January 11 day 11

I am having trouble not reverting to the phoenix 365 for almost every pic...but we have a friend who is probably just as cute as the little pup. Hard to imagine that it took a whole 11 days before we got a visit from little Addie cakes, but she really cannot drive yet, so we blame her drivers.

January 10 day 10

One of the best compliments I have ever had about my photographs was;

"You should check them out they can be like a Steven Wright joke"

I have friend; he has a trophy wife; Apparently it wasn't first place.

Day 9 Week 2 shot of the Week

I quit smoking many years ago. It was the most difficult thing I have ever done to myself. I also tend to not like to see things wasted. So I find it a little ironic that I felt a little remorse as this smoke was soon stomped beyond repair. I feel like I should feel that it got what it deserved, but no I felt a little pang of sadness for its potential going unrealized.

January 9 day 9

The benshotme staff went to Grumpy's to see the big D last night. That's not what I want to blog about however. This photos metadata is tagged as being from the 10th. It was actually shot late on the 9th. I have been meaning to reset the clock in this camera for sometime as it is set for daylight savings time or something stupid. Like the light out in the kitchen, this is one of those so stupidly simple things to do....they are being left undone.

January 8 day 8

There is a controversy brewing in Woods Hole. A local restaurateur wants to be able to roast coffee beans in his garage. Somehow this has blown up to a controversial issue, which needed to be brought to the zoning board. Presently they have not made a finding on the status of this issue. The benshotme staff is hopeful they will do the right thing.

January 7 day 7

It's convenient to be doing 2 365 "projects" as they can spill into each other and any given day one can be both. The benefit of one of 365's being of little phoenix is that she never complains about posing for a shot or two on the days where I do not have a lot of time to search for subjects.

January 6 day 6

Once a week phoenix is a working dog.... here she is on her way to the office. Looks like she feels the same way about it as I do.

January 5 day 5

The top photo is the one I want to blog about from day 5. The bottom one is my fav from day 5. The top shows our 3rd set of address and phone number tags for wonder pup phoenix. The girls at the shop seemed to think I was joking when I asked if they sold insurance on the sale of tags, turns out I should have pushed this issue harder.....

January 4 day 4

They say a photo says a 1000 words. You gotta wonder which thousand sometimes.

Day 3.1 - Week 1 shot of the week

Do not worry... Here at the blog I also I will be keeping up with recording the shots of the week from the main benshotme.com site. This shot is from earlier today and I am not sure why it is the shot of the week and would welcome suggestions.... Happy new year!

January 3 Day 3

I am actually attempting two 365 projects.... one is to publish a photo from everyday this year... another is to record a photo of phoenix everyday. This is phoenix day 3. phoenix if you do not know her is a mutt ambassador who would, if she could speak, tell you to go find her a friend at your local shelter.

January 2 day 2

My inner self yearns to stare into the coals and wither away the winter in their warmth....while I feel some other truth may call and wisk me into the cold.

January 1 day 1

This year I thought I would try my first 365 project... What you should find here at the ben shot me blog are shots from each day of the year....but not updated everyday.

I thought that a visual shout out to A.A. was appropriate to start the year. Wonder what he would have made of today's processes, which are making two of these three books nearly obsolete. A good exposure still goes a long way.....

Happy Holidays

An overnight drive has us in another holidaze...... Hope you find what your looking for under the tree, or hood, or rock or where ever you look for that missing bit this upcoming year!

Daze of holidays

The shooting has slowed a little lately. There are a number of factors, dark early, the first winter sickness. But mainly after shooting so, so much in Italy; complete immersion in new surroundings was inspirational. Being back at the old haunting grounds and at the day job, well frankly, not as inspirational.

That said e and I have been working on a little theme lately with some invites and cards ect. So we decided to continue and I now present this years end of year holiday card. The goal is to be slightly surreal and perhaps have people think its a photoshopped image. The secret revealed first here is no photoshop... this is the straight image. We predict this will also probably be slightly better recieved than our plan b, which was to have the dog in a manger scene.

Champs

I am a pretty big with hockey - some might argue that this is an understatement. Included in my hockey diet is playing dek hockey. Regularly. A season has just concluded and I am proud (only moderately) to say that my team, the snipers, won our B division championship game. They even hand out a trophy!

Turning Pointe

Yesterday erica and I had the pleasure of seeing our niece, a little mouse, and her fellow dancers from Turning Pointe Dance Studio perform the Sea Captains Nutcracker at the four C's theater. Being the day after Thanksgiving I was feeling a little lethargic and it was something of a mental struggle to actually get to the performance, despite it being at 3 oclock. Once there the pleasure of immersing myself in the fishing for shots soon made everything ok again.

