- P.O. Box 180 • Londonderry, NH 03053 • 603-548-4178
- P.O. Box 180 • Londonderry, NH 03053 • 603-548-4178
- P.O. Box 180
- Londonderry, NH 03053
- 603-548-4178
Today was my annual trek to Gillette Stadium to attend one of the New England Patriot's training camp sessions. These free events have gotten more popular over the years, so I planned this visit on a weekday to "guarantee" a smaller crowd, but what I completely underestimated was that as defending super bowl champions with one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, the Patriots are a HUGE draw. Getting there an hour before practice started used to be fine. Not any more. When I arrived, the doors had already been open a half-hour and the stands were completely filled. ...Read More
Extending a music track to meet the duration of a video. It's something I take for granted now. It's very rare that a piece of music will match the length of a video production. Inevitably an edit (or several!) will be required to either extend or reduce the duration of the music so it will fit the video. I've done this so many times now that I don't think much about it - it's become rote for me - but ...Read More
The Homeland Heroes Foundation Last year I was introduced to the Homeland Heroes Foundation, a New Hampshire-based non-profit charity that assists active duty military, veterans and their families in a variety of ways. For this year's big fund raiser, I volunteered to put together a video to explain what their organization does, who they help, and what impact they are having on veteran's lives and families in hopes of attracting more donations in the form of either money, household items, ...Read More
Pete Townshend at TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts March 7, 2016. This year The Who embarked on "The Who hits 50 Tour!" Well, actually, the tour was originally scheduled for 2015, but after Roger Daltrey contracted viral Meningitis they postponed the 2015 North American tour to 2016. I decided to purchase one of the VIP packages to get access to seats in the front sections on the floor of the Garden. The VIP package also included watching the band's sound ...Read More
Jerry Marotta, drummer for The Security Project. 1969. That's the year I became "musically aware" - when I started listening to the radio and buying music. I remember at that age being very shy about asking to buy a 45 from behind the counter that I would buy an album instead. I think the first album I bought was "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells. When I was in sixth grade, I changed from playing cello to ...Read More
Teacher and infant at Wonder Years Learning Center. It's fun working with children. They're so friendly and curious. Last year I worked with the Seacoast Community School on a TV commercial to introduce the community to their new name (see the video here), so I had a lot of experience working with children on camera from infants up through elementary school age. At these ages the kids are very willing to help and listen - they're very open to a ...Read More
Behind the scenes with Meagan Fuller, Miss Massachusetts 2015. I really wasn't expecting it. In early July I got a call from my friend, Jennifer Foxwell from Jennifer Design, with whom I've collaborated on a number of projects together. Last year she was designing a website for the newly crowned Miss Massachusetts, Lauren Kuhn, and needed some video for the website. I was soon introduced to Lauren and I produced this video for her. The pinnacle, though, was being at ...Read More
Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patiots, at training camp 2015. My annual trek to the New England Patriots' training camp was another spectacular day. 80 degrees and beautiful sunshine. Of course, that's by design. I always look ahead at the weather and pick the day that will have these conditions. The main reason is to make sure I have lots of light so I can shoot at a very high shutter speed to stop the action. Nothing wrecks ...Read More
Fidelity House Human Services, a non-profit company that provides residential and support services to individuals with developmental disabilities and their families in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, was looking to enhance their Careers page on their website with a video. They wanted a video to convey why the people who work at Fidelity House do what they do. Although challenging, I was very excited to take on this project because it was an excellent vehicle to create a video that ...Read More
The next Spindel Eye Associates TV commercial in their series "might want to get your eyes checked" has been released! The setting for this spot is a baseball game. Many thanks to the Manchester Little Leaguers, their parents, 2DiFore Marketing Solutions, and Educational Outfitters who were all instrumental in helping to pull this spot together. This commercial had an interesting genesis. The idea originally came from Dr. Spindel. He proposed it way back in December, but we had to wait ...Read More
