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ESCAPED TO THE FUTURE!

I am pleased to announce the book release for my first book! Here is the press release:

Escaped to the Future book release at Visible Voice books, Friday, Feb 25th, 7-10pm.

Local photographer Ken Blaze has released his first book: “Escaped to the Future: A Series of Speak in Tongues photographs by Ken Blaze.” Come out and hang with Blaze and his friends Brian Straw and DJ Party Sweat for a night of music, memories and fantastic photographs from the good ol' days of Speak in Tongues.

Speak In Tongues was a center of culture, art and music in the Cleveland, OH underground scene from 1994 until Dec. 31, 2001. The venue played host to thousands of underground bands, parties and art shows over its nine years of existence. Now ten years this year since its’ demise, Escaped to the Future has been released as a photo retrospective. Escaped to the Future is a photo essay chronicling the people and ambiance of what was Cleveland’s most unique and volatile venue. The book contains over 145 original photographs as well as memories and quotations from some of the people that went to events at the venue.

The title of the book comes from a photograph of Cleveland scenester, now Los Angeles scenester Sean Carney painting the words “Speak in Tongues has Escaped to the Future” and “We Did It” on signage hung in the windows on the final days of SIT’ existence.

Blaze, 38, is a resident of Lakewood, OH and has lived in the Cleveland area his whole life. He works primarily as a photojournalist in the region.

Visual Music Opens Saturday.

I am happy to announce that Visual Music: A North East Ohio Photographic look at Rock & Roll curated by Anastasia Pantsios at the We Gallery & Musicain Akron opens on Saturday, November 6th.

On view at the We Gallery. Eleven different photographers who documented the Cleveland/Akron music scene from the 1960s until today will be showing their work. Both local bands and memorable area shows by big-name acts will be included.

Visual Music features the works of:
Ken Blaze, Jay Brown, Bob Ferrell, Neal Hamilton, Janet Macoska, Keith Marlowe, Karen Novak, Anastasia Pantsios, Stephanie Saniga, George Shuba, and Linda Wood.

I was asked by Anastasia to show some prints of my photos from Speak In Tongues. Speak in Tongues was an important venue for the Cleveland music and arts scene from 1994 until 2001. I spent many days down at SIT, and this exhibit will have 16 prints from the series.

This is a bit of a precursor to the ST book that I am finishing up and will be done this winter.

The WE Gallery is located at 20 N. High Street, Akron, OH 44308. We Gallery

Hope you can attend and see some Ohio music history.

Summer is gone already.

September. September! Wow. Between shooting and staying home with my son Luca, summer vanished in an instant. Wedding season kicked in for me in June, and it hasn't let up since. Good for me! Bad for my blogging. The thing that always takes a hit is the blog when I get super busy. I gotta try and get my editing down in as timely a fashion as possible and blogging just takes away from that for the most part. But today, I have some time, and I thought I'd make a post

I had a birthday in July. That was pretty fun. I used the opportunity to shoot some of my pals as they toured through our new(ish) house. We moved in December, but we never had the chance until July to have people over to see the new digs. This was fun and everyone that participated was great. These are my favorite 8.










I also thought I'd put up a couple of engagement sessions shot in August for couples I will photographing next year.

Engagements are fun for me to get a chance to know my couple and try to create photos that show off their personalities. I think these latest sessions did a good job of that so here's some of my favorites from each session. First up is Erin & Chris and then we have Darlene & Owen.

2009 WPJA PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR! ... almost...

The WPJA (Wedding Photojournalist Association) just announced the 2009 Photographer of the Year. From the WPJA email that went out this evening:

"The WPJA proudly announces that the 2009 winner of the Photographer of the Year (POY) is Carlo Carletti of Italy. First runner-up in the 2009 WPJA POY competition is Ken Blaze of Ohio. Ian Bursill of England has been named second runner-up in the WPJA POY contest. If this feels like deja vu that's because Carletti won the title in 2006. Taking this year's top honor makes him the first to win it twice. A WPJA member since 2005, Carletti has gained international prominence for his award-winning black-and-white photography. The WPJA congratulates all the honorees for their outstanding achievements, which help make the Wedding Photojournalist Association the most respected wedding photography organization in the world."

I would love to say that it was me. But alas, it was not. 1st runner-up ain't too bad! You could say I was this close - *thumb and index finger millimeters apart.* I had the title in my grasp but a photo that placed 2nd in the last quarter contest was disqualified. (It was my own fault. I should have entered the photo in a different category.) Without that that 2nd place finish it looks like I was pushed back to 1st runner-up.

I am honored to be selected as the #2 wedding photojournalist in the world by the WPJA. I sincerely and humbly appreciate the award and am thankful for the all the couples who have trusted me to shoot their weddings in 2009.

Many congratulations to Carlo Carletti and Ian Bursill.

Full story about this year's winner HERE

An athlete, a politician, and a strike.

Aside from moving into a new house and having a new office built, I was busy with some editorial work over the last few weeks:

Mentor, Ohio is home to Katie Spotz, a 22-yr-old woman that will attempt to row across the Atlantic Ocean from South America to Africa. I shot a portrait of her for the New York Times.

The story is here with the photo they ran.

This was my favorite shot of her from the shoot.



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Scene ran a story about Cuyahoga County's new government scheme and the restructuring involved. The head of that restructuring is Martin Zanotti.

See the full story here.



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The Cleveland Orchestra was in the news and I was there for the New York Times. The orchestra threatened to strike, and they did on Monday, January 18, 2010. A writer and I covered their concert on the preceding Thursday and had a good piece. Story is here.

These are the two photos they used in the paper the day of the strike. The web had additional images from the concert night and strike day.




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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.