For the last hundred years there have been photographers creating documentary photography at museums. Famed photographer Elliott Erwitt documented so many museums around the world that he created an entire book dedicated to the subject: Museum Watchers (published in 1999). Photographing museum visitors connecting with art becomes art itself. Last week I visited the Indianapolis…
Firelight photography gives a nice warm glow to your photos. It’s challenging to get exposure and focus locked in when you’re using a candle or campfire as your sole light source. But it’s worth the effort to learn and practice because it gives the viewer a sense of the ambiance of a place that would…
What is color photography, really? As I always say… “Color Photography isn’t about taking photos IN color, it’s about taking photos OF color.” How does color contribute to the story that I’m telling? When does it add information? When does it distract from the subject? When is color the subject itself? These are things I’m…
Photographing a Balloon Glow like Jupiter Flights at Connor Prairie is challenging due to quickly changing light conditions. Digital photography makes this much easier with instant feedback and take a lot of frames. However it is possible on film especially with an automatic mode like aperture priority.
The Indiana State Fair is one of my favorite places to take photos. I go each year and there’s always so much to see and do and experience! My wife and I take our 5 kids to the fair each year, so I’m there as a parent and a participant as much as a documentary…
Gregorian chants echoed off the bleachers as tens of thousands knelt in the darkness, in near-silent prayer & meditation. It was a long way from the usual stadium lights, high-energy music, and the cheering & jeering of the usual crowds at Lucas Oil Stadium. The National Eucharistic Congress was held in Indianapolis, Indiana from July…
Cars & Coffee photography is something I’ve done regularly this year. When engaging with a familiar subject, it’s important to me to keep it feeling fresh & interesting. What Can We Learn About Cars & Coffee Through Photographing the People? So this week for Cars & Coffee Photography, I decided to focus on the people…
Ballet INitiative in a nonprofit dance collective based in Indianapolis, Indiana. My introduction to their group came last winter when one of my kids was part of their annual Nutcracker with a Twist performance. The show, billed as a “feminist 1920s Nutcracker,” is primarily based in ballet, but also incorporates other styles of dance. This…
Last weekend Graham Rahal Performance hosted a cars & coffee event at their location in Brownsburg, IN. I headed out with the boys to see what we hoped would be some cool cars. We were not disappointed! We could not believe how many people showed up! And apparently they were a bit surprised as well….
Dance Photography I started doing dance photography a few times a year when two of my kids started dancing. Because my love of photography is centered around storytelling, I’m looking to document the experience of dancing. I look for moments of peak action in their movements. I stand backstage with the dancers peering between the…
This past weekend we made our sorta annual visit to Carmel Artomobilia, a car show in our town of Carmel, Indiana. As with most events I photograph, I wanted to focus on both the cars AND the people observing them. So here is my street photography approach to the car show… Related Posts If you…
Let’s go behind the scenes of a commercial photoshoot I did recently. This was a 5 day shoot at locations like small businesses in Indianapolis, homes in the city & the suburbs, and out on a family farm in Morocco, Indiana. Thanks to Young & Laramore for bringing me on for this shoot. It was…
I recently worked with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to document their Verizon 200 at the Brickyard race weekend. There were four races over the weekend and I was there taking photos of the experience. The Scene I took a documentary approach to show what it felt like to be at the track, capturing the overall…
Having lived in Indianapolis for 17 years now, I always wondered who got to drive the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Camaros I’d see around town each year starting in the spring. Well, now I know because I’m one of them! An Extremely Brief Introduction to the IMS If you’re not familiar with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway…
The Indianapolis 500 is a month-long celebration during the month of May in Indiana. This year I photographed two different perspectives on the festivities. First, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum hired me to photograph their Hall of Fame dinner two days before the race. It was an evening of racing legends, stories and a celebration…
I went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum this spring, and seeing as the Indy 500 is this weekend, now is a great time to share the photos! The winner of the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race gets their name and likeness on the Borg-Warner Trophy. The second place finisher gets nothing (well, some money, I suppose)….
