Today was a great day even if I was running on about 5 hours of sleep because of last night's revelry related to my friend LeeAnn's birthday festivities. Still, I managed to get in some hours at work and play a little soccer afterwards too. I closed out the day by heading down to the beach near my house around sunset to get a couple of shots. I'm getting more used to shooting with the Canon, but I'm still dialing everything in yet. I'm also really intrigued by HDR photography and although my brother headed back to Minnesota before installing photoshop CS3 on any of the computers around here, I discovered that iPhoto does a pretty good job faking the effect. Lets be clear though, I'm not the biggest fan of those wildly surrealistic looking HDRs that have become very cliche in the last few years. I'm really trying for a little more subtle approach.

Lake Michigan Sunset (processed in iPhoto)


Trees Near Lake Harbor Park (minimal processing in iPhoto)

Carpe Diem

The longer I live, the more I realize that life is all about making the most of every day. Opportunities come knocking continuously and its up to you to decide which are the ones worth seizing, and which ones you can let float on by down the river of life. A couple of weeks ago my friend Joe mentioned to me that Man Man would be playing in Grand Rapids and that seeing them live is the way to go. I didn't really think I'd have the money to go (as I'm usually broke as a joke, but happy) so I didn't give the suggestion much thought.

As fate would have it, I've been finding enough work lately that I happened to have a little money burning a hole in my wallet when my buddy Phil called me to see if I was heading to the show. I mulled over the decision, taking into account the fact that I had a 9am Physics class in the morning that would have a quiz awaiting me when I arrived; moreover, I considered the fact that a respectable amount of barley soda would surely be consumed at the show, which would undoubtedly lead to a headache not related to doing vector calculations. Throwing caution to the wind, I said, "fuck it, yeah, I'm down" and made my way to the show. I brought along the Canon Rebel T1i that I'm buying from my brother to see what kind of shots I could get with it.

Admittedly, I don't have a lot of experience shooting in this kind of setting as most of the photography I do is done outdoors under generally friendly natural lighting situations. While I'm not super happy with the shots I got at the show, some of them do have a "happy accident" quality to them, and I learned some things about shooting in this kind of environment after talking with my brother about the photos. So without any further adieu, I present you with some blurry, surreal photos of Man Man. In a way I feel like the surrealistic quality of these photos really suits the style of music Man Man plays.

waiting in line outside the intersection


Man Man








My friends Phil, Mary, and Kasey after the show.

Post Numero Uno

I decided to set up this blog today because I wanted to have a place to post my photos along with my thoughts on this wild ride we call life....hope you dig it.

Here's some eye candy courtesy of the west coast of Michigan.