8.1.22The Buck Stopped ThereThere’s a buck that hangs out around our house. He trots around in the woods nearby, occasionally walking the public steps to get to the hole in the chainlink fence that leads to an empty lot next to the nearby train tracks. He eats the fruit from the tree and grazes on who knows what in the tall grass while two babies frolic (yes, frolic) around and play with each other. His antlers, both dull and furry with only a few points, set him apart from the many females who hang out with him. I saw him resting under an evergreen with a baby deer yesterday evening and got his photo with my Z9. Today’s capture was with my phone.

8.2.22Four Years ApartHave I ever done a before/after for the daily photo? The daily photo bible states I cannot post an old photo in place of a new one, a film photo from a different day, a digital illustration, or a screenshot of something, but what about an old shot along with a new shot? I think it counts. The top image is from the first floor of the flat iron building at the top of Sycamore Hill in Mt. Auburn, and the bottom image is what it looks like today. The building is now home to a cafe called (you’d never guess) Flatiron Cafe. I originally shot it in August of 2018 when The Port stabilized it. It’s really cool to see a preservation success story like this.

8.3.22Resin CoastersTried out something new. Broke apart a sliver or walnut, made a form, and submerged the shards into clear resin. Waited 24 hours for the resin to cure, broke the form, rounded the edges, and polished it smooth. Might make more at some point.

8.4.22CataloguedIt’s generally not difficult to aim a wide angle lens at a room and get a shot that conveys what the space is about. It’s useful when depicting the interior of a place in a matter-of-fact way, and if you play with the angle through micro-adjustments, you can come up with really nice, artful photos of that space. Personally, I find using a telephoto more challenging and rewarding when it comes to real estate. I use one when I’m through with the wide angle shots and need to concentrate on lifestyle/decor content. It’s great for little vignettes that speak to the interior design more than the architecture, though there’s always room to capture both simultaneously if you find a good angle to do so. This is mostly a decor shot geared toward a feeling of cleanliness and style more than anything else. I have a lot to learn about styling scenes, but I’m usually trying my best to make photos worthy of a furniture catalogue.

8.5.22Do Not PetEvery intention I had of getting work done for the upcoming farmer’s market was dashed when I realized 1) it was First Friday on the Avenue, and 2) I had the entire day tomorrow to work on it, meaning I didn’t need to toil alone in the shop tonight after all. We joined our neighbors and walked to the festivities, enjoyed a few drinks and some food, and hit a couple of bars on the wall back home. This little dog, who looks cute enough, was growling at me while I stood nearby his yard at one of the bars. Using my most soothing voice, I tried to reassure him I wasn’t a threat and began to offer my hand as an olive branch to peace before he bared his teeth and I understood he was dialed to only protect his yard. There would be no petting this adorable little bear trap this day.

7.6.22True BelieverToday’s checklist: Provided tech support to Ashley’s grandfather. Drank a cup of coffee from my favorite mug. Hand-sanded vertical plant stand legs. Listened to the Bouncing Souls’ first four albums. Built a crude drying rack for stained plant stand components. Ate two bacon double stacks and chicken nuggets from Wendy’s. Applied pre-stain conditioner to components and double checked pre-orders. Successfully stained 12 stands using six different finishes. Went to Lowe’s for another can of English Chestnut. Finished listening to the rest of the Bouncing Souls’ discography. Toyed with wood glue versus CA glue + activator to see which would hold better (settled on a mix of the two). Cleaned up shop and watched Star Trek: Voyager The Killing Game, Parts 1 & 2. Finished the evening watching a video of a chaotic 2005 Bouncing Souls show on YouTube.

8.7.22Rad FindThe plan was to work a half day at the shop today because our big Pfizer job is nearing its deadline and there’s some concern about our ability to meet it on time. But Ashley was having an emotional day, and seeing how upset she was, I didn’t feel right leaving her all alone at home with nothing to do on a Sunday. I texted John and told him I’d do overtime tomorrow in order to have today off and he understood. We loaded up the pup and went to a couple of parks before randomly stumbling upon a walkway that led to a public pool in Covington filled with dogs. It was the final day of the season for the pool, so the pool staff pulled a reverse-Baha Men and let the dogs in. Myrtle, being part fish, dragged us around to the entrance to get inside and hop in the pool. Needless to say she had the time of her short little life fetching ball in the water with all the others. It was a boatload of fun watching all the dogs do their thing and seeing Myrtle having a blast. On the walk back, I stopped to get a shot of my unironic favorite Covington building (pictured).

