Bill Konway’s Photography Blog

It doesn’t happen too often, actually not nearly often enough, but sometimes everything just works out like it should or as it was drawn on paper.  That was actually the case last night while doing a shoot for Bowtech Archery, (www.bowtecharchery.com).  The idea originated at the spur of the moment in Madison, WI, during a conversation with the marketing director for the company.  He talked about a new bow they had and for whatever reason, the idea smacked me upside the head.   I laid out my idea, still not knowing where it originated from and suprise!  He bought into it.  Through some typical dificulties with schedules, including production, weather, and my sked, we just got the bow while I was away in Oklahoma last week.  The deadline for this image was this coming Wednesday.  Yeah it was a bit tight but you gotta try to make it work.  Anyways, this is where someone or something took ahold and made everything work as smooth as glass.  The idea was for a guy, dressed in all black, face paint and all, to appear as though he were sneaking ashore with his bow, ready for anything.  The hook was we’d do it at night.  Now here is where the karma thing comes in.  Another friend had found the model, I had never seen this person before but knew that the looks of the guy would be key to the final image.  The weather last night was anything but a confidence builder.  Strong winds and clouds that could burst open with rain at any minute.  Assistants, which I figured we’d need 3 of at least were all last minute, drop what you’re doing and get here.  The reason for that many assistants was due to the fact that my strobes, (3 of them), needed to be in the water with the model.  I didn’t trust a stand to hold up in the water with the wind and Murphy’s Law.  Each of the two side flashes were snooted with a length of gutter downspout to keep as much light off the water and prevent glare.  The third flash was held overhead on a pole by another assistant way off the side.  The top light offered a bit of a highlight on the bow and acted as a rim light to give some better seperation and depth to the photo.  Everything, and I do mean everything went perfect.  As a matter of fact we could have stopped shooting after the first 10 shots and had a keeper.  A bit of tweaking of the lights, a single gel on the camera right strobe, and some dripping water form the hat and we DONE!  Can you tell I really, really like this shot?

Well the heat in Oklahoma finally broke, unfortunately it was the day we were leaving.  I really enjoyed the area near Bartlesville.  Great scenery and great, friendly people, and great food.  Here are a few more shots taken there during the week.  I’m looking forward to getting back to this place.  The shot below is of one of several wild horses we came across.

Well, I’m in Oklahoma, and man it’s hot!  I swear you could cool stuff in a microwave here.  Been hanging out with a buddy of mine, John, who has a cattle ranch here near Bartlesville, OK.  We’ve been poking around the area and spending evenings fishing one of the ponds at his ranch with a lot of success.  I think we’ve probably caught 25 or more largemouth so far.  This is a pretty cool area.  There is a lot of flat ground and then yuou turn a corner and it’s all hilly.  We also got a chance to see about 75 wild mustangs milling about in a field just off a gravel road.  Below are a few more of the pix I’ve made thus far.  We will get home Sunday evening and then it’s back to work.  I have another Bowtech shoot Monday evening that will be very cool assuming all goes well.  Probably very different from what you might expect from a bow shoot.

Sometimes you just get lucky.  The shot above is one of those times.  Maybe lucky really isn’t the right word, but I don’t know what is.  I was with a friend Mark and his lab, Buddy, shooting pix of training and retrieving.  At some point, Buddy came in and laid down with the bumper in a playful sort of way.  With the 14mm on the camera, I just swung down and popped off a few shots with the camera nearly on the ground, without looking through the viewfinder.  The depth of field of the long lens that was set to manual managed to keep everything in sharp focus.  Maybe a convergence of luck, being prepared, and noticing one of “those moments”, that too often we seemed to miss or at least take for granted.  A couple more shots from the evening are below.  We shot right up to the point where the skeeters were going to take us away.

Later this afternoon I head to the airport with John, my friend and we head to Tulsa, OK.  for a week of, well I’m not sure what.  But I do know it will be a good time.  See an old friend or two, maybe meet a couple new ones also.  We’ll be staying most of the time at John’s cattle ranch near Bartlesville.  We plan to try and get to Oklahoma City and into Kansas as well.

I spent a few hours the other day shooting photos for a gear guide.  They needed a hunter in a typical fall scene.  Despite my best efforts, I managed to get my legs covered up in poison ivy.  Arghhh!!!  I hate poison ivy.  At least the pictures worked out well.  Takes a bit of the “sting” out of it all.

For a while now I have alluded to some photos that would be coming out soon that I thought were going to be very cool.  Right near the start of my 5 week road trip, I headed to Minnesota for a shoot with Pat Reeves and Nicole Jones of Driven TV.  The idea was to shoot some pix to be used to kick off the new season.  Well the new season for them begins in a few days and here are a few of my favorites.  For exact times and channels, check out there site at http://www.drivenhunter.com/.  We shot a ton of stuff over my two days there.  I’m not exactly sure what they will end up using since I haven’t seen the final selections.  I will eventually show off a few more from the shoot as well. 

My hard drive that had gone bad some time ago has been 100% recovered and all the files are now on a new hard drive.  The best part is the new hard drive is sitting right here next to my computer.  I tell you what, I have been pulling my hair out hoping this all went well.  THANK YOU KROLL ONTRACK!!!  The price of $1500 was fairly steep but the loss of everything on that drive would have been catastrophic.  I think I will be getting a DROBO, which is something similar to a RAID system, ( Ihave no idea what that is either), which I’m told would be a pretty good solution to never having to go through this again.  Below are a few images that I shot that are being put to use by a client, Rivers West, as billboards.  Very soon I should be able to post  some more really cool work that was shot a while back but embargoed by the clients till July.

This coming weekend I’ll be heading to Oklahoma, near Tulsa for a week or so of shooting, and a bit of playing.  The end of July will be the annual Professional Outdoor Media Assoc. confeence in St Louis, MO.  I wasd asked to be a speaker at it this year.  I’ll be happy to tell them everything I know and we can still be out of there in 15 minutes!

While waiting for the return of my bad hard drive, I wandered through an old one and came across a few shots that I really liked.  So here they are in no particular order.  The shot above is of a farm across the field from my home in Indiana.  The one below was from a catfish outing in Tennessee. 

The shots above were from a goose hunting trip to Alberta several years ago.  The following shots are from a flyfishing trip on the Caney Fork River in Central Tennessee.

Been sort of stuck between jobs for about a week now so I’ve been trying to catch up on some work around the house, which is never any fun, and organizing old photos, even less fun.  Anyhow,I woke up a bit earlier than normal this morning and decided to take a ride down to the Kankakee Marsh which is about 10 miles away.  Low and behold there were gostlings everywhere, along with the ever attentive parents.  Geese are something of an unusual breed.  For one, they usually mate for life with a single partner.  Another quirk of theirs is their parenting attitude.  If one goose, my guess is a female, believes that another mother isn’t taking proper care of her young, she’ll run off the less than diligent mom and “adopt” her young.  The photo above shows  the posibility of this because of the disparent size of the young.  This goose actually had about 16 young with her which I also believe is too many for a single hatch.  Correct me if I’m wrong.  I can take it.  Here are a few more shots form the morning.

     I’ve managed to make it home in one piece and catch my breath. Currently I’ve been shooting dogs for a particular job and having some, “challenges” shall we say. Nothing too serious, just hurdles. I need a shot of a dog pointing. A particular breed of dog, which is really no big deal. First thought is, “uh, I’ll need a bird to make him point”. Second thought, “where do I get a quail, chuckar, pheasant, etc at this time of year”. Time to head to the local feed store. The man there was very helpful. I was impressed that he didn’t breakout laughing when I told him what I wanted. His response was, “Sure, I can help you, take 2 of these”. He proceeded to pull 2 yelow and blackish chicks from a cage full of a hundred or so. Now honestly, I have no idea what a baby quail, pheasant, etc looks like. I did notice that in other cages above and below the one that had my chicks in it were ducklings. I knew this only because of their bills. On my way out however, I did think to ask what the critters chirping in my box were and he told me chickens. OK, chickens weren’t on my mental list of what I was looking for, but then again I really didn’t have any idea of what I was needing.  The feed guy gave me these chicks and I was on my way. 

   Jump ahead a couple days now.  My wife thinks these tiny birds are the light of her life.  Not good.  I think she secretly named them too.  Pack up the photo gear and head to the location for the shoot with the happy chirpers at my side.  Enter Fritz, an outstanding example of a canine hunter and the dog of the hour that will be required to “point” my chickens.  If Fritz could laugh, certainly you would have been able to hear him doing so for miles!  Suffice to say we didn’t get any “pointing” photos.  The chicks are now back in the company of their kin in a feed store cage.  It sucks being laughed at, particularly by a dog…

   I have now aquired a couple fo quail.  Not bobwhites, but quail none the less.  Later today we’ll see how much humor Fritz finds in them.  I have no doubt that today will produce the shots needed for the job.  I can’t show any of the photos for this job yet, but here are a couple of Fritz doing what he does best, not being entertained by chickens.

Seems like about forever since I’ve been home. I started 5 weeks ago in Wisconsin, went on through to Minnesota, stopped back home in Indiana for about 8 hours, went to Kentucky, left the farm for Louisville to catch a plane to Dallas, retutned to the farm, left there and headed to St Louis, finshed there and made it back home. That’s even a lot to write…
Here are a few scattered photos from the trip. No real rhyme or reason, just a few that I liked. I’ll be back in St Louis later this summer for a conference that I’ll actually be speaking at, go figure, someone will finally listen to me but I have to drive back to St Louis for them to do it… Wyoming also still looms in the future I think, as well as possibly Colorado. Sometime in July I’ll be in Nashville for a couple days of relaxation with a buddy there and a bit of fishing.

More computer problems have been an issue.  The external hard drive I’ve been using for the last 4 months or so has taken a dump.  It’s in for data recovery, and will cost in the vicinity of $1000 if a quick fix won’t bring it back.  It basically has all my files for the same time period.  That’s a headache for sure.  It looks like it’s time to figure out some other form of back-up.  Any ideas, anyone?