rlketcham.com

Key City Players are presenting The Tempest by Shakespeare in Chetzemoka Park for the rest of the month. Excellent job by all and a wonderful experience.

Lots of writing and image making going on it’s just not ready for prime time.  So here is a morning ferry ride to Keystone.

PT Cyclery has been a mainstay of business in Port Townsend since the 80′s and a great bunch of real helpful folks even for those of us who don’t know a lot about something with no motor. They were nice enough to let me shoot a few images for a project we have in the works. There are a few more of the session on my flickr site, the project I’ll add to the blog when it is done.

The camera that is with you is the right one. iPhone photo while waiting to go drag out the big guns for a shoot at the bicycle shop. This is my favorite photo from the whole day and all I had with me at the time was my phone.

Sara who runs the Center Valley Animal Rescue stopped by and needed a quick portrait (ya got 20 min) for her brothers wedding website that didn’t have animals or a motorcycle in it. Up went a black sheet and out came the lights. Beautiful young lady who laughs a lot and puts up with a few of us that tease her unmercifully.  She is truly dedicated to saving animals of all kinds and the ranch is there solely to her dedication and hard work. Check out the info on her site at http://centervalleyanimalrescue.org/ . Special lady and doing a special job. Next time we do this I want time to do it the way she deserves, but these do show some of who she is inside.

Set this up and shot about 60 frames in about 20 min on a Sat. they stopped by on the way home from Costco. Simple set-up and shoot. The 85mm is perfect for the space I had and I like the way it works for this kind of portrait. Click the photos to link to flickr where I added the lighting info.

(Sara if you read the first paragraph I will deny writing it)

This was one of those short series of images that I couldn’t get out of my head. It took 3 days of driving into town and retrying to get everything lined up to get it right. Timing the bus runs, weather, and getting the camera settings right to get what I thought I saw in my head.

No not an earth shattering set of images but they are something I wanted and it ended up with a little bit of added story to go with it in the image. Point is I failed the first few times I tried it and kept at it til I got what I wanted, bonus was I learned a lot in the process I wouldn’t have learned if it went right the first time.

Click the image and then go thru the rest while it is on screen. It was fun to shoot, I like being in that zone that you get to when you are going for something in your head. We have a hell of a bus system for a rural area and I have more ideas for them that I’ll publish as I get the images.

I don’t plan what I am going to post about very often it all just seems to happen when it does. Lately I have been reading a lot of blogs where the consensus is that text needs to go with a photo to add context and meaning. I feel that if it needs words it has failed. Universal ‘truths’ or stories shouldn’t need an explanation to prop them up. Photojournalism was cited as one example however all to often I see poor writing held up by great photos or poor photos held up by the writing.

We only get better if we reach for that one image that says everything so clear it doesn’t need anything else. I would like to believe that the Steve McCurry photo Afghan Girl would have the impact it does without the back story. I still don’t know the story behind the image but I feel every time I see it.

On another note there is some new stuff over on my flickr acct that some of you may like to see  and there is another photographer I have been talking to that does work I wish I could. Please take a look at http://whilestandingstill.com/ beautiful subtle work.

Not to mention that Jeff Lynch still has some openings for his Spring Safari in Tx. Jeff is a must read for those of you Canon shooters and for doing landscape work. And as long as you are cruising the photo web check in on K-man’s trip to Japan and part east, fantastic images coming out of this world jaunt and he is calling it work.

Go look there is a lot of inspiration out there and a lot of folks that are shooting everyday.

Saw this while trying out a new coffee shop that is under the street in PT. Had the G9 with me and plan on going back with the big guns some morning. Looks to be an interesting place with lots of couches and rooms for hanging out with coffee and friends. Looks to be pretty good for Jazz on friday nights as well. Now to buy some friends to hang out with….

G9 is a little rough for this kind of low light shot so I dropped the clarity and added a little vignette to go with how the image struck me. Braced the camera on a chair arm and let the slow shutter work its magic. Little different from the images I usually show but there are more in the works.

If you make a little time the sun will peak out from the edges every once and awhile. My friend Chris over at Patterns of Light and Dark and Paul at Paul Lester Photography have been making a few beach images so when I was in town today I couldn’t resist and join the fray. Cold and windy and that seems to be the order of the day for these type of images no matter where in the country you are. The tower in the distance is on the Navy Base on Indian Island which stores munitions, that in itself is pretty ironic given PT politics and general outlook. The pier is one of several city piers for visiting boats, empty now but full in the summer.

Not my  usual type of image but I am trying to get out and shoot something everyday for awhile, just to see what happens when you go out for a walk with the camera and no idea of what you are after. That approach will probably change to going out with a vague idea of what I want to shoot, we’ll see how things progress. Slow and lazy time of year, short days and wet wet weather, counting the days til spring.

Been a little busy here and I had another idea all ready to post but decided to save it for after the holidays when it may make a little more sense.  So here is a little bit of what all I have been putting in front of the lens.

For Me

Katie

For Katie

Katie

For Me

Early Morning Diner

For work

Homeward Bound Board Members

So that is a little bit of what has been going on around here. Hope you all have a great holiday and as they say more to come soon. For an ongoing update visit the flickr stream now and then at www.flickr.com/rlketcham

If the sound bothers you mouse over above the thumbnails and adjust it on the right or let me know and I’ll remove it( changed the start-up to manual so hit the play to start). With that said, I spent a day last summer when things were slow for everyone following Diane around her work for a couple of hours. This is the result of a few hours in a high quality print shop. Diane is a 4th generation printer and been at it herself for over 30 yrs. High stress work which made me think in B&W for the effect. Had to put together a slideshow with sound and this has been sitting on the HD since last summer. Made with Slideshow Pro in Adobe Flash and the sound was done in Audacity. Figured ambient sound for the print shop would work for this after seeing what Matt Brandon did for his The Hands of Rat Island slide presentation. Matt is a master of doing interesting slide presentations and I do my best to pick up ideas from his work, not to mention the images he makes are truly inspiring.