood, paneling makes a perfect canvas for Adam’s bright shots.
Stop by to take a glance and also check out 5th & Elm’s second location in Hancock (the old Spice of Life). You can’t go wrong with good coffee.
All, thanks so much for the emails, phone calls, txts, tweets, and facebook hits with praise for the 2009 Houghton Spring Art & Music Festival. The response has been overwhelming to say the least. Thanks to all the musicians, vendors, downtown businesses, the Scott MacInnes & the City of Houghton, Carlton Crothers & the SmartZone, Todd & Jessie from Brassard Media, Bonnie & Cynthia & the Arts Ctr, PJ Olsson, Good Times Music… I could go on and on. Thanks to Todd & Meghan for cameraphone shots in the middle of the action below. Again – my personal and sincere thanks to everyone! We’ll do this again next year!!!
Check it out, everyone. This year’s downtown festival is a little bit different from the previous 7. We’ll be setup in the middle of downtown, right in the middle of the road actually – taking up two full blocks of road. Check out the musical lineup as well. Everyone has been working especially hard on this one. Please distribute the link, the word, and the poster around.
Take a peek at the commercial that is going live today. (nice job Brassard Media! and way to get my little girl in it!
The Copper Country Community Arts Center and the City of Houghton present the 8th annual Houghton Spring Art and Music Festival on Saturday, June 13 -Shelden Avenue from noon-8pm.
The festival’s outstanding features include ~30 artist booths & demos, free family art activities, CCCAC Extreme Bake Sale, prizes from downtown businesses, and an awesome music line up. Food will be on site with T’s Taste of Chicago.
Music Line Up
Noon The Outlaws 1:20 Uncle Pete’s All-Star BBQ Blues Band 2:50 Orphans Torch 4:10 Joshua Davis and Joe Wilson from Steppin’ In It 5:30 Squeaky Clean Cretins 7:00 P.J. Olsson & Rock Camp
This year also features a “Frog Hop” activity. We’ve received generous prizes and support from The Library, Down Wind Sports, Wicker & Willow, The Edge, The Lunch Bag, Good Times Music, The Blue Iris, and Silver Rae Bead Studio. Stop by the Arts Center booth during the festival to pick up a Frog Hop card to take to our supporting businesses and receive a frog stamp. Fill up your card with all eight stamps and return it to the Arts Center booth to be placed in a drawing for prizes. Participants must be 18+ and present to win and will be announced before the final performance…
Speaking of the final performance, this year our headlining act will be P.J. Olsson who will be performing with over twelve young musicians ages fifteen and under as well as a hip-hop dance team. Participants are in P.J.’s “Rock Camp 2009″. Check out their website at www.pjsrockcamp.com.
Pam is a fashion designer with a very distinct style, so we provided some green marble from the old hospital stairwell and a dark studio to offset pink, black & white. We shot Pam’s fashion show a while back, and while this is the same modeling crew, the look and location are new. Kept some high saturation on the colors with a bit of added contrast, and synced a spot removal to fix an annoying speck on the D3’s sensor. Thanks to the random voulenteer from the drawing studio who was able to throw some feathers on the scene. Pam – as always – great work!
In a dance studio basement in the Keweenaw Peninsula, there has been a steady stream of musicians, dancers, instructors, and equipment moving in and out of the doors. Through the walls there are sounds of guitars, drums, harmonized vocals, and the occasional yell when a circuit breaker blows from the load of amps, stage lights, and the industrial smoke machine. What’s going on here? It is PJ Olsson’s Rock Camp 2009. Check out the running blog for the whole story, but in short – its a very cool, hands-on session with some stellar instructors, headed by rock star PJ Olsson. A live performance is planned for this year’s Spring Art & Music Festival in downtown Houghton on June Saturday June 13th.
Brockit’s involvement comes in the form of a full blow, rock-star photoshoot. Interns Emily and Rebecca helped load in all the gear and worked quickly with Todd & Jessie Brassard of Brassard Media – both who seem to be involved in every aspect of the camp – to setup the scenes and get the shoot rolling. Having returned just the night before from a large weekend shoot in West Virginia, I needed all the help I could get. We shot performance style with a live performance complete with lights and smoke, then moved to the studio setup for the group shots. Each performer, dancer, singer, etc. gave two quick poses – inspired by TopModel, MTV, RollingStone, or the variety of examples that Jessie brought with her. Got some great shots out of this for sure. Nice job everyone!
Some sneaks below, and the full sets will be available by the weekend.
Anyone following Brockit on Twitter or Facebook knew that this was a fun project for our studio. It had all the right ingredients: incredible people, photogenic location, high energy, and some unique challenges. I finished a week of work in the Detroit & Ann Arbor area and headed to San Francisco to meet awesome Brockit assistant Emma at SFO. Though we made the assistant call-out on the Brockit Facebook group, the stars aligned and Emma, who worked most of our Lake Superior weddings last year, was in the area and served as chauffeur and assistant for a couple days. Satish and Vani were a great couple to work with! Let me back up – not only were they great, their family was incredible. We were so well received, accommodated, and pampered with Indian food and drinks, that we felt completely at home. I think Vani’s family was surprised at our ability to eat hot food though – everyone kept on saying, ‘be careful, you know that is very spicy, even we don’t eat those peppers!’
We started in the morning with some traditional ceremonies inside the house, then moved to a traditional ‘American’ setting and attire for the early afternoon. Beautiful locations and not a cloud in the sky! After a long lunch we watched the transformation of Vani as she was adorned and clothed in traditional and ceremonial markings, jewelry, and clothing. I’ve captured many a bride’s transformation, but there was certainly something magical about Vani’s. The flowers sewn into her hair, the gold thread in her sarong, the henna on her hands… beautiful, beautiful.
Going long on these preparations, small caravan raced at a disturbing (even for me) pace out to the temple through California rush hour traffic. Unlike an ‘American’ wedding, there is no slipping the time in a Hindu wedding. Stars and planets do not care about traffic… On to the temple and the non-stop ceremony. If you haven’t been to a Hindu wedding, woah…. incense and rice in the air, along with the smells of insanely good food, kids running everywhere, and non-stop ritual on stage. Thanks so much to Gowtham aka: @sgowtham in Houghton who for the price of a couple beers at the KBC gave me all the tips on Kanya Daan, Panigrahana Hathlewa, Saptapadi, etc… I don’t think I missed a thing! Emma switched lenses like a pro for me as the scenes changed quickly, and Vani’s family guided my barefoot self around the stage like I was a sibling.
Technically I shot most of the day with natural light. I added a strobe for the outdoor, afternoon scenes, but kept the aperture open and focal length as long as possible for the intense ceremonial action on the stage. I was surprised to fill 24GB pretty quickly, so thanks again to Emma for fast CF card swapping, and thank goodness the D3 has dual slots.
I couldn’t help but spend a few extra days out in CA. While my friends in Northern Michigan had snow, I had 74 degrees, sunshine, and not a cloud in sight for days… ahhh…
Photos are available! Just over 400 in all from two photographers. Images are posted in chronological order. Some highlights below. Congratulations again!
Check out the gallery here!
Many congratulations to the 2009 graduates from Finlandia University! Emily and I were pleased to capture the event this past weekend and watch the transition from student to graduate. A little shout-out to Peter VanPelt who received an honorary degree and made a number of eyes tear with his powerful speech. Thanks, Peter.
We’re processing the photos which include candid shots as well as the stage shots and will be uploading as quickly as possible from the road this week. Keep an eye on the blog here for updates. I’d suggest adding the RSS feed or subscribing to the blog so you’ll know the second they’re up! Thanks and congratulations again!
