Jan
28

5×5: 1

Sometimes we become so entrenched in our lives that we forget to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us. As a photographer, this can become a difficult trap. I encounter so much inspiration in our travels, when everything is new to me or significant in Very Important Ways. It is, I think, important that we remember to keep our eyes open at home as well.

One of the things I love about Eugene is our market culture. Many of the neighborhoods in our little town have neighborhood markets. Each of these markets reflect the nature of their neighborhood. I’ve always wanted to spend time photographing these places and exploring their relationship to their area.

I also began to think about challenging myself to create five images within a five block area. Each of these images had to be unique to me. I couldn’t go back to Red Apple and shoot again (as much as I wanted to), or get the same old shot of Tiny’s. So, I put the two thoughts together and created the 5×5 Challenge.

Every week I will be selecting one of the neighborhood markets in my town and photographing within five blocks of it. I will then select five images and post them here on the blog. My goal is to continue this for five weeks. Seemed appropriate, no?

So, without further ado:

5×5: 1. Red Barn Natural Grocery

What do you think? Do you have any location suggestions for me?

Jan
25

The business of the thing.

I’m sorry there haven’t been many new photo updates. Running a business is full of little bits and pieces that are all Very Important. Mage and I have been pretty engrossed in getting everything put together.

If you have been following for a while, you have probably noticed that we got a new look in December. While the previous website was good for 2008, it looked pretty dated four years later. We made a new one, launched it in December, and realized that we needed something a bit different with more functionality. Hint: Don’t design a website in Dreamweaver using tables/slices. This is what the internet calls, “Doing it wrong”. So, Mage very patiently smiled and nodded at me, made me design some files for him, and redid the whole site. I’m pretty sure he was suffering from a bit of geek rage, but we all learned a lesson. Leave the coding to Mage. Leave the pretty making to Gretchen. Go check out the site again. It has a couple new features and new photos too gaze upon.

New Sparkle Website!

We had a lot of people asking about purchasing prints, so we opened an Etsy site for print sales.  It is linked from the site, or you can get there from here:

New Fantastico Etsy Page!

Of course, we also started a Facebook page. How could we not? After the first month, we hit our first goal of 100 likes. Woohoo! If you haven’t yet, go over here and like us.

New Awesome Facebook Page!

And finally, our business cards came in. I love them so very much! The colors are great, the images look perfect, and I’m pretty sure they could be used in place of a throwing star in battle. These suckers are strong and pointy!

(finally, a freaking picture)

As you can see, we’ve been pretty busy. We have some neat plans coming up, that I promise to post about soon. In the meantime, I’m going to try not to code, or build any new sorts of websites, or anything of that nature….for at least a week!

 

Jan
11

Choconut Creek

We have been visiting family for the past week and it has been a lot of fun. Today we’re meeting up with an old friend and heading to Ithaca, NY for a fantastic photo day. In the meantime, here are a couple shots from Choconut Creek in Vestal. My Grandparent’s house used to be very close to this spot, and I have a lot of good memories of playing back here in the summer.

These images were designed to be a triptych, but I think they work well on their own as well. As with everything I’ve been shooting lately, they want to be Really Big!

Dec
30

Flint!

That is all.

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