Lon's Thoughts

LIfe is a journey

2010-04-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

"A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles" Tim Cahill

Apparently I have been on this journey called life for quite awhile now. At least that's what my body tells me when I get up in the morning. I have done a lot of stuff, seen tons of things and met a bunch of people. Every now and then, someone wanders into your life and becomes a part of it. And sometimes, they have to leave.

Denis Asprey left this past month.

I have only known Denis for ten years. I wish I had known him longer. He used to be a hippy and he lived in a commune for awhile. He was an artist, musician, biker, Boy Scout leader, and a tremendous family man. He was also one of the best friends anyone could ever want.

Denis always wore sandals. He wore them to work as a hardwood floor installer. He hiked in them, including climbing Mt. Whitney at 14,000 feet. He wore them to church, which he attended faithfully. He did wear moccasins on occasion.

He loved to teach the youth. He taught them about life. He taught them how to throw a tomahawk, shoot a bow and arrow, to enjoy the sunrise on a mountain peak.

He loved to ride his motorcycles. Including a real sweet Harley Springer Soft Tail. He would jump on it in the summer, put his great wife on the back and travel several thousand miles. He also had a Russian motorcycle that was copied from a 1940's BMW with a side car. He would throw a grandchild in the sidecar and give them a joyous ride around town.

Denis will be missed by a lot of people, including me. But he will never be forgotten and his influence to do good will be with me always.

Just a Cell Phone Battery

2010-03-03T14:17:00.000-08:00

The other day a photographer friend of mine published a photo on his Facebook page. It was a beautiful shot of a pretty girl photographed at the beach. I commented on his page about his photo and said something like 'wow, you spent the day shooting a pretty girl and I spent the day shooting cell phone batteries'. He commented back, 'yeah, but you made more money'. It made me stop and think about that for a while.

Here is Stan's photo of Grace Bristol and my photo of a cell phone battery.
(to see more of Stan's work go to: http://www.stanliuphotography.com/)

Yeah, it does look like Stan had more fun. But the question it raised is am I in this for the money or do I have the passion that artists talk about? I became a photographer because it sounded interesting, fun, and kinda cool. I liked the idea of saying 'Yeah, I'm a photographer'! But by the time I graduated from college I was married, in debt and in a hurry to join middle class America.

Photography has been good to me. I have a nice house, three kids that we sent through college, a big red truck, a souped up Mustang and a hot rod Volkswagen Bus (see my blog entry: Buster goes to a show, Aug. 2008). Middle class America here I am.

I'm happy. I have a nice studio that I look forward to working in every day. I have clients. I do shoot a lot of boring things. Rarely pretty girls. But shooting boring things can be fun. They are a challenge, they have curves, corners, bright colors, reflective chrome, strange shapes and someone wants a pretty picture of them. I had a fellow photographer come into my studio years ago while I was shooting copy slides of some blueprints. He told me he wouldn't do that work, he only shoots advertising. Last I heard he was a salesman. So, I think I am creative, I am passionate about making my clients happy and I do work for money. I don't apologize. And I still feel good when I tell someone 'Yeah, I'm a photographer'. Maybe I should get one of those snazzy khaki vests with all the pockets!

Here are a few samples of weird things made pretty in the studio. Of course thanks go to Lois the good stylist.

Lois and Lon on a vacation!!!

2009-11-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

This year, Lois and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary on the 9th of September. We were very busy in our studio and decided to celebrate the occasion by taking a trip in October. After looking at many locations we decided that we would like to go to Jackson, Wyoming. We chose this for a couple of reasons. Both of us had visited Jackson when we were kids and had memories of those trips. We also had wanted to purchase a piece of artwork for our anniversary. Jackson, just happens to be the third largest art market in the US. So this is what we did. Here are some of our vacation pictures. They aren't real good, because, well, I was on vacation. So there.

Here we are in Yellowstone National Park. It snowed.

This is the famous Elk Antler Archway in the center of town. There is one on each corner of the city park.

