our blog is moving!!

So here’s the deal. Emily and I are both writing on this blog now, so it seems funny that it be still mcuccarese.wordpress.com. We could either change Emily’s name or simply the address of the blog. Also, I get infinite space for photos if I migrate it to my website’s host, so you’ll now find our little blog at cuccaresephotography.com/blog. Enjoy!

Athena + Drew = Bruggeling

This is Athena and Drew.  Aren’t they beautiful?

Athena and Drew have been together forever (figuratively speaking of course, because that’d be weird).  They’d been dating a while when I met Mike.  Drew knew Mike from Campus Crusade, I knew Athena from InterVarsity.  When Mike came to InterVarsity and we started hanging out, Athena took it upon herself to find out everything she possibly could about Mike from Drew. Apparently she learned good things, because I got approval… which worked out pretty well, because I kind of like him now.

It was so much fun to get to see these two on their day. Although there was rainy weather, last minute decisions and little things not going according to plan, the smile on Athena’s face never faded… she was just happy to finally get to marry her man  Drew kept his eyes on his bride, and you couldn’t help but see his joy. I can still remember the day Drew took Athena on their first date. Athena came back to her apartment all a smile, and I knew that Drew had treated her well… Drew, you are a good man, because almost 5 years later, you’re still treating her that well.

Athena is an almost Pharmacist, Drew is an almost Doctor … Apparently they  both love school… and if you ever have the opportunity to have an Athena cooked meal, then you are one blessed person.

Well, Hello World!

Mike invited me to begin posting on the wonderful blog of Cuccarese Photography.

It’s been an interesting few months, as we’ve embarked on a 2 weddings a month shooting spree.  I mostly call it a shooting spree, because it also includes a lot of traveling, packing, leaving our equipment places.. regaining some of it, and coming up with new fun ways to enjoy the day :) meanwhile, we’re working our full time jobs, and planning a move to the east coast (That’s right.. we’re relocating once again… if you know anyone in Boston, MA that could use a photographer… let me know). We hope to make some friends as soon as possible, and ask them to let us take their picture… because that’s what we do :) it’s the pain of being our friends. Anyways, I do love going to weddings!

I’m going out of order… which is difficult for the structured person I am… but here’s a few of my personal favorites from a recent wedding we shot at the beginning of June.  This is Dwight and Sam. They are InterVarsity students at WVU who love the Lord and have a heart for Justice. It’s been nice getting to know them this year. Dwight was Mike’s student (who told others about his TA with the ‘crazy’ hair).  They got married at Coopers Rock (a Park outside of Morgantown). It was a beautiful day for an outdoor wedding.

This is Dwight’s younger brother… he wouldn’t take a normal picture because he wanted to battle light sabers… so we made a trade:

hibachi.

So here’s the deal. I can tell a story, but really I just want to post a fun picture I grabbed at a hibachi grill. so uh. yeah

Fx

As I mentioned long ago, I have a deep respect for purists when it comes to photography.

That being said, there are not many things in life I find as enjoyable as photoshopping the crap out of a picture. Critics often say that with photoshop, your need for raw talent diminishes and that a truly good photographer can take an amazing shot with just their camera. I totally agree, though I humbly challenge said critic to photograph George Washington drinking tea with Vladmir Putin in line to get an iPad. But more seriously, I do agree that the amount of detail a professional photographer has to be aware of has diminished as a result of photoshop, and the overall value on capturing a single good  photograph has been obliterated by modern digital photography, but *shrug*.

Aaanyhow – I found this awesome little gem online this morning. It’s an adobe photo shop. Get it??

So a couple months ago, my dear friend Jeff’s brother got married. Emily and I diligently recorded the event and then I toyed around a bit with the photos afterward. Here’s what I came up with:

I think one of the most powerful things Photoshop can do is change the mood of a photo. A few layers changed this normal looking smiley photo to a quirky-grungy feel.

