week 26 day 178 shot of the week

Maybe I will maybe I wont come back and blog about straw hats here....

day 178 June 27

Another day of far to many photos to choose from! Arg... I want to share them all so instead I will pick three from the harbor cruise slash Ryan Montbleau band show!

day 177 June 26

In the middle of what I was considering a little bit of a photo rut, came a weekend to cure some creative yearnings.... First pictured here was the 2nd annual Water St music festival. There are dozens of photos to choose from when searching for shots I really like from this day. If you like this one check the the June 2009 archives there are a dozens more. As the weekend progressed we partied like it was a 5 year olds birthday....oh it was! Happy Birthday Justin! And then rocked the harbor with Ryan Monbleau!

day 176 June 25

I just gave myself a little bit of a scare. I thought I had gone a day without photographing miss phoenix. I opened the archives and no pup pics..... after some quick checking of the archives I discovered that I had missed an upload....phew! That said, its this row of headshots of one of my favorite co-workers Bob that I like the most from this day.

day 175 June 24

Lunch times walking with the pup and the wonder wife on the bogs during a break in the weeks rains.

day 174 June 23

Thirty five years ago I started playing with this model of a British Spitfire. It patrolled over Britain and this model over my grandfathers bed. We will need to clean it up a little and glue on a broken horizontal stabilizer.

day 173 June 22

I have been enjoying mixed or shooting off of natural color balance lately. This one finds the camera having auto picking something between daylight and incandescent - resulting in both cool, outside and warm inside......

week 25 day 172 shot of the week

This weekend consisted of a memorial and then sifting through the left over possessions of my grandparents. I spoke at the memorial and we went to the loot-grab, both things I did not think I would do. I am glad for both, including the semi-morbid sifting through of formerly treasured belongings....because there are now some new photographic treasures. This photo is my grandfather's binocular case, used often for birding off the back porch, accompanied by his Scout leader uni for troop 64 Saylesville, RI, where he was a charter leader back in 68.

day 172 June 21

Can photographers do cover tunes? This is my cover of the work of Abelardo Morell, a fantastic photographer whom I met during my days working in the trenches of the Boston photo biz...

day 171 June 20

And now for something completely different. I do not tend to shoot a lot of abstract"ish" stuff, but from time to time the abstract jumps out and grabs me. It's a fence a pole and wall - in that order.

day 170 June 19

The Upper Cape Cod Camera Club has given out its summer assignments. One of mine is to create an HDR image. This is my favorite single exposure for one of my recent attempts. If I like the HDR results, I will also publish here...... to be continued.....

day 169 June 18

This is a part two from day 167. While driving with e (not this picture again) to the memorial service of my recently deceased grandparents, (Don't Fear) The Reaper began playing as we crossed the bridge to go off-Cape.

day 168 June 17

There are a number of problems with this Phoenix 365 submission.... the largest is me -literally. I am bothered by how chubby I have become again. One thing that helps me to do things that I know are not going to be fun, like getting myself in better shape again, is telling someone of my intent. So internet - soon I will start losing weight.

day 167 June 16

Blogger warning: This blog will not be about the accompanying photo.

As a youth I joined one of those clubs where you pay a penny for a bunch of tapes and then you have to buy a bunch and or accept a number of the cassettes of the month. One of such cassettes of the month received by me was a Loverboy album I never opened. My friend Joel noticed the unwanted tape and offered a trade for an unwanted tape of his- Blue Oyster Cult. I accepted as I liked the song Godzilla as well as others.

While deciding on what tapes to bring on a family road trip (a blog for another time) I discovered that the tape no longer played and set it aside. That fall, Joel died in a car accident. When I remembered the tape exchange and the broken tape I searched and found the presumed broken tape. While traveling to the his memorial, I popped the broken tape in the player.....and not only did it play- it started playing on their hit (Don't fear) The Reaper....

day 166 June 15

This is the first of many pup shots for the week. It seems worth mentioning again that this year, I been working on a series consisting of daily photographs of our super pup Phoenix. The challenge to myself is to try to continue to find new angles on this single subject, the required 365 times.... This one I like more than the average day, lots of places for the eye to roam too and it has my other favorite model in it too!

day 165 June 14

Being named the official photographer of Cape Cod Kickball in its second season was quite an honor. It also has been great fun to go shoot these bi-weekly matches, where teams like The Hippie Killers spar with the likes of Cape Cod Cowboys. To see the level of athleticism on display, at this level of competition, has been an inspiration and a breath of fresh sea air.

day 164 June 13

Last weekend we took in another of Turning Pointe Studios Dance production, this time their "A Celebration of Music" held at Mashpee High School. Our favorite dancer claims to have enjoyed being in the show but would not divulge her favorite part to this reporter.

week 24 day 159 shot of the week

Todays list of ben shot me topics and issues to address:
Change the slide show format
tweak the www pages
edit the www news
thank the members of the facebook group
plot for issue 7
upload yesterdays images
shoot today's phoenix 365
more haiku's for the portrait project
reach out for more portrait subjects
better define the portrait series in writing
shower