New Digital Menu Boards at Pizza Chef in Millbury, MA. Pizza Chef, a pizza and sub shop located in Millbury, MA, asked us to overhaul their antiquated menu boards. The owners were looking for a modern menu board design that was exciting to view, easy to read, displayed great imagery of their food, and was easy for them to update on their own. Organic Food Beauty Photography The first order of business was to photograph their food. In a single ...Read More
The Kessler Crane Second Shooter and CineSlider at the Bellman's Jewelers video shoot. A slider is a wonderful piece of equipment that adds significant production value to a video project. I've been using them for years, but the one frustration I've had with them is that, for me, the shot is limited by how well I can push or pull (that is, slide) the camera manually along the slider. For slow movements, it can be quite challenging to maintain the ...Read More
Aavid corporate teaser video shown at the Aavid customer meeting. View from our hotel in Shenzeng, China. In September 2014, we were hired by Aavid Thermalloy to produce a corporate video to be shown at their 50th anniversary celebration being held at their Laconia, NH headquarters (you can see the video here). After the party was held, the company then made plans for a similar celebration at their manufacturing facility located in Shenzeng, China. For the China event, they wanted ...Read More
A new series of TV commercials debuted last week for Spindel Eye Associates located in Derry and Londonderry, NH and is currently expanding into Windham, NH. The series of spots will revolve around the concept that you "might want to get your eyes checked." The setting for this spot is a restaurant. Many thanks to the Cafe il Cipresso for letting me use their facility for the video shoot. The restaurant had hired me previously to make a TV commercial ...Read More
It was the summer of 2000. I had the good fortune to not only get access to Red Sox tickets, but I got to see Pedro Martinez pitch several times. Every time he took the mound that year it felt like he could have pitched a no-hitter. He ended the season with an ERA of 1.74. In hindsight, that accomplishment was even more remarkable given that he was pitching in the height of the steroid era. Pedro is far from ...Read More
Sonny Charles is a former U.S. Marine Corps Battalion Intelligence Scout / Hand-to-Hand combat instructor who opened his own workout gym in 1997. Over the years he found the equipment on the market to help train hand-to-hand fighting always fell short in one aspect or another. So, he decided to design a better mouse trap. The result: Ukeman (pronounced "uke-e-man). Sonny is looking to license the Ukeman design to a manufacturing partner, and needed a couple of videos to help ...Read More
Behind the scenes with Lauren Kuhn, Miss Massachusetts 2014. I recently had the pleasure of working with Lauren Kuhn, Miss Massachusetts 2014. She was crowned June 29th, 2014 and is gearing up for the Miss America competition (final night is Sunday, September 14, 2014). Although extremely busy running from one event to another as Miss Massachusetts and getting ready for her second year of Dental school at Harvard University, she squeezed time into her busy schedule for a session to ...Read More
Close encounter with a bear in the Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. While on a fishing trip with my Dad near King Salmon, Alaska with Alaska Rainbow Lodge, we spent one day at Books River located in Katmai National Park and Preserve. Katmai is one of the premier brown bear viewing areas in the world due to incredible numbers of Sockeye Salmon that run up river each year to spawn, and get "caught" at the falls. ...Read More
Commercial for the Seacoast Community School located in Portsmouth, NH. The Community Child Care Center of Portsmouth recently changed their name to the Seacoast Community School, and, as part of the roll out, they wanted to produce a TV commercial to publicize their new name. The Comcast folks recommended me as a potential producer, and after meeting with the executive and development directors, they hired me to produce the spot. In developing the script, I felt the piece would have ...Read More
Vincent Laforet and Elliot Gould at Vincent's Directing Motion Tour 2014. After attending Vincent Laforet's Directing Motion Tour 2014 in Boston, I was left inspired, exhilarated and very humbled. Vincent Laforet (laforetvisuals.com) is a world renowned photographer and cinematographer. He is a three-time winner at the 2010 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, is a DGA director and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer. He produced the first 1080p video shot with the Canon 5D MKII in 2009 (Reverie) which opened the door - ...Read More
Cinemagic Movie Theater - The Big Night Out. Completed a really nice story for Cinemagic's new theater in Portsmouth, NH. This shoot was a bit more complicated than most. It required two locations and a night shoot. We also hired two professional actors to play the leads, as well as for the voice over. The opening scene was shot in Cinemagic's corporate office (Zyacorp is the parent company located in Bedford, NH). Afterwards we all hopped in the car and ...Read More