The performance was interesting to behold as all level of performer was presented to the viewer and shooter. It was interesting to contrast the fluidity of the professionals with the enthusiasm and desire of the in-training students. What a reward it must be for these students to not only see the results of their practice put to the test, but to also see a demonstration of the results of true devotion to the craft, displayed by the professionals on hand. A hardy well done to Laura Faria the studios art director and all her performers, for a wonderful show!

Favorites

Sometimes these posts are to make sure some of the shots I really really like end up being talked about here in the blog. This shot is one of my favorites from our ever getting more distant vacation to Italy. In case you have not caught up to what your looking at, look again, that statue is holding the severed head of Medusa. Making the statue itself Perseus. If you already knew these tidbits kudos to you my observant and educated reader! I love the rapt attention the woman in the puffy white jacket is giving the scene. Also the shadows of the statues and other folks milling about this night are also rather stunning. The actual shooting was done with a new trick of mine that maybe I will reveal in an upcoming blog.

Blog for Gina

One of our new favorite readers recently commented with mild amazement something like..."how do you get a picture of a dog just sitting on a street corner in Venice like that?" Well the way you do this is to never leave your camera behind. If possible have your camera in your hand and turned on at all times. When in Italy step it up a notch, carry extra batteries and extra cameras. Look around corners, stop when you should walk, turn when you should proceed. Walk and walk all day and night until you know the area like you lived there for years. Take photos even when there are no photos to be taken.

Withdrawls

We have now been back from Italy for almost a week. I have just about finished editing the second set of images down to a reasonable number and quality of image. The first couple days back it was nice to be in the familiar confines of home. This is quickly wearing off and given way to the desire to be back on the Mediterranean wondering when the waitress might stumble by your table. No longer can I innocently ignore the conversations of others because I can not understand them. The baggage we haul around is no longer yesterdays laundry and tomorrows costumes. I am left wondering how do you inject a bit of escape into everyday existence?

Dropping

I have just finished the first edit, of the first of three slide shows, of images from our recently ended trip to Italy. This is a time consuming process...uploading, sorting, editing. This is a process, including the blogging about, that I recommend you do not do while jet lagged, as you make mistakes, by the jumbo liner. It is also however, rewarding as now I am getting to relive that first Lasagna in Italy. The first pizza. The views of the castle ect. For those of you eager to see the pics too.. sorry its taking so long, but I promise something for Tuesday night.

making our way

We have been traipsing around Italy for 2 weeks now. And this morning will mark the first steps towards home. This immediately makes me think of, and miss, our little pup phoenix, who would have loved to come on this trip. So many other smallish pups of her stature here. So many things to sniff. So many people to charm. She would have had a blast. See you soon little phoenix!

Una birra lager, per favore.

Last week was a busy one for me, e will tell a slightly different story of our stay in the sleepy fishing village of Lerici. For me it was talks and conversations during the day that turned to stories and mingling by night. A favorite meeting spot was the "Corona" where more than a couple pints were shared of the Kronenbourg 1664, which despite its Nordic/Germanic name hails from the UK. Our numbers dwindled steadily during the week and finally we parted all our new and old work friends and railed to Firenze (Florence for our English speakers). Presently we are still struggling (with and or enjoying) a more limited than connected, internet connections. More to come when the net becomes less expensive and more stable.

posting

The benshotme staff finds itself in Italy. Where we are presently finding it very difficult to update the images at the archives. Slowest damn "highspeed" internet ever!! We hope this can hold you over until some better connectivity can be found!

Chow!

a year

This shot is placed firmly on the cover of the october edition of benshotme the magazine.. Now that we have been doing this a year. Somethings are easier others are still complex. It is still somewhat difficult, you feel a little guilty, asking 10 dollars for each one. I do not know why this is. They cost us that much to make and people do seem to enjoy them. Those that are paying the ten bucks seem to do so completely willingly. Yet I feel a little pang of self consciousness each time I receive a 10 and slide it into a pocket. Maybe this is why there are stores.... so the that manufacturers do not have to get their emotions tangled up in the sticky business of retail. That said I need to keep a single phrase in my mind... "hey, ten bucks, is ten bucks,"

If you want more details of this issue visit here.