8.8.2215 HoursBourbon at the 13 hour mark. Pizza delivery sometime thereafter. A round of High Lifes and Nespresso coffee at 14 hours. It was a long, productive day at the wood shop. Our big Manhattan project is due Friday with quite a bit of work left to finish. John, Joe, and I took the last chopper out of the jungle at 11 PM, hours after the others had pushed the limits of putting their marriages and relationships with their children at risk by staying late to get it done. Three measuring cups—once destined to briefly hold resin before melting from an inevitable exothermic reaction—found themselves a more glamorous fate by holding ice cold pours of Old Forester to be cheers’d by three exhausted, dust-covered men.

8.9.22A Very Odd CoincidenceSomething strange happened today. As usual, I found myself on Twitter this morning and saw a photo I made years ago included in a semi-viral tweet about Cincinnati. The photo was of four colorful row houses at the base of Prospect Hill lined up neatly with the city in the background. I considered interacting with the tweet and pointing out that, yet again, my work has been divorced of credit, but decided to move on with my day. The account was one of those high-follower, faceless reposters that subsides on making inane claims solely for engagement. It wasn’t really worth the effort, and after yesterday’s 15-hour day, I was spent. Also, it’s Twitter; who gives a shit. Anyway, a long story short, I went about my shoots for the day and ended up in Prospect Hill for my final assignment before heading home. It was then I realized that the house I needed to photograph for the owner was, in fact, one of the same houses in that semi-viral tweet from earlier that day. It was a fantastically weird coincidence.

8.10.22Thief!Something (or someone?) has found the tomatoes. Our ripest candidate was stolen from its bed sometime in the night, and this grizzly murder scene was left for us to discover. Suspects so far: the squirrel, the raccoon, a very nimble deer able to hop privacy fences, a vegetarian cat, and me in a hungry fugue state.

8.11.22A Cooler DropVisited the Dalton Street Post Office for the first time in awhile. It took me a year, but I finally finished a roll of film that needed to be mailed out for developing. First full roll I’ve finished since summer of last year. My schedule has been too full of actual photo work for clients over the last year and I haven’t focused on analog photography for myself as a result. I don’t like putting rolls of film in outdoor mailboxes during extreme temperature months for obvious reasons, so I went to Dalton Street to make sure the drop was cool. I could simply drop it off at the post office down the street from my house, but Dalton is just too much fun to visit.

8.12.22PonesRode my bike up to the Art Museum this evening to photograph an event. I got there early to ensure I had enough time to cool down and clean myself up after riding up the hill (Ashley had the car and I wasn’t willing to pay $26 for a Lyft). Adequately cooled and with my Z9 slung over my shoulder, I hit the Grand Hall floor to document the evening. No speakers, no special exhibits, and no presentations tonight. Just gaiety and food and 1920s attire. Four dancers from Pones, a local performing arts group, circled the main hall before making their way to the courtyard. The low light inside wasn’t great for capturing their movements, so their move outdoors was beneficial for my task. I met Kim, one of the dancers later on, and she said they intentionally hammed it up for the camera, which in turn made for better photos. I’m not a dancer, but the joy they wore on their faces while dancing was intoxicating. Caught myself grinning ear to ear because they all seemed to be having the most amount of fun out of everyone at the party. Also, tonight was the first time I shot an entire event not in RAW format. I went fully JPG and trusted myself with the settings instead of relying on the safety net of the latitude RAW provides for post-production. It turned out great, and I didn’t have enormous files to sift through afterward. I think I’ll be shooting in that smaller file size more often.

8.13.22Surprises“Woah, I think there’s a groundhog eating an apple over there,” Ashley said, kneeling with her elbows on the windowsill, eyes behind binoculars pointed at the wooded lot across the street from our house. I ran to get the Tamron and quickly assembled my rig, propping it up on the frame of the window without a screen for added vibration reduction. It was a cute little surprise that made the afternoon special.