Original Menu Boards at Restaurant. New Digital Menu Boards installed in Restaurant with Render Edge Media, LLC organic food beauty photography and custom menu board action. We recently designed and installed two Digital Menu Boards at Romano's Pizza located in Haverhill, MA. We had previously worked with Romano's on renovating their website. With their website now in great shape and pulling in over 2000 unique visitors per month, they were interested in replacing their tired, old-style menu board. They settled ...Read More
Jon Anderson at Tupelo Music Hall April 23, 2014. The very first rock concert I attended was to see the band Yes. They were playing at Roosevelt Field in Jersey City, New Jersey. The date was July 25th, 1975. My first trial as a concert photographer was almost a complete failure. I didn't understand how the camera's automatic metering system would be fooled so badly with the large darkness that filled the viewfinder. All my exposures were horribly over exposed. ...Read More
Renovated Tuckaway Tavern and Butchery website. We are very excited about the launch of the Tuckaway Tavern and Butchery renovated website. Not only does this website showcase our modern, responsive website design, but also our Organic Food Beauty Photography. I had two great photo sessions on site at the Tuckaway. The first concentrated on photographing the food from the restaurant and the second on the Butchery. I had an excellent time working closely with Chef Bobby Marcotte. The food looked ...Read More
New York Times best selling author Scott Sigler came to Boston to support the release of his latest book, Pandemic. Last time Scott came into town was in 2010 after Ancestor was published. I recorded the entire visit, from the reading through the question and answer period (check out the summary here). So I decided to record him again. I did the shoot entirely with my Nikon D7100 with the 18-200mm f/3.5 lens and a mono pod. With a one ...Read More
GoPro Bicycle Mount. After being hired to produce a film for Ciclismo Classico, a bicycle tour company specializing in hosting trips throughout Italy, the first thing I set out to do was figure out the best way to attach a GoPro Hero3 Black Edition camera to the bike to get the most interesting footage. After investigating a lot of solutions, I concluded that I wanted to position the camera off the bike. This ruled out all body mounts and most ...Read More
GoPro Bicycle Mount. Ever wonder what SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, means? It's a very important concept and is key to helping your site appear higher in the so-called "organic" search results for the search engines like Google and Bing. If you want help with understanding the things you can do to improve your website's SEO, then please join me for a round table discussion at the Greater Derry Londonderry Chamber of Commerce Tech Expo on Wednesday, November 6th at ...Read More
Earlier this summer I attended Alex Buono's The Art of Visual Storytelling Tour. Alex is the Oscar nominee and Director of Photography (or DP) for Saturday Night Live's film unit. During the seminar, Alex broke down one of the special effects he shot in the film "Green Street Hooligans," starring Elijah Wood, where Alex was both the cinematographer and co-producer. The scene was in a soccer stadium and they needed to fill the stands with a sold out crowd. Since ...Read More
Last summer I upgraded my camcorder to the Sony NEX FS-700. One of the main reasons was to take advantage of its ability to interchange lenses. With this camcorder, I can use the same high-end lenses I have for Nikon DLSR. The camera also sports a large sensor - a 4K Exmor Super 35 CMOS sensor with 11.6 million pixels - allowing the camera to achieve very low depth-of-field shots and a very high frame rate. The low depth-of-field is ...Read More
We recently launched a brand new website for the Greater Derry Londonderry Chamber of Commerce. This website incorporates new technology that helps the chamber promote their members and local events in a very sophisticated way, but with the ease of editing a word processing document. Authentic Content It is well known that having tons of authentic content is the best way to raise where a website appears on search engine results pages without having to resort to paying. Unfortunately, created ...Read More
I am very happy to announce the completion of my first car dealership commercials! Comcast Spotlight was kind enough to introduce me to Rochester Toyota to see if I could bring a fresh approach to their spots. After meeting with the owner, Lisa Casaccio, I was challenged to write several scripts to see if they would meet her expectations. I produced four spots which I reviewed with her in person. I prefer a face-to-face meeting because it winds up being ...Read More
