Author Archive: ken

Since I was a young kid I’ve loved music. I think part of it was sparked by my parent’s love of music (although their music wasn’t my style) and part of it was influenced by my older brother who was a DJ when he was in high school. He was into Led Zepplin, Iron Butterfly, and other hard rock bands. I developed an appreciation for hard rock as well as other forms of music, including blues and jazz. A cousin gave me an old Kay guitar and I taught myself how to play. Now, realize that just because I loved music, doesn’t mean I was good at it.

For several years I plinked around on an old Kay accoustic guitar and a no-name hollow body electric guitar. While doing this, I also discovered photography (see an earlier post about how that got started). My interests in both grew and when I was in high school (after investing in a Canon F-1 SLR and lenses) I saved up enough money for an Alvarez accoustic guitar. It was a great sounding and playing guitar, especially after playing the old hand-me-down Kay.

In college I played in a band called Escape. We were pretty awful, but it was fun. I played in a few coffee houses and some other small gigs. I played backup guitar and sometimes bass, neither were noteworthy accomplishments. I did develop an appreciation for those individuals that were truely musically talented and also an appreciation for live music.

I guess this relates somewhat to my photography in that I can identify with musicians. They are usually a creative bunch with lots of ideas for how they want to be photographed. This colaboration creates some cool and unusual images. I also like shooting live performances because they contain so much energy and life (and also great music).

I’ve been fortunate to be able to photograph several local bands and artists. Musical styles have varied from heavy metal rock to classical flute to hip-hop.  I have to say that I appreciate them as artists as much, if not more than clients.

In case you haven’t noticed, I have added a third gallery of photos of people. I debated with myself whether it would be best to add a new gallery or if it would be better to start replacing some of the older photos with newer ones. Having 3 galleries of portraits may be a bit overkill, but there are just some photos I didn’t want to get rid of. So my final decision was to add a new gallery.

I’ve decided that this will be the last one and that once this new gallery is full, I will replace older photos in the other galleries with newer ones. If you, as a visitor to my website, you have feelings one way or another, I’d appreciate you input. Either comment here on the blog or send an email to me.

Ok, recently I’ve been asked about the way my portfolio is organized. Many photographers have their portraits broken down by such categories as “seniors”, “models”, “families”, “kids”, etc. Mine is organized under the umbrella category of “people”. Why do I do this? On the surface I’d have to say it’s because that’s just the way I see things in terms of my overall subject matter. I also take photos at locations and of inanimate objects (such as products for catelogs and advertisements). So, I suppose my response could also be that, if I divided my People photos into these categories, should I also divide my other photos into more specific categories? If so, what categories? Maybe it’s not worth over-thinking it.

But, I really don’t think this is the reason that I don’t have my people photos broken down into smaller categories. The reason is more elemental. I simply don’t see any difference between styles of photography between say, “seniors” and “kids”. Portraits, to me, are photos that capture, not only the likeness of someone, but also something about them personally. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 3 year old child, or if it’s 25 year rock musician. A portrait is a portrait. Styles vary based on the individual, not an age group or other predetermined category.

I don’t have a “style” for shooting kids any more than I have a style for shooting seniors. I just shoot the person and tailor the session specifically for them. Sometimes my portraits are very traditional, while other times they are simply outrageous. It just depends on the person. I would wager that, if you look over my portfolio without any knowledge of the subjects, it would be nearly impossible to categorized the photos based on the traditional types. If you did, you would see a huge crossover that would make the categories meaningless.

I change lighting, backdrops, camera angles, and every other variable based on the client’s needs rather than trying to fit them into categories. In this way, each portrait session is customized to capture exactly what the client wants. Below are some examples:

Is this a traditional 3 year old’s portrait?

Is this a traditional senior portrait?

I hope this helps explain why my portfolio is organized the way it is and also gives you a glimpse into how I approach my craft. This is also why I like to meet with my clients a couple of days in advance of a shoot. It gives us the opportunity to discuss the client’s needs and allows us to plan out some possible shooting options. While I take my client’s needs very seriously, I also believe that a portrait session should be fun and lighthearted.

I have had my Archos MP3 player for years now. I got it right at the time Ipods were just coming out. The Archos has been a great player although it is the size and weight of a brick. It has worked great for thousands of hours of play.

I used it at work (when I had a desk job) or when traveling and its size and weight were not too much of an issue. Well, the time and miles have taken their toll and the Archos is nearly dead. The battery is about shot, the case has warped and if allowed to gape, it powers itself off, and compared to the newer players, it’s obsolete.

For V-Day, my wife bought me a San Disk Sansa e260. While smaller capacity (20gig for the Archos, 4 gig for the Sansa), the increase in the number of features make it a superior device. Not only does it play music, but also videos and photos. Plus its menu is bright, large, and colorful. My Archos’ display was a B&W LCD about the size and viewability of a Timex Ironman watch.

The downside to the new player is that I have to re-rip songs. The old player was in esssence an external harddrive with a music player attached. Songs had to be organized into directories and subdirectories based on artists and albums. If I try to copy the directories from the old player to the new one, all the songs get lumped into the same directory. This is because the new player is database driven. The database, not the directory structure, organizes the music. While being a pain in the butt to start with, in the long run, it makes it easier to organize, sort, and find music.