not here, not now

So here I am again with another photo of the week and not really a lot to blog about it. The reporter in me will tell you that it is Spiritual Rez playing at the Cotouit Center for the Arts this past weekend. It's a shot of the week becuase, well, I just like the shot a lot. During the actual shooting I was more concerned about getting the frame in the frame than finding a moment. Look close, its in the lower left, its got a lion in it. I do not remember "deciding" the correct moment. I just remember thinking that I couldn't frame the frame the way I had hoped. So I gave up on this angle and didn't think much about this shot until I discovered it during the editing for public comsumtion process. What I found I liked was that I did capture a unique moment where these 6 of 7 band members were performing but none of them are interacting with each other or the audience. They are all off in their own little jam worlds, alone and yet together. And I have two visual regrets....the drummer is hidden by the guitarist and the top of his ax is cropped out.

words for the wary

Maybe its the failing economy. Perhaps its the dark creeping into the afternoon. Maybe its the cool in the morning. It could be the inability of others to consider being considerate. One could say that every step is always into the unknown. Things can seem unsettling and a possible trip-up can be at every door.
On the flipside 13 years to the day that a certain former football player was let off on one crime he was convicted in another. This time I have not heard one mention of race riots. I guess the media is too busy scaring the hell out of the throngs with the impending great recession to simultaneously drum up a race war........

Are you cool?

This week I visited the campus of Rutgers University and the RU cool room. They certainly are cool, I mean, you can get, at the very least, monitor envy in about one blink. They are also cool for the work they are doing monitoring the eastern seaboard (and world) with state of the art ocean sensing technology. But as usual this is not what I am here to blog about today, especially as they are cool enough to already be recording and publishing all sorts of stuff about all the cool stuff going on, check out the AUV Scarlett Knights glider page, for instance.

The real question left in my mind today, is of course, am I cool. Do we not all want to be cool? It seems to me we are we often stealing or borrowing the cool of others in the hopes of projecting ourselves as cool? My favorite phrase of the summer was certainly, "I'm so cool I make the Fonz look like Henry Winkler." Here I am borrowing it to appear much cooler than I really am. I did however fix a malfunctioning device by bumping my fist on a table this month... so maybe I am a little cool....

Feet!

I do not like them. You might ask yourself, if he does not like the feet, why would he choose to feature them so prominently in this, the current shot of the week? Well the answer is, so I could tell everyone the following:

I do not like feet.

If you are married to me and many of you are not, you already know that I find them ugly. You already know, I think they are a great stocking stuffer. You will also probably already realize that none of this is rational. Some people do not like Bill O'Reilly....some people do not like feet. I happen to not like both, but that's a different blog.

Flaming out

So we have done it. No not that. We had the end of summer party/belated e birthday party, of course. The summer is all but gone up in flames. With it C.O.D's initial summer has come to a close as well.

But as usual, that's not exactly what I am here to blog about. I am here to say thank you to all those people who came to share the day and celebrate the transition to a new season....or another year with e......or to drink beer.....

Whyever you came thank you! I know e and I certainly wished we had more time with each one of you.

Now go forth and embrace the pending fall.

Another just one

We had such a great time at the wedding I thought it deserved recording a couple more of my favorite shots from that day here at the blog. Embarrassingly I was having so much fun shooting shots at the event that I did not learn as many names as I probably should have. Two, possibly Three, of my favorite images from this day contain this man... the unnamed guitarist from Patrick's band. As e has already said this picture looks like it could have been taken 70 years ago and was taken on the fly as I rapidly saw the image coming together. This resulting in me liking it that much more, that it required complete unscripted recognition that a possible picture was about to happen and that it came out this well thrills me to no end!

one

The internet version of benshotme turns one year old this month. This is one of the first bsm images, as it was shot with the first of two new digital camera's, the purchase of which was inspired by my desire to make new photographic discoveries. I landed this image when the camera was just hours old (to me). I had decided to (finally) "go digital" and it has been a personal revelation. Being from Cape Cod I have a new analogy for my approach to photography, for me, its like fishing. I will head out of the house to the water (any place that reflects light), and start casting (pushing the shutter button), sometimes there are keepers (these are the images you see here), sometimes the big one gets away (damn the fleeting moment that is poorly exposed) and sometimes you come home empty handed (but feeling good for the effort). The other fishing analogy is that I do not really enjoy the post processing of images, you know film and print processing, we will call this the gutting and cooking. I had not been shooting much mostly because I found the gutting (darkroom) and cooking (framing, matting, presentation) too time consuming and the stink (chemicals) often gave me headaches (that can't be good). So here we are a year later and I'm still very much enjoying trying to get that next digital byte!

