2.1.25Southgate House RevivalTravis’ band, Last Scouts, performing on stage at Southgate House Revival. They added a new member after two previous members moved on.

2.2.25Baby Shower II: The SequelLast Sunday, we celebrated Justin and Annie as they prepared for their newborn baby’s arrival. Archie, their son, was born healthy and happy on the final day of January. Today, we celebrated Mike and Maria as they prepare for their newborn baby’s arrival! Maria has been in our lives as long as Myrtle, actually. She’s run a doggy daycare out of her house for years, and Myrtle has been going there or seeing Maria in some capacity almost every other week for the last 7 years. Myrtle’s boarded with her when we’ve gone on vacation, Maria was her handler in our wedding, and she’s been one of our best friends for ages. Really happy for them, and excited they get to start a new chapter in their lives with their upcoming little one. It’ll feel strange not to go to another baby shower next Sunday.

2.3.25Blast From the PastMy friend Caitlyn is moving to a new apartment and needs furniture to make the surprisingly large space feel like a home. She’s gotten fantastic deals on antiques from various outlets but needed a few other standard items, namely a couch.Tonight, we gave her the first couch I ever bought: one of those Karlstad IKEA couches in isunda grey. It’s the right size for her place, and we were looking for a good home for it anyway. The timing just worked out perfectly. I had that couch with me for 13 years, and I’m proud that it stayed in such good condition considering it was my main living room couch for an entire decade. I’m delighted she will be able to use it.Anyway, we helped her move the couch and a couple of other pieces of furniture into her new place this evening. While there, she gave us a tour, and I saw this on her wall. It was an interview I did with her back in 2018. We used to do interviews with local photographers every other month or so, and I chose her as one of my features at one point. I’ve never seen anything I’d written etched into brass and placed on a plaque like that before. It warmed my heart that she thought this was special enough to memorialize.

2.4.25Split Diopter FunI use my split diopter so infrequently, I have to relearn its eccentricities whenever I do. It’s a weird optical element that produces a wholly unnatural effect focus-wise, but I really like its unique ability to facilitate storytelling in a single frame.I thought it would be fun to capture a body cleaning. By making the subject and action both in focus despite different depths, the viewer can easily infer what’s going on. The q-tip in hand in the background is understood to be soaked with rubbing alcohol because the other q-tips are sitting next to the bottle in the foreground. And because the diopter produces a nice bokeh on the foreground subject, there’s less of a need to worry about simplifying the background on the left half of the image in order to make the subject pop.It feels a little like an ad for rubbing alcohol in this instance. I’ve always wanted to try it with people, though. Maybe the next time I bust this thing out, I can try for something a little more poignant.

2.5.25Coming AlongMost of my work this week has been at my desk, but I got to briefly go up to Mt. Washington today to make a new set of progress photos for Jake’s property that he’s flipping.

2.6.25The Tiny Fainting CouchCaitlyn bought a hilariously small fainting couch for her apartment. She didn’t realize it was so small until she went to pick it up. It’s more of a foot stool than anything. It may be a good Victorian dog bed. Either way, it’s falling apart at the legs.The connection point for the legs is broken and falling apart due to age and rough use over the years. The wood is splintered and broken, so screwing the legs into it won’t work. I need to cut out the broken wood and replace it with a new foundation piece. Reattaching the legs will be straight forward at that point because they’ll have something solid to grip.

2.7.25Lighting TestAside from a slight bump in contrast and a little bit of vibrancy added, this image is unaltered. It was achieved by adding pink and yellow gels to two strobes that are pointed at a white backdrop at roughly a 45-degree angle. I intentionally didn’t light the subject (moi). When the lights fire simultaneously, they blend together and create a beautiful gradient background.I’m testing this setup because I have a portrait shoot coming up that will require a fun background like this. I’ve rented studio time up the street at The Lodge so I have more room to move lights around and give the client room to breathe. The rate is reasonable, and the space is excellent; I can’t wait to set up and start making some good stuff.I have a third light on order at the moment. I’ll need it for this shoot. I plan to light the background like it looks above and put a soft box on the subjects/eyelighter below to illuminate their faces, Once I have three studio lights, I feel like I’ll be ready to tackle just about any headshot situation. I made it work with two for a long time, but three will make everything easier.

2.8.25Diffuser TestIt’s been kind of blah outside, and I’ve been home more than usual. As such, I’ve been experimenting with tests of my gear (see yesterday’s post) to stay active and keep myself sharp.I decided to illustrate the effects of various diffusing materials with this one. From the way different grids focus the light at specific intervals to how different materials scatter and soften it, choosing the right element to put in front of the flash bulb is key to getting the effect you need. I think instead of using that giant soft box, I’m going to use the plastic and soft cloths for smaller subjects like this. They’re more physically manageable and seem to do the same thing at this scale.The grids are great for controlling light bleed. I’ll use them when I need to carefully light one specific part of a subject without interfering with the background.

