Author Archives: Michael

Tagged

Your Cover's Blown logoMy friend and oh-so-talented illustrator, Christy Schneider, tagged me on her blog last night. I’m honored that she listed me among her favorite reads and will now, in turn, share some of mine.

In no particular order:

Bruce L. Snell — Yeah, he’s my brother. But he’s a darned talented photographer, too. Mostly portrait and wedding work but I think he can shoot pretty much anything he sets his mind to.

Doug Stremel — I’ve known and worked with Doug for quite a few years now but he’s just recently rediscovered his love for photography. You’d never know it looking at his work. The guy’s got a great eye and makes it look like he’s been shooting for a lifetime.

Montreal Photo — The photo blog of Julien Roumagnac. I’ve been following this one for awhile. Stunning images and a really great presentation as well.

Daily Walks — Diane Varner’s photo blog is an inspiration. She has a way of taking the most ordinary objects and making them art. I love her color sense as well.

One Floor Up — I guess I’d call this an industrial design blog but it’s filled chock full of beautiful, modern stuff. Stuff I want.

Drawn — Tons of great illustration related posts. Makes me wish I could draw. (Okay, maybe everyone can draw… to some degree. It makes me wish I could draw better.)

Jonny Crossbones — If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the old Tintin comics. Jonny Crossbones is a strip created by cartoonist Les McClaine in a similar style.

Design Sponge — Tons of cool design and decor stuff here.

There are many more blogs that give me inspiration but that’ll have to do for now. I still need to pack since I’m leaving early tomorrow morning for the first of two back-to-back shoots. In case I don’t have time — or a connection — to post while I’m away, here’s an oldie from my South Korea trip to tide you over. I’ve been pulling images for an upcoming story and hope that the photo editor will agree that this could make a great cover shot. The contrast of the old and new? You can never go wrong with that. Or, as another stock shooter once told me, any shot with a flag in it. Two flags are even better. Maybe I can Photoshop one into this shot…

Seoul, South Korea

Abstract cat

eclair through glass

I know. “Not another cat photo!” I can hear you from here. Tough.

When we moved the office back into the house, I knew I wanted to separate the two spaces. The four-legged furballs were among the main factors in that decision. So, we added a door to a hallway in the new house that defines “office” from “house”. We chose a ridged glass door to let light through and keep the back hall from getting dark and dreary. An added benefit is that I can see who is lying in wait outside when I go to get a snack from the fridge. The distortion of the glass makes for interesting patterns and I’ve been thinking about working on a series of shots of the cats through the glass in various stages of recognizability. Here’s the first — our calico, Eclair.

I’ll see if I can’t get an actual travel shot up tomorrow and then it’s back on the road on Sunday. I’ll post if I have access. See ya there.

Feline design?

Bear with me here… this is science.

rug

Since we’ve moved into the new house, I’ve been noticing some interesting behavior in one of our cats, Nacho. This funky area rug used to be in the office so the cats have never seen it before. Now that we’ve reintegrated the office into the house, it has found its way into the new living room. Mostly the cats pay no attention — they have plenty of other new things to explore — but a few days ago I found Nacho sitting exactly in the center of the black circle (seen in the bottom left here). Thought nothing of it. A day or so later, there he was again. Smack dab in the circle. Now I’m finding his toys left in the other circles on the rug (as seen above, top right). Is he placing them there purposefully? I think I’m going to start logging my findings in case this turns out to be some major discovery.

Nacho on the rugSee? Even while I was taking the photo above, he comes over and sits on his black circle. He’s a little off center this time but we’ll give him a break since I was distracting him.

There’s definitely something going on here. This cat seems to have some sort of design sense that forces him to place his toys — and his butt — within a composition. I’ll keep you posted on my findings as I am sure you are as amazed as I am.

Oh, and that yellow arc at the bottom of the second photo? It drives him NUTS!. He attacks it like his life is in the balance.

Maybe he’s just strange…

Back to business

Banff, Alberta, Canada

With the move more or less behind us it’s time to get back to business. Today that meant catching up on some stock submissions that had been accumulating in my outbox. This shot of Vermillion Lakes near Banff, Canada, among many others will soon be available for licensing through Robert Harding World Imagery. I’m still backlogged in my post-processing but it feels good to be moving forward. I have two weeks before my travel schedule picks up again. We’ll see how much progress I can make before then.

K4 show opens

K4 show opening

Friday night was the opening for the K4 show in Atchison featuring photography by Bruce L. Snell, Ferry Keizer, Doug Stremel and myself. The ribbon-cutting above started the event off and we followed with a great evening of seeing old friends and meeting new ones. Thanks to all who came out and, if you couldn’t make it, I hope you get a chance to catch the show before it ends on October 18th.

Saturday morning the moving van arrived to load up the last, big items that needed to be hauled out of our old house and downtown office space and take it to the new home/office in Lawrence, Kansas, 30 miles to the east. It was actually a more relaxed day for us because we finally had someone else to do the lifting and we pretty much just pointed out where things were to go. Once that was done, we picked up the cats and let them explore their new home. Caper was first to negotiate the leap over the stairs to the top of the wet bar — a spot that he now enjoys for some quiet relaxation.

Caper

K4 show at the Muchnic Gallery

Banff print

k4 logoI mentioned earlier this year that there would be lots of changes and new things going on for me. Well here’s another of those new things. Tonight I’m hanging my first show with three other photographers; my brother Bruce L. Snell, Ferry Keizer (somebody get this guy a website!) and Doug Stremel. We’re operating under the name “K4” since we’re four Kansas photographers and it’s been great fun working with these guys to select images and get everything organized. I’m looking forward to seeing all the images in one place tonight for the first time.

The show will open August 20th at the Muchnic Gallery in Atchison, Kansas — just north of Kansas City. There is an artists’ reception scheduled for August 22nd from 5 to 7 p.m. The show will be up until October 18. Stop by and check it out or, better yet, get yourself over for the reception!

Kentucky elk herd

Kentucky elk herd

I’m finding that I actually have more time to post when I’m on the road these days. Now that I’m back from Kentucky, I’m divided between work, painting the new house and office, packing, and preparing the old house for sale. It will all be worth it in the end, though. I look forward to having home and office under one roof again.

So, as I prepare to spend the day painting ceilings at the new place, I’ll leave you with one more shot from the elk herd that has been reintroduced on reclaimed mining land in Kentucky. This was a little later in the morning than the last shot I posted and the light was warming up a little (aided a bit here by Photoshop). Still, the fog just wouldn’t burn off. While others complained about the “bad light” I was having a blast finding ways to make the muted colors and subdued contrast work to my favor. Hopefully I succeeded a little but I know I came away with more shots than the folks who thought it was too bad to even take their lens caps off.