Trinity

The other day I photographed Trinity for a pageant that she is preparing for. Now, this is not typical of the type of work I usually photograph, as I usually try to make images of children in their natural environments. But... because I know Trinity's family and knew how adorable she'd be for the photos, I agreed to set up some studio lights and make the photos she'd need for her pageant.


Now, I've never made pageant photos before, and in fact have never even been to a pageant. So I have no idea if these photos will do the trick to win Trinity the "most photogenic" prize in the competition. But I can't imagine a cuter little girl! She's been practicing her moves, and if what she displayed during the shoot was any indication, twirling is a very important part of pageant competition.
:)

Holga Photos - Adams Morgan, DC

Last week I headed down to Adams Morgan and ended up making some Holga images on the way to and from the metro. These are some of the resulting photos, including a couple of self portraits (the last two images).

Taxes and Photographers

Because I'm an award winning member of the Wedding Photojournalist Association and the Artistic Guild of the Wedding Photojournalist Association, I was interviewed for this month's WedPix Magazine. About TAXES and how they apply to being a professional photographer. Gee, thanks guys, for making me think of taxes a couple of months early! Actually, my wonderful accountant sent me a huge packet to keep me organized earlier the very same day I was interviewed, so it was already on my mind. And I'm also honored that someone thinks I know enough about taxes to be interviewed!

Actually, since starting this business, I've learned a lot about taxes. I'm no expert by any stretch, and resort to my accountant with any questions I have about anything, but some of it has to be proactive on my part. So many aspiring photographers ask me for all kinds of information about this business, and my first is to get yourself an awesome accountant! But since so many people ask me for advice, here's my tax tip for those starting out:

Always collect business tax, and set yourself up legally as a business with a tax id so you can do this. I can tell you from experience that paying the 5% state tax out of pocket at the end of the year sucks big time. And set aside 30% of everything you make for the feds. You're also taxed on your gear. Did I mention that taxes suck? But hey, I'd rather do it right than have them come after me in 10 years saying I owe them (tens of) thousands in back taxes!

When it comes to (your) business, operate legally and correctly, and you won't regret it.

You can read the article here: WedPix - Wedding Photographer Tax Tips

DCist - Exposed!

I just got word that my Chinatown image has been selected to appear in the DCist Exposed Show that will take place at the Warehouse in DC from March 9-16. The reception is March 9 at 6:30 PM, and there are some awesome photos that will be in this group show, so check it out if you can!

I will also be featured in an interview in the March issue of Montgomery County InSight Magazine with regard to my Holga photography project. You can pick up a copy at any Giant grocery store and various other places around the county.

Details on both of these will follow once I have more specific information, so check back often!

Photomedia Center Holga Show

I found out about this Holga photography group show put on by the Photomedia Center on one of the ArtDC.org call for artists postings, so I entered a few of my Holga images from the past year. Well, one was chosen for the show! See the work HERE. The photo above is the one that was chosen for the show.

Incidentally, the show was sponsored in part by Light Leaks Magazine, for whom I will be writing an article about Holga photography in Washington DC a little later this year. I'll post more once I find out the exact date the article will be published. I've already written an article about my Holga photography project for the Professional Wedding Photographer Forum (PWP), although you have to be a professional photographer to see it there. No worries, the Light Leaks article will be available to anyone. And I'm always happy to answer questions about my work, so if you have one, drop me a line!

You Know How I Love A Good Covert Operation...

Attention all New York City readers, or to anyone planning on being there in the near future:

DC artist and art blogger J.T. Kirkland is planning a covert show in Manhattan January 16-18. An excerpt from his blog:

'My company/client is putting me up in a pretty darn nice hotel in the Financial District in Manhattan. It's just a couple of blocks from the WTC site. In my room, I am going to mount a showing of my work. This will take place Tuesday-Thursday, January 16-18, from 7:30-9:30pm.

Sometimes an artist just has to grab a bull by the horns. If no gallery is taking your work to an art fair, hold your own. If no gallery in Chelsea will give you a solo show, mount your own. If you can't afford a studio in NYC, let your client pay for one. Right? Right!

So here's the deal. Next Sunday (1/14), I will be driving to NYC with my work. I will mount my show on Monday night and I will do all that I can to ensure the cleaning staff stays out of my room that week. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I will open things up for visitors to come in and check out my work. I hope to meet many of my NYC readers. If you want to purchase a piece, we can do that (cash, check or Paypal are all options... my laptop will be up and running)."

