It rained on our parade: Manitowoc Photographer

My wife and I ventured out to the Manitowoc parade tonight, and it rained. Yup, rained all night. We were cold, (mostly cuz of the wetness), and kinda bored. The floats were really spaced out, some as much as four whole blocks from each other, and almost none had any music.

However, we did manage to have a splendid time anyways! I shot in B&W as we got some coffee at Beerntsen's Confectionery, and walked around downtown Manitowoc. It was actually a blast, and we had fun taking some goofy photos, as I hope you can see (=

Enjoy the silliness, and have an awesome Thanksgiving everyone! I am thankful for so much, including the fact that I have ten whole followers! So cool to know some people actually care about my work. I'm thankful for a loving God, a beautiful wife, awesome family and so much more. Life can suck, it really can, but I do believe as long as we remember the good things we've been blessed with, that we can never lose our hope.

Have a blessed weekend!

Mamiya Super 23 for sale!

Hey everyone.

So, unfortunately, the time has come for me to once again try to sell my wonderful medium format camera. I put a lot into it, but just don't have the time anymore. It's a frikkin sweet camera, just needs a little work and some time.

It's the same camera model that my favorite photographer William Eggleston used, hence part of the reason I bought it. I have two backs with it, as well as the ground glass back and a non-functioning lens. The 6x9 back was always broken even when I purchased the camera. The lense worked for a while, but now the shutter is jammed. It probably just needs some love, but I have to wait until the future to own my own medium format. I at least have one to borrow one right now.

I just need cash to save up for starting the business. Take a look at the pics, and the auction! Spread the word, these things are extremely hard to find these days.

Auction!

Self portraits: Green Bay Photographer

I got in the lighting studio and took some photos this morning. I was mostly trying to learn and see if I could crank out a cool new pic for my profiles. I don't know if I'll use any of these for profile pics, but I really like how they turned out.

The last one is a continuation of my self portrait project I am working on.

With my cheesy little air soft pistol.

Untitled Self-portrait #15. ©Adam Koenig 2009.

Green Bay art, wedding, event, band, concert, poo, tree, nature, landscape photographer

it's day..., i don't even know anymore. What day is it? is it day 70? Or is it wednesday.

or is it the day i give in to all my self-hatred and doubt?

I don't want it to be that day, but it feels like that day.
have i taken photos this week? I don't even remember, so jaded. I wanted to stop taking pictures forever yesterday. I never wanted to see another camera for all my life. Seriously, you may not believe that if you know me but it was true for approximately 20 hours.

we're back on a plane of existence again. I mean we're not really talking, but I can at least look at all the cameras I own now, I guess that's something.

so enough blathering. I know blogs aren't supposed to blather. But I have 10 followers now, I can do what I want?

hmm, I just read an interesting quote...
"The reason they want you to fit in is so that once you do they can ignore you"
~Seth Godin

so true.
And it segues into how I am feeling.
I have found myself in an interesting position the last couple months.
I decided not to go to grad school, that I wanted to shoot weddings, and do art on the side, and than I poured myself into learning everything I can about starting a business.
Than I wanted to throw up.
I than realized I hated taking pictures.
Shortly after I realized that wasn't true, I was just sick of everything and desperately need a vacation. A "sabbath" if you will, before I just start vomiting my organs all over the place.

I have quite succesfully forgotten myself. I forgot why I even started taking pictures in the first place, and also why I even liked taking pictures. Do I really want to shoot weddings?

I originally picked up a camera because I thought "ooh pretty beauty in ordinary things, I wanna capture it". Haven't ever heard that one before have you?

I originally picked up a DSLR for one reason. To shoot bands. I love music and wanted to continue that love in somehting other than playing it, cuz that prooved... let's just say it wasn't for me.

And now for the end of my rambling salad... I give you, Adam Koenig Photography.

My reasons for taking pictures.

1. Take bad-ass awesome images. Yes I swore.
2. Take bad-ass awesome images. Yup, swore again.
3. Can you guess? Take BADASS AWESOME IMAGES!
4. Earn a living doing what I love.
5. So I can show the world the insanity in my head. And make them like it.

I will no longer post any images on this blog unless they further the vision of what I want to end up shooting. Thus comes an early end to the Project 365. I made it 69 days. It will happen again, but not now.

P.S. I will have a new blog sometime soon, Eric Lightbody is working on it, and it's going to lend itself to my identity wonderfully.

Days 67-69: 365. Green Bay Bacon Photographer

No, don't read that wrong, I am not going into food photography. I am taking a total break from everything serious, however.

My friends recently threw a house party, and decided to base it around a bacon theme. So for my whole weekend, I decided to post three pictures of bacon delicacies that were served.

It was quite a fun time, and wound up in a few guys eating bacon and playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. All in all, a success. And now... bacon.

