The anticipation, nervous energy before the stage comes to life, and one-shot no retakes atmosphere gets my creativity charged up. I absolutely love the countdown to go time. Troubleshooting in a pinch to make it work and look flawless. Fast paced action all around! (These all translate just fine to wedding photography moments too… but that’s another post.)

Earlier this month I joined the production of Caught – a senior thesis turned full out dance production by Hannabeth Fischer. A brief excerpt from the show’s event page goes like this:

Artistically acclaimed “mesmerizing”, “enthralling”, and “beautiful the whole way through,” Caught is up for it’s second run in South Bend, IN. Choreography and film: Hannahbeth Fischer. After a highly successful debut at Saint Mary’s College in November, Caught has grown. Adding two musicians to the original sound artist, Patrick Quigley, the Analecta trio is complete. Analecta is a group of rising local musicians: indie, progressive, classical. http://www.myspace.com/analectaband

Experience a cross-platform performance with digital film and dance, playing on the borders of Dance Theater. Live sound engulfs the entire audience, the entire building. This performance, while beautiful on camera, cannot be experienced anywhere but live. Fischer’s statements about movement, duality, tension, architecture, desire, and interaction permeate the multiple channels.

Audience members should look forward to an exciting new space at LangLab. The truly unique space, conducive to incubation and artist musings, will shock many that it exists in South Bend.

Fischer shot some of the film for the projection in the space, adding a unique parallelism to this run of the piece. This is LangLab’s first full length dance performance. Neither South Bend nor LL have experienced a full kinesphere performance such as Caught, and should make it out to LangLab on December 10. Fischer and collaborators welcome conversation in the post-show hang time.

Aside from the usual available light performance photography I also worked with a great crew to provide video and multitrack audio recording for the performance portfolio DVD project. This was a first to go a huge step past mics-mixer-camera to allow for precise audio postproduction mixing of the single-take recording. Translation: geeking out.

Shots made with Nikon D700 and Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 lens in existing light / video projection.

Technical challenges outside of the recording side included adapting a theatrical stage performance at Saint Mary’s College to the LangLab warehouse art venue (very cool feel!). Full theatrical lighting and dimming control was simplified to fit the intimate space. I do enjoy a good brainstorm and improvisation!

Congrats Hannabeth and the cast of Caught on a wonderful 2nd performance! Glad to have been part of it!

More photos on our Facebook page too, become a fan and see our work as soon as it’s posted to enjoy!

UPDATE! Jan 2011 – Check out the LIVE recording album the band made from the audio tracks from the show.

Once we got talking, I mentioned the whole concept of the Trash the Dress shoots we had in summers past. Creation, more than destruction – getting a new look by not being afraid to take a bridal gown somewhere that would mess it up, muddy it down, or get it wet. It instantly struck up an idea -

Enter a new twist on our bridal themed TTD shoots – Trash the Prom Dress.

While I hoped for a bit more sunlight after the first set out on a tree over a pond, I have to say I loved the addition of the storm clouds that started to move in for a good weekend of downpours.

Always great to work with creative subjects not afraid to go out on a limb -or fallen tree trunk- to try a new idea for a new look.

The more ideas and involvement you give us the more the creative energy gets going to make your photos that much more uniquely yours. Go ahead, drop us a line and fire away to see what we do for you!

During a shoot in an old theater’s projector booth, I accidentally pulled a lens of a table when my camera strap caught it. While in a moment of inspiration, I changed lenses and grabbed my D300 off the table after arranging lighting and props. The camera decided to bring a friend with it, and my 50mm lens soon followed. The model, tangled in old film footage from the Lion King, Spawn and an unknown scifi movie saw the horror on my face as I tried to stop the lens with my foot, hacky-sack style. Swing and a miss. Severe ouch.

The glass was fine but the focus and aperture would barely move. We finished the shoot with the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8G
lens, the workhorse of my gear, and I was seriously unhappy at my klutz move. I have backup cameras AND lenses plus insurance for a very good reason!

This is, by far, my favorite focal length on the 35mm / DSLR format, the Nikon 50mm f/1.4D AF Lens

I sent it to Nikon that following Monday, got a repair statement and price within the week, and approved it over the weekend. Pretty good speed to get it ready to repair within a week of the drop.

It showed up at my door before 4pm today – Friday. Hokey smokes!

Thank YOU, Nikon repair service! I was fully content to shoot the 50mm f/1.8 this weekend… but you guys put the pedal to the metal to get this one done in a jiffy!

Check out how the photos turned out – lots more in the Trash the Dress Gallery

Enjoy the weekend! It’s stright up summer weather today in South Bend!