Just one look

Or maybe ~1111 some odd looks. When Carina started singing her way down the aisle with the one hit wonder "Just one look", Patrick's, the groom's eyes welled over. Later when the teary eyed Emily read her poem to the couple, it was easy to see that you were at a special event. Now that we are back here to bog hill and the picture uploading has commenced, going on 15 hours, the specialness has not worn off. E bops around the house belting her rending of Carina's rendition of "Just one look". And I, I will be thoroughly enjoying looking at the over 1100 looks I recorded from this beautiful day trying to determine which ones are fit for public consumption.

The year we disappeared

Tears welling in his eyes would be one sign of the magnitude of this, a rare, visit to town. Tears welling in my eyes is another sign of the profound loss this family has suffered. When some grown bully from your hometown attempts to murder a police officer on his way to work and then the crime goes unresolved by his colleagues and the members of the community you love, what can you say to express your profound disappointment? Now that they are left with nothing else to hope for, in the unresolved- some might say intentionally neglected- case of attempted murder of a police officer, John Busby and his daughter Cylin, wrote a memoir about the event; their life defining event.

Last night myself and some 100 of our townsfolk came to pay our respects and express our shared disappointment, at the first of several book signings here in town. A local reporter was present and I am sure another article will appear in the local paper. The "mystery" "story" of the attempted murder is what will gather the hype of television shows like 48 hours. The local reports for years have detailed the primary suspect's other nefarious acts almost to sake of glorification.

The real story, to me, is how we, the folks from this family's hometown have let them down. They still love this town, as we do, but they can not live here because bullies are allowed- or more repulsively- assisted by town authorities in getting away with attempted murder and more recently murder. The most recent murder in our town, also associated with these bullies, occurred in 2005. The shooting of John Busby was in 1979. Neither crime has ever been brought to trial.

party and stuff

We have decided to host a belated e birthday/end of/indian summa party in September. The idea had been thrown around between e and i for a while and it kind of gained some momentum after james, pictured here, got word of e's birthday and the hint of the word "party". As only james can do, the world was suddenly mobilized, we might be having the announcement of Barack's running mate at the party, the dead were coming back from the dead to play, the rivers would run with beer. It would be epic!

Well thats not what I am here to post about. I am more here to talk about the faces james makes while being photographed. He claims to hate having his picture taken, maybe because "they are all awful." Yet I wonder how this, his patented camera face, is helping? The irony of watching him now run around with his new camera in everyone else's face, for his job, well, it is the stuff you could write screenplays about.

I ask you to go to your nearest mirror and practice the "james camera grimace." This way if you come to our party, and james flashes his camera in your face......

Party details to come....or inquire today.

festival

The Naukabout festival came to town this weekend. We attended mostly to catch up with old friend Ryan Montbleau. This photo of him was taken inside the "band trailer". A humorours stage story was later in the day told by Matt of the Old Silver Band about this trailer. Apparently one of the 14 year old festival volunteers was tasked with "security" for the trailer. He was also around earlier in the summer when the same trailer was used by the Village People before and after their County Fair performance. According to the youth the Village People peed all over the trailer......I for one am still left wondering after all these years which village these peeps really are from?

20

This past weekend featured a celebration of the 20 years passed and the gathering of my high school classmates of 1988. Of our class of ~150 people, ~30, including myself managed to return to our old haunts. We boozed cruised the canal. We ate dinner to Guns and Roses.


Seeing some of these faces for the first time in over 20 years, shocked or pleased some distant part of the brain that is seldom accessed. Personally I do not feel like I am much different than that guy from all those years ago. Sure I am more experienced in someways. I have some knowledge I didn't then, but there are also some things good and bad lost from those days. These lost synapses make me feel a little nostalgic, but not a lot, today is like yesterday,like the days 20 years ago, just another day passed....

A special thanks should go to e for putting up with up all the hoopla.

Lets go!

Beach days are coming to an end. Its cool today. There was rain. My 20 year high school reunion is coming up this weekend. All this somehow seems intertwined.

I don't feel old, as a classmate insinuated, in say the body. I have no aches. There is not discernible difference in my performance at any level. But damn 20 years past anything sounds like a long time. I may not have a sore back but my ears are achy from 20 years reverberating around inside of them.

I want to feel like this

Sting once sang:

they all seem like game show hosts to me

I wonder if you were one of one hundred some odd said hosts in this world; how does this line make you, the game show host, feel?

Chuck? Bob? Alex?

I think I want to feel this way.

Come on down.

Spin the wheel.

You are next!

Dear Debbie

Yesterday, we the family allszplat, visited a local softball game. At the game new friend Debbie said how much she liked the website and these shots. Debbie, I'm sorry I did not respond when you said this. I did hear you. I just feel so awkward when people say they like the work I am doing. You see the problem is, I like it too...I like it a lot, but for me to say that in conversation seems a tad conceited. It's somewhat hard to even write it.