The Big East Esports Championship at Butler University was full of action and emotion and I was there to document it all! Scroll through the photos below and experience the story of the event as it unfolds. Related Posts For more sports & esports photography, check out these posts. You can also learn more about…
Photographing light, whether natural or manmade, goes a long way in making an interesting & engaging photo. Photography at its core is light and shadow. That’s why it’s the first thing I look for when taking a photo. March in the Midwest means a lot of gray skies. So on a rare sunny March evening,…
Work Truck Week in Indianapolis is always a joy to photograph. This year was my fourth time documenting these big big trucks inside the Indiana Convention Center. What I Look For When I take photos, I like to look for scenes and moments that are out of the ordinary. If something makes me stop and…
Creating social media content for clients using my documentary photography experience to share client products, services, and locations.
Live from _____, It’s a ZDP Photo Walk! Have you tuned in to a live photo walk yet? I’ve been a photographer for over 20 years, and photo walks (AKA wandering around with the sole purpose of taking photos) have been a regular part of my practice. But lately I’ve added a new element… broadcasting…
Snow day! That means it’s time to head outside and create some black & white photography in the snow! There was big, heavy, wet snow this morning, and I went outside to take some pretty photos and video of giant snowflakes falling. In fact, I have a nice, 60-second pretty snow video you can watch…
We’ve been anxiously awaiting the new renovations at the Carmel Clay Public Library and were excited at the opportunity to take a preview tour before the doors opened to the public. My wife and I homeschool our 5 kids, so the library is one of our most important resources. It was great getting to see…
As a photographer, I thrive on the novel. I love documenting things I’ve never photographed before. So when I was asked to photograph a ballet class, I was excited to see what I could get. This is The Ballet Studio of Carmel (Indiana) lead by Ashley Thibodeau. It was a fun class to photograph! The…
Available Light Only Documenting the mood and atmosphere of A Merry Prairie Holiday at Conner Prairie was a fun challenge as a photographer. There was a mix of light sources that ranged from candles and fires to outdoor projections to modern holiday light displays. Projection The first show we encountered was a projection on the…
Using motion blur in photography is a great way to convey action, movement, and excitement while telling a story. In this post I’ll give some examples of how I like to use motion blur. All photos here are from this year’s Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. To Pan or Not To Pan? There are two primary ways…
Beauty in the Ordinary Taking great photos of everyday scenes is something I pride myself in. I often say that while we’d all love to take photos of tropical or mountain scenes or bustling urban cityscapes, most of us don’t have the opportunity to do so more than a couple times per year (if even…
Photographing the new Butler Esports Park was my second photoshoot this year in esports. It’s been great learning about this new frontier in sports and technology. Both photoshoots have been for the architect of the new arenas, Populous. Their attention to detail is incredible and I’ve enjoyed showing it off in the photos. It’s also…
Recently I decided to take some photos as a sort of “event street photographer.” Here I’ll talk about the process and show the results! What is Street Photography? If you’re not familiar with street photography, it’s candidly documenting the everyday life and interactions of people in public spaces. Sometimes the subjects know their photo is…
Recently I had an opportunity to photograph something new: esports! Indianapolis played host to a 5v5 NBA2K tournament, called The Turn, in a brand new venue downtown. I was contacted by Populous, the architecture firm that designed the new space, to take photos of it in use. I had a great time seeing and documenting…
This week I took a winter walk to shake off the Great Holiday Malaise and get back to taking some photos outside again. I like the variety of images in this series: abstract nature, people doing wintery stuff, and OF COURSE, just a couple golf balls. Hey, they were there! I had to do my…
I feel that “everyday” photography is greatly underrated. Scroll any social media feed and you’ll see plenty of tropical locations and mountain vistas, often with thousands of likes. Those photos are nice, but I want to see everyday life photographed in an interesting an engaging way. It can be beautiful or harsh or happy or…
Doing some late night photography lead to something I almost never do: using a tripod. Taking out the trash late one night, I noticed the (nearly) full moon shining down on my backyard and felt inspired to take some photos. I knew that I wanted to shoot at a lower ISO (for better image quality)…
The title of this series is 13 Minutes in the Fog: A Photographic Journey. A foggy morning is always great for making you look at your surroundings anew. So that’s just what I did this week when the fog rolled in and the scene didn’t disappoint! Inside Out I frequently look for how our inside…
Stonewall Sports Indianapolis is a community sports organization for LGBTQ+ individuals and allies. I went out to document opening day for their fall kickball league at Frederick Douglass Park in Indianapolis. What a fun group! There was plenty of music, customized uniforms, and not-so-subtle team names. If you’re in the Indy area and looking for…
Seeing the peace and serenity of McCormick’s Creek State Park, it’s easy to see how this became the first state park in Indiana, founded in 1916. The spot was never destined to be harnessed commercially for its natural resources. Early efforts to build a sawmill and a quarry did not yield the hoped for results….
