We just gave away a Vanguard GH-100 Pistol Grip Ball Head, and now it’s time to give this bad boy to some lucky winner.  Behold, the Think Tank Urban Disguise 40 v2 camera bag.  It’s an awesome camera bag that converts to a messenger style bag with tons of pockets and compartments to store all of your gear.  I have been using Think Tank bags and organizers for about a year now, and I am a big fan of many of their products.  You can find out more about Think Tank and this bag on the Think Tank website, and be sure to follow Think Tank on Twitter (@thinkTANKphoto).  All you have to do to enter is ReTweet our contest tweet with #keatley on Twitter.  You will be automatically entered to win!  The winner will be randomly selected tomorrow, January 19th at 4pm.  Be sure to check back tomorrow to see if you won.  We also have 2 more great prizes we will be giving away on Twitter and Facebook tomorrow, so even more reason to check back.

It’s that time again, we have lots of great photo stuff to give away, so get ready for a week packed with daily contest giveaways! We are going to kick things off with a Vanguard GH-100 Pistol Grip Ball Head, which allows for quick positioning of your camera when using a tripod. You can check out more about it here, and be sure to follow Vanguard’s awesome tweets (@VanguardPhotoUS).  All you have to do to enter is ReTweet our contest tweet with #keatley (which is probably why you are here reading this in the first place!). You will be automatically entered to win! The winner will be randomly selected tomorrow, January 18th at 4pm.  And be sure to stay tuned, we will be announcing new giveaways throughout this snowy Seattle week.

Merry Christmas, everyone.  I hope you are able to look back at 2011 with fond memories, and look forward to 2012 with excitement and anticipation.  That’s how I am feeling right now.

Here is the highly-anticipated 2011 Annual Keatley Christmas picture.  It feels so good to have this one in the can, and to finally get to look at it.  (You can click on the image to get a closer look.)  This year, we are living the good life, up in a tree, because that’s how we roll in the great Pacific Northwest.  Sorry to break it to you, but red flannel is the new cheesy Christmas sweater.  I know, just when you finally got around to planning that sweater party.  It’s not too late to trade ‘em in for flannel and an axe though.

As you may remember, in last years picture, we were with our yeti in the middle of Fargo.  (You can see all three of our Christmas pictures by filtering the posts with the ‘Keatley Christmas’ category.)  It went over pretty well, and because of that, I put a lot of pressure on myself to repeat or even outdo it this year.  Long story short, I over thought the whole idea and couldn’t come up with anything for about 5 months.  This has been a year of great learning and growth for me as a photographer.  I have had some things I had to really wrestle and struggle with for a good part of the year, but in the end, I feel like I came out with a much better perspective and idea of who I want to be as an artist.  It was only after I made some of these realizations that I was able to come up with this idea.  It was a difficult, but worthwhile process, and  I love how this picture turned out.  I think it’s a lot of fun to look at, and something I am really proud of.  Our dog, Oliver, on the other hand, well, he is just glad to be out of the tree.  In hindsight, it is also probably really fortunate that we did the yeti last year, because I can just about guarantee Isla would have passed out from screaming if we tried that this year.  She was so young last year, she didn’t have a clue what was going on.

If lumberjacks and outdoor types sound familiar to some of you, it is probably because of my short promo video, The Woodsman, shot earlier this year.  You can watch it at the bottom of this post.  It is worth pointing out, that lumberjacks and woodsmen are not necessarily a tight knit group, but they have been known to fraternize from time to time.  All that to say, for me, I guess you could call 2011 the year of the lumberjack / woodsman.  Who knows what 2012 will bring.  Stay tuned.

It’s been really fun to hear from so many of you about how you look forward to our annual Christmas picture.  It means a lot to us, and it makes it that much more enjoyable for me to work on knowing how much some of you enjoy these.  I am already looking forward to creating next years.  Thanks for taking a look, and I hope you will like, tweet, or share this if you enjoy it.

Photo Retouching by Gigantic Squid.

