Shangrila is a Lick Away

Summer is like a giant lollipop laced with lsd that you take lick every day for 3 months.  The sand, the salt, the sun, the smiles - the high never really goes away.  

Summer as a young kid, I remember: Summer!... Wake up, go to the beach, hunt lizards, run through the woods, find the top speed of your friend's new go cart, explore the quintessential meaning of fireworks, experience the true pleasure of having absolutely nothing to do (an experience you won't actually appreciate until much later in life).

Those early years of summer make an imprint on our psyche and never go away, even after we become adults - summer means fun.

In summer there is redemption.  Even with our busy lives, meetings, deadlines, we find time to make a little extra time for summer.  One might be forgiven if they thought they were in heaven.  Even if we know that it, like the lollipop, will soon be gone.

Here Chad, with gaptooth abandon and a twinkle in his eye, explains what summer is all about.

Waste Not Want More

We all have things we don't use anymore – old furniture, clothes, computers, televisions, cars. Sometimes these things depart our lives almost as quickly as we acquired them.  We use them to their fullest then donate them to charities or thrift stores or recycle them in hopes that they find a new life.

We hope they find a new home helping others, as clothes to help keep a child warm from the night, as cookware to allow someone who couldn't afford a pot to make soup, or as material to be recycled as a new product.

Somewhere between this cycle of donation and delivery is a purgatory.  And nowhere is this better illustrated than in a junkyard – acres of used material goods all fully instilled with our shining hopes for a better life and a new home.  We hope that they find their destiny.

But we don't really want to know if they don't.

Road Trips and Long Sniffs

I road trip often for work and I while I do make every one worthwhile, the trips I most remember are the ones I take with my family.

Here Caroline and Peanut stretch their legs after a long trip across Oregon.  I don't remember who asked to stop, Caroline, the dog, or the bus.

It's Not Like Chocolate

You never know what you're gonna get.  Forrest may have said it first - but he wasn't speaking about cameras.  I own several 35mm film cameras that alternate in my bag for my shoots along the west coast.  Each offers its own take on a specific photograph.  I like to think that this was the vision of the designer, not the fact that each one is over thirty years old.  Either way, age builds character.

I always book an extra day for sightseeing.  Or in my case, viewfinding. 

Here a trolley beckons you to San Diego.  From San Francisco.

Equilibrium at the Equinox

The changing of the seasons always makes me take stock of my life.  Analyzing my goals for the next few months, thinking of what I'm doing and where I'm going, things I've achieved over the past season.  Above all though, I think of my friends.

Here Michealene throws a frisbee for Prudence far down a windswept beach.

From Reels and Rewinds to Programs and Pixels

Digital and Analog.  Two completely different methods of relaying information - one from the days of film and tape and the other based on invisible 1's and 0's.  But when it comes to video creation that difference becomes amazingly blurred.

Dials, buttons, LED displays, tape reels - the appurtenances found on video editing machines twenty years ago - these are the machines we used in class.  Back then it would take me eight hours to edit a thirty second commercial.  I turned the dials, pushed the buttons, cohorted with my partner, and made good fun of it - all while sitting in a small room with a tiny tv screen above my head blinking my progress.

When the digital revolution hit things changed.  No more film developing, tape copying, clicking machines laying around.  Digital creation is easier, quicker, cheaper.  Videos can be created now more quickly and efficiently than ever before in their history.

But I'll be darned if still doesn't take me eight hours to edit a thirty second commercial.





Blue Water Health from Pettepiece Photography on Vimeo.
Olympia Videography

The Laws of Nature

Some people take beautiful landscape photographs - of a dramatic suns singing one last crescendo as they drop behind a stark mountain range or a crashing sea while sparkling off the pale blue water.  I'm not that photographer.  My interest lies in people.  Capturing expressions, emotions, life. 

That's not to say I don't like buildings.  They have a personality all their own and speak their own language.

Here the Washington capitol building in Olympia, the last capitol dome to be built in the US, stands monumentally over a stark fall campus - its orderly structure conflicting with nature's seemingly disorganized lines - one built to create law, one that heeds only its own. 

Who Says Commercial Photography Isn't Sexy

Just because we have souls doesn't mean our buildings don't.  The houses and structures under which we spend most of our lives can take on a personality of their own.

Their construction, consisting of merely wood and metal, doesn't necessarily preclude them from a symbiotic relationship with us.  Buildings enable us to live our lives comfortably and shelter us from the elements.  Buildings act as a homebase for our families and are a place to sow our financial success.  In their own way, buildings help us to achieve that which is important to us.

Here a new office building makes no apologies for it's lineal lines, egregious angles and stately stature.  Architecture can be a model all its own.  And is definitely sexy.

Cowboy Glam Rock

Bands have much in common with videographers. 

As a creative art, lighting, sound, image, and production value are ultra important for both of us and just a few of the things that we have in common.

For me, lighting and sound are everything.  From the live event to the recorded version, it's the attention to detail that makes the production; whether you're seeing it live or just listening at home.

But what do we have in common that matters most?

Personality.

This is Raven Marcus from San Francisco.

Here's Looking at You

I get asked often about my "other studio".  Managing two studios with completely different subject matter is no easy task.  Aside from my commercial studio, Pettepiece Photography, I also run Olydog! Studios Pet Photography in Olympia. 

Pets are one of life's great pleasures.  And I know they feel the same way about us.

This is a beautiful African grey parrot I photographed at a show we attended last weekend.  This is the only pet I've ever photographed that may actually be smarter than me.

Many thanks to Campbell and Campbell Events.