My Grandpa, Paul A. Gettinger

Grandpa & Rocky

Ever since I found my love of photography, I’ve wanted to create some portraits of my Grandpa. For myself and many others this farmer & preacher has been the living symbol of unconditional love and inspired wisdom. I find myself painfully inadequate to write about him – my words could never do justice (you’ll just have to meet him yourself). Of his character, I’ll simply say this: perpetually compassionate, ever faithful, a teacher, a worker, a pacifist, an optimist.

2012 Calendar photo taken in Clearfield, PA

Taking the photo

For this year’s calendar photo, I thought it might be nice to hilight one of our new customers: a coal company near Clearfield, Pennsylvania. I couldn’t resist the curves of this bridge since it so nicely shows off the company name on the side of the locomotives and the red coal cars.

The process of taking this photo was pretty perilous since there’s nothing to stand on from this vantage point. We got a Jig Lift so I could boom out over the water. I still couldn’t quite get far enough out, so I attached the camera to a monopod, set it on 10 second timer and extended it even further. I took my wife along since the calendar is always a fun shoot, and I was using our personal camera. She had to look away when I started hanging the camera over the water.

Obviously there had to be some photoshop work done to that dirt patch in the bottom-right corner, but compared to past years this had very little alteration.

Alternate Calendar Photo

The bridge was actually my second choice of location. My first pick was at the coal cleaning plant where we unload the train. It’s always nice to feature a customer on our calendar but it didn’t quite have that dynamic impact that a wide-angle photo gives, and you can’t see the company name on the coal cars.

The owner of our company still couldn’t quite decide, so we produced a couple hundred calendars of the alternate photo to give to that customer – just for fun.

One thing is for sure: if I ever had a fear of heights, that’s long gone now.

The desert mountains of Idaho

I had been looking forward to this trip for months, so I was supremely disappointed when I started to have flu-like symptoms the day before our early morning departure. But there was no turning back! I had non-refundable tickets, and no desire to sit out of this adventure. I had never been to Idaho, but I’d heard my friend Brad talk about it on numerous occasions. An “undiscovered bird hunting paradise,” he described it. I anticipated mountains full of wild birds never before hunted, and I wasn’t about to let a sore throat stop me. As promised, it was much more than walking through a field of liberated birds!

After landing in Boise, we began the scenic drive north on Highway 55. I had never before seen terrain quite like that – I felt like I was on some other planet! The mountains looked like they had a light brown coat of fur!

As we continued north, we made a much-appreciated pit stop at Gold Fork Hot Springs near McCall. It was incredibly relaxing and rejuvenating to just float in the naturally hot water flowing from the mountainside. It probably helped soothe my illness too.

Thankfully, they drove us to the top in an ATV. I can't imagine having to climb up the mountain to hunt!

We arrived in Riggins just in time to catch the Boise State game at the Seven Devils Saloon – quite an experience in itself. After witnessing their boisterous victory, we turned in for the night at the very comfortable Salmon Rapids Lodge overlooking the Salmon River, and enjoyed the extra 2 hours we gained by being on mountain time.

For the day of the hunt, Brad invited his friend Tom from Boise to come up with his dogs – two beautiful Gordon Setters. I have never seen calmer, more obedient dogs than these. The best thing about these dogs was that they were more than tools to Tom. They still had that sense of companionship that is abandoned with most hunting dogs, but their performance in the field was still superior to most dogs we’ve hunted with. Their beautiful dark coats stood out wonderfully against the brown grass. Between the dogs and the setting, I have never had an easier photo shoot of a hunt! Everywhere I turned there was a gorgeous landscape for me to capture – full of texture and depth.

Pete the Gordon Setter with Fausti 28 gauge shotgun, Chukar and Ruffed Grouse

We were hunting for Chukar partridge, Pheasant, or California Quail. Mainly we focused on Chukar, which was a tricky hunt, and very physically demanding! Thankfully, they drove us near the top of the mountain so we could walk mostly downhill – but it was still no stroll in the park! Imagine walking for miles along a 45 degree pitch – that’s hard on the joints. Besides that, there were places that didn’t have much solid footing, but just bare rocks faces lightly dusted with pebbles. The tricky part about hunting these birds is that the cover is pretty light. Once the dog points, the bird won’t stay put for long since it’s not very well hidden. Often the birds would flush while I was trying not to slide hundreds of feet to my death, which makes it tough to aim. Up on the mountain the Chukars would fly down, which is an unnatural motion for a bird hunter who is used to tracking a bird flying up.

