Category Archives: Cool Stuff

Click on the title of the blog post to view the entire entry.


Classic Film Noir and Hollywood Glamour photography

September 25, 2008 – 1:43 pm

I really like the look of the black and white Film Noir Portraiture and Hollywood Glamour Photography that came out during the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s.  The high contrast of light and shadows convey such emotion.  Photographers like George Hurrell, who was the master, in my opinion, were so incredibly talented and adept at painting and shaping with light.  Today Jim Ferreira continues to shoot in this style for portraits and promotions.  

The photojournalistic style that is pervasive in wedding photography today is cool and now but classic portraiture will never die.  I attended one of the last seminars by the legend Monte Zucker and he said something that stuck with me.  He said, “Everyone is taking pictures of the bride’s shoes, dress and the wedding party jumping in the air, what is that?.  No one is taking classic portraits anymore.”  He told this room full of photographers, “Bridal portraits are what you should be doing.  It will set your businesses apart BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE IS DOING THEM!”

By Jeff | Also posted in Portraits, Wedding Photography | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Cypress Gardens

September 13, 2008 – 1:09 am

Today my wife and I went to Cypress Gardens.  The last time we visited I was pretty disappointed, the park was run down.  We were extremely pleased with what we found this time. 

The park has has a rich history that started more than 72 years ago and it has been billed as Florida’s first theme park paving the way for the likes of Disney and Universal.  Julie and Dick Pope founded the park and the botanical gardens in 1936.  The gardens became a backdrop for beautiful southern belles and many movies and advertising campaigns.  Familiar Starlets who have walked our paths include: Betty Davis, Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett, Esther Williams and Elvis to name just a few. Proclaimed the Water Ski Capitol of the World, Cypress Gardens became the birthplace of performance water skiing in 1941.

Over the years the park ownership has changed hands a couple of times.  With competition from the larger parks attendance dwindled and a decision to close the park came in April 2003 after the severe blow to the tourism industry on September 11, 2001.

In 2004 Kent Buescher, owner of Wild Adventures Theme Park in Valdosta, GA became interested in purchasing the park.  In the spirit of the Pope family who initially built the park, Buescher signed a historic deal in 2004 with state and local governments to save the attraction.  Now there are rides, Splash Island water park, a concert venue, historic gardens, animals, the famed Southern Belles and world-famous water ski show.

Here are a few pictures of the ski show and few sights from the garden.  Also, one of Nancy taking a picture of me photographing the ski show.  It would have been good to have my zoom lens but I wanted to travel light.

By Jeff | Also posted in Travel | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Green Fortune - Plantwall

September 4, 2008 – 12:25 pm

This is one of the coolest decorating things I’ve seen in a while.  I would love to have one of these in a studio.  You could put one in a reception area and also have one in the camera room.  Options as a background are huge!

     

 

GREEN FORTUNE - PLANTWALL.

By Jeff | Tagged | Comments (0)

Internet Radio

August 12, 2008 – 10:09 pm

I was surfing through the iPhone Applications on the Apple.com site and came across this really cool FREE music player Pandora Radio.  It is based on the Music Genome Project which is an ongoing project that analyzes songs and artists using up to 400 distinct musical characteristics.  These attributes are captured, cataloged, and entered into a database.  You just type in the name of your favorite artist or songs and the Genome Project does the rest.  It searches through its database and plays those songs and artists that share the characteristics of the song you entered.  It’s really cool, if it plays a song you don’t particularly like you can click a thumbs-down icon and the player knows not to play that song or songs that match its characteristics.  

I’m really enjoying having it on my desktop in my home office.  The sound quality is incredible and pumping it through my harmon/kardon speakers ROCKS!  An account is FREE and I’m looking forward to traveling next week and being able to take the “stations” that I have created with me on iPhone.  Oh, yeah, there is the iPhone app that I mentioned above.  Check it out.

By Jeff | Tagged | Comments (0)

Laura Lee Designs handbags

August 2, 2008 – 11:45 pm

Last weekend Cristiana Garcia and I photographed Ashley and Marc’s wedding at the Sandpearl Resort on Clearwater beach.  It was a beautiful wedding and I will post more about Ashley and Marc in a follow-up.  This is about the Laura Lee Designs handbags that Ashley and the bridesmaid carried.  Marc’s sister Alison “AT” works for Laura Lee and had these very cool Bridal Bags for the girls.  According to AT each of the Bags had over 3,000 beads sewn onto it!  It seems that these are the smaller bags and that some of her creations have 25,000-30,000 beads!!  Folks these are really works of art.  Check out the link above to Laura Lee’s site and be sure to read her About section, it’s a really interesting story of how her designer business came to be.

Alison, I’m glad I was able to get a few of these special shots for you.

 

 

By Jeff | Also posted in Wedding Photography | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)