Same deal here, but I chose slightly more elegant graphics.

In this case I just used a ‘dirty’ layer, a ‘bookeh’ layer and some small little lights.

This one didn’t involve much photoshop, actually, I just enjoyed it. They had their reception at a theater – wicked awesome.

Photoshop layer effects. Cheap trick? Yup. Do I enjoy it anyway? Yup.

That makes me sad

Ok, well there’s nothing sad about visiting family in San Diego. But there is something really funny about the way Nico (and the rest of us thereafter) says ‘that makes me sad’ when something is moderately disappointing.

Allow me to introduce you to a traditional Cuccarese vacation. We’ll all get together somewhere and after a ceremonial round of saying “how you doin’?” to each other, we find some chairs, drag them out to the driveway and sit. Now, each day will have some main thing to do, but it’s all bookended by driveway time. Naysayers may say it’s ludicrous to fly out to California without spending all day at Disney Land/Lego Land/Downtown SD/Arnold’s hosue/the beach/Tijuana/jail/etc. but to them I say *shrug*. We don’t sit around the entire time. I did get to see an angels game, my friend downtown, the beach and some neat places to eat, but the point isn’t to fill the day with things to do. If you do that your family is only ‘around’ you for the experience. You need a driveway. In my humble opinion.

So of course I took the camera around and snapped photos the whole time, trying (but failing) to resist the temptation to take the generic sunset photo over the water. Here’s a few.

This photo is just to pay homage to the great Steve Zissou. Graig took it.

This is graig. Except this is graig after I printed the photo out and waited 30 years

This is a terrifying lightsaber battle with Nico

My dad smiles all the time, however the event is as hard to catch as bigfoot. Well here you go – proof.

Here’s the sunset photo I hoped not to take

This picture perfectly describes Angelo – he’s very fun

Normally I don’t like straight-on flash. Especially pop-up flash. However I think it worked out well in this case. I was pretty proud of it until I found myself in the background of the photo. Cred goes to Emily.

tiny bundles of responsibility

We’ve had the opportunity to shoot our neighbor’s baby girl a couple times (two photos from the first shoot are in the ‘lads and lasses’ post). Our neighbors are stupendously social and extremely fun and by extension, so is their little girl.

I do enjoy taking photos of babies, but often I find it difficult to get excited about it. It’s probably a control thing – you can’t tell a baby “okay now lift up your chin and look down through your glasses like you’re a pimp”. Also, most people that have seen me around babies can attest to the fact that they just. kinda. stare. at. me. I can’t figure out why, but babies almost instinctually look at me as though I were some abstract painting they’re struggling to ‘get’.

That being said, after a couple shoots with our neighbors, I’ve come to realize that I’m not really wrong about babies, but my expectations are. Normally, I love having fun during a shoot, but more importantly, I like getting the lighting/posing correct. With babies and their families, I think it can be said that having a good time is more important . You can forget about the technical stuff if you’ve got an upset baby. Also, babies need rest. Having strobes flickering at them for 20 minutes can be quite taxing, so it’s a good idea to just sit down, chat and play. very fun

On a somewhat technical note, I bought some super cheap shoot-through umbrellas because I was tired of all the shadows my reflective ones have been making. Wish I had dropped the 30 bucks on these a long time ago.

The first two were from our shoot a few months ago, and then the rest were like a week ago. Look how she’s grown :-)

subtle.

So I haven’t been out shooting for awhile. Currently consuming my life is my wonderful proposal entitled: “Au(III)-catalyzed [3+2] Electrocyclization – a Concise Synthesis of Angular Tricycles from Simple Allenyl Ethers”. I only bring that up because I re-read the title the other day and realized the word ‘tricycles’ has a much less nerdy everyday connotation, and it made me chuckle. Try to picture angular tricycles.

aaaaaaaaaanyway – I was reading gizmodo the other day and one of their ‘shooting challenges’ was the overexposed/blow-out. After looking through the results, I remembered how powerful photos can be in what they neglect to show. The results of the contest are here – the winning photo is awfully hard to see (due to it’s blown-outness) but the first runner up is awesome. Anyhow, I thought I’d put up some of my more ‘subtle’ photos. See if you like.