8.14.22Old HabitsYesterday I got a surprise text from my neighbor, Kevin Wright, asking if I wanted to have a few drinks on his porch that evening. With cheese coneys and a bottle of Uncle Nearest in hand, we ate and drank Highlifes and bourbon until 2 AM. His Boston-born neighbah, Charlie, wandered over at some point and we talked about everything from what our lives were like as kids to raising a new generation as adults (they’re both fathers). We also talked about something that I don’t talk enough about on here: how the pandemic has caused many of us to suffer from, at times, debilitating anxiety. While I don’t have panic attacks, I am really, really struggling with being social at the moment. The pandemic feels like it unraveled the years of work I did to come out of my introverted comfort zone and be someone people wanted to be around. Occasionally I can set the anxiety aside, but porch hangs are more my lane than crowded bars at the moment. I hide away in my house and build things in the workshop by myself, then I come upstairs long after Ashley went to bed to play this dumb Star Trek game on my computer like I’m 17 again.

8.15.22Wringing Out the ScheduleI need to go to South Bend and Ann Arbor tomorrow for work. Luminaut hired me to photograph a few projects they recently completed. So naturally, I’m getting my rental car, gear, and bag ready while also working a full day at the wood shop before doing a quick shoot in Covington this evening for Rebecca. Absolutely every minute of today has been filled with something to do and it feels like I’m wringing out a bone dry wash cloth to get even a single drop of water out of it at this point.

8.16.22The GraduateAs previously mentioned, I went to South Bend to do some photography for Luminaut. After shooting the renovated facility and packing up the rental, the trip extended over to Ann Arbor where I stayed the night in preparation to shoot two facilities nearby in the morning. They booked my hotel for me in advance—I stayed at The Graduate on E Huron Street. The hotel has a turn-of-the-20th-century-college theme to it that makes for a great mix of style and sophistication while remaining comfortable and fun. If you ever have a trip planned near or in Ann Arbor, I highly recommend this hotel. I don’t always enjoy drinking in the evenings as my default activity like many others do, but I still managed to check out the hotel bar off the lobby. These booths were absolutely perfect. Sadly, my hotel stay was only for one night. Were it required, I would’ve enjoyed staying another night to bask in the opulence of the hotel.

8.17.22Finding the Right AngleThe day consisted of shooting two final facilities for Luminaut in Ann Arbor, one of which had this lovely card game room adjacent to a small bar area. I had to figure out a way to show both areas together while finding a way to illustrate their relative separateness. This angle—one that shows the card table in the foreground and the bar area in the mid and backgrounds while the patterned chairs and color palette tied them together—seemed to make for the best composition. After finishing up with both facilities, I drove back to Cincinnati and collapsed on my couch around 7 PM.

8.18.22Crumbling LabyrinthMonmouth Street in Newport has this series of concrete staircases between 11th and 12th Streets on either side of the busy road. I haven’t done any research on them, but they look to be of WPA-era construction. I think they’re beautiful, personally, but they’ve been so neglected and forgotten that they’re almost useless at this point. The staircases either rise directly into chainlink fences to keep people from using them or they lead to sidewalks that end without a convenient way back down on the other side. The overhead lights built into the structure are rusted out, and several pieces of its concrete construction have seen better days. It’s clear that over the years intentional efforts have been made to discourage their use entirely, and instead of removing them, they exist as inefficient vestiges from a different time. The sidewalk next to each staircase is the only serviceable feature to get you from one block to the next. I’m going to try to find photos of it during its heyday when the stairs still led somewhere and the lighting worked. I bet it was gorgeous. It’s a shame we can’t care for pedestrian infrastructure the way we do cars.

8.19.22Quiet On the SetSteve needed help building and hanging custom sound panels in the podcast studio he’s developing in his second room. We made the frames in my garage last week, he upholstered and stuffed them with insulation, and tonight we carefully attached them to the wall. I’m not an audio engineer, but when you walk into a room with sound deadening panels, you feel it. His show, Streaming Things, took off like a rocket when he and his cohosts recently reviewed every episode of the latest season of Stranger Things. Due to their newfound popularity (they broke the top 250 of all shows on iTunes last month), they’ve made some pretty serious money and have reinvested it into making the show sound even better. I’ve been friends with Steve for nearly 20 years, and over the decades I imagined it would only be a matter of time before his talents took him into the limelight on a global scale. It’s nice to see it finally happen for him.