Oh right!& this blog - sorry I got off track there -

I used to know a guy who claimed he and his brother were terrorized by a neighborhood bully. The bully would get the two kids cowering, sitting cross-legged in their front yards. The boys would just tremble, waiting for whatever evil the bully would decide was their fate. All that the bully would utter to create this scene as he pedaled up the street, past the aluminum chain-link fencing was, "INJUN STYLE!" Bullying is not funny- I was bullied- every year children are severely emotionally scarred by bullying. That said, this bully created great humor for his grown subject whom I believe used this same cry of "INJUN STYLE!" to represent his ability to overcome fear.

day 163 June 12

The completion, printing and now distribution of the spring edition of ben shot me the magazine has been a big relief. As its incompletion was drawn out, each day later became a bigger burden mentally. This particular issue lacks a couple of stories that were the strengths of previous issues. In the pressure to finish, I also probably made a couple hasty editing decisions that I am already regretting. That said, the images from the restaurant Frank, outside Radio City and Daniel Byrnes are a few equal to some of my best work. e and I have been discussing regrouping and formulating a plan to make the summer issue more complete.

day 162 June 11

This past week was a good one photographically from a creative standpoint. While I try to choose only one photo each for these blogs, the decisions this week have been more difficult than usual. This week, many days have multiple images that I really like.

I have been thinking of starting a portrait series - in one way I am looking forward to a new challenge and adding more to my "bag of tricks"... in another - I do not know where I am going to find the time!!

day 161 June 10

Several months ago I joined the Upper Cape Cod Camera Club. They have a competition committee or the U.C.C.C.C.C. This day brought the end to club season. At our closing gathering, we picked the photo of the year which will be printed on next year's ID badges and we were also given our summer shooting assignments. I have 5 topics to shoot for, they are:
HDR
Time exposure (exposure longer than 2 seconds)
Patterns
High Contrast
Decisive Moment

day 160 June 9

Sometimes you're driving in your car and you realize that due to all of the recent rain, you have not taken as many pictures as you usually might... so you grab the camera from the side door pocket and you point it out the window of the moving vehicle and you get......

well, sometimes you get lucky.

day 159 June 8

On a whim and mostly to see how difficult they are to create, I started a facebook group for ben shot me last weekend. I had not even mentioned it to erica - that I was even thinking of it. To my amazement, before she came downstairs and less than 30 minutes after creating it, the group had a handful of members. erica had sent invitations to our closest folks and they were joining! I have now also invited a handful of my friends and acquaintances and here, a week later, there are over 80 members to the group. Thank you so much to those who have joined. Especially, to my complete amazement, thank you to the group members whom I hardly know or have not even met!!!

For fun, I immediately started an exclusive facebook ben shot me group photo contest. Enter today if you would like to win a free burrito!! Who doesn't want a free burrito!? As a group member, I hope to keep you entertained, up on the ben shot me news and equally- we hope to occasionally inspire, while not being boring, preachy or snotty! At the very least we will keep a light on for you.

day 158 June 7

I am constantly keeping my eye out for things to photograph. In the same vein I can also be hit spontaneously by a blog subjects while on the move. These inspirations are much more difficult to record and by the time I sit down at the end of a week to write these blogettes, they are often forgotten. I should do something about that.

week 23 day 153 shot of the week

This is my favorite kickball shot so far. Sometimes I have difficulty staying with a subject when I think I have the best possible shot I can get. Kickball has enough going on, while I may not do better than this... there is always that chance I might, see you at the next game on June 14th!

day 157 June 6

Our dusk staff walk was highlighted by thousands of fireflies illuminating the bogs. They twinkled like little berry stars. Our staff walk was lowlighted by the shortest staffer nearly pulling the arm out of the socket of the second-shortest staffer, when the shortest was in hot pursuit of whatever rustles in the leaves bog left.

day 156 June 5

While not running down creatures of the wood, I spend my time in bored attempts at sleep, which are oft interrupted by the damn house photographer. phoenix log day 737.

day 155 June 4

I hate to admit it, but we have been having a little trouble with the wunder pup lately. You can see it in this photo. Spring has brought the woodland creatures, especially the little fury scampy ones like bunnies, chipmunks and squirrels. phoenix hates bunnies, chipmunks and squirrels. You can see her go into prey mode as soon as she detects them. Ears up alert posture - zoom! Several times lately when she has been off-leash she has tore off with no regard to us... her dog bowl fillers. We thought we may have lost her once! Ugh.

day 154 June 3

The real job was many 12 hour days this week... I am glad someone in the house got to sleep.

day 153 June 2

I have been trying to take my post as official photographer for Cape Cod Kickball as seriously as, well, possible. This attitude is paying off as they have asked me to put together a slide show. I took care of some of the behind the scenes stuff of creating an online slide show and will be presenting it to the world in the coming weeks.

day 152 June 1

I am gaining a little traction at the new burrito shop in town. I would really love to get one of their no-brainer-burritos named after me! I could use your help. The benshotme burrito! It is Flank steak, yellow rice, sauteed onion and blue cheese dressing. Go order one by name today at The Burrito Place!

day 151 May 31

Several of e's friends have recently remarked that there is never a bad photo of her, despite there being so many of her here at the pages of benshotme. Then yesterday, to balance the universe, a photographer friend of mine who just met e for the first time said to her. "no offense to you ben, but your much more beautiful in real life than in all those pictures I see online."

I for one find her beautiful in 3 and 2D.

e has been clamoring for a stylist due to all the time she has to spend behind the lens. We have not broken down yet... However, if there are any freelance, non-profit stylists out there.... feel free to send in your resume.