Nov 6, 2024
Near Rico Colorado.
📸 by Scott McCormick @masbeyondo_adventure
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Near Rico Colorado.
📸 by Scott McCormick @masbeyondo_adventure
by Scott McCormick If you’re writing a romance novel, don’t look for ideas in other romance novels. Look to thrillers, chaos theory, or the building of the Flavian amphitheater. If you’re struggling for inspiration, try looking in the unlikeliest places.
New Image Wednesday + Jonathon Boogie Long
Happy Wednesday! What's new? Whoa! What's that? It looks like a huge piece of plywood under a blanket. It's a what? Wow. You're making full check books of those massive checks that you get when you win Publisher's Clearing House? You're crazy. You'll never sell any of those...seriously? A backorder of 60,000? I have no idea what's going on in this world anymore.
P.S. – The winner for the poll a couple of weeks ago (see here) was: "Starting a group text and including a random number on it." Thanks to all who voted!
I haven't posted in a couple weeks – and not by accident. I want to keep these blogs more fun and truly geared towards photographs. But, as of late it's been hard to convince myself that anything is remotely light-hearted. With so much tension and so many unheard voices, I needed to stop myself from using this platform as another internet tirade to be skimmed over briefly and instantly forgotten. This blog isn't about politics or social injustices by any means, but these past few weeks have made it hard to sit quietly enough to hear any kind of sense at all.
JONATHON BOOGIE LONG
So, today's photos are reserved for an amazing blues musician from Baton Rouge, Jonathon Boogie Long. I went to see Boogie at a festival earlier the day of the shoot in the middle of a 149 degree open street. Thank god for bad beer. I hadn't ever met him or even spoken to him on the phone, so I wanted to get a feel for what his live show was like and what his general demeanor was. Not only did he NAIL his live show, but overall, the guy is incredibly confident and badass. He popped over to the house for a couple hours after his set with one of my great friends, Doug (who also happens to be Boogie's manager), and Merne and I hung out in the backyard chain smoking and talking about music, life and the whole. We got so caught up we didn't have any time to over-think or under-think the photos we had to take. I like that. When you can truly connect with someone quickly and effortlessly so much so that the job you're supposed to do becomes secondary and more like just a fun blip on a cool experience. I tried to grab the confidence Boogie exudes with these photos, and I hope you enjoy them.
See you tonight at Office Hours!
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LINKS
Merne Judson III – Website
Jonathon Boogie Long – Website
New Image Wednesday + New York
Hey! How was your week? Ooh oh yeah? Hey..that kind of sounds fun. If you’re going to ask me, we should include all the other readers. Ok. What’s the question and choices we get?
Legit, you’re messed up. But, we’ll see what folks think.
New York City!! Woo Hoo! I love it! I always love going to New York. It’s so great. The people are awesome, the places are nothing short of incredible, the food is astonishing, and the public transportation is easy to understand (ahem..Denver)! My girlfriend and I booked a trip out to New York partially because I had a bit of work to do out there and partially because we just wanted to hang out in the awesomest city. We paired up with our amazing friends Caitlin and Mike (see the Minneapolis blog from a few weeks ago to learn more about them) and we ran amuck for a few days! How fun!! We got to do a bunch of tourist-y stuff I’ve never gotten to do out there, like: Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, ride on the Staten Island Ferry, go to Katz’s Deli, check out The Cathedral Church of Saint John The Divine, and a TON more!
My best friend from high school, Heath and his wife Lauren came down for the Staten Island ride as well! It was SO great to catch up with those guys. They’re two of the coolest, kindest people I’ve even known. Heath does a ton of killer work in film with old Super 8 cameras and has introduced me to a plethora of amazing artists in film and photography. Make sure to check out his work at the link at the bottom of this blog. He and Lauren live upstate and are running a farm and working with ducks. They bought some land and built a yurt on it to maintain a simple and profoundly rewarding lifestyle. However, his explanation of the first few months with no cell service or real house or power running to the yurt was potentially one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long time. It’s just quiet, well-mannered, artistic Heath sitting in a silent yurt alone all day while his wife pulled massive hours at work leaving him to slowly drift into – what can only be described as – a Kerouacian insanity that caused him to arbitrarily chop wood and slowly slip from reality. Those two amazing people are having a baby now! So…no more yurt and onto a house with power for them.
Caitlin and Mike hosted us for the trip in their awesome one bedroom in Harlem. We’ve been so lucky to have them as friends for so many years. They’re both brilliant (the two just finished their masters degrees at Columbia – yay!), and they’re really HILARIOUS to hang out with. Totally full of energy and a curiosity that is absolutely infectious. The news is they may be heading back to Colorado sometime in August….finger’s crossed.
Enough of all of this blather! Let’s see some pictures, eh? That’s why we’re here!