After the last few weeks finalizing prints, framing, preparing and all around brainstorming at high speed, it all came down to one great night of celebration with friends last Saturday!

Highlights of the night – and all were simply amazing:

• We have the coolest friends and clients out there. Sara said it best that each of you have helped us live our dream and do what we get to do – tell your amazing story with our photographs.
• Bucholtz family was among the first guests there! As a reward for their promptness they claimed the couches throughout the night.
• Two of my camera store coworker friends were there, one I hadn’t seen since he moved to New Jersey 3+ years ago. I knew he was looking to stop by but it till floored me when he walked in.
• THREE people drove up from Indianapolis in the rainy weather, and all 3 totally surprised us! Our friend JP and his family moved to Indy a week ago and we had a going away party and everything. Then BAM, he walks into the coffee shop. Awesome to see you again man!
• Our other 2 guests from Indianapolis take the cake for catching me most by surprise. I haven’t seen Natalia and Jeff since Sara and I photographed their wedding in 2006, back in my engaged days. Great idea to make a date night of it while you guys were in town!
• Friends I’ve known since elementary school and a friend I hadn’t seen since I graduated high school were all there. Way to represent CCS in its best years – our classes’ years!

I managed to pick up a camera later in the evening and snap a couple of photos of the fun. Enjoy!

Guests chilling as the Rendition plays.

The E Team reunites! Erik and Eric! Never so much fun since a slow Sunday shift at the camera store inspired pegboard Plinko and making Halloween decor out of photo lab scraps. Superb to see you again man!

The Rendition rocking, so proud of their artistry in music

Surprise guests from Indianapolis!

If they look familiar it’s because we’ve shown off their Wedding Album and Sara’s signature portrait of Natalia ever since it was taken. No portfolio of our wedding day photography would be complete without showing this favorite image from this great couple’s wedding day!

Thanks again everyone who braved the rainstorm and came out to celebrate our 5th year reliving Wedding Day Stories with photography. We’re richly blessed to have you as friends!

- Eric, Sara and Adrian

Click the photo above or CLICK HERE for the event page and full info!

See you there!

Who said artistic stuff had to be complex?

Go make some art today.

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/i-lego-ny/

I saw her creative side years before we ran around with cameras together. She has an uncanny knack of making art out of just about anything she finds, tasty food included. I’ve always enjoyed that we both like to dress up a meal with a nice colorful or garnished presentation.

You should see her go when creativity strikes. Love you babe!

One of my favorites from the trip, nice snap by our friend Julia with Sara’s 35mm.

Sara and I snapped black and white film and touted the new Nikon 2 megapixel Coolpix 2100. Of course… the Coolpix was snubbed among the photography class field trip carrying everything from a Polaroid camera, manual and autofocus 35mm cameras, medium format Hassleblads and Bronicas, and a 4×5 SpeedGraphic. Among those peers I’d be a nervous little camera too.

For a group photo we did as all good students do and dumped our camera gear on our unsuspecting instructor, the amazing Craig Sheaks, who was glad to show all the gear we amassed for the trip.

Our friend Julia – Craig’s wife-to-be years later, who had photographed me with my wife-to-be – was snapping around town with a Polaroid. Me in my novice snobbery thought “I know you’ve got a better camera than… that thing!” Then I saw what she was up to… and was glad the comment was kept in silence.(I’m reiterating my foolishness here as a reminder that things are rarely what they seem, especially in the artistic process.)

Using fingernails, keyrings, silverware and anything around you could manipulate the image before it dried on the Time Zero film. Sara got some angel wings and I got a top hat. Rather cool techniques.

Smudges, scrapes, and fingerprints – all part of the artistic process.

This week I downloaded the Poladroid application to take otherwise nice photos and ugly them up a little via retro Polaroid looking goodness. Entirely addictive and fun! Here’s a recreation via Poladroid, not too shabby.

Check it out at Poladroid.net and give it a try.

And whatever you do… keep snapping!

Check out his workshop post HERE

Instead of “light modifiers” I will probably start to refer to our lighting kit as the photon force field.

Keep the creativity cookin!

This summer it was time for us to retire the second Nikon DSLR that helped start our business. I bought the Nikon D70s it back when it was introduced in 2005 and it has helped to photograph over 70 weddings since then, not including tons of engagement portrait and senior shoots. Hokey smokes I’m exhausted just counting up all the shoots since 2005!

The improved controls, response speed, and feel of the D200 and D300 had me hooked, but I didn’t want to try and sell a very used D70s when I could instead use it to see invisible light for a new take on some interesting photographic art.

For all the “how’d they do that” check out the conversion and technique at LifePixel.com