Boys streak through the paper, past the bare legs and faces of the cheerleaders, flooding onto the field, braced and ready. They will fight for friends, family and school, for glory, for football.

The field is prepped for battle. The lines are drawn. Armored in helmets and pads, trousers, and gloves each player is a warrior, with painted faces and generals, armed with clip boards and headsets.

As one body, the crowd stands and men grab their John Deere baseball caps and cup them to their breasts quietly. Everyone gazes at a flag, hanging limply in the heat.

A minute and a half later the crowd erupts, cheering and clapping after the anthem to the republic. Cowbells clang as coaches bellow, barking and back-slapping players onto the field.

Another game starts, but not on the field of play. Boys not more then four feet tall, painted by dirt and sweat scramble with a ball behind the bleachers, breathless for the day that they too can be on the field. There are now coaches or referees, just a ball and their passions, chasing in circles as young girls watch, chewing gum and messaging each other on their phones. They too are waiting their turn.

As one, the spectators live for every possession. When their boys cross the goal line, it is their goal, and they stand for it, crowing and clapping with delight. When a player is tackled hard, a collective breath is held. There is a unity in the stands, a singleness of purpose to support those warriors on the field, those boys straining so hard against each other to win.

The ritual continues everywhere in American. Football season has begun.

In preparation for LaughFest, some of the organizers and myself collaborated on some portraits to be used in the program and a few other places, which you can now find at pretty much every official venue in the city.

The idea for the sittings was simple: ten sittings with different people and families, all a part of the Gilda’s Club community. Given that we had half an hour to set up, shoot, tear down and change locations, as well as meet and greet everybody, I think that everything worked out quite well.

I am thinking of exploring more of these 30 minute portraits. There’s nothing like having a time limit to take me out of my comfort zone, and that makes for great pictures.

The first picture I’ve got was shoot in Noogieland, the part of Gilda’s Club that is dedicated to kids and all things kid related. As near as I can tell, from a child’s point of view, this place is pretty much paradise.

This next picture was also shot in Noogieland, but this time in a different area. They have cool things there like mini-castles and other play areas.

As somebody who has a lot of personal experience with cancer, Gilda’s is amazing not because they cure cancer, but cure people’s in-ability to cope, both as individuals and as families. One of the casualties of cancer is losing your sense of humor, and to a degree a sense of humanity. The disease is overwhelming for everybody, family and patients included. Gilda’s Club is a safe place to go, to bring the kids and the family and engage in genuine, heartfelt support with people who are going through the same journey.

In all of the photographs we strove to share the levity and laughter that is so very Gilda’s Club.

To see more of these pictures, check out the Laugh Fest brochure, and for gods sake, don’t forget to get out and have a laugh with the rest of us! [o]

It’s the day before ash Wednesday, when the entire Roman Catholic world is supposed to be starting lent. So I’m going to share a few photos of of paczkis.

Now I happen to be a very curious person about how everything happens, and incredible tasty baked good are no exception. I was assigned my longtime client The Grand Rapids Press to go to Marge’s Donut Den and make photographs sharing the process of how these donuts are prepared.

Dough is rolled into very large sheets, which are then cut into the appropriate sized donuts. Repeating patterns and shapes like the one above are always interesting visuals, easy to look out for and graphically interesting.

Once the donuts are cut, they’re baked to temperature before the magic happens.

The magic is of course the stuff that goes inside of the pastry. In the picture above it’s chocolate, but Marge’s has all manner of tasty fillings, too many to mention or photograph.

Once filled with cream, or chocolate or fruit jelly, the donuts are finished with either powder or granulated sugar.

Finished paczki’s on the top row with granulated sugar, and unfinished one below, waiting for more sweet goodness.

How many did you eat? [o]

I’ve said before that Monday is the greatest day of the week.

People always look at my like I’m crazy when I say that, but today is Valentine’s day, and my lovely woman dropped off a flower and card at the studio, a wonderful surprise. This is why we’re getting married: she has demonstrated a nearly infinite capacity to surprise me. Arriving at the studio to see that not only she thought about me enough to get the flower, but to get up earlier then usual and go through the hassle of stopping at the studio before work (it’s in the opposite direction) just to make me smile.

Preassure is on.

This must mean that now I’ve got to do something extra special for the Valentines.  She upped the anti, now it’s up to me to reciprocate.  If you’ve got ideas, drop them in the comments section, I’ll take whatever help/advice I can get!

To read about the game, check out the Grand Rapids Press article here, and GVSU’s recap of the game here, as well as some great photography by Doug Witte.

This was shot with an Canon 85mm f/1.2, shot wide open at f/1.2.  Lots of reviews online say this lens is not such a good sports lens, but I’m going to use this photograph as evidence that this is not quite the case.  [o]

In this case, my photo is running on the Dallas Maverick’s website,  although a quick google search also has it at NetsDaily, as well as the Dallas News.

