Tonight Dr. Temple Grandin spoke on autism there. Originally scheduled for the comparatively tiny Lehr dining room, the lecture was to Pucille Gym because of, I assume, overwhelming demand. It’s not many lecturers there that have a currently running HBO feature film made about them. Add in, it looks like a surefire Emmy for Claire Danes, who plays Grandin in the film, you’ve got an event that would nearly max out capacity at Pucillo Gym.

To say Dr. Grandin is a high functioning autistic person is to describe me as a high functioning primate. She’s brilliant. She’s an entertaining and informative speaker. Much funnier than I expected. She was very engaged with the audience. One of the hurdles I had to jump tonight was not distracting her while she spoke. At the beginning she asked if everyone could stay seated as much as possible as it’s distracting for her to have people moving around in her field of vision. Frankly, I think it would be distracting for anyone, obviously, moreso for her. Needless to say, I picked the wrong night to be covered in a red polo shirt. I was like an enormous “look at me target”. I only used flash for a few shots as that was extremely difficult for her. I tested that out before she even started speaking and ditched the flash. Sad, as the gym was darkened somewhat.

So I spent the evening lurking around corner and hiding behind things. In fact, the only shots of her face on were taken from the very back of the gym with me hiding behind the bleachers or people standing. Most of the shots are from behind her and above her.

A wonderful lecture. It’s a privilege to get shoot people such as Dr. Grandin.

Here is the entire gallery. Here are a few samples.

Another place to follow what I’m doing and see my latest work? Facebook. frost imaging has a shiny, brand new page on Facebook and I would love it if you would click here and become a fan.

Thanks for coming by and and checking in.

For now, here is my favorite shot from a recent shoot for the North Museum. Dr. Marla Jones of Elizabethtown College holds a vial of strawberry DNA after a presentation on DNA extraction techniques.

So to keep you going while I am busy, here’s what I’ve been up to lately.

I just finished a project for the Lancaster Bureau of Police shooting the entire staff. One of my favorites is this one of Chief Sadler;

If you’ve been a reader here long you know I love working with the LBP Mounted Patrol. Here’s their group for the Bureau;

One shot from this year’s Queen Street Block Party;

Mid-day at Steinman Park for JSID;

I don’t get to do portraiture very much which is funny because when I do it, I love it. Here’s one shot from a family session I just finished;
‘

My favorite band, The Faux Minx, posing after playing the Mayor’s reception during the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities Convention at the new Convention Center;

One of my favorites from this year’s Celebrate!;

Yes, it’s time for the annual Sertoma BBQ. The most important thing to remember is that all the money from this event goes back into your community. So if you don’t have tickets already, come by and get yours tomorrow. You can pick up your chicken or buy a chicken dinner in Long’s Park from 10-5. There’s all kinds of things to do in the park throughout the day and it should be a beautiful day.

As for the production end of things, I’ll be there tonight and tomorrow. I’ll have images from this year’s BBQ up by Sunday. Check back here for a link to the new galleries.

If you would like browse the last two year’s BBQs. You can. Below are the links to the gallery.

2008 BBQ

2007 BBQ

You can also buy any of the images you see in the galleries; anything from standard 4×6 print to a museum quality print on canvas to coffee mugs and t-shirts. Just look for the “Buy” link in the upper right hand corner of the photograph.

Thanks for visiting and I hope to grab a shot of you at the BBQ this year. Wave and say hi!

And yes, here’s one shot from this afternoon. Here’s 2008 BBQ Chairman burning off some grills for the folks at FOX43 TV.

UPDATE: Here is the link to this year’s gallery:

2009 Sertoma BBQ image gallery

And here are a few faves from mine.

There’s been a flurry of year end activity at Millersville University.

Here’s Vyner Award winner , Nate Sheffer playing the Jazz & Java event at MU.

And here’s Dr. Keith Wiley conducting the ensemble.

There’s a ton of new MU work, you can see it all here in the Millersville main gallery.

My good friend Jason Mundok held his first in a series of home concerts dubbed, The Wood Stove Concerts. They are amazing events and redefine the artist’s relationship with the audience (and the music is stellar to say the least). Here’s one shot of Jason and his ensemble, Living Fables.

