Lussier Photography

Empty Chairs

2013-05-24T04:46:06-07:00

This weekend I’m heading down to Long Island to run a Memorial Day Road Race like no other.

The race is the four mile “I Did the Grid” race in honor of CPL Christopher G. Scherer, USMC and all others who sacrificed their lives for our freedom.

CPL Christopher Scherer is one of the thousands of US service men and women who gave their lives for our freedoms in our most recent wars. He was the son of close friends of mine. If you are familiar with this Blog, you probably know the Team Chris story. If not, you can get some background here.

So, you are probably wondering how CPL Scherer, USMC is connected to today’s image. Or Memorial Day. I can explain.

This is an image from my June 2012 trip to England. My son Ryan and I were touring Warwick Castle and in the middle of the guided tour of the castle’s residence was this room. Empty, except for the plexiglass platform on the floor with toy sized empty toy-sized chairs meticulously placed on it. The scale of the tiny empty chairs against the huge, ornate medeaval room commanded attention.

At the entrance of the room was a sign with explanation — Each empty chair in the room represents a UK soldier who was lost in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, I don’t remember the number of chairs that were on display, although even one would be too many.

Please remember those who gave all during this Memorial Day Weekend.

See you all on Tuesday.

Park Avenue

2013-05-23T04:30:44-07:00

One more black and white image from Arches National Park for this week. I’ll be changing things up a bit tomorrow as we head into the long Memorial Day weekend.

This is Park Avenue at Arches National Park, obviously named for the towering rocks. It wasn’t our main destination that day. It was just a place to kill time until our climb to Delicate Arch for sunset and out light painting adventure.

I love the light painting images. And I love the sunset images. But there is something about black and white.

Turret Arch

2013-05-22T04:30:04-07:00

Our sunset shoot was done and we were hiking towards Turret Arch when I saw this — Windows Arch through Turret Arch. I was standing almost directly under Turret Arch so the shot called for my fisheye lens. The same fisheye lens I rented to Chris Nitz just a half hour before. Yes. Rented. Well, ok. Technically I guess I loaned it to him, but after slapping it on his camera and looking through the viewfinder, Chris said, “Damn. I owe you a beer for loaning this to me!” Anyway, Chris was right there to hand the fish back to me.

I knew I was going to like the shot as soon as I looked at the camera’s LCD. Like yesterday’s shot, BW was the way to go here.

BTW, if all goes as planned, I will collect my fisheye “rental fee” from Chris in the fall of 2014 in Acadia National Park — the site of the nest NXNW Photo Blogger Jamboree.

When Skies are Boring

2013-05-21T06:06:36-07:00

The sky was boring at Delicate Arch when we were there last month. I knew the arch would glow red at sunset and our main reason for being there was for light painting after dark, so I wasn’t fretting the lack of clouds. To pass the time until the Magic began, I kept shooting knowing I would process in Black and White.

Stone

2013-05-20T06:20:47-07:00

Steven Perlmutter and I conducted our second Historic Mills Photography workshop this past weekend and from all indications it was a huge success.

I can’t tell you how much fun we had sharing these magnificent buildings with people. As well as sharing our love for photography.

Between playing tour guide, photographer instructor and grabbing some candid shots of attendees in action, I did manage get a couple of shots for myself. This is one of them. A shot from the North side of the Everett Mill overlooking the Stone Mill.

Here are a few shots of attendees in action:

Book Cliffs

2013-05-17T06:33:09-07:00

When I took this shot I was operating on about 6 hours of sleep over the previous 48 hours. And those 42 hours I was awake were among the most fun I’ve ever had shooting.

This was the last day of our whirlwind North by Northwest Photo Blogger weekend. While Chris Nitz, Rick Louie and Mark Garbowski headed back to Denver (their shooting day wasn’t over either!), Dave Wilson, Justin Balog, Michael Criswell and I stayed in Grand Junction before heading to our respective homes the next day.

We made the most of the time. We hit up Colorado National Monument for a sunset/blue hour shoot, in spite of our complet, delusional levels of sleep depravation. We found this area with a gorgeous view of the Book Cliffs on the other side of the city of Fruita and camped out, waiting for the magic to happen. The four of us chatted and reminisced a bit about the previous 48 hours of frantic fun.

And were in awe of the clouds that, until this night, had alluded us.

Road Kill

2013-05-16T06:16:24-07:00

While waiting at the Grand Junction, CO airport for Dave Wilson, the rest of us were chatting and — like grade school kids in the school yard — plotting to ditch Dave. We were also looking for things to shoot. Mostly to kill time.

I saw one of the guys shooting a detail on a parked vehicle and thought it was a good idea. I found this Dodge Ram Truck with a few unfortunate creatures plastered to the grille work.

Compression

2013-05-15T05:29:21-07:00

Here is another shot from Arches National Park.

We shot a lot of really cool, iconic places like Mesa Arch and Delicate Arch, but I also enjoyed shooting random scenes like this one.

Cisco Trailer

2013-05-14T06:08:07-07:00

This is one of the many abandoned trailers and RVs at Cisco. A cool feature which gives this place a definite “Breaking Bad” vibe.

I have a couple of shots of it from a couple of angles. This is my favorite.

Cisco

2013-05-13T06:23:39-07:00

The first official stop on the Utah NXNW trip was the the Ghost Town of Cisco, Utah.

It was an interesting visit. Justin Balog, who helped orchestrate this trip, assured us that in all the times he’s shot Cisco, he has never seen any other photographers there. Yet when we pulled up to the town, there were about a dozen cars and about twenty photographers roaming about the ruins — We had walked right in to a photography workshop.

We did our thing, they did theirs. Their shoot finished about a half hour after we arrived, so we had some time to work the town without worrying about random people walking into our frame. That is, until the police arrived. More on that later.

Processing note: I was planning to go B&W on this but, after seeing Justin’s take on Cisco, I went I opted for a cross-processing technique in Lightroom.