This is the Elk Preserve. Each winter 7000 Elk will winter in this preserve. It was right across the road from the cabin we stayed in. We did see three elk there one morning.

Here is our very dirty car parked behind our 'cabin' just outside of Jackson.
This is what we saw when we walked out the front door of our 'cabin'. There is a creek at the bottom of the picture out of the frame.

Here are some pictures of the Grand Teton Mountain. Grand Teton is supposedly from the French meaning large breast. It figures the french would name a mountain range that.

"Under any light, the mountains are wondrous and sublime. Cold and pulseless must be the heart of him who can view such a scene with indifference"
Alfred Jacob Miller (artist) 1837

This guy was right on the side of the road. I got out and took his picture with a 'normal' lens and then realized that he was about the size of our car and decided to retreat and put my car between him and me.

This is something we don't see much in San Diego. Big clouds and a flat plain.
Enough of the photos. Lois and I are a strange pair. We enjoy each others company every day at work and always have a good time when we travel. This trip was great. We ended up purchasing a beautiful bronze of a mountain lion in a tree.

Rendezvous!

2009-10-05T15:07:00.000-07:00

The Mountain Men of the fur trade era (1815-1840) are an important part of the history of our country. They also would gather together once a year for several weeks and trade their furs, buy supplies and have one heck of a party. Many of the things they did at these rendezvous' relate to fun things that the Boys Scouts can really get into.

Each year Shelley, myself and a strange group of people put on the Blackfoot Fort Mountain Man Rendezvous for older Boy Scouts in our local San Diego Council. Following are some images from that great event:

These boys have earned great skinning knives by being the 'Best Dressed' mountain men among the scouts.

There is a lot of competition and skills that take place. Above is a mountain man teaching the young men how to set traps.

Much of the competition is team building. Of course we don't tell the scouts that they are learning team building. This is a travois race. They have to lash together these poles and drag an injured member of their team around a course.

These scouts are competing in the popular hawk throwing. Hawks being short for tomahawk.

They have a fun relay race in canoes. The object is to get around a course without getting their 'powder' wet. Powder being gunpowder.

This year we had 53 units register. About 350 participants. We allow the adults to participate in most of the activities. This is a rare event when we have one adult for every two scouts that come.

It takes a bunch of dedicated adults to put this kind of an event on. These folks are a combination of scouters and mountain man reenactors. See if you can spot yours truly and Shelley.

Merry Mary 2

2009-09-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

Well, for the third time Mary has worked for us through the summer and then goes back to her real life. Usually she would head back to school at BYU. Last summer she skipped a semester and headed to Guatemala, where she volunteered at an orphanage for four months. This time she is headed for Buenos Aires, Argentina for eighteen months. She will be serving a mission for her Church; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon).

She will be missed. Usually it is in mid September that we start looking for her in the studio and she is gone. She has that ability to bring peace and happiness wherever she is. She also makes a great and forgiving target for the red rubber balls I keep in the studio for sneak attacks. Here is a few images from this summer:

This is Mary re-doing the tile floor in our kitchen area of the studio. It was cool when she stuck one of these 18" tiles to the bottom of her foot.

Above is Mary on a search and destroy mission to eradicate another spider ecosystem.

Below is Mary doing two jobs at once, painting a prop sign while babysitting Shelley's (Queen Denizen of the Digital Dungeon) baby.

This next photo was in my blog on the red shoe project. Not only did Mary have one of the best ideas, she become the model for the the Tight Rope Red Shoes.

She will be missed, but we are excited for her as she starts this next chapter of her life. People like Mary are hard to find and they always leave good memories.

Asphalt: not a tennis term

2009-08-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

Boy what a bad week to have the landlord decide to repave our parking lot. We had an ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers, asmp.org) seminar scheduled in our studio for Saturday. One week ahead of time we get notice that we will not have access to our building on Saturday. Well, that's wasn't going to work! With one sorta polite email to our landlord, we had this guy form the construction company show up at my studio. Man, what a great guy. He jumped through hoops to get our parking lots finished ahead of schedule. So, here on Friday afternoon, I sat on the couch in our lobby and shot these marvelous action shots.