If you want to see more sports photography, head over to my website and checkout the portfolio! [o]

It’s really cold outside.

Since it’s wintertime, I’m going to do what I can to make my blog posts appropriate to the season.  These pictures are from a piece I did for the New York Times about tourism in the abyss of winter.  Fortunately for me, it wasn’t very abyss outside, just really really cold.

Shooting in the winter, large lakes become alleyways for wind to get good and fast, all the better to make my ears and fingers freeze.  However, if the weather is right, then the pictures will be amazing.  It’s all about being at an extreme.  There is a sweep to the sky and the ice in the wintertime that has no equal in the summer.

Probably because I can’t stand on the water in the summer.

Strange, yet fascinating people.

I was fortunate enough to be spending time taking pictures of Mark Hulst, a gentleman who lives and fishes on Hamlin Lake and rents a cabin to sportsmen hearty enough to brave the elements in the pursuit peace, quiet, and freshwater fish.  These are hardcore people.  Ten degrees is not nearly as relevant to these people as the disposition of the fish, and whether or not they are biting.

Since I spent time on the ice, I was treated to coffee, schnapps and a pragmatic humor that is found only among outdoorsmen on a good day. [o]

The truth of the matter is that anybody that owns and runs a business has to be involved in marketing.  It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is when your customers are ignorant to it’s existence.   The tricky part is that good marketing isn’t just a department of your company, needs to be integrated in all aspects of customer relations.  Apple is killer at this, intentionally designing absolutely every last customer interaction, from the packaging to the website to the store to the product to the power cords.

Vertical integration of marketing throughout the entire company is often over-looked, and often sorely needed.

Lots and lots of talk.

The basic goal of all marketing is pretty much the same: we are here, we are worth your money.  Sharing this message requires communication, and things start to get complicated when you explore all of the different mediums and strategies for sharing a message.  To stir up the pot even more, every medium has lots and lots of messages on it, and people don’t have enough time or attention to spend on all of them.  Oh my, now things start to get competitive.  It’s this competitive nature of the communications marketplace demands creativity to communicate your message in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

Pictures worth a thousand words.

When I was in journalism school (writing, not shooting) one of the first lessons learned was the power of the photograph to motivate an audience into paying attention to the accompanying story. While the mediums used for communicating have changed, photographs are still useful at getting people to stop skimming and start paying attention.  This was true 60 years ago, and it’s true today.  If it wasn’t, then the photographs of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s latest progeny wouldn’t sell for $14 million.  Pictures mean audience, and communication demands audience.

The good news for myself and all of my photographer colleagues is that image making is not going anywhere.  Point of fact, there are more photographs made and viewed now then in any other time in history.  I’ll use the 10 billion photographs hosted by Facebook as my argument.  This ups the ante on how and what kind of images are paid for.  People see so many photographs on the internet, on billboards, and just about everywhere else, to the point of saturation.  The bad news is that this abundance of images has pushed many photographers out of the business.  The good news is that pictures are still worth a thousand words,  and now, more then ever, certain businesses are going to need those words to not just be in focus and well exposed, but of good concept, production and execution.

Videos are a thousand words.

As the mediums used to communicated become richer, we can start to communicate more and more with moving pictures and sound, making for a rich experience sharing lots and lots of messages.  Video is also here to stay, but it’s not the answer-all-questions panacea that it’s made out to be.  Video still requires a fair bit of bandwidth, and a fair bit of expertise to do well.  It doesn’t require all of the expensive equipment that it once did, but good production still costs lot of time and money, or both.  Consuming video also takes time, more time then consuming images.  This, along with other considerations must be thought about before beginning a video project.  Youtube loves videos, but as an audience it helps if your video is short.  Brevity is the game we play here.

With DSLR’s entering the marketplace in force, we’re seeing more and more video of increasing quality and content.  I imagine that we’re going to see the same trends in video as we have with photographs: a supersaturated bottom and middle, and an expensive, highly produced top for clients who really need a high quality creative product.

Communications is costing me too much.

Production quality is expensive, for video or stills.  Even when we do our own in-house productions, it costs money.  Many of my business owner friends spend little to no money on marketing a message because the numbers are intimidating and large.  Intimidating and large encourages an anecdote, so I’ll give one about our logo.  It’s two brackets and a lower-case o, simple font play, created and designed by the marketing firm Agent-X.  Logo design was many thousands of dollars, money that could have been spent on equipment, personal work, payroll, any number of things.  But the logo works brilliantly, the branding is top quality and worth every penny.  We have made back the cost of the branding development many times over, even though it was a terrifyingly expensive purchase at the time.

Good communication requires creative, professional people, and we cost money.  The good news is that if you integrate marketing and the customer communication implied into every level of your business, then the sun will beam down on your business, your products and services will sell faster then anticipated, and business does well.  Maybe not quite, but it’s surprising what some simple communication can do to transform your business. [o]