The ASA Shirts are now up for sale!

We are running an "at cost" special to help get them out there.

Hurry! Deal ends on 9/20!

Dont forget, the discount code is "ASA"

Spiderwoman!

The 2010 Heart of Steel Poster has claimed it’s place on the wall at the Boston Rock Gym and Mr. Glassberg has been bumped…Move over Jon!

Last year I ripped out this image of 2009’s Heart of Steel competition at the Boston Rock Gym.


Well again this year the 2010 Heart of Steel comp yielded another image that I knew was going to work great for the wall.

Measuring about 4’x6’ this multi-layered 3D cut out is of Sasha DiGiulian who just edged out Francesca Metcalf for 1st place in the comp last February.






















Here a couple of images I took of them from the 2010 comp. I should get them autographed!!
Here too is a link to some cool panoramic images that Willie Van Tassell took...

Unbenounced to me until after I put this together, I found out that Sasha had won the Lead Climbing National title at Pan American Championship down in Ecuador!

Not to be outdone, Francesca Metcalf took the National Bouldering Climbing title at the same event!


Way to show them how we do it here in the States Ladies!


It is truly a privilege to photograph some of these climbers. I have had the honor now of capturing several of the countries BEST.

Zack didn't...

... get his Theater head shots taken for the final show of the year when everyone else did.



















This got more than a few laughs during the final years production of Les Miserable.

This is just so... so... so Zack!

As cool as this was, next year, we'll loan you the ten bucks = ).

Blast from the past

So since we moved our office, I have been going through some OLD pics and found a few that sent me down memory lane…way down memory lane..like twenty years down memory lane.



Here is some of the first theater work I did probably back in the late 1980’s at the Emerson Majestic Theater. Back then I was shooting 800 ISO pushed to 1600 then having all the film processed special at Unison in Boston. That was like a 1 week turn around once I had proof printed. MAN digital kicks the crap out of that workflow. If needed I can turn a 1500 image show around in a few hours and with far better results, though these look great I must say.



Here is a self portrait I used for my original ASA website back in the early 1990’s. What was then my first office is now Matthews Bedroom! Check out my of Speedgraphics 4x5 …oh and my beloved Pentax 6x7….God I miss that camera. ALL film.



Wow! This picture is from back in my black and white printing days. These two young ladies were called “The Grinning Lizards”. I made a negative photocopy of their log onto velum and burned it into the print before I put into the developer. Gail and I ran into them one cold Valentines day out on Martha’s Vineyard. We were in the Edgartown Harbor parking lot and heard their beautiful music floating in the wind. We followed the sound and low and behold… Lisa and Jess. We became good friends and I did a couple of shoots for them for there albums as well as follow them around where ever they played including the Harp in Bean town. Have not heard from them in well over ten years.



Here is the back of my head = ). One of my first real political gigs, a gymnasium dedication at Malden Catholic got me up close to the Kennedy’s, Bulger, Governor Mannino, Congressman Markey…




Oh man…my first magazine publication (Cape Cod Life 1996)…and first mag cover (Mt. Washington).

I have NO CLASS!

That is to say, our first basic photography class is complete = ).

So if I could imagine the ideal first photography class, what would it be like...hmmmmm....

How about a small class with very enthusiastic, easy going and patient students that all have the same name, use the same camera make and model and the same lens.

Wait a minute! That actually happened!

Talk about an easy first class from a teacher's perspective!

At first I was nervous to tell the potential students that there was only two signed up for the class and that they would bail becuase of it. I could not have been more wrong. I guess the 2 to 1 student to teacher ratio meant to them that this class was more like a private lesson!

To Mary and Mary, thanks !

As crazy as I was those days, I always left the class with a smile.

Thanks again for being such a great students!

Sweet girl...

We had a great session earlier today at the studio. Julio and Elizabeth returned to our studio with Arianna...now seven months. I love that we started as their wedding photographer and are now their family photographer...This is what we hope to become for all of our bridal couples. Can't wait to see them all again in a couple of months!

Getting Dynamic!

Yet another workshop in the bag.

For the first time since we started hosting training/workshops at our studio, we set-up this one in our actual studio space. I think it went of very well.













As for Dan’s workshop….AWESOME!

Each day started in the studio and we hit it until lunch. Having that much pizza in two days just can’t be good for you though I wish it was. Lets see…pizza for lunch, left over pizza’s for supper…oh, and don’t forget those late night pizza snacks! We did that two days in a row! I am not kidding.

As both Gail and I have loved the work we have seen from Dan, we took turns as much as possible sitting in and trying to soak some of this up. As of right now…our minds are screaming with new ideas on how to light events and portraits.