When a situation arises that has difficult ramifications for others, it is nice to find people that are willing to go that extra step to make things better. Our seminar was in trouble. How to get the 40+ people into the studio? This one supervisor took it upon himself to remedy our problem. People were able to park in our parking lot.

I like to think that this is the way that I personally act, but also the way we choose to run our business. Thanks to Patrick McDonald who gave a damn.

If The Red Shoe Fits...

2009-06-30T10:09:00.001-07:00

When we have an open day in the studio we work on an on going project involving a pair of red shoes. Yesterday, was the first day we had in several weeks. (This is a good thing!). We sit down as a group and talk about ideas for the red shoes. This particular idea was Mary's so it seemed fitting that she become the tight rope model. (Merry Mary, is our intrepid studio 'Jill of all trades'.) It also helped that she is the only one out of the five of us that the shoes fit.

The steel cable is about three feet off of the floor. First we tried having her sit on a ladder and that didn't work. So we placed a painters board across two ladders and that worked well. She is sitting about 6' off the ground. We shot about three dozen photos until we got the one that we liked. This is the finished image:

So far we have shot seven photos with the red shoes. Our plan is to shoot twelve different versions. I will post more on this blog in a couple of weeks.

Getting Away

2009-05-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

We have been really busy in the studio the past month. Not complaining. In these economic times, you don't want to be complaining about being busy. But, you do need to get away sometimes and clean out your brain and re-energize yourself.

For me, it's primitive camping. I was able to get away for six days and nights. Great fun. Primitive camping is camping with equipment that was used before 1840. Sleeping on the ground with just a couple blankets. Cooking over a fire and so forth. Of course, I had an ice chest full of good food, but it was always out of sight. Here are a few pictures of my camp and the area I was camping. (I was just to tired of shooting pictures to take too many on my vacation)

Besides camping, I was able to shoot all of my several blackpowder guns, shoot my primitive long bow and have some great conversation with friends around the campfires.

MacKenzie

2009-04-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

I could write some thoughts on the cool stuff we have been doing in the studio, but for some reason all that pales in comparison with having our fifth grandchild: MacKenzie Jackson. Everyone that comes to our studio knows Shelley, our daughter, and head digital artist. MacKenzie is Shelley and Daniel's first child.

She was born on March 9th and weighed a whopping 5 pounds 4 ounces. She is perfect in every way. She is just very petite! We are so happy to have her in our family. Shelley is doing well and as expected, is becoming a wonderful mom. Here are some more pictures:

Detroit in February

2009-03-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

I have always felt that it is important to give back to those institutions that have given so much to you as you travel the path of life. In my case, that is my photography profession (in particular the American Society of Media Photographers), the Boy Scouts and my Religion.

I have served ASMP in many capacities over the years; in the local chapter leadership, including three years as president. Also, seven years on the National Board of Directors and my favorite, coordinating several nationwide meetings. I thought I had sorta retired from service when a call came asking me to chair a committee to put on a national leadership conference in Detroit in FEBRUARY! What the heck, why not? So, with a good co-chair from Seattle, we put together a two day meeting with speakers, breakout sessions, one huge slide show and all the stuff that goes into it. The meeting had about 105 people in attendance. It was a great success in many ways. For me, it was a chance to do something for an organization that has done a lot of good stuff for me and my business over the years. Oh yeah, it was a ton of fun.

Here is a sampling of what it looked like.

This is the logo that my son designed for us:

Ava

2009-02-06T13:04:00.000-08:00

Being a grandparent is a really neat thing. It's great to see the family growing, to have these little kids around calling you grandpa. But one of the real pleasures is seeing your own kids becoming parents. It brings back memories of having little kids of our own. Our kids have become really great parents.