I spent an entire day yesterday with Lindsay Adler (lindsayadlerphotography.com) and Lou Freeman (loufreeman.com), both accomplished photographers in the art of portrait, fashion, glamour, and lifestyle photography. The class they taught combined lectures and hands-on lighting set ups where they actually took us through how to choose and set up the lights to produce their signature looks. The set ups included professional models that we were able to direct and shoot once the set up was completed. I've included two ...Read More
Lee Harvey Oswald backyard photographs. I've always been fascinated with the myriad of discussions surrounding the Kennedy Assassination. But in May of 1979, I never imagined how close I would come to some of the most famous photographs in history. I was finishing my freshman year at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the Photographic Science and Instrumentation program, when many of us decided to attend the SPSE annual conference being held in Boston, MA that year. I was ...Read More
Just completed a commercial for the up coming "NH For The Holidays" expo to be held at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, NH on December 8th and 9th. The spot used a combination of motion video, stock photos, and digital artwork. The piece was pulled together in Adobe After Effects. For the main background of the photo album I used a free cardboard texture on the web and colored it a festive shade of blue. The burned edges for all ...Read More
In April we were not only an exhibitor at the Made In NH Expo, but were also hired to make a video summarizing the event. For three days I donned my Steadicam and walked the floor investigating all the vendors and watching the attendees try product. To help break up the piece, I thought it would be a great venue to try some time lapse photography that I learned a few weeks ago from Ron Risman at Rule Camera in ...Read More
Junior Seau as a New England Patriot against the New York Jets, 2007 After listening to all the sports-talk radio about Junior Seau's suicide, it dawned on me that I might have some photos of Junior when I had the opportunity to see the Patriots play the Jets during the 2007 season. Indeed, after going back into the archives, I had several, so I thought I would share them here. I was invited by PC Connection to watch the game ...Read More
Elliot Gould, owner and principal of Render Edge Media, LLC, filming at Jokers Bar and Bistro. Photo by Melissa Gould. We recently completed a TV commercial for a restaurant located in Manchester, NH called Jokers Bar and Bistro (jokersbistro.com). The owner, Peter Jennings, wanted to communicate very specific attributes of the restaurant in the commercial - a casual, relaxed atmosphere, all food made fresh to order, and a venue for live events nightly. The video was shot over the course ...Read More
Published Photo 'Dew on Moss' in Merrimack Valley Magazine Mar/Apr 2012. I have always loved the photography in the Merrimack Valley magazine. Their food and home photography in particular are consistently great. Inside the back cover they always publish an image submitted by a reader featuring a person, place or thing located in the Merrimack Valley. Here's an archive of the photographs they've published in the past on Facebook. Last June (2011) I took an interesting picture of dew on ...Read More
Steve Jobs on the cover of the debut issue of MacWorld in 1984. The passing of Steve Jobs gave me time to reflect on how much he impacted my life. From the Apple II through the iPad, I have used Apple products to for fun and for work. But the seminal moment had to be when I saw the Lisa computer. Up until then, figuring out how to use an application on a computer meant spending hours pouring through the ...Read More
Jacket Photo of Mary Johnson for An Unquenchable Thirst. Monday, September 26, 2011 Tomorrow is Mary Johnson's official Book Launch Party to celebrate the publication of her memoir, An Unquenchable Thirst. I had the distinct pleasure of working with Mary on her website, her introductory video, and taking some photos of her and her memorabilia. One of the most gratifying parts was having one my photos chosen as the one used for her book jacket photo (see first photo on ...Read More
Fresh Blueberries. I just completed a series of videos for Innate Response Formulas (www.innateresponse.com), a vitamin company located in New Hampshire who is a leader in whole food nutrition. This six-part series demonstrates how Innate converts fresh, raw food into tablets using their proprietary Refractance Window® dryers, the theory behind their patented technology, and the nutritional benefits of low-temperature drying. Location, Location, Location This corporate video shoot entailed multiple locations, including going to a farm to film fresh carrots, broccoli, ...Read More
Rico Petrocelli autograph When I signed up for a booth at the 2011 Cross Border Expo in Rockingham Park, NH, I didn't realize that I would get the chance to meet a true Red Sox legend. A week or so before the event, I received an updated announcement from the Salem, NH Chamber of Commerce announcing that Rico Petrocelli and the two recent Red Sox World Series trophies would be making an appearance at the Expo. I didn't think much ...Read More
