Pat vs. the trash

May 15, 2013
Video
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I was mostly trying to make sure the boat I was in didn’t flip over while I was filming this one.

There were three pretty large guys in the canoe, and we were purposely running ourselves ashore regularly, forcing our captain to stabilize by digging his oar into the mud while we our weight away from the tipping vessel.

Voiceovers are usually not my thing, but this one called for it I believe, and they are something I want to get better at. My friends who watched it said I have a Discovery Channel monotone style, which I’m not sure is what I should be going for.

But just like every video I make – it’s a learning experience. As long as everything I make is better than the last thing I made, it’s progress.

Marathon Monday

April 24, 2013
Photography
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By now, you have surely been so saturated with heartbreaking news and images from the Boston Marathon that you are avoiding the myriad of followup stories as much as you can. I know I am.

So I wanted to take a second to remark on how beautiful that morning was, and how thrilled I was to be covering the Boston Marathon.

I was at the start of the marathon and until 4:09:43 into the race it was a wonderful event and an amazing day in early spring. Here are two photos for you – the kind that got swept away when news from the race was overshadowed by an afternoon that was the unfortunate foil of this remarkable morning.

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And here are the kinds of images you are surely seeing a lot of. Vigils sometimes give you the opportunity to do some interesting things with light because they usually take place in in the dark and most people are holding a light source right under their face.

The more I shoot, the more I’m learning that I really enjoy using negative to emphasize a subject. I find myself often seeking out photos with such a composition, especially when the subject’s face can tell the whole story.

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Last week was certainly a challenging one for a lot of people. I hope you and your family are alright.

Lost photos

March 21, 2013
Photography
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I lost around 100 photos on Tuesday. Mostly just a few shots of people shoveling out from a winter storm, nothing Pulitzer-worthy.

But when I saw the files were suddenly missing from my card when I went to edit, getting them back became a matter of principle, so I started searching the Internet for an answer.

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I came across a program called CardRescue, it was $40 which isn’t cheap for a broke journalist, but it worked like a charm. You just let the program search the drive in question and it will bring back any damaged files. It even brought back a few hundred shots that I had deleted on purpose.

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These are a few of the photos that the program brought back from the abyss, pretty cool if you ask  me.

I figure the foul weather conditions must have corrupted what was on the card somehow. I think it’s time to trash the amnesia-suffering SD card and invest in a rain cover for my gear.

Maui

March 14, 2013
Photography
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If you’ve ever endured a New England winter, you should understand why I decided to migrate to warmer climates for a week in February.

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Maui is one of the best places I’ve traveled to not just because it has beautiful weather, but because the people who live here are some of the most genuinely happy folks I’ve met. The island is about half tourists and half natives at any given time, and most of the natives have never stepped foot on the mainland.

This guy had eight surf boards on his truck along with everything else he owns.

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He stopped me when I was taking photos of his vehicle, reached under the animal skin covering his truck bed, pulled out a passion fruit and offered me half while chatting with me about why he loves living here.

maui blogThe pieces of coral by his hand, which he was eager to show me, spell out “LOVE.” He said he searched for months to find all four letters.

I would have spent all my time on Maui photographing beach bums if I could.

Homeless in Suburbia

February 25, 2013
Video
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A couple weeks ago I knocked on the door of a homeless family’s motel room.

I wanted to tell the story of someone who is struggling in an area where struggle is not something people generally care to notice. I searched the Internet for a good subject and eventually I came across Kathleen, a single mother living in a Northborough motel.

Taking this project on was both exciting and scary. I had never used video to tell such a serious or important story nor had I delved so far into my subject’s lives to capture intimate images before.

The whole experience of shooting, doing interviews and editing was one of my most important so far. I got a lot of out of it, mostly because I was so scared of screwing it up.

I have a photogenic girlfriend

January 7, 2013
Photography
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kim

I was hoping to make a new headshot for my Twitter page last week, so I employed my girlfriend as an assistant. In order to get the lighting correct I fired off a few test shots to see how the light would hit my own mug when I stepped in front of the lens.

The shots of me turned out looking terrible. I mostly looked deranged or in some intestinal pain as I tried too hard make the right face for the camera. But those test shots from earlier? Well, let’s just say I have a photogenic girlfriend.

I used a very small softbox placed far to the camera’s left to get this effect. The hardest part was making sure some light reached her left eye so I had her close her right eye and turn her head until she could see the softbox. For the highlight on her hair I used an LED grid made for lighting video. I set my  24-70 f/2.8 around 50mm and shot wide open at 2.8.

On Christmas and the crazies

December 19, 2012
Video
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It seemed like an appropriate time to make a video on Christmas so I started looking for someone who takes the holiday to a different level.

There is a certain class of people who I like to make videos on – the crazy ones. The ones who obsess and work in fits, possessed to make something they love.

So I just needed that, plus Christmas. Oh, you put 10,000 lights on your house and synchronize them to music and broadcast that music through the radio? Yea, that will work.

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