New York
I hope you dug those as much as I loved taking them! I’m stoked to see the result of the poll from up top. See y’all tonight at Office Hours!
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LINKS
Heath Iverson – Vimeo
New Image Wednesday + Minneapolis – Blog w/ Caitlin and Mike
New Image Wednesday + Kid Reverie
I don't even want to ask how you're doing this week. Every week it's some new huge weird thing. What is it this time? Got a bunch of kids together and convinced them that the Ice Bucket Challenge is popular again and filled their buckets with hammers? Oh. Seriously? That's what you did this week? Well, I'm sorry. I'm glad you just caught up on Elementary on Hulu and went on a five day cleanse. Hey...what's that behind your back? Is that a hammer?! DUUDDE...
This week's photos are all of Steve Varney for his new project, Kid Reverie. You've seen Steve singing in Glowing House (check out the homepage) and backing up legendary Gregory Alan Isakov – yeah, even though he's young he's still reached 'legend'. I've heard some stuff from Steve's new project, and it's awesome. He has a great way of directing melancholy ideas to an inspiring and enlightening melody to make for an overall illuminating musical experience. He sings with care, texture, and a perfect balance of aggression and elegance that divines a lush musical state. Not only is he extremely talented, but Steve also continues to put forth one of the kindest, most genuine attitudes I've ever been lucky enough to meet. He's absolutely an important person to have in our Colorado music community. We're lucky here because of people like him.
My friend and fellow photographer, Merne Judson III (link below) joined me this past week to head out to Gregory Alan Isakov's farm to work on the first round of photos for Kid Reverie. The farm carried the same powerful kindness that both Steve and Gregory share. It was a lovely experience with a relaxing, joyous shoot. However, we wanted something a bit more based in movement for Kid Reverie's new record, so these shots don't always show the calm, quiet day we had, but rather the screaming, thrashing, blur that we felt we needed to portray. It's such a great thing to scream your ass off and throw your arms and legs around only to (moments later) look up and smile warmly and have a sip of craft beer or coffee. At one point, we wanted to age a baseball a bit more than it already was, so we threw it in a french press that was still half full of coffee to gather a darker tone. Perhaps three seconds after doing so, all of us forgot about it....that's a pretty epic find when you're making coffee the next morning. I assume the tilted face accompanying that discovery looked similar to having your cheeks, brows, nose, and lips squished together by a rubber band.
Overall, the shoot was great. The photos were easy. The expressions were profoundly genuine. The day was warm, and we got to drink. I hope you enjoy them.
Oh wait! If you have questions about how we did the lighting, what we shot with, etc. there are now TWO options for you! 1) Office Hours every Wednesday night - this week features Leon Art Gallery's Eric Robert Dallimore. This one is going to be amazing. Eric is coming home after a long flight and is definitely in the mood to talk art. Or 2) the new one....<drumroll> The new FORUM! While Wednesday evenings are absolutely my favorite night of the week and have left people with true incite and a breadth of knowledge only being face to face can deliver, some folks just plum can't make it. Enter the forum...if you're one of the folks who can't make it and just need a quick answer to an easy question. Post it in my new forum and I'll get right to it! How fun! The link for this new page is here.
Enjoy these photos of Kid Reverie and I'll see ya tonight at The Elm at 5:30!
KID REVERIE
As always, thank you so much for looking at my stuff.
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LINKS
Merne Judson III – Website
Gregory Alan Isakov – Website
Forum – Link
Kid Reverie – Facebook (coming soon)
New Image Wednesday + Dash For The Terraform (The Making of)
I learned my lesson last week. I'm not even going to ask how you're doing...no..no..stop! I don't care this time! Too much business to discuss! ...I do like your new bedazzled Kenny Chesney tattoo, though.
After 8 solid weeks of work...it's DONE! Atomic Cowboy's fourteen foot mural is up and open to the public! What a journey this has been! This is by far the largest piece I've done, and I'll tell you - after this long - I'm stoked to be done with it. Make sure to head to the new location to view this sucker live at 4275 Tennyson St. Denver, CO 80212. I hope you enjoy it! This week is all about the steps on how I did this from start to finish.
Wanna see how we got there?! Here's the 5 huge steps!
1. THE CONCEPTUAL SKETCHES
2. WHERE WE WENT
The cowboy portion was shot at Pine Cliff Stables in Golden, CO. What a blast! With the help of the Emily Sierra (link below), we got all the shots we needed in about three hours of maniacally running these horses. The astronauts (singer Brent Cowles - link below) were shot at Great Sand Dunes National Park. All the astronauts are one guy. There are no repeated images at all in this whole thing! And the astronaut on the horse (Poco Post owner Mallory Englestad) was shot in Sedalia, CO with the amazing help from a family friend who lent us her gorgeous German horse, Tito.
