Lately I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy photographing European designed windows in Portland and Seattle. I’m shooting for a Canadian company called Innotech Windows. After shooting the windows, I’m totally sold on how cool they are. First of all, they’re unique. They are all vinyl, same color inside and out, can span very large distances, but the topper is the tilt and turn or tilt and slide features. The handle turns down to tilt the window open a crack, or turn the handle up to turn the window open (like a traditional window). Or some tilt and slide across (like a sliding door). Innotech is one of the only companies providing such windows on this side of the Atlantic and I’m lucky enough to help promote them through my photography.

Anyways, the best thing about shooting downtown is meeting people. Here’s a funny excerpt from a conversation I had with an older lady on Capital Hill in Seattle:

she told me, “shooot me, i’m a pretty young bird… ya know, if you wanna phota-graph some of dem berds, you oughta go on over to the sail wood neighborhood, ya know, over there by the thea-der. ”

“actually, i’m photographing the windows for the company who makes them”

“oh yeah? well I got a pair of those binoculars, you know, the ones with the five dollar deal on tv? and i got a friend over there in sail wood who’s a real ornathologist. but he’ll tell you to watch out for dem crows! those crows’ll get ya good you know?”

Today was a long but very fun day. I had a full day of shooting local business for a downtown revitalization organization. It sure is great to see the local business owners coming together to improve the downtown area. I hope to talk more about this when the ads run over the summer.

For you camera nerds, today was a big day for me in that it was the first all day shoot that I relied 100% on my Canon speedlite (580ex). I know, I know it’s not a huge deal, but I’ve been using my Quantum Q-flash for years and I am so comfortable with that thing that I’ve had a hard time leaving it packed while on a shoot. But with the nature of this shoot (walking from business to business, shooting 10-12 businesses) the 580 just made sense. First of all, it was so nice not having a lead cell battery pack, using the 580 is so stinking light weight! Second, I was very impressed that 4AA batteries (2700 NiMh) lasted the entire day. I had a set with me ready to swap out and never needed them. I was able to incorporate some knowledge from the OneLight workshop by Zack Arias and had a great time getting to know some fun and smart local entrepreneurs. It’s days like today that I think, “Dang, I love my job!”

Thea is a friend and talented musician. I’ve gotten to know her and her husband through our church here in Bellingham. I’ll post some links at the bottom of this post so you can listen to some of her songs and see what she’s doing. I had the priviledge of capturing some images of Thea around town, I had a great time and laughed a lot. She has a very contagious laugh and smile.

Links:
Listen to Thea
Thea on MySpace

I guess it’s pretty obvious if you’re reading this but with the help of the guys at PWG, we launched a newly designed site and uncovered our blog!! Boone and I have been blogging somewhat regularly, mostly about what we’re up to, for the past 6 months and now the blog is incorporated into the site. So this is just a note to say “Hello” and that we hope to keep you updated on what we’re up to whether it’s photos of our families, images from shoots as well as anything that catches our attention.