One month later, here is the first of the photos from the honeymoon. All things considered, this cruise down the coast of St. Lucia wasn't a bad way to spend a birthday either!

Finally have some new content to post, so please keep an eye on the site in the coming weeks!

Hope everyone had a wonderful and safe new year!

I was cataloging some of my older pictures and came across this one. Can't believe this is a year old! He looks very much the same these days, I'll have some new shots of him up shortly.

Obviously the other priorities in life have been taking precedence over posting for a few months now. I'm hoping I can manage to find a bit of a balance and get some new stuff up over the coming weeks.

Turns out the hotel didn't have an ice bucket for our room. We made do. :)

Some of you got a sneak peak of this shot yesterday morning as I posted the wrong image up. Well, here it is for real this time!

It took far too long to get this image up on the site, but at long last here it is. And for those still wondering: she did say yes :)

An older one lost in the shuffle...

I interupted a quality nap to get this shot. My boot made an excellent "pillow" for the pup, but truth be told, he was face down in this boot just a few minutes before. Mans best friend: very definitely. Man's best judge of aroma's? Well, not so much.

For those who haven't seen it in the news recently, New Horizons makes its closest approach to Jupiter today. Check it out today and over the coming weeks at the New Horizons Official Site.

And then I'm gonna EAT YA!

Using my longest zoom and a teleconverter I still had to crop this quite a bit. Should've asked Santa for a 600mm lens for Christmas... Hope everyone had a good holiday and Happy New Year!

My nephew Benjamin, getting a little home-field advantage during the egg hunt at his second birthday party last month. And p.s., answer truthfully on this one, how many of you have the song stuck in your head now? I do. And p.p.s., is it the original Beatles version, or is it the Joe Cocker version?

For those wondering how the pup is doing, he's quite well :) Rambunctious, to say the least, but quite happy :)

Sometimes a bad shot works out ok. This one was a massive overexposure, but I liked the hand-drawn quality it ended up with. Couldn't have made this shot if I had tried, but sometimes the mistakes end up ok.

I haven't done many shoots with toddlers and infants, but so far every time I seem to get a "meltdown" shot. I'm starting to think it's not a coincidence...

Oliver, getting ready to eat my camera.

In case you're all wondering how Ollie's doing this afternoon :)

I actually had to get him to look up from attempting to eat the bottles of beer to get this shot. What a good boy!

Chillin out back at the neighborhood happy hour Friday night. Gotta hand it to him, he's good about not eating the camera even though I'm constantly sticking it in front of his face. Fingers and toes though? Well, those are expendible.

One of Oliver's favorite toys, and one of his favorite poses. There's no doubt about it, he's a goofball.

Seriously, the dude's got a thick noggin.

Sorry for the delay in posting new images of Oliver, as it turns out having a pup takes a lot of work!! So to make up for it we'll do two today and two more tomorrow...

Yes, I'm gonna be that guy that posts a million shots of his dog. But seriously, if your pup climbed into the fridge to cool off his belly every time you opened the door, wouldn't you post a shot of him?

The puppy has officially arrived :)

Kylie and Phil, of Kung Fu Fighting fame.

Everyone has a limit...

A bit of playing around after taking some shots of Kylie and her brother Phil.

A light moment in a shoot I did a few days ago :)

Two today...

Good luck at the new job Kat!

I got the green light today to post some of the photos I've been taking over the last few weeks. Things will be a bit heavily slanted toward wedding photography in the next few posts, but I hope you enjoy the images.

Another of the shots from Rockburn.

Sorry to those who've been waiting patiently for an update. I actually have been shooting some, but as it is assistant work to someone else, I'm not yet sure whether it's ok to post that work. In the meantime, I finally found a chance to get out and photograph some for myself. It's been a long time since I've just gone out to shoot, and it's been even longer since I've had a useful polarizer to take with me. Now I know how much I missed that thing :)

So here's the introduction to my next series of photos. These were all taken in Rockburn Branch Park, a nice little park down the street from me here in Maryland. In fact, all of these shots are taken from spots along my regular running route, and I was scoping them Tuesday night on my run. I was kicking myself as I ran that night, thinking that the weather and lighting wouldn't be good enough to shoot until after the weekend. Luckily Mother Nature handed us a gorgeous day today, and I manged to get out and take a few. Hope you enjoy them!

Next on the docket: I'll attempt to determine why GoDaddy doesn't support the EXIF functions in php. I'm sure I can talk them into fully supporting my site, don't you agree?

If you haven't already had a chance to, please check out the article I wrote for the May issue of Photoblogs Magazine.

This shot came out slightly different than I had pictured it in my head. First, I had expected that this would look best in black and white, likely with a blue filter to emphasize the texture of my hands and the grain, but when I viewed it on my screen I found that I liked the warmth of the skin tones and the grain. Second - and this is the big one for me - I had wanted this to have the feeling of offering up the grain, like a gift. Think of the Allstate hands... I couldn't quite get the feeling I was looking for while I was shooting, and it wasn't until after looking at the shots on my computer that I figured it out: my thumbs are spread wide, rather than tucked in to my hands. Think how much warmer and more welcoming this would be with the thumbs tucked in. Amazing what the little details can do...

