Holiday Card

Another of my freelance projects. Some friends of mine were looking to send out their first holiday card as a couple and I was excited to help them out. We started with with photos of them and their adorable pets, then I designed the card from scratch for them. It was good to have the chance to stretch my graphic design muscles again.

 

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Hitting the Beach

I took a few days to just recover after finals had finished. Now, I’m rested up, and ready to get back in the action. My awesome friend, Tegan, hit me up to check out one of the Great Lakes beaches. 

 

 

We found some interesting junk laying around the beach, and they looked so much cooler in black and white.

 

Sunday in the Snow

Beagle

I spent all day scheduling shoots for the season, so I didn’t have much time to produce anything new. I planned on something new as a backup, but the software is acting up.  So, I pulled this photo of a beagle in a shelter from the archives. There is a ton of new stuff coming that I can’t wait to share, so stay tuned.

Oddmall: Emporium of the Weird

As some of you may have noticed, I have a certain taste for… alternative culture. As such, I have more than a couple alternative friends who invite me to alternative events like Oddmall: Emporium of the Weird. It’s basically one giant event for dealers selling things like comics, postage stamp jewelery, duct tape bags with Pokemon designs, monocles, artificial severed limbs, sci-fi sculptures, wooden robots, and countless other things that you didn’t know existed, but now want to purchase for your home.

Tattoos in the midde of the hall were a bit of a surprise.

There was a guy selling nothing but sculptures with creepy baby faces.

Hey, it’s the awesome Lady-Penguin from Free Comic Book Day! Go check out her super cool jewelry at https://www.facebook.com/RazzigyrlJewelery .

I love this rocket ship sculpture. I hope shooting it from this angle made for a better photo.

For reasons I cannot describe, the fact that Optimus Prime support Pepsi makes me incredibly happy.

So, did you see those terrifying baby face sculptures up in the collage block? Well, Ari saw that booth  too, and insisted on buying one. Not only that, but she couldn’t leave the Off The Wagon  booth to go grab one, so I had to go get it for her. That’s right, I enables this:

And, on the off-chance that you still might be able to get to sleep tonight, I leave you with this:

The College Fest That Never Was

Both the city and the university police were out in force to keep the partying under control, but were left with little to do.

I do believe that I have some sort of curse when it comes to Kent State’s annual College Fest. My freshman year, I skipped the drunken festivities for a more laid back gathering with some friends. I only found out later that I had missed photographing a full-on riot complete with couch burning in the streets. So, sophomore and junior year, I spent all night wandering the roads of Kent for fear of missing another such event, only to be disappointed by routine college debauchery. Senior year came around, and I was bedridden with a particularly nasty flu virus. When I checked my Facebook, it was populated almost entirely with posts and photos about a student body being tear-gassed by local police. My friend, Phil, took a photo of the event that was nationally syndicated.

This year, I wandered the more party-centric areas of Kent for hours, only to see a Kent that was almost barren. Nothing. Not even a game of beer pong. Imagine my shame at the university that seems to prioritize academia over destroying the town.

Now, for the sake of link-bait, I give you a bonus flower gallery:

Helltown

A few weeks ago, my friend Ian messaged me about planning a group expedition to Helltown, an actual ghost town not too far away from Kent. , Helltown (formally Boston, Ohio) supposedly a completely abandoned town, left to rot as the paranormal set in. I did some digging online and learned that the government had purchased the land through eminent domain to add to the area’s parks, but never bothered to do anything with it. Since then, rumors of everything from ghosts, to mutants, to Satanists have grown to surround the area. It had all mostly been debunked, but it still sounded like l could get some creepy photos out of it.
With all that in mind, Ian, Paisley, and I headed out to Helltown. I was assuming that the rumors would oversell this place, but I figured I’d at least get to see something resembling a ghost town, but even that was more than we saw. The “abandoned” homes were few and far between, surrounded by what looked like a healthy, small town. Even if the town was much more inhabited  than we expected, we still roamed around the area, looking into all of the various “paranormal hotspots” that were referenced online to see if we could find anything.

The first stop was the cemetery. Most of the stones were so old that the writing had been worn away, and many were broken.

Paisley inspected the tomb stones and tried to piece together various family legacies.

Ian, our resident paranormal aficionado , spearheaded the expedition into Helltown.

We saw a dog napping on a porch as we wandered through town, and I went to photograph it. I took a literal one step into the yard to get the better angle. This was evidently enough to rouse the canine. Luckily, not only did she turn out to be friendly, Ian is some sort of dog whisperer.

We reached the infamous “End of the World” road that was supposed to be a ridiculous drop, and haunted on top of that. When we reached the peak, Paisley and I decided to walk down and check it out. And… while steep, the hill just ends with a concrete barrier and some foot trails in the woods.

A focal point of a great many of Helltown’s numerous legends was Mother of Sorrow, the “Satanic” church in town. The site is thought to be satanic due to the inverted crosses incorporated into the church’s architecture. However, in Catholicism, the inverted cross is the symbol of Saint Peter, who thought himself to be unworthy to be executed in the same manner as Christ, and demanded to be crucified upside down in a sign of humility.

Since all of our attempts at finding anything haunted came up empty, we decided to poke around the local heritage museum for more leads. We were pointed in the direction of the covered bridge, and got to play around with an old-timey photo viewer. From there, we headed to the historical Stanford House…

While the Stanford house was indeed beautiful and inviting, this place was sitting in the woods about 50 yards away

I know that I should have been worried when I found a dilapidated shack in the woods in a supposedly haunted area, but by this point, I was just glad to finally find some creep imagery.

Every inch of this shack was completely falling apart In the creepiest way possible. Seriously, there is cabin couldn’t have been a more fertile ground for nightmare fuel if someone had planned it.

While we didn’t see anything haunted, I still held out hope that I would find something ghostly on the photos once I got home. Sadly, everything I edited in post was all free from the paranormal. I guess that means we’ll just have to keep looking.

Tiny Puppy

My friend Ari showed up at my apartment to kidnap and take me to an event a local animal rescue was putting on. The event didn’t have much of a turnout, but at least I got a few decent dog photos. That’s what truly counts, right?

A Boy and His Dog

I took the GoPro down by the river today.