Potpourri Week

The past week was one of my "dense" ones, both in variety of jobs and tasks, and in the way one thing ran up to the next with barely any relaxation time. Still, I had the opportunity to be creative and have fun, which is why it sometimes really doesn't feel like work - but don't be filled with envy until you've tried my life for a few weeks! At any rate, that's why nothing new showed up here. I think I'll do my catching up in reverse.

Sunday began with five hours of volunteer photography for the SPCA of Wake County, specifically to do "Santa Paws" - portraits of pets and their families with Santa Claus. The pet owners contribute to the organization in exchange for photos. Many of the pics are rather "normal looking", that is, suitable for holiday cards to be sent out to family and friends. The settled and attentive look of the animals belies the effort that goes into catching what is most often a very brief moment of calm. "Santa" has many years of experience at this, and also not only knows animals, but clearly loves them. They virtually always feel the same way, so one of my favorite shots was this candid moment from off on the side of our small, crowded set.

This little pooch almost disappeared into Santa's beard!

This nice boxer wanted to be sure Mr. Claus listened carefully to his wish list.

After many hours of shooting mostly dogs (and people), we were rewarded with the chance to pose this group. I think that might be an Australian shepherd on the rug...but I may be forgetting who mentioned that breed about which dog. Anyway, look at the parrot on the man's shoulder.

Here's a portion of the same photo, so you can get a better look. This gray bird has red tail feathers, matching Frosty's nose.

We all got hungry in the course of the work, and I'm glad I managed to grab a slice of pizza during a two minute break. The bird seemed to want a chance at the leftovers.

The rest of my Sunday involved playing a concert of Mozart #25 and Shostakovich #7 in Chapel Hill with the North Carolina Symphony. It was a workout of a day, but now let me back up to Saturday. I had the honor of photographing a lovely outdoor wedding at the Umstead Hotel. It's late fall, and it was quite cool, but the bride was more than game for the weather, and it was great to be out there. I have a lot of editing to do, of course, but here is one photo that I liked right off the bat.

See, when I tell people that doing a bit of sports shooting is good practice for weddings, I'm not kidding! After the wedding, I played the previously mentioned concert program in Raleigh's Meymandi Concert Hall (second of three performances of that program). Before I leave the subject of the wedding, though, here's one more shot, done during the ceremony:

I think it shows a lot of how they feel about each other, and to me that is the most important goal of wedding photography. That's all the wedding photos I'll show for now, but let's back up further to Tuesday, when I did head shots for 52 musicians of the Durham Symphony. Here are a few.

By the way, I'm their official photographer, so you can see a lot of my work on their website.

Speed work is beginning to seem normal to me, so I'll need to do some slow, contemplative landscape photography to be sure I keep a balance. I did do some nature photography today, but that's for another post.

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