For those of you who attended the MiiR / ODW event this past summer, and had the time of your life, you can now relive every moment through pictures, and watch the documentary Beyond the Bottle which we screened that night.  It’s all right here in this post.  If you weren’t able to attend, you can still look too… just don’t expect to find yourself in the pictures.   If you didn’t attend and are really mad at yourself for missing it, ROAD TRIP!  We are doing it again this coming Saturday, November 12, in good ol’ Boise, Idaho.  Here are the event details and location.

I will be showing my Liberia prints again, as well as doing a silent auction.  The goal is to raise money and awareness for the ODW Horn of Africa Relief Fund.  There will be food, drinks, beats by DJ Domestic, and a screening of the documentary Beyond The Bottle, which I recommend watching if you want to find out more about the clean water crisis.  Hope to see you there.

The following event photos are by my good friends Gabe and Ashley Rodriguez, who are living legends and one of Seattle’s top power couples.  A very big thank you goes out to them for documenting this incredible night. Check out Ashley’s recipe and photography blog Not Without Salt, and Gabe’s photography site GabrielBoone.

It’s been a pretty busy week, and I haven’t had as much time to blog as I had hoped.  There are a couple days worth of progress to share, and the next phase is the forms for the concrete foundation.  It’s really impressive how they can make the forms so precise.  It looks like a big mess at first glance, but when you get up close, you can see just how precise it is all put together.  Like a surgeon.  The light blue stuff you see on top of the gravel is insulation.  We are going to have concrete floors which will be created with the same pour as the foundation.  The concrete will be poured on top of the insulation which will keep the floor at room temperature, unlike a garage floor which can get pretty cold.

Tomorrow is the inspection, so hopefully everything checks out ok!  More soon.

Next post in this series: Backyard Office: Honey Bucket
Previous post in this series: Backyard Office: Plumbing

This was a big day.  No turning back now.  I took a deep breath and was finally able to relax once the construction crew began to break ground in our back yard.  We had to cut down a bunch of bushes and small trees, which we were a little sad about, but we will just have to plant new ones once the office is complete.

This process took a couple of extra days because our soil was too soft.  They had to dig deeper than usual, and fill the hole in with gravel before pouring the foundation.

Previous post in this series: Backyard Office: Shed Demo & Building
Next post in this series: Backyard Office: Plumbing

We used to have 2 storage sheds in our backyard.  But in order to start building the office, we needed to tear down the shed behind our house.  Tearing down that shed meant we were losing a lot of necessary storage space, so we then had to tear down the other shed, and build something more substantial to make up for the space we were losing.  Still following?

Here is a before and after picture of the first shed we ripped down.  As you can see, I am not going to miss that thing.  It was basically a spider cave.  We actually installed that huge window we bought on craigslist in there.  It seemed like it was a good idea at the time.  Nichelle wanted to grow seeds out of the weather, but we didn’t think about the fact that the window blocked UV rays which makes it difficult to grow anything.  I know, real smart.

That’s Ian from Gigantic Squid with the Hammer of Thor.  Turns out he’s not just a retouching wizard, but he can also destroy things with surgical precision.

After watching Ian for a while, I decided to speed up the process, and knock it down with my hands.  No big deal.

The new storage shed is still not finished yet, but here are a few images from the early stages on.  I was pretty nervous about taking on this project since I have never done any construction before.  After doing more than enough research, I began cutting 2×4′s and nailing them together.  I was surprised how easy it was, as long as you think everything through before you begin cutting and nailing.  Over preparing is ok when it comes to this kind of stuff.  Measure twice and cut once as they say.  I also had help from some good friends, and overall it has been a really fun project.

Previous post in this series: Backyard Office: Dreaming
Next post in this series: Backyard Office: Ground Breaking

Nichelle and I have dreamed of building an office in our backyard, off and on, ever since we bought our house almost 5 years ago.  We have talked about a million different ideas and locations in the yard.  A couple of years ago, we even bought a huge 300 pound picture-window on craigslist to put in the office, which we never ended up building.  Those who know me well, know I am a dreamer, and can often be impulsive.  Thankfully, however, I am not so impulsive when it comes to big decisions like this.