8.20.22Zablong-GoneI never ate here. Heard it wasn’t very good. And yet, before the pandemic, it always looked relatively busy during the work week. Guessing the pandemic killed it. The name sounds like an action word in colorful lettering within a spiky bubble layered behind a hero in a cowl in a retro comic book.

8.21.22DrenchedWe went for a long walk this evening and got absolutely soaked through when a rainstorm popped up before we could get home. The one time we don’t check the weather app first, it bites us. It was uncomfortable at first, but after giving up on any attempt to stay dry, we embraced the shower and enjoyed it (or at least Myrtle and I did). Ashley’s smile says “yay” but her furrowed brow says “I hate this.”

8.22.22iPhone’s Macro SettingA few weeks ago I got a new iPhone 13 Pro and didn’t realize it comes with a macro camera setting until I accidentally activated it at work. I’ve always wanted to buy a macro lens for my Nikon, but the applications for it are minimal. Can’t justify the spend. Anyway, I watched a YouTube video of a guy getting his ears cleaned in a parlor in Chinatown (NYC) last night and it was more satisfying than I could've possibly imagined, so I went back to using q-tips again even though I know it’s bad for me.

8.23.22Right Frame of MindI really like this podcast about the supernatural that’s hosted by Glynn Washington of Snap Judgment. While I don’t believe in any of it, I get a genuine thrill listening to ghost stories from people who believe them. While I was shooting this old-house-turned-new-Airbnb in Avondale today, I started listening to an episode about a scary ghost in an old house that terrorized a family and I had to switch over to another show. It was spooking me out too much. I guess you don’t have to believe to be creeped out!

8.24.22CookoutTo celebrate the hard work and end to the big NYC job, the guys at the shop had a cookout on the driveway. We smoked meats, fried a chicken, and dined on various hearty sides before digging into coconut cake and fried sweets for dessert. I fought a food coma for nearly two hours before finally driving home and collapsing on the couch in exhaustion. I didn’t get a good photo of the food because I was too hungry to stop and capture it.

8.25.22New ViewA relatively long walk up Lincoln while dodging deer with the dog along the way. My barber, Travis, told me it was a good view a couple months ago, but I didn’t see it for myself until recently when I drove down from Ft. Thomas. He was right.

8.26.22TubaTuba Baking Co. in Dayton, KY had a special tonight that’s lentil Cincinnati chili with onions and cheese over spatzle and it’s incredible. Best veggie chili I’ve had. It’s basically a fancy 3-way. We ate in the biergarten while a man in lederhosen played the accordion and sang in German. I could’ve eaten another whole plate of the spatzle, if I’m honest.

8.27.22The BusWe had plans downtown and rode the newly reinstated Southbank Shuttle. TANK, much like Metro, has infrequent service on regular routes, but the Southbank Shuttle does a loop every 15 minutes between Covington, Newport, and Bellevue. It’s handy because it’s only a dollar and we can get to the city’s core in no time flat. Much better than driving and parking, honestly.

8.28.22New OfferingsWe have one final farmer’s market next month, and I’m honestly a little tired of making plant stands. As such, I’m trying to come up with some new ideas for the next show. This door-side item holder was relatively simple to make and I think I’m going to make three of them for the next show. They’re made from oak, so it’s better wood stock than the pine I normally use to make stuff. The only issue is I will need to sell them for a little more because the price of the wood is higher. I thought the rounded edges on the platform and the shelf over the wood dowels gave it more personality than a simple plank with pre-made metal hooks.

8.30.22ButternutI photographed this place months ago in the morning and didn’t care for how the light was hitting it when reviewing the images. Since I’d gone to Queensgate yesterday, I was reminded to return to Butternut to get the same photo but in evening light instead. The result was better this time around. It only has a single 11-year-old review on Yelp. Ted S. gave it one star because his wife's hamburger buns molded before Independence Day. "The outlet refunded her money, but the damage was done," he wrote.

8.31.22Being “Quiet”Ashley had a very important phone call this evening, so it was my job to keep this monster silent and away from her so she could focus. We went upstairs and played with toys on the rug while the sun set.