John Curtis Photography and Videography

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Bay Harbor Vintage Car and Boat Show - part 1 - the Red Carpet

9:09 PM | Posted by John Curtis photo/video |

June 24th and 25th of 2011 I had the honor of being the lead photographer and videographer for the Bay Harbor Vintage Car and Boat Show.

I contracted out to shoot two days of photo and video for the Bay Harbor Foundation, with an end goal being a full promotional video, and enough photographs to satisfy their promotional print needs for the next season or two.

I will admit, I was, a bit nervous.

To be shooting all the media for an event, photography and videography, is a pretty big task.

Lucky for me my wife Bre is an excellent shooter willing to lend a helping hand when need be!

Here are some images straight from the red carpet of todays car and boat show, mostly my favorites, so keep your eyes open as more are on their way.

This is quite possibly my favorite shot from the whole Red Carpet Parade.

It just looks timeless!

This is my favorite car from the entire show, check out the mobbed out hot rod!

So sleak.

Definitely more stuff coming from this awesome Northern Michigan event!

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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Chalevoix - Emmet County Pink Ribbon Ride - Bike 4 Breast Cancer

5:48 PM | Posted by John Curtis photo/video |

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It will sound crude, but I love tits, It's just the truth.

Well.... It's at least the truth that most men will present when talking about beast cancer.

My truth however, is a little bit , ....deeper than that.

Right around 6 years ago my mother, Jill Curtis, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Shocked by her diagnosis, she chose to keep it a secret, as our family was in the midst of change.

My mom is a fighter, at this point she'd already beaten cervical cancer, and had gone on with many healthy years. I think she thought it better to come to grips with it on her own terms before bringing everyone else in to the loop.

Months later it was inevitable, the cancer was widespread in one breast, and steadily threatening the other. A date was set and she went in for a double mastectomy.

6 years later and my mother is cancer free, chasing her grand kids around, like it never happened.

The point to this story is awareness, prevention and action!

Who knows what the outcome would have been if she had waited a year to get another mammogram?

I might have ended up with a pink ribbon Tattoo'd on my arm because I had a mother who had died from breast cancer, instead of one who survived it.

Today, 6/18/2011, was the 9th annual Char-em Pink Ribbon Ride to raise awareness about Breast Cancer. My family and I were honored to be a part of it.

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Friday, June 17, 2011

Introducing Korbin Winstone ( Infant Baby Photos )

8:36 AM | Posted by John Curtis photo/video |

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It's amazing to see the people you grew up with starting families and living life!

This week I had the pleasure of gifting an infant photo session to my long time friend Kyle Winstone and his wonderful (soon to be wife) Rachel.

Almost two weeks ago, after 10 months of anticipation, Kyle and Rachel brought a beautiful and healthy baby boy in to this world! Korbin Lee Winstone ! It was awesome to meet Korbin the other day as well as his 7 year old sister Paris. It's really is great to watch your childhood friends grow in to loving and caring adults. Kyle is a lucky man to have such a great family and he's going to make one fantastic father!

So.......

Meet Korbin Lee Winstone

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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

St.Mary's Catholic school - Charlevoix Michigan - Gaylord Diocese

2:31 PM | Posted by John Curtis photo/video |

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For the last few weeks I have been working closely with the staff at St.Mary's Catholic School in Charlevoix Michigan. I am not really an organized religion type of person, and thought that I might be getting in over my head! Needless to say I had an awesome time filming in and around the school, watching the kids run, play and have fun. What I learned is that you should never judge a book by its cover.

Enjoy!

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Saturday, June 4, 2011

Petoskey MI, Leo's Alley Way (May 29 Memorial Day Weekend) Part.2

5:58 AM | Posted by John Curtis photo/video |

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While shooting in the alley way we let Hucker loose to do as he pleased for a bit!

Pictured below is the pure joy of being set free for the first time in your life.

Huckers take off was impeccable . a straight 10.00 as you can see!

He ran like this for quite a ways, then he noticed the "FOAM".

Then it was on like donkey kong!

He posted up by that two tone door and I was able to get some pretty cool shots.

This is the "I thought you said I was free" face!

Fascinated by rocks.

And finally the "leave me alone I a groovin" face.

We needed to find a way to get him away from the door so we put his Meow Kitty on this

bar and brought it to his attention! Kind of a mean thing to do to a 20 month old who's life

revolves around his Meow Kitty, but hey, it made for good photos!

I dont really know why he stopped here.

He just stopped, bent over, and proceeded to rub his

Buzz lightyear and Meow Kitty into the brick?

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Monday, May 30, 2011

Petoskey MI, Leo's Alley Way (May 29 Memorial Day Weekend) Part.1

11:37 AM | Posted by John Curtis photo/video |

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The Mrs., Hucker and I took a walk downtown Petoskey yesterday.

The sun was poking its head in and out of the clouds, the apple blossom's are blooming

and the smell of summer was floating around.

The alley way behind Leo's bar, Ethnic Creations and the Mitchell Street Pub is pretty famous

by Northern Michigan standards.

I dont know how many local bands have had their promo pictures taken there, high school seniors, engagement photos etc.... But regardless of how many photos have been snapped in this little alley way it will always be one of the prettiest spots in Petoskey.

Here are some photos of the alley way, they way I see it....

This is my favorite shot for part 1.

Here are the specs!

Canon 60d shooting .RAW . Sigma 10-20mm ex lens @ 10mm

(shutter = 1/160, f/8.0, ISO= 100)

I used Adobe's Camera Raw program to process the .Raw file.

Inside the program I saturated some of the oranges, desaturated

some of the res and yellows and converted it to B&W.

After converting it I went in to the TONE CURVE tab and

brought out the highlights, lights and turned down the shadows.

I love the apple blossoms in Petoskey!

Anytime you can contrast nature against architecture you will

walk away with some interesting to look at.

I really liked the two tone of this door, and the steps crossing just

above it added to the mystery of it all.

If you click on this picture and enlarge it you will see some really

interesting stuff going on!

The cobwebs in the corner, the pollen on the glass, the construction

going on inside the building, the cars and parking in the reflection!

Pretty neat if you ask me!

I have been thinking a whole lot about perspective lately,

and how it can change the way people think or feel about anything.

Photography is a great way to mess around with perspective and get

an inside look at what it really is.

The next four pictures are all of the same general area.

What I did to test out the different perspectives was this.

In this one I went against the natural grain of the alley way.

Crossing my lens and camera body against the lines of the buildings,

trees and retaining walls.

In this one brought the camera body up a little bit from the first frame to

to match my frame to the angle of the building in the foreground, then

focused hard immediately in front of me to gain a good depth of field.

This next one followd the previous with the foreground building laying

naturally with the camera, then I added more to the other side of the frame

by pulling back a bit and lengthening my depth of field.

On this one I noticed how the alley ways road was

transitioned up in to the wall of the building.

So I laid the bottom of my camera body flat on the little

transition of alley way to get this kind of organic feel

out of the lines the architecture in the alley way form.

It's amazing to me that such little movements can either make or break

the way people feel about a photograph. And such is life. Where you are standing when a certain thing happens dictates how you interoperate said event. And the guy standing across the street will have seen the same event but have a completely different idea of what happened due to his own perspective.

Crazy, I know!

Once again, I was trying to contrast nature and

architecture.