Get the details on his blog and if you are able to show your support, please do. And by all means, pass the word along to anyone you think might be interested. Artists need to do more of this type of thing to get their work out there. Now if only someone would put me up in a swanky hotel in the Financial District... :)

DC Holga - Last of 2006

Lots of people do fun and exciting things on New Years' Eve. Well, I spent my NYE in the darkroom for about 10 hours printing and toning Holga work for my big project. I think that's kind of fun work, but not terribly exciting. So this post will be pretty short, except to say that the two Holga images posted here are the last of 2006. I took them in DC near the White House, and my total of finished prints has reached 19. I have 38 on the list to print, so that puts me at exactly half way done with my printing. Next up for 2007 - get a show of my work somewhere. This should be a busy year with all I have planned as far as reaching my goals!

Oh, and I did come out of the darkroom by 11:35 PM in time to settle in and watch the ball drop on TV, kiss Andy, and go to bed. Yeah, like I said, I'm just full of fun.
:)

Happy New Year!

(Yes, the headless antlers are wearing a bow. )

It's finally 2007! I haven't updated the blog in a little while because I've been all over the place visiting family and friends, and so now I'm going to make a few posts at once! First up, family Christmas antics. This year we traveled to Ohio to spend time with my father's side of the family. These are some of the many photos I took that evening:

Cousins Amanda and Joel preparing to be Santa's Helpers. Don't they look thrilled:


Uncle Drew and Aunt Roseanne. I don't know what the joke was, but thought it made a fun photo:


My cousin Tony, who has been taking some pretty cool photos of his own recently:


My grandmother and her kids. My dad is in the back:


These photos were all taken during Antognoli Christmas Bingo. Yes, you read correctly. My crazy family plays Bingo every Christmas eve. When I spend Christmas with Andy's family, I call on Christmas eve, and they sing the Bingo song so I can hear. Did I forget to mention, when someone wins, we sing the Bingo song and clap. And everyone is a winner at Bingo. And we sing every time. I have a big family. I had no hope of turning out normal.
:)

Nonna reading off the Bingo numbers. You have to stay on your toes because she sometimes reads them in code or a mix of Italian and English. After a decade you start to figure out the code though, and Bingo is much easier to win.


Singing and clapping during Bingo. Everyone is a winner... I think this is toward the end when we sang the Bingo song 20 times already.


My Aunt Libby under the disco lights and with antlers:



Andy being attacked by my cousin Jordan:



And finally, Andy nabbed this photo of me in between my taking photos. Note my striped tights. I loooove striped tights.
:)


I hope everyone had a happy holiday, and look forward to starting off 2007 with a bang!

One Year Ago...

Last year at this time, I was in India. We traveled to Kolkata to attend a friend's wedding, and also just to vacation and take in the sights. It was an incredible experience, and I'm just itching for a chance to go back in the future. I may post a few more photos from that trip if I have time... although with the holidays coming up, I'm sure I'll have plenty of photos from THIS year to show! Our Hindi friends did set up a little decorated tree and make a Christmas cake for us to make us feel more at home, but I am looking forward to spending the holidays with our families this year.

What can I even say about India? That experience changed me, I think. I've been to Europe, and India by far was more enjoyable for me in all respects. The color... it's everywhere! It's sensory overload. Everything is so different there than here that it's almost easier to list the similarities than it is to list the differences! But that's one of the aspects of this trip that I loved, was the fact that I got to see something so completely different from my own existence. I now have a fresh perspective on my place not only in my own culture, but in the world as well.

Not to mention all the great photo opportunities. You don't even want to know how many photos we took over the course of the two weeks we were there.

Anyway, I already have these and a lot more of my travel photos posted on my main web site under the "Artwork" section in the "Travel" gallery. There, you can see photos from India, as well as places in the United States like NYC, California and Arizona. I don't put up my DC photos there because I didn't travel far to take them. HA! And the photos in the artwork gallery are not typical touristy shots - I try to keep those galleries on my web site limited to photos that I would be proud to hang in a show, even though it's not really the kind of work I typically make unless I am on vacation or visiting another city or culture.

Betty (The Ewok)

The other week, we babysat a 13 year old Yorkie named Betty. Betty was 7 pounds. Compared to our 80 pound Maurice, I thought it would be like not having a dog at all. Boy was I wrong! Betty kept up with our 2 mile, fast paced walks. She didn't like to walk on the leash and pulled quite a bit. I called her "the flea" because she could jump several feet from a sitting position. And I won't even go into the the neon green radioactive poo incident. Dogs, no matter what the size, are a lot of work!

But despite all that, Betty was adorable. She kind of looked like an Ewok, which is uncanny since Maurice looks like Chewbacca. It was so funny to see us walking down the street all together - we got quite a bit of attention :)

Anyway, Betty is back at home now, and Maurice is happy (the spoiled only child!). I guess this post has no other point, if not to say that dogs totally rule!