Being a photographer by profession is pretty darn cool. We shoot a lot of products for a living. (I suppose you can tell, because if you are reading this blog, you are in the middle of my website.) So having the pleasure of photographing your own grandkids is really a lot of fun. Here is the latest addition to our, ever expanding family, Ava Kayle Atkinson:

Yeah, she is cute. Like way cute. She looks just like her older sister Ashley.

Yep. Being a grandparent is a good part of life. And just to make sure that no one asks me to shoot pictures of their kids, Shelley shot these. But I photo directed!

Outhouse II

2008-12-16T10:20:00.000-08:00

Who would have thought that I could actually write a second entry on this blog about outhouses! But I am. This is different however. A friend of mine bought a ranch out in Ocatillo, which is in the high desert here in Southern Calif. One of the reasons he bought it was to let the Boy Scouts and young women from our church camp there anytime they wanted. Well, our scouts have enjoyed camping in this beautiful place many times. So I felt we owed Duane something in return. I asked him if we could do a service project for him. I was thinking maybe rake up brush, pick up trash, that kind of stuff. To our great pleasure, he asked if we would build an outhouse for the use of the people that come and camp. So we did. Here are a few pictures of our project. This was built from 'scratch'. I don't think you can buy an outhouse kit!

Travelin'

2008-11-12T13:33:00.000-08:00

I notice how many people that I know go on great trips and take hundreds of photos. I go somewhere and am lucky to shoot a dozen. Course, I don't go to many places very interesting. Well, to keep up with the 'Jones' here are some of my travel photos from the last 18 months or so.

Boy, I don't get out of the studio much or for very long. Oh, well, that's what retirement is for.

Outhouses!

2008-10-24T10:28:00.000-07:00

Outhouses: hate 'em, scared of 'em, but boy, when you need one aren't they great!?! You never want to be down wind of one, that's for sure. You always open the door with such trepidation. You just never know what you might find. If the smell or the sights don't get you there's always that chance of finding a nice rattlesnake or a wasp's nest sitting in the corner. They sit there, so obvious, so brightly colored, so not part of the landscape.

They have such great names: Big Red's, Spanky's, Andy Gumps, Johnny's. Then there's the door. You sneak out in the dark of the night, in the middle of the campground. You are trying to be so quiet, so secretive. You do what you went for and then you leave and that door slams, with that familiar noise, the 'you all know what I have been doing' THUNK.

I slept in one once. It was raining and I needed a place to keep dry. Have you ever tried changing clothes in one? Then there was the time, in the middle of the night, I put my small flashlight on top of the paper dispenser. As I finished doing that which was necessary, I bumped into the dispenser. The flashlight bounced around the outhouse and right down the hole. I just had to look in, and what a weird glow was emanating from that dark, scary place. I always wondered what the next person thought!

There is the story of Wild Bill Hickock, the famous gunfighter. He went to use the town's outhouse and as he stood up one of his pearl handled 45's fell down the hole. His guns were his life. So, he opened the lid and squirmed down into the stuff. He pulled out his gun. As he exited the facility, he ran into the town drunk. There Bill was, covered in s***. He pulled his gun out and put it right against the old man's forehead. He warned him that if anyone ever heard about this incidence he would dispatch the poor man from this life. True story.

Love 'em, hate 'em, but when you need one....

Whata Month

2008-10-06T16:40:00.001-07:00

Wow, September went by pretty darn fast. I can't believe that it's been over a month since I wrote about Merry Mary, who by the way, is having a great time in Guatamala and I'm sure she is making all around her happy.

September is a big month for Shelley and Me. We both give up a bunch of our free time in support of the Boy Scouts here in San Diego. In particular we are part of a group that put on a Mountain Man Rendezvous for the Varsity Scouts. These are guys from 14-18. Here is a picture of our staff. See if you can spot Shelley and Me!
The boys that come to this weekend activity get to do a bunch of the things that Mountain Men did from 1820-1840. They shoot blackpowder guns, throw tomahawks and knives, shoot arrows, run, compete, eat too much, and have a heck of a good time. Here are a few more photos to give you the idea.

