NOTE TO ALL CLIENTS: I’ve been away from the office since early Friday. I’m currently in Dubuque, Iowa shooting a commercial project and will return on Wednesday. I have responded to a few email inquiries tonight, but have not been able to answer incoming phone calls due to my extremely hectic shooting schedule. If you haven’t heard from me, I will get back to you on Wednesday. Thank you for your continued patience!

~dave

I LOVE SHOOTING COMMERCIAL WORK. PERIOD. Yeah, we’re having a blast at Loras College!

(Clockwise: Tasha, Angie, Twyla, Rob, Mary Kay…. and your’s truly!)

Well, Rob and I have had a dizzying few days driving, shooting, socializing, shooting, driving and shooting. Oh, did I mention sleep? Who needs that? Apparently, we don’t. Hotel rooms have become our friends, needless to say. On Saturday we drive to Waukesha to shoot Brian and Mary’s awesome wedding with our dear DEAR friend Amy Johnston of Photo98. It was so good to catch up with her, since our last visit. We had a blast shooting together, as evident below.

Shooting couple formals in comfortable clothes? Yup. The reception ended at 4:00pm and we got comfy for the couple shots. After the wedding Rob, Amy and I met up with our good friend Kim of KB Image Photography for a few drinks. I also had the pleasure of meeting Neil of Front Room Photography. The “GTG” was short and sweet as we were….. well….. dead tired.

We drove countless miles so far, having visited 3 large Midwest cities. Rob utilized some of the drive to finish watching Zack’s OneLight DVD. (Yeah, the countryside here is boooooring. Photo courtesy of my iPhone.)

We’re now in Dubuque to shoot a huge promotional campaign for Loras College. This city is awesomely old. But soooo incredibly awesome for shooting locations. I wish we had these digs around here.

So awesome in fact, we had some time to do some urban exploration. We happened across the old warehouse district in the Port of Dubuque. I wanted to shoot down here sooo badly, but with who…? Just us? Not so much. We discovered an amazing club in what looked like an abandoned building, called Voices. It actually turned out to be a cool-a$$ art gallery, that was throwing a show with a pile of cool indie bands.

With 10 minutes on our hands before we had to return to Loras College, we approached a band loading gear into the club. The guys were in Datagun, an ambient electronic-influenced indie band. They agreed, we unloaded gear, set-up and shot in about 5 minutes time. The shortest, most impromptu shoot I’ve ever done. But very very cool guys…

We a little time to spare, we changed clothes, made it to the Sunday evening mass at Loras and got some amazing shots!

More soon. Keep it real.
~dave

Rob and I are off to shoot a wedding in Milwaukee tomorrow with our dear friend Amy Johnston! We are so stoked! Then we head to Dubuque, IA for a few days. We’re shooting another kick-a$$ promotional campaign of Loras College. I’ll try to throw some updates up over the weekend and during the coming week!

For those of you trying to reach me via email, please be patient. I should have internet where we are staying and I will reply to emails daily. I will be back in Appleton on the 30th. If you’re trying to reach me about yearbook submissions for senior photos, I will be delivering those either Tuesday night or Wednesday afternoon!

Nicole and Cory’s engagement session from today…

See you soon!
~dave

For those who know me well, know that I can be opinionated when it comes to quickly passing photography trends. Take for instance, color splashing. It was cool in the 90′s…. I think. You know, a red bouquet plopped in the middle of a black and white photo? Yeah. I’m often times amused by all the “fads” in the wedding photography business, that come and go as fast as radio hits on the Top 40 charts. Be it color splashing, textures, 35mm style Photoshop actions or trashing a dress.

Why ruin a perfectly good wedding dress? It really doesn’t make sense. Don’t get me wrong… some photographers can execute it fairly well, while others are out to simply ruin a dress or put a bride in a dumpster. But if I had my way, I’d do it differently. And I did.

Brian and Candy pretty much let me roll with it how I wanted. And we had a great time!

And the rest were more “traditional”, if you will…

Special thanks go out to Vicki & Jeff for letting us “in” and hooking up some power tools!
~dave

Happy Midnight. I’m awake as always!

Aside from editing recent wedding work, I thought I’d post up some linky links. Here are some recent blogs I’ve been staring at for a few days now..

Vincent LaForet
The new 5D Mark II scares me. I may pre-order one this week, but with a 1/200 sync speed… I may MAY hold out for the 1D Mark IV. Aside from the camera, go check Vincent’s entire portfolio! WOW.

Cliff Brunk
I can call Cliff my friend. I love him and love his work. See for yourself. If you’re reading this dude, I got nothing but love for you.

Fredrik Odman
OK, not a blog… but an AWESOME conceptual photographer. Ans an inspiration. With Fredrik’s work… I can overlook the textures. He pulls it off well. And if you know me, I hate textures unless it executed brilliantly.

Robert Knoth
Incredible and touching photo reportage on the Chernobyl disaster.

Fact Check
Fairly balanced political commentary on the upcoming Presidential election. Thanks to my wife Melanie for turning me onto it.

This one goes out to Adam and my brother, Larry. (An oldy, but a goody):

Rad. Rock. Woot.
~dave