I have gotten better at saying thank you when complimented, but a mere thank you also doesn't seem like enough either, so sometimes like yesterday nothing appropriate comes out. Thank you is what people say when you pick up their dropped keys. It does not seem like the appropriate response to the very fuel of ones passion. How do you appropriately acknowledge the very source of your inspiration, without misrepresenting your gratitude? Thank you Debbie- these shots are dedicated to you and the ones before you and hopefully the people to come who keep the desire to engage each other's passions alive.

Introspective

Lately the shots I have been taking have been a little bit more introspective. The first half of this year I was "putting myself out there" as they say. Engaging people with my photography and the idea of benshotme. Lately my shooting pace has subsided a little bit and my cavalier approach has subsided. I am less likely to whip out a copy of our latest magazine to share with a stranger. I'm less likely to approach that stranger who was in a nice looking shot at the drive-in. That good looking shot is also more likely to be of a stool. Part of this is just due to it being summer. There seems to be so much going on in summer there are few choices left for the free time. It also probably means that it is time for the benshotme experiment to refocus and determine exactly what it wants to be.

One of the biggest disappoints to the experiment so far has been that we were hoping for more people to want to participate. If your out there and reading this...I really want to shoot just about anything - I want your ideas for these web pages and the magazine. I do have an invitation to a softball game this week that I intend to shoot, but beyond that the ideas have not been coming from the readership.... join in today send a in topic to be covered!

two terms

On this day seven years ago, I married my friend and lover, the one who shares my laughter and light.

I love you erica!

This now being an election year, I hope things go well and another 4 years are approved by the voters. Remember no signage or picketing within 50 yards of the polls.

4 more years! 4 more years!

dog days of summer

It's here. At least for me. These are the days that it becomes so hot you do not want to move. Its miserable. But the heat, that's not what I am here to blog about. In my mind a while back I decided that if a shot was good enough to be the shot of the week over at benshotme.com then it had better be good enough for me to record it as such over here at the blog and say something about it as well. So this weeks shot is another of phoenix, our cute little cherub of a dog. Recently I decided 2009 would be the year of the phoenix. This year I have been shooting photographs every day some call these projects _____ 365. For me this year was just an exercise, no boundaries any photo any subject, just daily. Well next year I will begin phoenix 365 a shot of our dog every day.... I can't wait!!!!

Juggling the time

So on Monday I would have posted about the wedding (see next post), but the championship game of my Dek hockey season needed to be played. We lost by one goal, for those of you who care about results. Tuesday the company I work for went from a small family owned multi-million dollar biz to a huge publicly traded multi billion dollar biz. You know your average Tuesday. Wednesday the wife and I had one of those epic fights that will be remembered forever, or at least what equals a fight for us. At the very least it put us at our jobs the next day with little under 3 hours of sleep. Thursday was just another day of softball and then dek hockey scrimmaging. It is at softball that I shot this picture of Geoff with way to many balls in the air...an analogy for the week. And that brought us to Friday where the now made up wife and I went to see one of my favorite bands in New Hampshire, which is where on the way back from the previously mentioned wedding I started thinking about my desire to get a blog out this week.......so sorry about the essentially list blog, this one was more for me to chronicle this mildly epic week than for you. How is your summer?

Another busy summer

Where do the days go? I have been meaning to post to the blog all week. I have wanted to talk about and post some of the photos of last weeks wedding of Dan and Stephanie. Here is a portion of Dan's toast to Stephanie and one of my favorite shots.

The scene

Cedar shingled houses with moths flying around porch light. Grills charring up burgers. Fire pits blazing. Raised voices over the blare of classic rock. Beer flowing down hatches. This was the other scene happening all over our Cape Cod last night, on this July 4th eve. It was in and out at Mike and Erin's, but there was of course a little time to snap off a couple shots.

Thursday night jazz

The worlds greatest coffee shop is now keeping its doors open a little later on Thursday nights. This week Coffee Obsession in Falmouth began its open mic/jazz night. Last night I could only spend about 30 minutes there and I was late so I am sure I missed some good times. But while I was there I was treated to nice mix of styles and in a relaxed creative atmosphere. Keep up the good work Hugh and friends.

celebrations

I have loved this shot since I pressed the shutter release. When I get a free minute it will become the shot of the week over at the main site.

So to my friend Justin, happy fourth birthday bud. I do have a tip for you for the upcoming year; you can have your cake and eat it too....it just does not have to be all in one bite!