I volunteered to shoot the kids, wagons, horses, games, face painting and anything else colorful and interesting at the Independence Day Parade in the Thoroughgood neighborhood in Virginia Beach this morning. This young girl was looking at the fill strobe on a pole. Wow, such a face.

The pesky red Converse Sneakers had been lost for over two months and they finally surfaced last week in a bin of props. Laura was having a hard time with the sneakers having no laces, so on a trip to Wave Riding Vehicles for repair parts for one of the mermaid tails, a guy in the shoe department gave us an odd package of white laces. That one little act of kindness made our day!

We couldn't wait to get those rascals wet.

My summer assistant, Laura Deas, saw herself as a mermaid and made sure we allocated some tank time to shoot it. There was a lot of work to be done in the studio and she was a little whirlwind getting it done. Some work was backlogged more than I care to admit and she produced some results just short of magic. Now she's off to Italy for a month photo class and more knowledge for her young photography business in Atlanta.

Last week my summer assistant from Atlanta, Laura Deas, and I were working on some images for Lauren Paul in the studio. This is one of the frames.

I've started a series of portraits of people I find interesting. Abbey Scott is the first. I refer to her as a "Punker," but I could be using the wrong term. After all, I'm older than her 22. As we were shooting this picture, she used a term I didn't understand and I asked what it meant. She said "it's a hip-hop term," like I wouldn't understand. I was tempted to mention Jerry Garcia,but didn't.

First Shivers and now Barbie. People see Barbie in the studio (without Ken) and I have to explain she's an underwater prop model. But, they still have a weird look. Honest, it's just about long blond hair flowing in the water, choices of background, ambient backlighting, strobe fill, bubbles and such.

There are three stories here; a multitasking of sorts.

First, the bear belongs to 8-yr-old Jenna Crumley. She lets me have Shivers in the studio every so often for a week or two. Press Shivers' lower left paw and he/she shivers, giggles and cheeks glow red. I like Shivers and so do visitors. No one can press the paw and not feel good.

Second, I'm painting/testing a prop column to work with a custom muslin for one a series of portraits I have in mind.

And, third, I'm installing/testing v1.0 of Hasselblad's Phocus software with a tethered H2/39CFH. Phocus' GUI is a lot like Adobe's Lightroom, so the workflow from Phocus to Lightroom promises to be very smooth.

We were doing some experimental video underwater with fabrics, clothing and shoes last Tuesday gathering some motion images for possible television content. We also had the housed still camera in case we needed/wanted it. Saw this and definitely wanted a still version.

I always enjoy this kind of shoot for the multi-city, multi-restaurant subject variety. Over the course of weeks, we'll shoot food, drinks, restaurant exteriors, an interior when the crowds clear, chefs, bartenders, operations staff and bring in talent for lifestyle sessions. One night the lifestyle session crew was nearly twenty. The added benefits are the client staff is great to work with (Captain George's and Just George's), we have a talented and easy-going art director and the there's no danger of going hungry or thirsty.

Mermaid Beth Barker in Bob Minnick's rolling reflection pool in Portsmouth, VA.

This is the cockpit of a 1987 Beechcraft King Air 200 aircraft after an electronics upgrade to an Avidyne/S-TEC Alliant Integrated Flight Deck (including digital autopilot). Probably only a trained flight crew can appreciate the sophistication and the new system. Glass displays replace many of the old ones.

Also, you had to be there as it was happening to realize how complex a job it was.

The photography was done with a Hasselblad 39-megapixel system using studio strobes, long exposures and multi-captures to accurately record all the different light densities. The result is a single 1.6GB image file.

A gentle rain this afternoon left some pristine drops on the black fabric of some new lawn chair cushions. At about dusk, I added a strobe sidelight through all the drops giving all of them a tail. The "worm" in every drop are my four fingers wrapped around the grip of the MkIII.

This is not my usual thing; I just liked the drops.

We're back in the pool again after a long (but mild) winter.

Jenna Crumley; Sunday, May 5, 2008, aged 7 years, 9 months. Born when I was shooting on Barbados. Nickname: WaterRat

Chuck Guthrie and I have been working for months on the logistics for shooting this privately owned Chopper and its companion, a silver Ferrarri.

Finally, this past Saturday, all the pieces came together with availability of the bike, enough warmth to work in the water, availability of models Liz Harlow and Christina Macfarlane, proper biker leather boots and other clothing courtesy of biker chicks Kathy Moore and Lori Reed and availability of shooting space late at night.

It's a 39MPix digital capture, so has extraordinary detail. It's destined for some large displays, so needed the resolution.