(My photos are featured around 4:05 in the video, if you're the impatient type.)
My good friend Samantha Rei, the United States' premiere Gothic Lolita fashion designer will be showing several of her designs at the Four Corners event for the Ann Bancroft Foundation. I'll be on hand to take photos at the super fun-sounding charity event. For those who are unfamiliar with the Ann Bancroft Foundation, it "supports girls and women to realize their highest dreams and potential. The Foundation endeavors to live this mission by recognizing individual achievement and by promoting initiatives that inspire courage, risk-taking, integrity and individuality in girls and women." You can found more information here.

The event itself is May 1 at The Depot. It's a bit pricey ($150 advance, $175 door), but it's for a very good cause. If you can make it, come see Samantha, myself, and cute models in cute clothes in the Tokyo section!

Matt Bingen April 20th at Station 4

Matt Bingen put on another great show April 20th at Station 4 in St. Paul. He was kicking out the jams as he always does, and makes me proud to not only be his friend and photographer, but a fan as well! You can check out some of his music here.



Click either image to be taken directly to the full set on Flickr

As anyone who was at Saturday's party knows, I was taking photos all night in front of my green screen. It was super fun, and I decided to do something a little different with them. I've posted nearly all of them, but you'll probably see a few more pop up in the next couple of days. Here's a few of my favourites:













The whole set can be found here

Recently, I completed a set of photos for Blasphemina's Closet, the brand of world famous designer and personal friend Samantha Rei. It was a lot of fun, everyone was extremely professional but still managed to have a great time, and in my opinion the photos turned out phenomenal! So much so that I'm going to pound your face with visual awesomeness! Feel free to hate me if you're viewing this on a tiny monitor, but who are you kidding? You hate yourself for having to view such kickass images on such a tiny screen.

Taking Photos in Uptown

Just walking around Uptown, Minneapolis.

I just love how these two images turned out and had to share.

Some of you have been asking about my primary flickr account (flickr.com/photos/wirethread) and why you can only see a few images at the moment. It's not just you, it's because I miscalculated a few bills this month and was unable to renew my Pro account right now. It will be resolved soon so that you can all resume checking back every ten minutes (I wish!), but if you're looking for a wedding or show, then my "assignment" account is the one that you want (flickr.com/photos/drayke). Plus all weddings are being archived on Photosynthetique.com and should be going live shortly so you can always view them there.

I hope all is well with everyone!

Aria Sharp 09.16.2007

A couple of Sundays ago, I had the chance to see another awesome Aria Sharp show at the Varsity Theatre. Once again, they impressed with a very tight show that is clearly well-rehearsed and fun to see. I know I've said it before, but if you have the chance to see them live, it's well worth the small entry fee. I'll post the date of their next show before it happens and maybe you can all come down and have a drink with me as we take in some good music.
Check out the whole set here.

I now offer prints of certain events, including not only this show, but Aria Sharp's show from 07.25.2007. You can see the gallery of both shows here.

Matt and Maranda!

Hi everyone! I've been totally neglecting my blogs, so today I'm playing catch-up! You all saw the preview of the Matt and Maranda set a few weeks back and I just wanted to update with the full group of wedding photos from that special day.

Also, if you're interested in purchasing prints from M&M's day, I now offer ordering through Imagekind. Click here to try it out!

Arrrr....I be the Dread Pirate Inaaarrra!

Due to a hardware failure, it's VERY slow going on the images from Matt and Maranda's wedding, but I promise that I'm still working very hard on them and hope to have them all up soon. In the meantime, here are a couple that immediately caught my attention when I was reviewing the whole set.
See the whole preview here.

At the UMore Park open house

They had the best sweet corn I've ever tasted. My brother Adam works out there in Rosemount taking care of the various plants. It was actually pretty interesting to find out how much work goes into testing various strains of grass.

Fun with Infrared

I took Inara out to see Lake Minnetonka yesterday, as she's never seen a body of water that large. She loved it for about ten minutes, then a combination of scary waves and hot, direct sunlight made her a bit upset. It was fun while it lasted!

This Ramp Will Be Closed...Indefinitely

I wasn't able to get too close due to police blockades, but I did want to share the few photos that I did get of the 35W bridge collapse. I hope that no one here lost anyone in the accident. My Mum missed being on the bridge by only a half hour, which scares me terribly.

You can see the whole set here.

Aria Sharp!

Last night I got the chance to see the band Aria Sharp for the first time. I had gotten a press pass to shoot the show from their lead singer, whom I had met at CONvergence a couple of weekends ago. It was great, and was definitely worth seeing.

From start to finish, they showed a polish, a rehearsed synchronicity that I generally only see in a band that has been together for years and have really worked out all of the kinks in their set. Imagine my surprise when I learned that this was their very first show! Needless to say, I was extremely impressed. Their music was wonderful as well, I would describe it as maybe "Drain STH meets Collide", my companion Joe (who is a bit more cynical about these things) said "I was thinking 'pfft Evanescence', until the guitarist really started hitting some shit.". We were both very impressed.

I hear that they are going to be playing a show on August 22, but I'm not sure where. When I hear where, I'll post it here because their show is worth seeing, honestly. Don't take my word for it though, go over to their Myspace to hear a preview of their album and keep abreast of their schedule. In the meantime, enjoy the photos I took of their very first show.

The full set is here.

My Last Day

Well, today, July 20, 2007, is my official last day of "work". I've loved working at Rockabilia, but from now on I'm no longer a "Photoshop Expert" and will now be known as "Full-time Daddy". I've really been looking forward to this for some time, and I can't believe that it's actually here! Not only will I be spending most of my time with Inara, this will also allow me more time to work on my photography. Hopefully I'll start making enough money where I won't be a kept man entirely, but for now Danielle is going to be bringing home all of the bacon. This is super scary and super exciting at the same time.
I can handle all of the household chores save for one: cooking. I'm definitely going to have to work on that because as it is right now, sandwiches, microwave burritos, frozen pizza and cereal will get fast very quickly. :)

Also, I'm going to very quickly appreciate my Netflix membership. Wish me luck!