They weren’t kidding about it being loaded with birds. We saw coveys of 30-50 birds flushing. If only we could hit them! Oddly enough, I bagged the only Chukar of the day. Brad found and collected an unexpected Ruffed Grouse along with several California Quail at the foot of the mountain.

Though we only hunted one day, my legs have never been sorer in my life! With the sun starting to set behind the mountains, we staged some photos with Pete the Gordon Setter beside his prize. Tom commanded, “Sit Pete!” but also made the comment “I’ve never taught them to sit.” But Pete was smart enough and obedient enough to catch on to what his master was requesting. He was even able to fulfill my requests to “scoot him a little closer to the birds.”

Such a memorable experience! I am so thankful that I get the opportunity to explore God’s amazing creation. Idaho was unlike any place I have ever been. I would love to go back (and I probably will), but I’m even more excited to discover other corners of this incredible world.

If you would like to see all my photos from this trip, click here. Also, check out my Freebies for Idaho wallpapers.

Advertisement running in a trade magazine

The Challenge: create an ad that will be shared between one of our companies, and the parent company.

The Goal: show the advantage this particular company has by being a part of the parent company.

I received this assignment with a shorter-than-normal deadline, so my immediate instinct was to think, “I can just split the space, and reformat two existing ads to fit” but doing that would weaken to potential impact. The neat thing about our company is that, like a team in sports, we’re so much stronger that just the sum of our parts. This is the advantage that our locomotive company has over its competitors.

Another ad that emphasizes a superior product

Also, the vision of the company as a whole is aligned differently. Historically we have been part of the service industry, but this newer company sells a product. So for them, their service focus includes things like training courses, technical support, extended warranty, and remote diagnostics.

However, being part of the service industry doesn’t mean that the quality of the product suffers. They have been victorious on several head-to-head tests against other competitors. I’m pretty proud of them.

Back to the design….
I wanted to communicate something like, “cut from the same cloth” but give stronger imagery. After bouncing ideas back and forth with my associate Brandon, we came up with this Mt. Rushmore-like concept idea.

This may be one of the most intricate “photoshopperies” I have ever attempted. Especially if you include the work done with the “One Source” imagery in the corner. Pieced together from several of my older photos (clouds, rocks, locomotive, plus the background mountain shapes stock photo) with a variety of blending modes and effects, this 8×11″ Photoshop file is about 3 gigabites! Even my monster computer at work had trouble crunching through this one. There were so many “smart objects” nested in each other that Brandon would tease me about going further into Inception every time I would dig deeper to make edits. I need to come up with some kind of “totem” if I continue doing designs like this.

My wife and I have been married for 5 years this summer, and it occurred to us that we still don’t have any of our wedding photos displayed in our house! As we looked back through our album we realized why. The photographer we had chosen was good, but very old fashioned. Each photo was flawless, but so boring! The color representation was perfectly true, everything looked exact. Perhaps that’s what inspired our philosophy as wedding photographers: people don’t want to see photos just to remember exactly how the event took place, but also to relive how it felt.

So we donned our wedding garb (my wife still fits in her wedding dress, and I rented a tux), and recruited our long-time friends Brad & Bethany Fitzpatrick to compose the shots for us.

Talon Winery has a beautiful little vineyard just outside of Lexington. We drove out there on a Monday evening with our friends. It was hot and sticky, but worth the effort!

We each imported the photos onto our computers, and will edit them individually. When we show them to each other, it will reveal one another’s own personal editing style. We’re still working on them, but I thought I’d give you a glimpse of what I’m working on.

3-exposure HDR

When we were finished posing, the sunset was so beautiful that I couldn’t resist taking a few shots of my own.

This scene was an emergency stop on the drive home.

I hope everyone had a wonderful July 4th weekend! I took these photos at our annual company picnic.
For fireworks photos, I recommend starting off with settings of ISO 100, f/8, and a shutter speed of 2.5 seconds. A tripod is a must-have to get anything good at all.

Full-Page Magazine Ad

A growing trend in the railroad industry is to “double-stack” railcars. This simply means that they stack shipping containers two-high on each car. Doing this makes shipping by rail even more efficient. The only problem is that most train tunnels are only tall enough for conventional railcars. That’s where we come in. Our construction company can actually drill, chip, and grind away at the ceiling of a tunnel, making it high enough for a taller train.

I took this photo last year when we were working on one of these tunnels in West Virginia. The attachment on the trackhoe is called a “roadheader.” It was pretty fascinating to see these guys “notch” the rounded edges in this two-lane tunnel.

