birchblazephotography.com » The Photo Blog of Kerry and Taylor Struble

After a great wedding client meeting in North Conway, Taylor and I drove up to Freeport, Maine this past Saturday to see Dar Williams appearing at the LL Bean summer concert series. We love Dar Williams—she’s a very funny modern folk singer-songwriter—and were thrilled to get to see her at this very cool venue. It also gave me a chance to put our new 70-200 Canon L lens through it’s paces. That is one sharp lens! Check it out…

Sun setting behind the stage, how cool was that? And this was pretty cool… there was a deaf interpreter onstage for the entire show. We think it might be an arrangement by LL Bean because we’ve seen this at other shows here. Oh, and LOVED the accordian! I really want to play some of my originals with an accordian player!

So there you have it.  What a great way to spend a summer Saturday night in New England! Here’s the video to one of our favorite Dar Songs, “As Cool As I Am.” See ya next time! –K&Tay

Wanderlust – “ a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about.”  It’ s in our blood. We’ve been known to become uncomfortably involved with a class VI road because we “just want to see what’s around the corner.” Anyway, while we can’t travel as extensively as we’d like right now, we try to have fun with little road trips. We’ve had beautiful weather lately, (in the wake of about a month’s worth of rain) so it seemed like a good opportunity to do some explorin’ .  This past weekend we found ourselves in Maine. Of course, we’ve been there many times before but we found some very neat places/things and we thought we should share. Enjoy. –Tay

…as we made our way to Ogunquit Beach, we came across two really cool places, the first was the Old House Parts Company, a recycled building materials warehouse in Kennebunk, Maine. Tay and I (Kerry’s handling the play-by-play for this post, btw) love this sort of thing and they had a ton of great pieces, all extremely well organized. It was a great photo op (the photo on the right, below, was taken at this place as well as the 2nd to last pair of photos):

The next place we came across was the Johnson Hall Museum, a fairly strange—but interesting—privately-owned curio shop morphing into a musem of sorts (also in Kennebunk). There were lots of quasi-historic out-buildings in various stages of decay, but again, crazy photo ops. Tay was a little creeped out by this antique jail cell, but not enough to avoid posing in it for me! Most of these photos are hers, by the way, she has a great eye for this sort of photography.

As mentioned, a couple from the Old House Parts Co.

Ahhh, finally at the beach! The ocean is so reinvigorating. We always say we want to get to the ocean a lot every summer, but then don’t. In the past two weeks we’ve been there three times, yes! This was a fun series of images. We were on a boardwalk amongst the dune grass and wild roses. I wanted this shot, but had to sit on the opposite railing, hook my legs underneath and lean way back over the rose bushes to get the right angle. Let’s just say my abs weren’t quite up to the task and Tay couldn’t keep a straight face for very long! Of course, it was worth it and I’m still waiting to take a bad picture of her. Love this shot.

–Tay&K

Love, muse, inspiration, model, hero, partner-in-crime, best friend, soul mate…anam m’anama, that is, “soul of my soul,” –in Gaelic. Yes, I do know how lucky I am! I get to wake up, go to bed and spend most of almost everyday with the person I described in the first sentence of this paragraph. Taylor, who is also my beautiful Wife—together with my kids, my Mom, my Sister and my parents-in-law (yes, my inlaws!)—make my world a most amazing and wonderful place to be. The only thing that could possibly make it better would be if my Dad was still with us. He would have loved Taylor….

Tay and I decided to step outside yesterday to taste a little preview of summer’s golden hour. It was a good day…

–k

There is a well known photographer from Seattle named Chase Jarvis (check out his website and work here). The guy is amazing. You may not have ever heard of him, but it’s likely you’ve seen his work. Volvo, Reebok, Apple, REI, Microsoft, Jeep, McDonald’s, Columbia, Red Bull, Nikon…these are a few of the companies Chase calls clients. Not bad, huh? A few months back another guy by the name of Russell Byrne (Russell’s blog) asked for, and received a pair of Chase’s shoes. Huh? What? To quote Russell, “Photographer Chase Jarvis once told an audience that anyone who walked his walk would find success, which led me to wondering what walking a mile in his shoes would really be like. So I asked Chase to send me a pair. And he did!” Russell wasn’t about to keep Chase’s soles to himself, so he posted the following challenge on Flickr: “I would like to see the shoes shot in as many ways as possible… let me know if you are ready for the challenge to….SHOOT CHASE JARVIS’S SHOES” (visit the project website) His well-traveled, Adidas Muhammed Ali Classics, to be specific. And I was. I was ready to put our Birch Blaze, White Mountains of New Hampshire stamp on those shoes. And what better way to represent than sneakers sporting snowshoes? This was definitely a team effort. In fact Tay actually snapped this pic. It was a lot of fun and we hope Chase might happen upon our effort and maybe actually even like it (if you have an extra minute, after the pic you might find the story of how I received the shoes mildly amusing):

This shot was taken in the ’shadow’ of Mt. Washington, a mountain which, on April 12, 1934, recorded a wind speed of 231 mph, which is “the highest natural surface wind velocity ever officially recorded by means of an anemometer, anywhere in the world.” A record that still stands to this day (I can Google with the best of ‘em). You can check it out for yourself at MountWashington.org. The Presidential range continues north from Mt. Washington, so I’m guessing it’s probably Mt. Jefferson or Mt. Adams in the background. We took this with the Canon and a 50mm. No flashes involved here, this was lit with nothing but the strengthening March sun—camera-left—and a pop-up reflector—camera-right. Those are my legs and feet, by the way…fitting tho, I think I’ve found my calling, “Kerry Struble; Well-worn sneaker model.”

How I Got the Shoes
I signed up to be a part of this project a few months ago and had no idea when or even if I would actually get the shoes. I’m ashamed to admit that I actually kind of, well, ok, did forget about them. So… one day Taylor and I pulled up to the house to see several boxes from UPS on our step. They had actually delivered some packages we were expecting to the wrong house the day before, so I was pretty relieved. But wait, here’s a box that I wasn’t expecting, in fact, I have no idea who it’s from. Tay told me I better be careful opening it. At first I didn’t think anything of it, but then I noticed the box wasn’t packed professionally, like you would get from an online retailer, say. Taylor’s words and thoughts of mail bombs and bio-terrorism began ringing in my head…Cut to me opening the box (which is now sitting on our front step) with a 2×4, peeking out from behind our front door. Boy, did I feel foolish when I saw that darn pair of sneakers looking for all the world like a puppy waiting to be claimed by it’s new owner. Shhhhhhh! Don’t tell Chase!

…And since one picture is never usually not enough, here’s 2 or 3 more we took that day…

enjoy!
-k