Portrait Practice

In my quest to take better pictures, some friends and family have been kind enough to loan me their faces. Here is a sampling of first attempts.

Katherine:




Jake:


Tone:


Melissa:


Carly:


Justin:


Tom:



Jessica:


Robert:


And no collection is complete without Cooper:


More to come...

Cooper Listens to Jesus

In lieu of buying a fancy camera (a Nikon D70, to be precise) I am experimenting with Photoshop. I don’t know that Photoshop editing can replace having a really nice camera, but there is still plenty of cool stuff you can do to a regular old photo. Here is my first serious attempt at photo editing. I call it, “Cooper listens to Jesus.”

Mostly I just bumped up the colors and added subtle lighting effects. I was inspired by my favorite blogger, Dooce, who posts an amazing photo of her dog every day. While my dog can not balance a pumpkin on her nose, like Chuck can, she is still a fine looking animal, and you can expect to see more of her in the future. In the meantime, if anyone has any great Photoshop tricks, I'd love to hear about them.

On the Cover of Rolling Stone

I thought you would appreciate this very attractive picture of me on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. This was back when Switchyard was famous for death metal, before I became a sensitive singer-songwriter.



Courtesy of Stephen Kam, photoshop magician.