Sorry for the long week of no posts, it's been a busy few days! Khoi (INFRANGIBLE) defended his MFA thesis on Friday, so I headed up to Ithaca to see his exhibit and join in on the post-exhibit festivities. Congrats again Khoi, it was a great show!

Another of the shots from the shoot with Gary. This one was fun, because we got to be serenaded by great music while I was shooting.

This is my 400th post to StrattonBrewing, so with it I'm also unveiling the new site design. Hope you enjoy it!

- Jim

Sap buckets collecting the good stuff that will ultimately become Pure Vermont Maple Syrup. Mmm...maple syrup...

Sorry for the long hiatus, it's been a busy couple weeks. I've been shooting (you'll see some of that soon), and I've been polishing up the new site (you'll see that soon too). So here's a little something goofy from this weekend to get things rolling again.

On a technical note, for those who care, I had some serious noise issues with the shots up in Vermont this weekend. I'm fairly sure that I have sufficient literature in my possesion to figure it out, but I haven't delved into it yet to check. Short version: I accidentally left the "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" on for the last two shoots (note to self: add that to the list of things to check before and after every shoot). It doesn't seem to have been an issue for the studio session, but these outdoor shots (diffuse, cloudy light; mildly but not horrendously underexposed) have some serious noise even in the midtones. I need to run some test shots and do a bit of research, but if you have any thoughts let me know.

I would love to go back to this spot and spend some time at this spot with a medium or large format camera. I love this scene, but I was only able to grab it with my digital as we sped by on a train. The lighting in the foreground was terrible, although I really like the softly lit background. Ahh well, next time around.

Hitting the archives to mix things up a bit. I have a few more shots from the shoot with Gary, but I'll wait a few days before they reappear.

Today is the 2nd anniversary of my first post on StrattonBrewing. This site, the photography that goes into it, and the interaction with all of you has all meant an amazing amount to me over these past two years. You've all helped me find my creativity again, and for that I thank you!

- Jim

A shot of Gary and his violin, as he was getting it ready to play on the steps of the Baltimore Museum of Art.

I'll have a few more shots of Gary to post this week, but somehow this one just seemed most appropriate to post first. So here, sporting this winter's latest photo fashions: introducing J Crew Gary Lin.

Gary came down on Saturday to have me shoot his violin and I also used the chance to grab a few portraits of Gary and Katie. This is the choice shot from the weekend, although I will be posting a few more over the course of the week. The shoot was fun, definitely entertaining trucking props and gear all over town to shoot some location portraits. And as always when Gary is in town, the afterparty was a rockin success :-)

Introducing, officially this time, the lovely and talented Ms. Kylie Eden.

Sorry that it's taken so long to get these shots posted, but here, by popular demand, are the much-touted shots of Kylie and Rob. I will have some better shots of both Kylie and Rob to put up in the near future, I promise. But these were the culmination of a fun evening, and, well, we were all obviously laughing our asses off at this point in the evening. Definitely some fun, if not entirely technically "good" portrait work :)

Going back through the Alaska photos to find some of the shots that I passed by the first time through. There are actually quite a few that I like, so I should be putting up a few over the course of the next couple weeks. And I promise inappropriate pictures of Kylie and Rob are coming soon.

We had some friends over for a very tasty dinner and some equally tasty wine. I warned everyone beforehand that I was planning to ply them with alcohol to get them to pose for me. Well, mission accomplished! I don't recall what particular song Katie was singing here, but I do recall that we were all laughing fairly hard at this point. It only went downhill from here. More photographic evidence to follow shortly :-)

This shot definitely isn't perfect, and in fact it's nowhere near as good as it was in my mind. But, well, I still like it... This is another shot from the day of rollout (when the launch vehicle rolled to the pad, the morning before our first launch attempt). I could use some fill on the face of Mike Gast (the Lockheed Martin VP pointing at the rocket), and I would definitely prefer to have been in a spot where his pointing hand wasn't lost in the background of the catenary tower, but what can you do but live and learn? So hear it is, hope you enjoy it.

Played around with light painting for the first time. Think this is something I'm definitely going to enjoy.

In other news, the New Horizons launch window officially closes this afternoon. I could still be down there trying to launch that thing... Glad it's on its way!!

And, finally, Happy Valentine's Day :)

One last one from the lighting tests I was doing last week.

This was actually just a test shot to get the focus (which was definitely tough to get right when it was just me), but I actually like the simplicity of it.

I need to get better looking models.

Playing around with some set lighting. Think this is gonna take a while to get good at ;)

One last shot of Jupiter overhead of New Horizons sitting on the pad. For those of you who are interested, you can track the progress of the spacecraft as it heads out of the solar system here. Like I said, this will be the last of these posts, it's time to move on and start working with some new images and projects.