If you want to see the entire website on this activity go here: www.VarsityRendezvous.com
This years photos and stuff will not be up for awhile, but you get the idea from last years website.

Why do we do this? Well it is fun. But I believe that we all need to give back to those organizations that have done a lot to make us who we are. Whether its a religion, professional organization or youth organization. Give back. The rewards are tremendous.

Lon, aka: The Booshway

A Very Merry Mary

2008-09-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

Those of you that have visited our studio this summer had the pleasure of meeting our Merry Mary. For the second year, she has worked for us during her summer off from college. There are just some people that make everything more fun than it really is or maybe even more fun than it should be. Like working for me.

Or scrubbing the studio floor:

Or painting a wall:

Or archiving hundreds of images:

Or, cleaning the ol' commode.

She would also gleefully, (yes, that is a word) jump into the middle of a set to blow the dust off of a large product:

Mary has chosen not to go back to school this fall at Brigham Young University. Instead, she is going to spend four months in Guatemala at the "Clara Fantasia" home for at risk children in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. HELP International sends volunteers there to provide the education, supplies, support and other essentials for the children and their estranged families. The ultimate goal is to reunite the children with their natural families after appropriate counseling with both the children and their parents. If that is not possible, then the orphanage seeks out responsible, married Guatemalan couples who are looking to adopt.

For more information: www.help-international.org

She will be missed. But we are proud of her decision to help others. But, who is going to scrub the floor?!? We look forward to hearing some great stories from Guatemala.

Here is a link to Merry Mary's blog, with exciting stories of life in an orphanage:

http://marylindquist.blogspot.com

Ashley

2008-08-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

We had another busy week in the Studio. We had a couple of large client jobs that required a many hours and considerable effort.

Then there was the photo shoot with Ashley. Ashley is our second granddaughter. She is full of energy. We have been shooting her each three months of her life. She is now eighteen months old. It reminds me of why I chose to become a product and advertising photographer. Shelley, was given the dubious assignment of being the shooter. I did the lighting and then just kind of hid behind my computer. Mary, Lois and Elaine, (Ashley’s mom), spent an hour doing everything that you could imagine to get this darling, rambunctious child’s attention. Oh my. Here are a few of our attempts.

Here is one that worked. It will look even better when Shelley does her magic in the Digital Dungeon, where she dwells all day. I wouldn't have missed this special photo assignment for anything.

Buster goes to a show

2008-08-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

I swore that I would never put my bus into a car show. But I did. It wasn’t anything big, just a community car show.

The problem is that for every five or ten people that think my bus is cool, there is some purist that thinks that altering this, fairly rare, VW bus is a sacrilege. They love to say that if this bus was restored it would be worth x number of dollars. They just don’t get it. It’s not about dollars. It’s about the challenge of creating, figuring out how to do something and the absolute joy of driving around surprising people. It's all about being different.

I also seem to notice that most the ‘purists’ that are all upset about this bus look as if they wouldn't even have the money to restore a little red wagon, let alone a fifty year old VW bus.

To heck with them.

It was nice that I ended up parked next to a gorgeous, bright red Dodge Viper. Kinda made the bus look a little dumpy. If you are interested, the surfboard on top of the bus is a 1958 Velzey-Jabocs 'Pig'. It's 9' 9" long and weighs 40 pounds.

Ol' Wiley

2008-07-28T08:55:00.001-07:00

1994-2008

Some of you, that have visited our studio might have met Wiley. He was a good dog. A great dog in my eyes. He left us last week. He had a great and long life. Australian Shepards live to about eleven years. Wiley was having so much fun living his life that he forgot about that and almost made it fifteen years. All but the last few weeks were full of good times.

He never was a problem. Never chewed things. Well, there was the straps to our spa that disappeared. He never dug holes. Well, there was the gopher infestation two years ago that he took quite personal. I think he thought they were coming from China. But all in all it was great to have him as a dog.