Ok, this doesn’t have too much to do with photography, other than I can put some of my fave photos on my new MP3 player and keep them with me and they don’t take up much space. Oh, another thing that makes this photo related, is that, along with my 5 CD changer, I also hook my my MP3 player to my large (150 watt per channel) stereo at the studio. It’s nice not to have to change CDs alot. I also let customers hook up their own MP3 player so we can crank up music that they like.

Oh well, that’s it for today.  🙂

It seems that the arguments about digitally manipulated images will go on forever. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the arguments, its basis is that photos that have been manipulated are no longer photosgraphs, they are digital art. While I understand this argument, generally I don’t agree with it. The reason I take exception is that traditional photos have always be manipulated. In traditional film photography, you can alter images in the camera as well as in the darkroom. I have made multiple exposures (some not intentional) in the camera. In a medium format camera, you can do it by not winding the film. The resulting image is comparible to a composite image created digitally.

There are tons of ways to alter images in traditional photography including retouching negatives and prints. The truth of the matter is that most of the effects that can be produced in Photoshop are based on real world darkroom techniques. Unfortunately, because it is much easier to alter a digital photo, it is done much more often. Many people are overdoing various digital filters and feel that they can turn an average photo into work of art. However, 99% of the time it’s a matter of garbage in/garbage out. 

As far as I’m concerned, I think it’s all about the quality of the final image and whether the client (and myself) is happy with it.

Some of the images in my portfolio have been significantly altered, while others are straight off the memory card. I don’t have any of my film images posted on the website. There are two reasons for this 1) I prefer to keep my portfoilo current and older images get cycled out, and 2) I am not happy with any scans of my traditional photos.

Here is one of my favorite manipulated images:

If you have any thoughts about this topic, post a comment or send me an email. Thanks!

This past week, my wife and I took a trip to Nashville. She had a conference she needed to attend and I decided to tag along. While she was busy during the day, I was left with some time for myself. I decided to take some time and drive down to Columbia. Columbia Tennesee is a very nice small town about 30 minutes south of Nashville. It has many elements of a traditional small town. There is a courthouse square with angle parking. There are parks and statues and mom and pop shops. It’s just a nice place.

Columbia is more than just a quaint southern town. My family hails from there. In fact there is a road called Rieves Bend Road. (Notice how the spelling on the road sign was corrected. )

This road runs to the Duck River. Long ago, there was a shallow spot in the river near where my family lived and people use to ford the river there.

There is a point to this post, if you stick with me a few more minutes. One reason I drove down to Columbia was to visit my family cemetary. As it turns out, my family migrated to the US in the late 1600’s to early 1700’s. No one has been able to figure out when, but my Great-great-great-great grandfather was a Revolutionary War veteran. While poking around the cemetary I found my Great-great grandfather’s tombstone.

Anyway, all this thinking of family reminded me of how I got started in photography. When I was 12 or 13, my uncle gave me his old camera and darkroom equipment. The camera was an old Graflex Century Graphic medium format camera. My uncle also gave me a old Omega B-5 enlarger and assorted darkroom accessories. This started my love for the art of photography. I spent thousands of hours over the years developing film, creating prints, and just playing around learning the craft. It was so satisfying to watch an image appear on a piece of paper resting in a tray of developer.

My uncle passed away many years ago. Little did my late uncle know that the gift he gave to me when I was a young teenager, would shape the direction of my life forever. I thank him every day.

Yesterday, while editing some photos, I was briefly distracted. I was looking through a storage cabinet and ran across a ziplock bag containing a bunch of colored markers. For some reason, one of them reminded me of one of my orange extension cords that I use in the studio and an idea popped into my head (usually that’s a scary thing :)).

So, I grabbed an extra extension cord and the orange marker and set them on a portable table in front of my jumbo softbox. I shot a few frames and took the memory card back to my desktop computer and did some simple editing. Then, it was back to finishing up the task I was working on before I was side tracked. Below is the result of the effort.

Today I updated the photo gallery on my website. The old gallery was one HTML page that contained all the different subgalleries, the new one has separate pages for each one. This allows the images to load faster. Hopefully this will improve the browsing experience for everyone.

Last week I had an architectural shoot for a company based in Kansas City, MO. They have a contract to sell the Red Roof Inn (the one on Coliseum Blvd.) and needed a bunch of photos to create sales materials and to publish on their website. It was a fun shoot and I was fortunate that the weather cooperated. Even though it was a sunny day with some nice clouds it was really cold. Luckily, most of the shots were interiors so I didn’t spend too much time outside.

This week doesn’t look too bad in terms of bookings. It’ll give me a chance to get caught up on other aspects of the business – tons of paperwork.

Hi everyone. This is my first blog post on my website, so I’m not sure what I going to post here. I’m going to try to post something new at least weekly. It’ll be my thoughts on art, photographer, business, and maybe even life in general. I don’t know if anyone will read this or care what I write, but I’ll try to keep this up for a month or two to see what happens. If it doesn’t go so well, I’ll just remove it from my website.

Anyway, if you get chance let me know your thoughts.

We made some recent modifications to the studio. Remodeling is such fun.;) One of the additions I call a white room. It’s really a corner of the studio that made to look like a room that’s totally white. Walls, floor, trim – white on white. It’s pretty cool. We just finished it last night and below is sample shot: