We’ve selected
our favorite Pictures Of The Year for 2022 , accumulated from lots of sweet spots around the country during our travels along the way to assignments for our prestigious clients, and other trips.
Each image has a little personal story behind it, and we hope you enjoy looking through them!
Before we highlight the 12 months
of our activities for 2022, I must mention that I discovered my grandfather,
Ralph Bealer was quite the traveler photographer as well!
During the process of selling our real estate property early 2022 , which also housed our Headshot Photo Studio, I found a slide taken of him making pictures in New Orleans on the Mississippi River in January of 1967. I also organized his trays of slides and reels of 8mm movies from Brazil, Haiti, Europe and many other places where he went on mission trips.
In January, We started off
OUR year at the Tampa International Airport photographing the new Blue Express passenger drop-off area. When we arrived we discovered that work was still being completed in the spaces that we would need to be photographing, which at first was quite disheartening. However, we persevered and through sequencing our shoot location timing, and lots of orange cone and barrier moving, we still made some amazing pictures of the installation without showing the workers painting and installing ceiling panels.
For February I headed up
to Cleveland for a handful of different location architectural shoots. There was 8" or so of snow that fell just before I was to shoot photos at Fribley Hall at Case Western University, and the for the exteriors I'm glad I packed my snow expedition coat and boots, as the temps really dropped during aerial drone and for the golden hour photos.
In March we jumped on a plane
and headed to Phoenix Arizona to visit family and take a little road trip on State Route 66! We landed in Phoenix, and headed up to Kingman to start on that section of SR 66 to Flagstaff. When we were in Flagstaff, we saw these gorgeous clouds enveloping the 10,000' mountains north of town, but little did we expect...blizzard was coming!
It was getting dark so we kicked up our heels and pointed our rental Mustang for Sedona, where we had booked an AirBNB cottage. Next thing we know there is a massive blizzard that descended on us, which closed SR 89A we were taking. We were not prepared for that, so we were glad the road crews closed the 2-lane hilly State Route when and did and saved us some from possibly a terrible experience. The next few days we hiked in the wild and wonderful area around Sedona.
In April we found
ourselves flying to Cancun Mexico to photograph a family wedding on a beach resort. The weather there was crisp but we did have plenty of warm days, and made some great pictures for them and also found time to make pictures for ourselves.
In May
I had a few local photoshoots to keep me busy, one of those was a great portrait of a
mom and daughter interior design team I made for a story about their business.
Also, a previous customer needed some aerial drone photos
of their products that were used in the brand new Cincinnati Ballet building.
June was also
turning delightfully warm, and I had purchased a new Toyota Tacoma in the Spring. I was so happy to be able to work out of it during some aerial drone photography sessions for a local landscape architect who needed some images.
July is our vacation
month as we head out to Tampa, Florida. Of course even on vacation we still remain photographers, and we can't help but sneak a little work in. I had packed the drone to do some flights over the gulf and rivers and made this great sunset photo of a fisherman coming home for the night.
I also squeezed in a trip to Atlanta for a new installation in a building that focuses on the uses and care of our water.
In August we found
a whirlwind of trips and photo shoots that come up beginning in August with a trip to Minnesota to photograph the County Building for some architectural products.
A team portages their canoe during a race on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
September came and Colorado
was calling; Actually we had put a down payment on a teardrop camper and several owners of that style camper were
having campout in the mountains, so we packed up our sleeping bags and tent and flew
out to meet them and get a preview of our future camper!
It takes 10 weeks to build and has a year lead time so we should be able to pick it up this summer in Colorado.
Our dog Tucker wanted to go with us, but we chose not to fly with him and
left him at home with promises he would join us to pick it up!
Tucker wanted to go!
Off road trailer like the one we will be getting soon!
Aerial photo of Beaver dam and pond with river flowing past in Colorado
Campsite and tent in Colorado
In October, a couple of weeks
later I headed out on a two-part mission to Serenbe, Georgia outside of Atlanta, for a residential shoot and from there on to Gulfport, Mississippi to photograph the new Mississippi Aquarium there.
I was so happy to be using a very expensive camera system (Phase One for the Serenbe shoot, and during the golden hour portion of my day a Rooster came to visit me and started making a fuss and clucking at me. I had a $60,000 camera rental on a tripod over the edge of the 10' high wall for the best angle! It's getting to the perfect part of my night and this chicken jumps on the tripod leg with his wings beating the air -and me as I was trying to keep the whole camera from falling into the pool! Fortunately I won, but the shoot was over for the day, and I ate steak for dinner.
View from the perch over the pool
Rooster starting to make a fuss at me.
Resulting photo turned out very well
I had no chickens to deal with, but I had a real problem with the installation lighting on the product I was there to photograph. There seemed to be no lighting! The ceiling product was absolutely gorgeous but it was so dimly lit with a blue neon that the shape, and true manufacturer color was not even revealed to its potential.
So I had to come up with something for sure, they don't want to pay my expenses and shoot fees and come back with excuses, so I had to do some photography trick I normally don't have to go to and made the product look amazing for their marketing! The video captures a little of the process I used.
This is what the ceiling product looked like when I arrived on my scouting walkthrough the day before the shoot was to happen. It was very dark and not colorful so I had to come up with a plan or have a miserable failure
This is some of the product after editing; They turned out gorgeous and actually the color that the manufacturer had created them to be!
Even this little patch of ceiling came alive with the treatment I gave it, along with a little serediptiy in the flare at the top of the steps.
Here's a video description of how I was able to resolve the lighting problem.
also in October
was a 3-Assignment road trip that started in Cleveland, then on to Baltimore, MD where I picked up the Architect at Washington-Dulles Airport for our photo shoot at Advarra the next day. While waiting on the plane I stopped to get some pictures of incoming jets right at the end of the runway where they might have been 100' off the ground!
After that shoot, the next day I left Baltimore, skirted past New York City around the bend in the Bronx, and headed up through NY to Mystic, Connecticut for a residential shoot, where I met the manufacturers for more products!
Making some nice long exposure photos under the flyway.
then November got crazy,
back home from Connecticut for a week, and then it's off to California for a two-location shoot starting in San Diego and ending up in San Francisco. Vickie and I were able to drive up the coast and see the Pacific Ocean, some Redwood forests and the Golden Gate Bridge the day before we photographed the building in Suisun City outside of San Fransisco.
Three days after returning
from California I jumped on a plane to Boston International Airport,
then drove to New Hampshire for another residential photo shoot closing out November!
This one had a lot of drone video motion I had to do inside and out, which was exciting and challenging to say the least. The air currents created by the prop wash, made for problems with steadiness, but I was able to fly the drone into a brace against the wall for some of the shots!
Using the drone inside the house requires some fine flying!
Flying braced up against the wall for steadiness
December has
meant a lot of post-production toning of photos and filling orders, instead of being on the road, and has allowed me to spend some time at home for the holidays. We are looking forward to a great new year and feel very fortunate to have our clients and customers who have trusted us to capture their wide variety of projects and people for their marketing and communications needs.
We'll close out our year with a picture of our cat, Yoda, who we lost this month after 15 years of a wonderful life he had and friendship he gave us. He loved people, and is missed!
Yoda this fall before he fell ill.