The Statue of Liberty. My wife and I visited the Statue of Liberty over the Thanksgiving holiday. Even though I grew up just outside New York city, I had never visited Liberty Island before. We reserved tickets on-line the previous evening and boarded the first Ferry ride at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. It was a spectacular day - not a cloud in the sky and very little haze. As the ferry approached Liberty Island, I went up to the ...Read More
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in Training Camp versus the New Orleans Saints 2010. I attended the New England Patriots training camp session today at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA. For those who may not know, the Patriots open up their training facility to the public for free during training camp season (click here for a detailed schedule). A good number of people show up to watch, but the facility is plenty large enough to easily accommodate everyone. I ...Read More
I never expected to see this. While hiking the Hi-Cannon Trail up to the top of Cannon Mountain in the Franconia Notch region of the New Hampshire White Mountains, my camera swung around and caught a thick, dead branch right in the middle of my Nikkor 18-200mm zoom lens. I've hiked with my Nikon camera equipment all my life, from the Grand Canyon to Glacier National Park to the Czech Republic, and I've occassionally knocked the equipment around - but ...Read More
Scott Sigler reading ANCESTOR in Cambridge, MA. I finally got the chance to meet the Future Dark Overload (FDO) himself, Scott Sigler (www.scottsigler.com), in person at Pandemonium Books & Games (www.pandemoniumbooks.com) on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010, where he was doing a reading from his latest novel, ANCESTOR. I video taped the event and posted it on YouTube. There are several video segments to view. All tolled, the reading and question & answer session lasted almost 70 minutes. This meant chopping ...Read More
We recently installed a 28-minute video loop in the PGA Center for Advanced Dentistry, the dentist office of Dr. Jay Ajmo, (www.pgadentistry.com) located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Dr. Ajmo has a state-of-the art facilty with dual 42" displays located in each exam room. However, Dr. Ajmo felt the displays were being under utilized. Their primary function was to display patient x-rays - a huge improvement over the ancient way of placing the x-rays up against a fluorescent backlight. With ...Read More
Ronnie James Dio of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow at the Beacon Theater November 1975. I just learned from a close friend that Ronnie James Dio died yesterday (Ronnie James Dio Dies). How sad. He was a favorite rock and roll front man of mine. Excellent rock voice. Good song writer. Back in the 70's I was a huge Deep Purple fan, so when Ritchie Blackmore left the group to form Rainbow, my friends and I were all over their debut album. ...Read More
Screen shot of Digital Display showing the menu at Red Sky Resaurant & Lounge located in Boston, MA. This week we installed a digital display in the store front window of the Red Sky Restaurant & Lounge (www.redskyboston.com) located in Boston, MA. It combines the food video and food beauty photography created earlier with information about the restaurant, including their menu, function rooms, and daily specials to produce a dynamic experience that will catch the eye of potential customers as ...Read More
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 I stopped by the Apple store yesterday to check out the new Apple iPad. The store was reasonably busy, but not anymore traffic than I've seen normally (who knows what it was like during opening weekend!). They had a table set up with eight (8) iPads to play with, and not all of them were being used. After all the hype and hearing the initial impressions, I expected to love it -- but I didn't. PRO'S ...Read More
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 Yesterday I filmed a series of instructional videos and captured food beauty shots for Chef Andy Fass, owner of Amelia's Restaurant (www.ameliasgainesville.com) located in Gainesville, Florida. Our goal with this client was to create compelling website content that will attract people to come to the website, come back often, build his brand and reputation, and, ultimately, convert website visitors into customers . The videos consisted of Chef Andy teaching people how to create classic Italian dishes, ...Read More
Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden June 11, 1977. Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden June 11, 1977. Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden June 11, 1977.
I was a Junior in High School when Led Zeppelin booked Madison Square Garden in New York City for a week of concerts in June of 1977. We were able to score tickets because they were sold by mail order - the promoter's brilliant plan to circumvent the scalpers from getting the best seats. The downside, of course, was that we had no control where our seats would be. To our great surprise we received seats in the first tier ...Read More
