Author Archive: ken

Saturday night was quite a busy evening. Early in the evening my wife and I attended the Heart Ball. The Heart Ball is a black-tie fund raiser for the American Heart Association and is quite a fun event. It was held at the Grand Wayne Center which is a great venue. There was a dinner, an auction, and then there was a a DJ and dancing.

We had to leave early however because I had a gig that same night across town at Checkerz, a local night spot. Dash Rip Rock, a client of mine and great local band, was playing and they wanted me to shoot them live. Since they don’t usually perform in Fort Wayne, this was a great opportunity to shoot them while they were in town. So we ducked out of the Heart Ball in the middle of the Auction, ran home and put on some jeans, then booked it to Checkerz just in time to catch the end of the bands first set.

Eddy working the crowd.

Eddy.

Greg

Sammy and Eddy

So, it was fun evening and I got some great shots. The ones above were just a few I quickly chose for blog (I know I’m really behind on keeping it updated). I need to go thru the photos and look at them more closely.

Thanks for reading and I’ll post again this week.

-Ken

Whew! Just got home from Nashville and the PPA (Professional Photographers of American) conference known as Imaging USA. Wow, what a lot of information! This conference is quite intense. Learning sessions start at 7:00am and run to 7:30pm every day. In the evenings, various vendors sponsor events so that you can network with other photographers, then it starts all over again the next day. During the times between seminars, there is the expo where all the big name vendors of photographic gear are showing off their latest and greatest.

This year the Imaging USA had a record number of attendees, over 10,000!! It’s no wonder nearly all learning sessions were nearly booked. The event was held at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, which is a very impressive venue. It’s huge! At nearly 3000 rooms with 4000 employees, it is really a city under a large glass dome. I tried to take some photos that would capture the scope of the place, but short of an arial photo it’s pretty hard to do. Here are a couple of photos:

A view of the Garden Conservatory area.

Balconies overlooking the garden.

An Orchid in the garden

The hotel is truely a beautiful place. If you get a chance to visit there, I would highly recommend it. Even though we were all there to learn from the seminars, it is difficult for a group of photographers to get together like this and not get kinda crazy and creative. While there I met up with my friend Barabara Mendez (another Fort Wayne photographer), Alvaro Balderas (a photographer from Mexico), Vilma Deckena (another photog from FTW) and Jenny Deselms (another photog from Lander Wyoming) one evening to shoot some fun and challenging photos. We were in a late night situation with nothing but a couple of speedlights and Pocket Wizards. Not the usual studio environment we were used to working in. Below is a time exposure of the general area we were shooting in.

The street scene of Delta Island.

The photo below was taken using a single Canon 550Ex on full power triggered with a Pocket Wizard.

This next photo was captured using a Canon 550EX, full power, gelled, camera right, and a Canon 580EX, 1/16 power, camera left.

It was a fun and late evening, but after spending a couple of days going to seminars and listening to lectures, it was fun to hear the click of a shutter. 🙂

————————————————————————————————————————

Apex Marine has created a cool video using the photos I shot for them this summer. While the start of the video is pretty neat, the last part is pretty cool. Because I was shooting in burst mode during action scenes, they took sequencial shots and strung them together to create motion. Those Art Directors are so crafty. 🙂 Watch it here – Apex Marine YouTube Video

Thanks for reading!!

-Ken.

I have been really bad the last couple of weeks. I have been neglecting my blog. It’s just that, with holidays and travel, there’s been too much going on. We were out of town visiting family the week of Christmas and things have been hectic.

Over Christmas I shot senior pictures for my nephew Zach. I brought lighting gear with me and setup a makeshift studio in my mother-in-law’s garage. We also shot some photos on location. Here are a couple of the location photos:

Anyway, I have a gazillion of photos from the past few shoot to edit. I’ll try to post more later this week.

One more thing, my wife got me a Kuerig coffee maker for the studio. I highly recommend it. Great coffee. Stop by and I’ll fix you a cup. 🙂

Thanks for reading!!

-Ken

A couple of weeks ago I shot some photos at Indiana Phoenix for Lassiter Advertising. Indiana Phoenix reburishes cement trucks. It was a real learning experience and I think it’s fantastic that there smart people that find the niches in the market and are able to take advantage of a need.

My favorite photos are ones of a couple of guys welding. The drama of the flying sparks just works for me.

A guy welding pieces to be used the mixer barrel.

A guy welding inside a mixer barrel.

Anyway, that’s some of what I’ve been up to. Thanks for looking and have a very Merry Christmas!!

– Ken

If you remember, this past summer I shot photos for Apex Marine’s catalog. Well, as they say, good things come to those who wait. The catalog has been printed and should be dealer’s showrooms soon. It looks really great and the design is awesome.

You can see some page examples here –

Back and Front Covers

Intro Page

Pages 8-9

Pages 12-13

Pages 18-19

Anyway, that was a fun shoot. I need to post more photos from recent shoots. I’m kinda behind on keeping the blog updated.

Thanks for reading!!

-Ken

Sorry about that. I really try to update the blog every week, but this week has been kinda crazy. I have had a ton stuff going on. So this week I am posting a video that I put together of a photo shoot this fall. I’m new to the whole video editing thing so judge this kindly. 🙂

Click here to see the UPDATED video

Thanks to everyone that worked on this shoot – Barb, Stacy, Steph, Emily, and Meg (who shot this video footage).

First of all, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We had a quite peaceful Thanksgiving and a nice weekend. This week is turning into a busy one . That’s always a good thing.

I was finishing up editing some photos this afternoon. These were shot at Fort Wayne Ballet’s dance studio. If you notice the floor is kinda scuffed up from all the use.

Well, that’s it for this week. Thanks for visiting!

-Ken

I can’t believes how quickly time flies. It seems like summer is barely over and now it’s almost Thanksgiving. Well I have started to learn some video editing. I bought a JVC High Def camera and have been teaching myself to work with video. Initially I wanted to do it to produce some promotional videos for the studio. But a client wanted me to shoot and compile a couple of scenes for their website, so I kinda jumped into it. It’s been a huge learning experience for me, but it’s been fun.

Recently I shot some photos for a local band, Dash Rip Rock. They are really talented and can play anything from Bad Company and Eric Clapton to Shinedown and Godsmack. On top of that they are really some nice guys. Here’s a photo from the photoshoot:

Dash Rip Rock

Raw Cotton Rags

This week my new notebook skin arrived from GelaSkins.  It turned out really nice. My HP notebook has a very glossy black plastic lid. It looks good when it’s clean and shiney, but always shows smudges and finger prints. So, to keep it looking good I bought a skin for it.

Thanks for reading!

-Ken

This week I finished up shooting photos for a Calendar that Fort Wayne Newspaper is publishing.  It’s good to have that project completed.

I’m still shooting at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art each week. I have photographing the renovation thats been going on for the past year or so. The building is looking really good and they have a projected opening date of March 26th. I’ll be posting some photos soon.

On a side note, I just purchased a High Def video camera and am working on learning video editng.  I am finding out that video production/editing requires time and patience. HD Video files are so large, they take a lot of system resources from your PC.