Here’s something I don’t do very often, basic portraiture. Below is a shot from a set done for the girl’s first communion. I should do more of this stuff, it was a lot of fun.

A shot from a set of this year’s YWCA Race Against Racism.

A did a lot of shooting surrounding the Launch Music Conference. Here is one shot from a late night show at the Chameleon.

The best way to keep up on what I’m doing?

Drop me a line and ask. Or follow me on Twitter or check out the Facebook page. I’ll post updates once in awhile but I do most of the updating at Twitter.

In the last three years I’ve uploaded more than 47,000 images (47,075 as of this morning). Some 39,000 people have viewed at least one of those images at some point. As I mentioned above, it’s unusual that I don’t hand out a card or two (or more) at every event I shoot at and ask the people to email me. The net result from all those cards, three emails in the last two years. And so ends the publicly available galleries.

I had genuine and probably naively hoped that the paradigm other than that of the photographer hiding away their work and locking it up except to paying customers would work. I had hoped and earnestly believed that if more people had access to the work it would at least generate some personal interest. I was wrong. And if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expected different results then at least that adjective cannot be applied to me…any longer.

Thanks for visiting and once again, if you a friend or a client and you cannot access the galleries, please drop me a line. I’ll make sure you can see the images as before.

Looking forward, the Flickr galleries will go away, to everyone, on January 29th. I’m still looking for a suitable successor. At this point it looks like Smugmug. At one time Flickr was a wonderful tool to make things simpler to see online. Now it takes extra time to manage, I’m constantly blocking off people who are cruising for bizarre porn or just anonymous people with no work of their own. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this change may cause and I only do it in hopes I can continue to do what I do best, which is take pictures.

Thank you.

-russell

Bow Arts Dinner gallery

Bow Arts party at the dome gallery

Pajamarama at the dome gallery

Brews and Bands at the dome gallery

I just finished chronicling the work of Theater of the Seventh Sister Associate Artistic Director, Lydia Brubaker during her annual Shakespeare Camp at F&M. Every summer Lydia directs a group of young men and women (from ages 13-18) through an intensive theater workshop that produces one Shakespeare play. This year’s offering was The Taming of the Shrew.

One of the most interesting parts of the workshop, at least for me, was the gender distribution of the students and how that affected the play. The students, some dozen or more young women and three young men, because of the make to female ratio, all played cross-gender roles. Put simply, all the guys played women on stage and woman played the male roles. So not only were they learning and working with the process of acting but they had the double hurdle of playing against their own gender. In a time of life when we all formed our adult identities, these students were not only working it out in real life but on stage.

I can’t say how impressed I was with the group’s passion, involvement and their performances. It’s simply amazing to watch Lydia work with the campers and them work for her. The students (and Lydia) do everything from working the theater itself to costuming their roles. I saw the final dress rehearsal today and I thought they did an admirable job with the play. It was very entertaining.

Below you find a few samples from today’s dress rehearsal and you can view the other images I shot throughout the workshop at the links below.

final dress rehearsal gallery

first dress rehearsal

rehearsal

blocking

acting exercises

For now, enjoy a few images (click here and here to see my complete rehearsal shot galleries) from the rehearsals but do pick up some tickets for “City of Angel’s” running all this month and early August.

Cylo taken during Schwanger Bros annual Customer Appreciation Day.

View all the shots from this great annual event here.

June First Friday.

View all the June First Friday images here.

Fireworks over the houses on New Street after a Barnstormer’s game for a special project.

You can see the entire set here.

The fountain in Penn Square, just because.

The Convention Center at night.

The Convention Center during the big storm June 12th.

A shot from the Lancaster County Community Foundation annual meeting. I want to welcome the LCCF as my newest client.

You can see all the shots here.

One of a series of shots from the Amtrak station for an upcoming print project.

You can see all the Amtrak shots here.

Finally, I just finished these shots this weekend. Every year I shoot the homes in the Lancaster Parade of Homes that WeeBee Audio/Video has worked on. Here are two shots from the Parade.

You can both sets of the Parade images here and here.