So both afternoons we got to let Dan loose on our Studio grounds. Our first two models were are our future Bride and Groom, Pam and John. Having never met them before in the back of my head I had to wonder if this was a good idea or not. This could go really well …or… you know. When they showed up I thought to myself “know one is going to believe this”. Pam, a beautiful Bride to be and John, her handsome Groom.








They were sooooo patient the whole time. They looked like stars as the Papa Razzi was chasing them around with spot lights and strobe packs in tow.

A BIG thanks to both of them for being so nice and patient to all of us.

Next up was Dan's assistant Jim. An expert with the battery packs and lights, Jim was also one of Dan's photography subjects. You can't beat versatility like that.














We all again took turns working the lights and also combined light sources like halogens and LEDs.


The second day right after lunch we had Braeden’s one year cake smashing. What a cute boy! We did some existing light work with him.































Then came our “back-up model” (I have to laugh) Katie. We had to "rough it" as you can see!
















Daughter of one of our Sunday session students, she put the sauce in saucy.


A HUGE Thanks to Billy and the boys over at Performance Custom Cycle! Our neighbors at the Mill, the let us drop in and take over their shop for a little photo session amongst the bikes.

If that wasn't enough, they rolled out this award winning bike for us to drape our model on.

THANK YOU!


















Here is a little video I through together from day 2. (My apologies to the Day 1 attendees. I forgot the camera otherwise I would have done for Sunday as well.)





At the end of it all, we had a great time and many of our students went home with some sweet raffle gifts.
A big thanks to Hunts Photo, Lenspro To Go, Lustre Color, and of Course Dan Doke for providing the raffle gifts.

Ryan drove all the way up from Connecticut for the workshop, so we were happy to have him win one of Dan's DVD's.










Jasmine was one of our "ASA Scholarship" students from Northeaster University that took advantage of one of the complimentary seats.

This proved to us once again how much we love hands on workshops, let alone running them.

Among all the cool things that Dan showed and told us, one thing that I will always remember and take away from this class is what Dan kept saying throughout both sessions, and that is that you have to give the the Bride and Groom something they can not get from there Aunt or Uncle that attended the wedding with their camera.

I heard and understood it at the time, but I guess I really didn’t let it sink in. Sounds silly, but it really didn't hit me until a day or so after.

How embarrassing would it be as a “Professional” photographer to be shown up by a guest?

For Gail and I, that really solidified the need to ALWAYS be pushing the envelope in all the ways possible in any situation. I think that is what makes Dan, Dan. He finds the usual and makes it unusual.

Isn’t that what being a “Professional” is all about really? Or should I say “Passionate Professional”?

Thank you Dan!

ASA is NOT in the House!

So after many long years of a little bit of construction here.. a little bit there… our new office is now complete! OK, so a few more details to tackle, but it is open for business. Finally some physical separation for our family and our business.

What made it even more special is that Gail was away at NEIPP (The New England Institute of Professional Photography) for a week so I surprised her!

Knowing that she would be away, I went crazy and completed all the finish work in about 5 days so I could surprise her when she got back.

Oh man,I busted my hump all week and by Friday I was a complete wreck, both mentally and physically. I missed Gail something fierce and so did Matthew and Steven.

So while Gail was away working and learning along side some of the best photographers in the industry, I was eating saw dust all week. Yea…..I was jealous. OK…so I was VERY JEALOUS. She also got the honor of modeling for Jenn Husdon and Arthur Rainville. They took some BEAUTIFUL shots of Gail in a dress that Jenn literally built around Gail. I plan to get some prints of the shoot for next to my new desk = ).


As much as it killed me to not go with her, I knew she would benefit from this in so many ways. I also knew what it would mean to her to not have to come back to that awful office set-up. It was so inefficient for oh so many reasons.

To help hold down the fort while she was away (essentially make sure the kids get to school and that they don’t starve on my hands) we flew Nana out for the week. By Thursday night she was helping me stay on a busy construction schedule by staining trim along side me at 1:30 AM. THANKS MOM!


As many of you know we do most of the photography at our Studio, but all the editing, album design, client contacting … was all done at our home office (or shall I say Living room).



Up until the beginning of 2009 our poor Living room served as the entertainment room, the playroom, home bill processing room and ASA’s double office equipped with 2 workstations, a regular printer and a large format printer. YIKES!

A typical night at ASA(above), Gail used to always have to squeeze by me and the Epson 4800 printer to get awya from her desk. Oh man...many a fight started that way!

We finished off the boy's playroom right after X-mas ’08 and that decreased quite a toy burden from the living room almost immediatley, but we knew finishing of the office was going to have an even more profound affect on our situation. It just took a lot of custom work to get it done. As you can see there is barely a square angle in the whole place.

So why do we take on these projects you ask? I don't know!

This is a great arguement for just sucking it up and paying somone else to do it!

Here are some pics from the past few years along the way during the build of both the playroom and the office...