Betty sleeping on our bed:


Andy holding Betty (see how tiny she is!):


For comparison, Maurice just before being shaved this spring:

AGWPJA - Award Winner!

I just got an e-mail to let me know that the results of the latest AGWPJA (Artistic Guild of the Wedding Photojournalist Association) contest were in, and guess what! I placed 6th in the details category, which means I am now officially a member of the AGWPJA. (Note: As of now, I am only one of four photographers from the state of Maryland to have placed in these contests since the start of the AGWPJA!).

The only way to get into the AGWPJA is to place in the contests, and the only way to get into the contests is to be a WPJA member. To become a WPJA member, you have to shoot weddings in a primarily documentary style.

The image that placed is of bride Aryn, whose wedding I photographed this past October. The image is very close to how I shot it, except I edited out a few bits of tree branch that were in the lower right and pumped up the color slightly. The AGWPJA lets you manipulate photos, but the regular WPJA contest images must be displayed as shot.

The judge's (Joseph Victor Stefanchik, another reason to get excited over placing in this contest!) comments on my photo: "Beautiful blue sky nicely contrasts the bride and her veil."

Also from the e-mail from WPJA and AGWPJA founder David Roberts: "JVS, who judged the contest, expressed that the task was especially challenging for him, because each category was loaded with so many outstanding creative images. It was difficult, he said, to determine the top ten. Yet, he did; and the results are for your review."

See the contest and AGWPJA web site HERE.

GOYA - Holga Work from NYC

Over the holiday weekend, I spent a good deal of time in the darkroom printing my Washington DC Holga work in the hopes of getting a show to display it, and I also had a chance to develop the rolls of film I shot while in New York City at the One Light Workshop and over the rest of that weekend. Some of the photos that resulted from those rolls are here.

Jason Groupp's studio where we held the One Light Workshop:



Zack Arias teaching us his magic during the workshop:


A random fence that I thought looked cool:


And yes, the pocket wizard does indeed work with the Holga!

Thanksgiving With the Turkeys

On Saturday I attended Thanksgiving with the Turkeys at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary for the second year in a row. This is an incredible potluck dinner with hundreds of people participating, but the best part is that it is all vegan... meaning no animal products whatsoever are used to make any of the dishes served. Andy and I have been vegetarian for about 10 years now, and look forward to this dinner ever since our friends Kate and Chris introduced it to us last year (we missed you this year guys... hope you're having a good time in Portland!).

First off, before the humans eat, the turkeys and chickens get their dinner in a ceremony dedicated to them. You can see some of the rescued turkeys in these photos. Turkeys are such cool looking animals... it's fun to watch them get just as excited over their dinner as we did for ours.



One of the larger turkeys runs to the dinner table set out for the birds:


This was what the human dinner looked like. There was too much food to even have a spoonful of everything. I maybe got to taste about a third of what was brought, and it was all delicious.


There were a lot of neat looking trees near the field where we ate, and I took a few photos of them. This is one of those:


After dinner, Andy and I wandered around the sanctuary to visit the various rescued farm animals that make Poplar Spring their home. There were goats, pigs, horses, sheep, ducks, and peacocks all just wandering around.

Andy pets one of the horses:


Some of the various animals we saw:




We came upon this sight in the makeshift parking lot: A peacock had perched on top of an SUV and was having fun checking out the herds of humans passing through his turf. It was really funny and created quite a stir. I'm not certain the owners of the vehicle ever found out that the peacock was up there though...


Then we went home and walked the Sasquatch and laid around - we didn't even eat dinner, we were still so full from the big mid-day meal! Thanksgiving with the Turkeys is always a good time, and we're already looking forward to next year...

Matt's Poem

I was digging through some of my files today and came across this image that I made back in 1999. Back then, it was exhibited in a local Savannah gallery and published in SCAD's yearly photo review and show for "Silverworks." I had used photoshop before, but hadn't really done any projects beyond my basic PS class there, and when working for the news, we didn't alter photos at all! So this was a departure from what I was used to, and I haven't really made any other images like it since. I use photoshop all the time now, and am quite good at the program if I do say so myself, but I generally prefer for my images to have a natural look (even though they may be a far cry from how the scene actually looked in real life!).

This photo was actually shot using film, and then blurred, with the poem scanned in and dropped on top in three layers. Even though I don't usually make work like this, I really like this particular piece. It's the only one of the whole series that I like at all. Sometimes you have to take a chance and try something new because you never know what you might accomplish in the end.

Anyway, I promise I will post some new photos soon. I've been shooting some Holga film, and I won't get to develop and print it for almost two weeks... argh! And I have some other ideas that I want to try if I have a few minutes of free time. Free time... HA!