Two 1st Place awards from the WPJA

The WPJA (Wedding Photojournalist Association) just announced the winners of its quarterly clip contest for Q3, 2009. (From their website: The WPJA, an International, membership-based organization, represents professional photographers skilled in the documentation of weddings and events in a candid, unobtrusive style. The WPJA was founded to uphold excellence in the area of wedding photojournalism.)

I am happy to say I was awarded 1st place in two different categories for Q3, 2009. The first photo was from the wedding of Beth and Jimmy and placed in the "Getting Ready" category.



The second image was awarded in the "Dancing" category and was from the wedding of Paul and Lisa.




Full text and contest winners here.

Norris Cole feature.

Today's Cleveland SCENE has this feature I shot on basketball player Norris Cole.

SCENE - Norris Cole Story

Goodbye to Grandpa's.

Two months ago my Grandpa sold his house. He had owned it for over 50 years. He had it built, raised three kids in it and those three kids had more kids and we all were brought up in it in a certain way. It was time to sell. He spends most of his time down in Florida and keeping up the house was just too much for him as he is now in his 80s.

I spent one last morning taking a walk through what was now the shell of a place that was very dear to me. My original plan was to have the youngest in the family, Luca, my 2-year-old, pose in all the rooms of the oldest house in the family. Well. He's two. There's no photos of him. It wasn't a "listen to daddy day" ... so to speak. So I shot some images at the house after everything was gone.

When I first looked back at the images, I didn't like any of them. After a couple months, there's a little more heart in them than I had first thought.

The first images are from the outside of the house in and around the pool area.

Scene "Best Of 2009" photos.

Shot a couple of the 2009 Scene 'Best Of' photos that published this past Wednesday. The idea behind the photos was to combine three of the best things into one photo. Kinda like a best person, best thing and a best place. There wasn't really a reason for putting together what was put together, and I think that made for some good photos. I did two of these out of the bunch. I think there was about 8? total.

First up was Uno Lady with cupcakes from A Cookie and A Cupcake at Ambiance. What we had was Best Female Vocalist, Best Adult Toy Store and Best Cupcakes. Christa was a great great model and really played it up well. Her playfulness made the photo work. The first image is what Scene ran and the second is one of my other favorites. Too bad we didn't catch a color page for this shot.





Next up was local politico Kent Smith and artist Derek Hess at Mahall's with Spudnuts donuts. Kent and Derek were noted as Best Lefty Rabble-Rousers for their book Please God Save Us, Mahall's was Best Bowling Alley and Spudnuts were Best Donuts. Simple enough. Kent was way into this shoot playing on the Superman Clark Kent idea. His name, the cape and the glasses along with the Scene logo looking like the Superman logo made this shot work. Not to discount Derek who played off his end just as well, complete with Jose the Caped Dog-Crusader...

The first image is what ran in Scene and the second os one of my favorites too. This shot ended up black and white as well, but it reproduced pretty well. Both images (this and Uno Lady) ran full page which was nice....

Repo Man

October 7th issue of Scene had a few images from me on the Repo business here in Ohio. The story focused on the differences in the industry as compared to the reality show that's currently out there. An interesting read and a fun assignment. Used some glam lighting to to contrast the feel of the repo shop that was on the front cover to the stereotype of the people and the business of Repo Men.

Story here:

Takin A Ride

Past Tense

Sometimes as a professional photog you get hung up in the gear and the newest trends. Gotta get this piece of gear, gotta get this lens, this new software. Gotta get this new book maker program .... whatever. I get stuck in it all the time. I buy gear. A year later it's out dated. I buy new gear. A year later it's outdated. It's crazy. It's the biz. I guess. I bought another piece of new gear. But it was geared in another direction. I stepped back a few decades and got a new instant camera. I would say Polaroid, but it's not. Polaroid stopped making their instant film, so it's kinda silly to pick up a new camera made by them. Fuji, however, has a version of the old classic Polaroids called the Instax. It's still being made, the film is still in production and many people are shooting happily with them.

So I got one.

I love it.

No photoshop. No hundreds of frames. One shot. One moment. No brackets. No nothin. 800iso. F14. 1/64-1/200.

I took the boy to the local kiddie park and shot these 10 frames. These are the 10 I like out of the 14 I shot.

Enjoy.

Recent shoot for National Law Journal

June was a busy month. In addition to the start of the wedding season, I had numerous other editotial jobs come in. Here's a clip from a recent portrait shoot for the National Law Journal.

Recent New York Times Story

Here's a link to a recent shoot for the New York Times called:

A Credit Squeeze for Small-Business Owners

Some recent School of Rock portraits.

School of Rock - PORTRAITS - Images by Ken Blaze

Akron's Suicide Bridge.

Did a job for the New York Times a couple weeks ago about their proposed use of stimulus money to fence their Y-Bridge, also more commonly known as the Suicide Bridge. Was an interesting day learning about the city from the mayor and from both sides of the issue.

Akron's Suicide Bridge

At home on Facebook

I've been looking at new ways to market and make friends in this troubled economy. So many of my former colleagues and current contemporaries are looking at the inevitable demise of their publications. Every connection is going to matter these days. So I made the jump over to Facebook this past week. I was leery of using a social network site for business means, but so far the response has been good, and it is quite a bit of fun. Please come and visit!

Ken Blaze Photography on FB

Only 3 days left ...

Only 3 days left in the month of February and that means only 3 days to take advantage of my wedding package discount. Tell your friends! Check out the The Story of the Day for more details!

Luca's new favorite toy.

A box.

They always say it's not the expensive toys that will keep your child amused, it's the everyday things around the house.

A new year's resolution.

Happy new year! 2008 turned out to be great year for me professionally and personally. My first full year of freelancing was a success. Now the trick is to keep it going and build my client base even more so. Thanks to everyone who had read through the blog and visited my site over the last year.

My resolution will be to post more often. The blog gets a lot of hits, and I would like to show more personal work mixed in with the pro stuff too. I have shied away from posting the thousands of photos of my boy Luca in the past, but I think I will start to add the best of what I have of him as time goes by.

Here's a shot to start of the new year. We basically have been living in a deep freeze around here. Here's the window of our playroom at home. Wow. Our outdoor thermometer said -10 on this day.

There should be a slew of updates in the next month as I try to put together some 'best ofs' for the year.

A little urban fun.

Got out into the cold frigid weather for a story for Cleveland Scene last month about the pros and cons of Urban Farming. I was surprised to learn about the number of people with their own 'farms' inside the city limits. It was a fun shoot. Our farmers were quite gracious in letting us talk with them in the stifling cold. It was only about 20 degrees and Jocelyn and Meagen were total troopers sitting for the cover photo. At least the chickens didn't seem bothered by the cold. Many thanks to them and Josh and all the chickens for talking with me and Dan for the story.

Full story, with more photos, is here at the Scene website:
City Chicken