3. WORKING IT
Before anything, we started construction on the Trojan Horse. I wanted to be able to place it however it needed to be placed based on what we got from less-reliable photographs (namely the unpredictable horses). The amazing builder from Baltimore, Joel Blaine did such an incredible job making the 2 foot horse out of broken and stained popsicle sticks. You can also see the progression of the image as we started shooting more and more elements.
4. THE HANGING
With extremely short notice, my new heroes, InkMonstr conquered the printing and hanging of this massive piece! They were awesome to work with, genuinely kind, forgiving, and absolutely professional. I will recommend these guys up and down for years to come. I hope to do a lot more work with them extremely soon.
THE FINAL
HOLY COW! Quite the project, eh?! I LOVED doing it! And...there's a lot more work coming for Atomic Cowboy, so stay tuned!
As always...you rule.
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LINKS
Every person here was INTEGRAL in making this image possible. Please check out their work!
Atomic Cowboy – Website (food is SO good)
Brent Cowles – Facebook (dude...I love this guys' voice)
Poco Post – Website (awesomely hilarious cards)
Joel Blaine – Website (new to Denver and quickly a staple in creative construction)
Emily Sierra – Website (such a great photo blog)
InkMonstr – Website (need anything printed? these guys)
Pine Cliff Stables – Yelp (go for a horse ride with some kick-ass cowboys)
New Image Wednesday + Boston Woodworking
Howdy!! How was your week?! Did you go to UMS?! It was awesome this year, eh?! Did you see Ichy-O?! Dude...SO GOOD!!! What else did you do? Oh? You came up with a new idea? Uh oh... Whatchya got? You're calling it "scare-apy?" Please explain. Ok..uh huh...yeah?...wow. So, it's therapy through scaring people? So what, you just yell "HYAAH" in someone's face and then ask them if they feel better? Seriously? That's your idea? You think that'll catch on? WHOA!!! Quit screaming in my face, man!!! NO, I don't feel better at all!! What the heck is wrong with you?!
So, (hang on for a sec and let me calm my breathing after that intro) today's blog is about this awesome Denver company called Boston Woodworking. Yep! They're in Denver! Not Boston.
Seth Clark is the owner. I met Seth at a party about a year back hosted by Donnie Criswell from Rocky Mountain Table Company (link below). As you can probably guess, Seth grew up in Boston. I have no idea how he did it, but he has no accent anymore. Quite a feat. I came from the midwest like 9 years ago and I still catch myself saying, "holy christ, eh?" and all kinds of silly crap that sounds like it's from a Bob & Doug McKenzie sketch.
Seth and I took five days of working hard to gather images for a new website he's finishing at the end of this summer. We spent two of the days traveling around to grab shots of some of the incredible work he'd done around the city. We hit a Chipotle office, a Larkburger, Western Energy Alliance, Sully & Co. (holy cow is that place awesome), and a bunch of other spots. After laughing a ton in the truck and gathering a slew of images, we hunkered down in his warehouse for the next two days where we proceeded to build a thirteen foot tidal wave made of wood pieces from his shop. Assisted by my great friends, Christa Kennett, and Kit Chalberg (video footage shot by Kit coming soon on my UPDATED WEBSITE), we took everything in the shop and twisted and contorted it to look like it was all getting sucked up in a giant wave. It was great. It was exhausting. I needed Gold Bond and three beers when we were done.
The second day, we shot it.
I've never used a two-ton fork lift to raise a six gram speedlight in the air before I'd worked with Boston Woodworking. It was hilarious. This little umbrella on a tiny stand floating up on this massive piece of machinery. The shooting day was epic. Super relaxing and fun...until we had to tear it down.
That, to be honest, was when Seth TRULY CONQUERED. My god! Give that dude a hammer and say "smash," and he's like a prodigy of destruction. I think he took down two straight days of work in about fifteen minutes. It was like Mario on a bender.
After we got the main image, I came back and shot the extremely talented workers in the workshop for a day. When I say extremely talented, I genuinely mean it. These fellas embody craftsmanship and artistry. It was a true delight to be around people who care about details and are truly perfectionists. And they were badass to hang out with too!
All in all, it was a great five days, and I hope you enjoy the images!
BOSTON WOODWORKING
HYAAAH!!!! Feel any better?
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LINKS
Itchy O – Website
Boston Woodworking – Current Website
Rocky Mountain Table Company – Website
Kit Chalberg – Website
New School Board Makeup (?)
SCS Board winners appear to be Caldwell, King, McCormick, Avant and Austin. Results likely to hold with majority of precincts reporting
I’ve been watching the polls all night and I need to hit the sack so I can be on my A game for school tomorrow. As of 10:27, it appears our school board winners are likely to be the following individuals:
District 1: Chris Caldwell
District 3: Teddy King
District 5: Scott McCormick
District 6: Shante Avant
District 9: Roshun Austin
Here’s a snapshot of the most up to date voting data as of 10:27,
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