Oh Deer

Due to the harsh [for western North Carolina] winter we had, there has been an abundance of salt left on the gravel driveway. And apparently deers love that salt, as we have a nearly daily visitor come by to lick as much as he/she can. For about 15 minutes, I was able to capture 98 shots, taken just 28 feet away from the deer [through the window in the garage door]. I posted my favorite 5 on both my White Squirrel Photography site [which is in major need of major changes!] linked below as well as my Flickr site. Hope you like them!

Interested in purchasing this image? See http://www.whitesquirrelphotography.com/outdoor to do just that!

Brew Tower

[as i write this, it is July 21st, but i did take photos each day for the last several days - am just now able to catch up and upload them!]

Standing outside the Asheville Pizza and Brewery in North Asheville, waiting for folks to show up to view the screening of our little 48 Hour Film Project film. The pizza place has great food [very slow service] and great beer. They make some of it themselves I think, and this is one of the towers they may do that it in. I’m not entirely certain they do that, but hopefully someone with more knowledge of the place can correct me!

Wheels Up

[as i write this, it is July 21st, but i did take photos each day for the last several days - am just now able to catch up and upload them!]

Late in the evening, July 17th, a super quick shot was taken by me of my portable dolly. After having turned in the film with 10 minutes to spare [which is better than the 10...9....8...seconds to spare when the BRCC team I was part of turned in their 2008 film!], I was pretty exhausted. Realizing I hadn’t taken a photo yet, I took a few shots of these wheels, as the title of this image popped into my head [it's an aviation term for when the landing gear has been retracted]. Since our film had aviation in it [one of the main characters was a mechanic at a small airport], I thought it fit. It was a long 48 hours and we didn’t stop filming until 2:30am Sunday morning! That is beyond insane, as most folks tend to wrap by 9-10pm Saturday night. That made editing a bit tough since the person doing the filming [me] was also the editor so my hopeful 2-3 hours of sleep got delayed until I just couldn’t stay awake any longer. But the film got turned in! It’s not as tight as I was hoping, but that’s mainly due to editing. The story, acting, lights, sound, and most of the camera work were spot on. A lot of me wishes I had done more fancy camera work and smoothed out a few of the shots in editing that were a bit jagged, but for a first time 48 hour film, it’s not too shabby!

Gathering for the 48

[as i write this, it is July 21st, but i did take photos each day for the last several days - am just now able to catch up and upload them!]

An hour before the genre, prop, line of dialogue, and characters are chosen, filmmakers gather at the Asheville Pizza and Brewery on Coxe Ave. south of downtown Asheville, NC. While this place as great food, they have the slowest service east of the Mississippi. But on the evening of the 15th, it wasn’t about the food or the service, but about the beginning of the 48 Hour Film Project! This is where it started and ended, 48 hours later! Once each filmmaker gets their genre and other elements, they go off and write, film, and edit a movie and turn in the 4-7 minute product here, 48 hours later!

Time to Focus

It is the eve of the 48 Hour Film Project here in Asheville, NC. It is time to concentrate and focus and have some fun making a movie over the weekend! From Friday night, until Sunday night, I shall be awake and together with Theresa Cox, leading a great team of talented people to undergo the magic that is making a movie. Or a short film. Friday night we pull our genre, get assigned a prop, line of dialogue and a character that must be in the film. Our writers and brainstormers begin the process until the writers feel they have enough to work with for a good, solid story. The brainstormers go home and sleep for a bit and then early Saturday morning, prep work begins and shooting will start. Saturday evening, shooting will end, and editing will start and go on through out the night. Then, before 7:30pm Sunday night, we turn in a 5-minute short film that will rock! Follow us on Twitter to see how the weekend progresses! Not sure how often we will update the Twitter account, but I’ll try and do it when we get breaks in the action.

Sawyer Motor Co. Building

The Sawyer Motor Co. building, in Asheville, NC. A bit of post-processing was done to this image.

Tools of the Trade

No Photoshop was harmed in the making of this shot [except for the Flickr version having my watermark in the lower right corner]. Just a shot of some of my computer tools that I hadn’t put away yet. I used the onboard flash on my camera [something i rarely use!] and zoomed at the same time, to create this unusual effect. I did it 13 times, and got the effect I wanted in two of the shots. This was my favorite of the 2.

Smells Like Summer

There’s a certain smell, in North Carolina, that lets you know summer is here. Perhaps it is a combination of the humidity and plant/tree growth. Whatever it is, the woods of Pisgah Forest, NC smelled like that today. It brings back many good memories of visiting out here as a kid in the summer.

A New View of Ingles

A late night shopping spree at the Fletcher, NC Ingles grocery store, and, with my camera at my side 30 minutes before midnight, I decided to snap a couple of photos. In a rare [for me] moment of distraction, I did not have the camera set the way I had intended it. The image was 1 stop darker than I was planning on, but I didn’t notice it until I had left Ingles. I was able to fix the problem in Aperture, but I was still not happy with my result. I had intended on overexposing the shot by a stop and 1/2. So the darker look was actually the opposite result I was looking for! While I was able to compensate for the 1 stop underexposed, I was not able to get the bright results I was originally looking for in post.

So…I decided to embrace the darkness. I applied some heavy editing to the corrected original and gave it a feel that reminds me of a shot of Grand Central Station in NY. I’m not sure I like it, as I was really trying to focus on the bright lights and this takes that brightness and removes all signs of it. But it is an interesting look! What does the original photo look like? Well, the one I corrected so it would be less dark is going up on Flickr, and I’ll edit this post in a few minutes with the direct link to it so you can see the “before” and “after” [though the before image i am posting was already edited to correct my boneheaded -1 stop mistake].

EDIT: Here’s the original, corrected for underexposure, version: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vjl/5921431914/in/photostream

White Squirrel on Target

A last-minute photo of a hand-painted white squirrel that Theresa built and painted for me several months ago. The target-like ground? That’s the result of a cool iPad app called SoftBox Pro [available at the App Store]. Oh – and that black background? The iPad cover.