2.9.25Candlestick MakerAshley loves this local shop called Hoste in Walnut Hills. It’s full of kitchen-related wares and decor items that fit her sense of style. This morning, Hoste held a candle-painting event that Ashley and Allie attended. These are the two designs Ashley made.

2.10.258K HeadshotsWent over to 8K Construction’s office to do some headshots.

2.11.25The Cold and FrostAnother product shoot I can’t share required a trip out to Indian Hill this morning. After what feels like an endless amount of snow so far this year, we were hit again with another round, albeit far less this time. It complicated the travel/loading/unloading process with all my gear, but thankfully nothing got wet or damaged. After I got home, a chill that seemed to plunge deep within my bones made sure that I would stay in the rest of the evening. Without anything photographically to share for the day, though, I knew I had to do something for this project. I stuck my camera out of the back door on a tripod and captured the cold and frost in what little light remained. The long exposure did a lot to brighten the scene up.

2.12.25Sikander: Collective BehaviorTonight, the Art Museum debuted its newest exhibit, Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior. From the CAM website:“For more than three decades, Shahzia Sikander (born 1969, Lahore, Pakistan) has been reframing South Asian visual histories through a contemporary feminist perspective. Working in a variety of mediums—painting, drawing, print, digital animation, mosaic, sculpture, and glass—she reimagines the past for our present moment. Throughout her practice, she considers diasporic experiences, histories of colonialism, and Western relations with the global south and the wider Islamic world, often through the lens of gender and body politics.”Brooklyn-based Hyperallergic, a publication that covers art news, came to Cincinnati to cover the exhibition’s opening. The museum needed high-quality images for its upcoming piece and asked me to do them. After I shot the exhibit, I photographed the event that followed, which included a meet-and-greet with the artist and a talk between Shahzia and the curator, Ainsley Cameron. Choosing a photo of the day was difficult, but I settled on this one of Shahzia speaking in front of attendees.

2.13.25r/PerfectFitThe title is misleading; despite how it looks, it wasn’t a perfect fit that would be worthy of submission on the r/PerfectFit subreddit.Caitlyn needed help picking up an antique vanity she found on Facebook Marketplace. She didn’t know the exact dimensions, but she knew it was roughly 70 inches tall. At that height, it’d fit in the Crosstrek, but I didn’t ask as many questions as I should’ve about width and depth. After following her to a remote location up a dirt road on a large hill deep in Alexandria, I saw the piece and realized it wouldn’t be as easy as I thought.I had to push the driver and passenger seats up as far as they’d go before the hatch shut. Even still, the piece pressed firmly against both the seats and back door, requiring a bit of muscle to latch it. The real test was getting into the seat and driving 20 minutes to Walnut Hills. Being 6’2”, it was challenging, to say the least. Though the piece fit perfectly snug in the entirety of the car behind me, I was not a perfect fit up front.Though painfully uncomfortable, the trip went smoothly, and we managed to lug this thing up a flight of stairs before setting it down in its final resting place in her new office.

2.14.25Glenway Storefront8K renovated a building on Glenway that will house a barbershop and a store with apartments above them. They asked me to come out to grab a few photos of the work as well as a portrait of each of the owners of the businesses that will occupy the storefronts on the first floor.I wish I’d gotten the name of the man in photo, but I was having issues with my speedlight and that required all of my attention at the time, and I just wanted to make sure I got the shot.

2.15.25Tiny ToothpasteAshley had business in Columbus, Indy, and Louisville over the last few days. She forgot to pack toothpaste before she left, so she went down to the customer service desk at one of the hotels to see if they had any. They gave her the smallest toothpaste money can buy: a 0.17 oz tube weighing 5 grams.She brought home an extra tube to show me, and I thought it was hilarious. I immediately started devising a fun way to showcase this diminutive hygiene product. I placed it on Mytle’s nose and took a photo first, but I wanted to show how small it is next to similarly-sized household products almost anyone would recognize.

2.16.25TWUCCSaw this adorable truck with a foreign license plate parked at Lowe’s. Then, I saw the local license plate on the top right corner of the cab: TWUCC. I’m still chuckling about it hours later.If I ever bought a truck, I’d want this. Something small with an open back bed that isn’t so large that you have to climb into it. It’s perfect.

2.17.25Macro: CRT ScreenFailing to find anything interesting to photograph today, I got out a bunch of macro diopters, stacked them on top of each other, and started looking at things with textures and translucent properties to see what I could capture. I think I’ve done a close-up of a CRT screen like this before, but I don’t think I’ve done it on the A/V IN screen before.

