Barney Family Mausoleum, originally uploaded by ArcherVision.

Standing Guard

As a photographer, you constantly want to find new subjects and new places to shoot. But more often than not work, weather, traffic jams or missed air shows (see post below) lead you to what is available to shoot. At least you get out, right? I am fortunate to have a pretty cool spot called Forest Park right at the end of my street. I hiked into the park from the Washington Street cul-de-sac after taking this quick pic of a very cool house at the end of the street that has a very out of place Antebellum type of look.

I don’t have any idea about the house, but I can imagine the original owners most likely, being the closest neighbors, knew the Barneys pretty well. Everett Hosmer Barney, whom made a fortune with his famous Barney and Berry ice skates, donated his incredible 110 acre park to the city of Springfield. It is one of the nicest city parks in the country, and has many rare plants from Europe, Egypt, China, Japan and India.

And it also has a very interesting subject to shoot, the Barney Family Mausoleum. This sun-draped sphinx guards one of Springfield’s most interesting and generous figures. It was also a subject of one of my Grandmother’s favorite photos of mine, a black and white from when I was in high school. I will have to dig that up and scan it.

Air Show

Air Show, originally uploaded by ArcherVision.

After about 2 hours of horrible traffic attempting to get to the Great New England Air Show at Westover Air Force base I just plain gave up. It was the first air show at Westover in 4 years, and the first one I almost got to see in more than 10 years. I had really been looking forward to shooting, so I bailed out of the traffic and headed to one of my stand-by photo haunts, Forest Park.

While shooting the Barney Family Mausoleum, a place I have shot countless times but keep going back to, I looked up and realized that 40,000 feet was about as close as I was going to get. I kind of like the shot I got. Sort of minimalistic, I'll admit it but it does give you the feeling that some things are just way out of arms reach.

Del Padre Digital goes RED!

Nino's RED Camera, originally uploaded by ArcherVision.

RED Camera, that is.

Over a year in the waiting, we finally took delivery of our RED and gave it a test drive. It is absolutely incredible at 113 frames and the image is flawless.

Nino is currently out in Denver shooting with it for clients Proficient Audio and Speakercraft. We produced video elements for both company’s booths at this years CEDIA show, the "Big One" for the audio industry. We created 8 new product videos for Proficient that included some new 3d renders and studio photography of their new line of sub woofers, electronics and in door-out door speakers.

The Speakercraft video, playing on a 17 foot screen, has interviews of the SC crew talking about business and audio gear chroma keyed onto some wacky footage, ranging from cattle drives and cowboys (Last Stand At Apache Pass, 2005”) to Roman epic footage (Romulus, 2007). And don’t forget Duck and Cover, which coincidentally was made way back in 1952 by Archer Productions (unfortunately no relation) and plenty of Godzilla. And all that is intertwined with footage of the incredible "Goth du'Sole-like" troup Lucent Dossier.

Although it was full HD and we had about 2 weeks total to go through about 5 hours of source footage and edit down to a 40 minute loop with music including the Doors and Rage Against the Machine, it turned out killer and one of the funnest projects we have had in a while.

If you are looking to shoot with a RED camera, you can rent our services through-out the North East and pretty much any where else you want to shoot. Check out our site for more info and keep an eye out for samples from the RED soon.

www.delpadre.com

Stank Puss

Stank Puss, originally uploaded by ArcherVision.

O.K. Even I can't make this up. This was an actual product, on sale at an actual arts and craft fair and were actually scratch and sniff panties. Made by Dirty Britches, these would make killer stocking stuffers.