I was excited about doing the ad because I knew I had this wide-angle shot of the roadheader that would create some depth in the design. I knew I wanted the roadheader to be grinding away at some text, but I had to reign myself in and take things one step at a time. An ad has to have an effective message to get the full punch of the imagery, so I had to think of what I wanted it to say. I chose “raising the standard” because the quality and efficiency of our work is truly leading the industry, but also because the photo actually shows us raising the standard height of a tunnel.

The text below that makes me chuckle… There’s a saying among graphic designers (and probably many other professions) that goes something like this: “I can do it fast, make it look good, and it won’t cost much… just pick 2 out of 3.”

Our new puppy "Daisy"

Let me just begin by saying that I’ve wanted to have 2 dogs from the very beginning…. When we bought Pita (our 3-year-old fawn boxer), I lobbied for getting two. Every time we see dogs for sale, I try to get my wife over to pet them (and hopefully get all gooey so she’ll get one).

Finally, this past weekend my dreams came true! We saw some boxers for sale, so my wife and I decided to go play with them. When we pulled up, we found that half the little was completely white – which isn’t very common. They were selling at a good price, and since my wife really likes white puppies we ended up getting one!

Her name is Daisy because my wife’s favorite flowers are daisies, and they come in white.

Daisy helping me mow

Today I mowed the yard and the dogs were outside with me. I was a little worried about mowing with this new puppy. She always seems to walk in front of us or between our legs, so I wasn’t sure how cautious she would be around a lawn mower. At one point I experienced a moment of panic when I looked around and didn’t see her anywhere. I discovered that she was actually following right behind me! Up and down the rows we went, and she rarely lagged behind more than a foot or so.
We really enjoyed mowing the yard together, but I learned one thing about having an all-white dog…

Lawnmower Puppy

…it’s tough to get the grass stains out!

Ringgold Middle School destroyed by a tornado.

Thursday evening I got a phone call saying that in the morning I was to drive down to Georgia to take photos of our crews cleaning up the train tracks in the aftermath of a tornado. We have trucks equipped with tree cutting claws that can ride along the rail.

Tornado's Path

When I arrived (after a 4-hour drive), the crews told me about how the tornado had destroyed the middle school and the high school in the town, and many homes were completely destroyed. I was surprised that, with so many mountains in the surrounding area, a tornado could stay on the ground for so long. In fact, you could see on the mountainside the path that the tornado had made. Thank God this didn’t happen during school hours!

Events like this remind us of how powerless we really are. Is there any place where we can truly be out of harm’s way?

Winghaven Lodge, Providence, KY; 11-photo panoramic

Brad and I took a trip down to Providence, KY to test out the CZ Upland Ultralight that he’s writing an article about. Testing the shotgun however was only 1 of many purposes of our trip, not excluding simply having fun with some guns, although I didn’t shoot much since I needed to focus on the photography (I sometimes tend to get carried away with the shooting and forget to take photos). Brad is also hoping to write another article about Winghaven Lodge, and we discovered some more opportunities

Browning Maxus 12ga

along the way. Brad invited Andrew and Katie from Must Have Outdoors to come and test some Browning and Winchester shotguns for their show (which will also give Winghaven some more much-deserved exposure). We both got to try out the new Browning Maxus 12ga semi-auto, and Brad was thinking about the possibility of writing a review about it, so I took plenty of photos of it too.

George cleaning his gorgeous Holland & Holland

But the most intriguing part of the weekend was meeting a gentleman by the name of George Gans. George is a regular at Woodhaven, and is a friend of Russell, the owner. We met George when we arrived on Friday night, and it didn’t long before it was revealed that he brought not only a Purdey shotgun, but also a Holland & Holland – both of which are high-dollar, hand-crafted firearms made to order in London, England. George actually carried the Purdey when we went afield the next day. In some ways George actually reminded me of “the most interesting man in the world” from the Dos Equis (XX) commercials. Not that he walked around with a harem of women, but he had a seemingly endless repository of stories to keep us entertained all day.

Brad with the Purdey

George was fun to talk with while walking through the fields, and he was also very generous in sharing his toys. To my amazement (and Brad’s) he actually let brad shoot a bird with his Purdey! Brad was tickled to death, and I was glad to take pictures. Brad definitely looks better with a Purdey. Brad shot his bird like the pro that he is, and George was glad to share the joy.

After lunch, George was gracious enough to lend me his Holland & Holland for a photo shoot. Brad is also doing an article on Kentucky bird hunting, which will talk about other Kentucky traditions such as bourbon. Winghaven was the perfect place to stage this shot because of their vast selection of fine bourbons. Having the Holland & Holland really made this photo. Nothing says shooting tradition like a hand-crafted double barrel shotgun.

George is a neat guy. I hope our paths cross again some day.

Kentucky Traditions