Apollo 13 is one of my favorite movies. I have a relatively large number of friends who are engineers or engineer-adjacent for someone whose career is in the arts. (Stick with me, my story gets better.) Almost 100% of them will tell you that their favorite part in the movie is the “We have to make this [CO2 scrubber, square] fit into the hole made for this [CO2 scrubber, cylindrical], using nothing but that [pile of random spaceflight objects].”*

I was thinking about that when I was working with Akvavit Theatre this weekend on their company photo, as I wanted to get to this:

To look like this:

Using nothing but this:

I appear befuddled in this photograph, because it is my natural “resting” state. Join me after the break, and I will explain myself.

Read More…

Wherein our hero makes it look like Spring without the attendant temperature.

A quick update, before I dash off to The Improv Play: in the interest of getting a more formal/variation on the family portrait, we went back out with Jess, Anthony, and Quentin, and the light was as good as you could ever want it. Of course, it was about 45 degrees and breezy, which nearly sent me airborne when I was using my zipdisk diffuser, but whatever, that’s boring Inside Baseball stuff. You want to see a good-looking family, don’t you?

More Images

More Images

Close

Quentin Outside

Quentin Outside

Quentin Roberts – Age One-Third of One Year

The greatest thing I’ve purchased for photography in the last year or so wasn’t a lens or flash or gadget, but was, in fact the low-profile softbox that I got on sale from Calumet. It. Is. Delightful. And came in handy in the somewhat tighter quarters of my office on Leland. Great for babies! Turn your strobe down low, and let the pretty light be pretty.

Click this adorable baby to see more highlights from Quentin’s shoot.

Anthony and Jess were kind enough to park it on the floor for part of the shoot. It is – to be certain – adorable. Now we just have to figure out where to put the wheelie walls and doors.