He got to go backpacking in the Sierras, hiking in the desert and visit all the neighbors trees. He chased cayotes out of our yard and he loved herding our neighbors wiener dogs when they would dig under the fence. He would corner them near the pool and they had a heck of a time getting back home.

Lots and lots of good memories. He will and already is missed. He had his own dog Dharma, who is suffering from his lost.

Wiley was named after my grandfather, Wiley McDonald. They had a lot in common.

Some Shell Collection

2008-07-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

One of our more interesting clients is the San Diego Museum of Natural History, located in Balboa Park. This past week we had the opportunity to go into their research library and photograph pages from old book. The photos will be used to make note cards to sell in the Museum shop. The book was printed in 1790. It was commissioned by a Maria Theresia Augusta. She seems to be a person of importance or at least of great wealth from Austria.

The book was large, about 15x18. We were not allowed to touch the book. A museum curator, with white gloves, handled the book and turned the pages. It was in great condition. They keep these books in a climate controlled vault.

Here is the title page. I think the book was written in Latin.

The purpose of the book was to catalog Ms. Augusta's collection of shells. After each plate there were pages describing each shell. The book was about 2.5-3 inches thick.

Here are three of the seven plates that we photographed:

The book was published in black ink. Each shell was reproduced as a line drawing. I have no idea how many of these books were made, but each page of shells was individually hand painted in water colors. This would have been done on each book published!

Really fascinating shoot. And for the first time in my life I got to stand in my stocking feet on top of a table in a library. Now how many of you can say that!!!

Interesting Shoot This Week

2008-07-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

One of the fun things about being a photographer is the variety of clients that we have. One day we may be shooting a cell phone in the studio, the next day a shock absorber for a car and the next day a pretty model wearing sports clothes. Each assignment is different and requires different tools and methods to accomplish what the client would like.

This week was no different. We shot a steel 'gusher' mold that was about the size of a loaf of bread and weighed 50 pounds. Then we did a close up of a part on the mold that was no larger than 1/8 of an inch. We also had 18 views of a new cell phone, some gun leather products and a few items that I don't know what they were.

Then we had the big stuff:Our client makes high end equipment for recording studios. The 'woofer' in the middle was three foot by three foot and weighed 300 pounds. So we started out this shoot wrestling this block. The fun and interesting part was the client wanted the lights to be illuminated on the front of the woofer and monitors. In order to do that we had to hook all of them up to a computer and send an audio signal. By the time we had enough lights illuminated the walls were vibrating in the studio. Pictures were rattling and I swear I loosened a filling in my back molar.

But we got the shot and I'm sure our new neighbors were wondering if anyone else felt the 'earthquake' they had felt.

And people think we are in this business for the money!

Bunch of new things

2008-06-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

Well, if your reading this you must have found our new website. Honest, this took us a complete year to finish. I have found the perfect marketing plan: you decide to do some personal work, or create something new, or for heaven's sake, go on a vacation, and clients come out of he woodwork!

We have had a good busy year in the studio, so the website took much, much longer than we thought. Anyone want to give us feedback on the website have at it.

Other new things in my life would have to include my brand spanking new knee joint. I have finally joined the ranks of the bionic. I had the surgery on Feb. 29th (that will be an easy date to remember) and it is an expected six months recovery. Six months is not too long, when I realize that I broke this knee when I was fifteen years old and this is the fifth operation I have had on it.
I have suffered, limped, cursed, complained for all these years. Now it feels better than I can ever remember. I actually can stand without pain. Of course, I can't predict the weather anymore.

One more new thing. I have finally got my 59 VW bus out of what was supposed to be a fire pit in our backyard, and got it on the road again. I put in a brand new engine, rebuilt the trans, rear end, put on disc brakes in the front and am working on the interior now. The engine is a GM 350 CI V8, putting out 330 horsepower. A little more than the original stock 30 horsepower motor. It's mounted in the middle of the bus, behind the front seats. I'll post some more photos next week.

Well, enough for now. I hope you liked the new website. If anyone wants pictures of my knee, just let me know.

Lon