Day 66: 365. Art: Green Bay Photographer

So tonight was the opening reception for the 37th Annual Student Juried Exhibition on campus. The show was overall quite amazing, and there were some cool awards given out. I myself got a couple of works entered in the show, including one of my self portraits, and one of my diptychs.

Awesomely enough,
the diptych, Untitled, 1: Vast

was chosen to recieve the Lawton Award for Excellence in 2D. Pretty frikking sweet, now I can call myself an award-winning photographer. Thanks so much for checking out my blog, I wouldn't be anywhere without my wonderful supporters!

On another note, my friend Kayla Bauer also got an award, the AVD (arts and visual design) award. Check out her blog here, she's got some really wonderful work going on!

Untitled Self-portrait #7. ©Adam Koenig 2009.

My self-portrait that got into the show.

Day 65:365. Internship: Green Bay Photographer

UWGB held its own Veteran's Day reception today, and I was called upon to shoot for my internship. It was a pretty cool ceremony actually, the Brigadier General donned a Green Bay Packers hat for his speech.

Tomorrow... the 37th Annual Juried Student Exhibition. Check in for some big news from yours truly!

Days 63 and 64: 365. Green Bay Photographer

So for this week, I am starting with some wildly different images. I worry a little that my blog is too disparate, that I am shooting too many different subjects, but I am working with it,

experiment

try new things

kill routine

these are things I strive for, and not that shooting many different images constitutes that, but this project 365 really is an experiment. To test myself, and give me, and you a way to see how my style evolves.

so, in order to organize better, I think I will work on keeping some common words in each title, so that blogs are searchable by subject. I gotta brainstorm some subject words yet, but if you have any ideas let me know!

Always Low Prices. ©Adam Koenig 2009

Green Bay's east side Wal-mart at night. I had to run and get some groceries, and this image just struck me.

And our rabbit, Layla. I know, it's just a pet photo, but I worked at this one. There's more I'd like to do, but I wanted to give the little celebrity a break from the flash. She's still cute though.

Day 62: 365 Green Bay Photographer

Well, I discovered something amazing today. This is more wordy than many of my blogs, but please read through, it's worth it. My good friend Jason, (jack of many trades) tried to help me fix my car. After much inspection, it has been determined that the car is pretty much beyond hope at this point, so we returned to our very mutual love.

We set out to figure out why so many of my images are so "hot". That meaning that I have a tendency to use lights to bright, overexpose, and leave highlights in my photos with no data left. This basically means that a lot of my skin tones are just white, that the detail is lost. We worked on my flash, took some images, but it wasn't until I got home until I figured it out.

*Warning*

This is where my blog becomes actually educational and helpful for a change... hoping it's a new

direction.

I have been "chimping" my shots a lot lately, especially when feeling out flash. For those of you who don't know, chimping is when you change settings based on looking at the back of your digital camera. When feeling things out it's helpful, but I am generally good at not being dependant on it.

However, I realized tonight, that I had (long ago) set my LCD screen to a brightness of -3. This means that the images I was looking at looked like they were 1.5 to 3 stops underexposed, causing me to compensate and thusly overexpose tons of pictures.

I had overlooked one tiny feature, and it has caused me headaches for 6 months!

Moral of the story being, it's not enough to be a gear head, or know your equipment. You have to be careful to work with what you know, trust what you're good at, and remember that your camera will never be smarter than you. But your LCD screen just may be.

And without further adieu: Mr. Jason Houge.

Thanks for stopping by!

Days 60 and 61: Green Bay Photographer

The semi-annual school art trip to chicago was yesterday, and I went along for the third time. It was pretty fun, I didn't really get to the places I intended, but had some wonderful Panang Curry at Thai Classic on Belmont St. for supper. Delish.

These are not the greatest pictures ever, in fact, they're marginal at best, but they're the first I've taken with my "new" Canon powershot. It's an A85, which means it's from 2003, has 3 MP and has really funky lines in the viewscreen. Hooray for snapshots!





Taken by the famous Bean in downtown Chicago.



Laura E, and the trees coming out of her head are my ode to snapshots (=

Days 58 and 59: 365. Green Bay Photographer

It's been over a week since my last post and I don't have another weekly post to show. That's my bad, but it has been a busy week. We have our annual student show that I was preparing work for, and it's just been hectic.

I don't believe in excuses though, so I apologize. That being said, I am going back to daily shoots for my Project 365. Weekly is a bit easier, but it also doesn't challenge me to actually do the shooting, so I am going back to the daily format. Since I have been having massive internet problems lately I am posting for yesterday and today.

Enter my friend Paul Haan. He's been one of my closest friends since I was about 4 years old. Yup. This image was fun to edit (insert sarcasm here), the comp'ing was really quite difficult, but I like the final result. Lemme know what you think, I'd like some feedback!




We rocked the interstate!

And now for a new project (Day 59). I finished pretty quickly, but it's kind of a riot and I wanted to post it right away.
In the spirit of silliness and my love for monsters and macabre, I present to you...

The Lonely Man, by Adam Koenig