2.18.25Altura ApartmentsMA Design worked to reimagine a former four-story office building in Mason into a rental community called the Altura Apartments. The massive facility offers your standard new-build apartments in several floorplans named after Italian cities, loads of communal space (including the lounge pictured above), and a vast array of outdoor amenities that we didn’t shoot because there’s snow on the ground and it’s February in Ohio.

2.19.25Steve-ing ThingsSteve came over to help figure out a complicated lighting setup we plan to use for an upcoming shoot on Friday. We’re photographing him and his co-hosts of the Streaming Things podcast for their social media marketing. This particular shot required four lights: purple and orange on the white backdrop, a neutral white key light on the right side of his face, and a Speedlight outfitted with an orange gel to illuminate his left side.It took about two hours to set up, dial in the way we wanted, and record all the necessary settings to duplicate it later in a different space. It’s times like this that having a dedicated studio would be nice.

2.20.25A Portrait of RobRob needed a professional headshot for his job. We made this image then went out to eat wings and drink beer.

2.21.25That’s a Wrap!Cast photo after we finished creating all the marketing images for the Streaming Things podcast. I rented out a three-hour block at The Lodge in Dayton, KY, to allow enough time to set up and take proper photos. While we didn’t get to the complicated, colorful photos Steve and I planned a couple of days ago, we did a ton of white background stuff they’ll use. All in all, it was a successful shoot.The Lodge was also a perfect space for something like this. At $30/hr, it’s affordable and convenient. I think I’ll utilize this space again in the future if I need somewhere to set up for something of this scope.Back row: Hatter, Kit, Andy, Jimmy, AlexFront row: Madison, Steve, Erica

2.22.25Vintage ShowA couple weeks ago, I did a shoot at Vintage on Race Street for GBBN. Those shots turned out nicely, but they wanted me to return to the space when it was open so I could capture how the bar looked during a live show.Normally, architectural shoots are slow and methodical, with time to dial in settings and perfectly stage everything. This return visit was anything but normal.I brought Ashley, Allie, and Travis with me to set them up at the corner of the bar. They’d get drinks, and I’d position a tripod across from them, looking at them and beyond toward the stage. However, when we arrived, it was immediately apparent that wouldn’t happen. The bar was crowded and full, with a waiting list of 115 people (roughly two hours). The person I was told to contact about setting this up never got back to me, either.Long story short, I went back to the bar at 9 PM when the show was supposed to begin, explained to the hostess and bouncer why I was there, and did a few handheld shots over my head at a high ISO that I would later correct in post. It wasn’t what I planned, and I honestly felt bad about not being able to control the scene the way I wanted.I did the best I could, considering the situation.

2.23.25Macro: LCDI used the diopter set from the other day and photographed this LCD screen from as close as possible. As a kid, it always blew my mind that LCD crystals could cause visible shadows on the backdrop behind it. Polarized light will always be a little bit of a mind-blower.

2.25.25Macro: FlowerStaying with the diopter theme of late, I aimed it centimeters away from the center of a flower. I’m less interested in what’s in focus than the pillowy softness of the image around it (and the chromatic aberration that comes with filtering light through so many glass elements).

2.25.25The Highest ComplimentA couple of weeks ago, I photographed Shahzia Sikander’s new exhibit, Collective Behavior, at the Cincinnati Art Museum. She liked the images so much, she contacted me directly to do more photos for her, specifically of the painted windows she made in a separate gallery. I went to the museum today to capture those windows and a few other pieces for her.I obviously have to make money to stay alive, but it doesn’t drive me creatively. It’s not a motivator beyond sustenance and wanting to live a comfortable life. Hearing that I did a good job from a living artist of her caliber, however, has the opposite effect. It’s more motivating than anything I can think of. I thrive on the quality of work and recognition for doing a good job.

2.26.25The Wayfarer BarJohn wanted shots of the bar his shop made for Wayfarer Tavern. They did a tremendous job. I’ve eaten at this place every week since they started serving pizza, and it’s the closest thing I have to a local that isn’t Unataza Coffee a few doors up the block.If you haven’t had their pizza yet, plan a visit. You’ll be more than satisfied.

2.27.25The Mercantile LibrariansPhoto of the Mercantile Library crew for the library.

2.28.25Precipitation RetaliationThe annual burning of the papier-mâché snowman to ward off bad weather for next weekend’s Bockfest celebration took place at Northern Row this evening. The Sausage Queen delivered the fatal flame to the lighter-fluid-soaked effigy, nicknamed Frothy the Snowman. It went up in about 90 seconds as the crowd clapped and recorded on their phones.Afterward, I enjoyed a hot poker in my beer as part of the celebration.