Over the past several months, we began discussing a backyard office once again, but this time, everything seemed to fall into place.  We have had 5 years to think, research, and let it all sink in.  Now, I can honestly say I am glad we didn’t act on some of our previous ideas.  Our needs and lifestyle has changed quite a bit over the past few years, and I think we now have a better idea of what we want and need moving forward.  As I look out the window at the huge hole in our backyard, I am pretty sure we are not going to back out this time.

We played with the idea of building a prefab office, and we also interviewed architects and contractors.  In the end, we went with a company called Backyard Box and we are so excited.  Backyard Box is a new company run by contractor Sloan Ritchie, specializing in prefab offices and homes.  The designs are by Jim Burton of Blip, and as soon as we saw pictures of his work, we knew we found what we had been looking for.  Jim and Sloan have worked with us over the last 2 months to create a custom office, which ended up being even better than I expected.  That says a lot coming from a perfectionist.  It will look a bit different from the image above, but this is the unit it was based on and the style is obviously the same.  We will not be able to do prefab for a number of reasons, so this will be a good old fashion construction project.  It still has not sunk in that it is actually happening.  Although, the masonry drill putting holes in our foundation at 8:00am helps reality set in a little.

Having a work space where you can be creative and away from distractions is really important.  Since this is something I am extremely excited about, I thought I would blog about the building process as it unfolds.

Many of you have asked me to blog about this process as you are interested in doing something similar.  I hope it is something you enjoy.  For those who are not so interested, I hope you will bear with me.  It won’t go on forever.  :)

So far, we have ripped a roof off of our patio.  Tore down two sheds, built a new shed, cut down a few bushes and trees, and finally the construction crew has begun digging.  It’s hard work, and very time consuming, but I have really enjoyed all of it.  I love working with my hands, and our backyard has provided no shortage of things to do.  No wonder I have felt so busy lately.

I recently did a shoot with Jane Pauley (NBC, AARP) and she commented at one point that the brain is happiest when it sees the hands working.  I don’t know if that is a scientific fact, or who to credit that statement to, but I think there is a lot of truth to that.  I find that I am happy when I am working in our yard, and I can see tangible results.  But, just to be clear, I’m not working on this office.  I’ll leave that to the professionals.

Next post in this series: Backyard Office: Shed Demo & Building.

Just wrapped up filming my first commercial, shot for MiiR, with my co-director Eric Becker of We Are Shouting.  It was a really fun shoot and the footage is looking great.  We are hoping to have everything wrapped up in the next week.  For now, here are some of the production stills by Scott Everett.  Thanks Scott!  Behind every great production is a wonderful crew, and the crew on this commercial was no exception.  From left to right in the crew shot (last image) is Caven Keith, DJ, Lauri, Becker, Rodrigo, Nina Carduner, Scott Everett, Keatley, and Sarah Finkelstein.  Not pictured is our hair and makeup artist Annabelle Petry.

Surprised to see something other than stylized portraits?  From the beginning, the goal with this ongoing personal series was to create something completely different from my portrait work.  Last fall, I decided I wanted to push myself to create something outside of my comfort zone.  I would prefer to let these images stand on their own without adding a story or context to them, but I also realize it is important to talk about one’s work.  If not the meaning, at least the process.  I have attempted to explain these to a few close friends, and the best explanation I have come up with so far is that this good idea evolved from several really bad ideas.  What this means is I began with an idea and talked about it for a little while and really wrestled with the concept and how it would read.  The first few concepts never really sat right with me, but thinking and talking about them with others eventually led to what you see here.  Even after I began shooting, the concept continued to evolve.  I worked with a great post production studio called Gigantic Squid, and collaborated with Ian Goode on the final look and feel of everything.  This really has been an experiment and exploration of a different type of photography.  As much as I pulled away from my portrait work in this process, I came to realize just how important the human element is to me in my work.  I learned how to respond to what I was shooting and adapted my approach as the images came to life.  That is not something I get to experience when working on an ad campaign which has to be planned out completely before shooting.  So far, this project has taken me across Washington and Northern California, and I am planning a couple more out of state trips in the months to come.  I have learned so much from this experience and I am excited to see how this continues to evolve and shape me as an artist.