This is the photo outside my lab. Is it a mysterious corridor to an abandoned silo that man has not explored since the cold war? Is it a really boring gravel pathway to the back door?

Take a picture of flying seagulls from above. I dare you. (if you want to take me up on this dare, they fly under lane avenue bridge. The Olentangy was frozen that day.

post office flag in DC

this is a pigeon.

Although the caption isn’t necessary – this is a blurry powerline

I loved these rocks. This is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I got my shoes really wet trying to jump around on these rocks.

Some transpirings

UPS brought Alyson Hannigan to our apartment a couple weeks ago – couldn’t be more excited. For clarity, Emily named our new 35mm 1.8G lens Alyson Hannigan for some reason.

I absolutely love it. Our 50mm prime served us well for a really long time and continues to get good use, but since I have a DX formatted camera, it’s a little too zoomed in for everyday use. Unlike Alyson Hannigan, its easier to carry around than our Sigma 18-50 2.8 and so the last few days, it’s the only lens I’ve been using.

In other news, a few campus orgs have gotten together for a campaign called another world is possible. It consists of some talks/presentations that serve to bring awareness to the existence of slavery and human trafficking in the world as well as environmental destruction. It’s really cool. I managed to remember my camera on Thursday and took some pics of the brilliant presentation Intervarsity made of slavery/trafficking. When you entered the building, an angry guy (Jed, actually a very nice guy) directed you through a hallway where you experienced a few elaborate examples of what slavery can look like. You walked by a line of people crouched on the ground with their heads down, a girl trying to build something with bricks with another angry guy with a pipe that kept knocking them down and threatening her (actually another nice guy, Dwight). It was followed by a girl frantically making jeans, another making chocolate and finally a girl cowering in the corner with a mattress nearby to indicate sex slavery. Brilliant. Here’s some photos. The rest of the photos are here

also I’m gonna start putting captions on the bottom of the photos. Hopefully you’re not terribly confused.

In other other news..

The snow hit again.

Some find it funny, others don’t

Randomguy

You can only barely tell from this photo that there’s a jeep off the road down there. He smashed head on into a car. Everyone’s fine.

This is the other side of the hill. I parked my car at home on top of the hill and came to take pictures of the mayhem. This poor Toyota bit the dust – the unintended acceleration in this case was probably not Toyota’s fault.

Angry BMW cuts through the snow. For a 530xi, this guy did a surprising amount of this hill kinda sideways.

if you build it….

ok this is getting ridiculous

So if you’ve read any previous posts, you’d know that I absolutely love the snow. Here’s another post about it.

The university closed at 1:00 on friday because of the prospect of snow. I was feeling all productive because I decided that I usually don’t believe news reports when they say things like ’1 to 2 feet possible in areas overnight’ and went to work. While I was working, I checked periodically  after the 1:00 shutdown just to make sure there wasn’t any snow. Nope – in fact it was raining like crazy. Until like 6:30.  blamo – tons of snow is falling.

“Ok no problem”, I thought to myself, “if I leave now, I’ll be able to make it up the crazy steep hill to my apartment.” Little did I know, when i got to my crazy steep hill, I was to expect a long line of people trying their best at the hill and a lot of cars off the side of the road (and counting). But, after an hour of waiting, the trusty lil’ mazda slid and skidded it’s way up to the top of the hill where it has remained all weekend.

So here’s the crazy steep hill. Observe the cars on the right side and interesting angles.

I ended up pushing this van up the hill. Punks on the hill did not. whadda buncha fonies

mazda getting some well-deserved rest

of course, we had to go play in the snow

and take some pictures :-)