Looking for a fresh perspective on my own surroundings, I created some black and white nature photography in my yard. If you enjoy photography, you likely value documenting your daily life and/or creating art on a regular basis. And while it’s great to travel to tropical beaches or vast mountain ranges, most of us aren’t…
I absolutely LOVE doing documentary photography of basketball! If you haven’t heard, Indiana is a HUGE basketball state. Yes, more than other states. There’s nowhere else a movie like Hoosiers could have been made. I scanned years of my archive of images I shot for organizations like the Indiana High School Athletic Association and the…
I love taking photos in the snow! It lets me see everyday locations with a new perspective. Snow provides technical challenges and unique visual possibilities. Let’s talk about those before you head out in the cold with your camera. Here are 8 tips for snow photography. They cover content, composition, and technical considerations when photographing outdoors…
A good photography practice can be to return to the same scene multiple times to photograph it under different conditions. If you saw my post about photographing night snow, you’ll have seen this first image already. Well, I found myself in the same area the next day, both during the afternoon and again in the…
Twenty years into photography, it’s rare to find a subject I haven’t already photographed in some capacity. Enter Night Snow. Whenever possible, I get outside when it’s snowing those big, fat beautiful flakes, but I had never tried it at night. First, it required me to do something I absolutely hate: take a tripod. I’m…
Documentary construction photography, design & collaboration for Cityscape Residential for their website by Common Design.
What’s a photographer to do in a pandemic? I’m someone who likes to photograph people most of all. I need to avoid people as much as possible right now. And when I’m around others, I can’t photograph them in the close manner I’m accustomed to. So I spend a lot of time outdoors. And with…
Photos for Eating Well magazine of Nate and Liz Brownlee, owners/operators of Nightfall Farm in Crothersville, Indiana.
Took at walk with the kids at Ritchey Woods Nature Preserve in Fishers Indiana and got some great fall photos.
Documenting lost golf balls as found in nature lead to an interesting series of artistic photographs.
It’s May and we’re half in the box. Documenting life in the here-and-now has been very interesting. As a trained photojournalist, I’ve always thought of “finding a story” as going out into the world and looking for something interesting to shoot. Ironically I’ve found these restrictions more freeing. I have to focus on what’s nearby,…
We’re all doing things a bit differently these days. One thing that’s interesting to me is how some of the things we’re doing are CLOSE to what we did before, but not exactly the same. For example, my family likes to hike and explore nature. But since we’re not going out to parks right now,…
Hammond, Indiana-based brewery 18th Street comes to Indianapolis.
Last fall marked my third time documenting the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. It’s always a lot of action and emotion with plenty of great photos to take (if you know what you’re doing, that is). My SEO plugin wants me to type a bunch of words. “F*ck off, plugin,” I say! I’m going to tell this…
One of the many reasons I love my work is that I never know what type of shoots are going to come my way. Documenting the rededication of Bethel Cemetery is definitely a photo story different than any I have done before. A logistics company called Cardno contacted me in the fall to document the…
Indiana City Last week I visited Indiana City Brewing on the southeast side of downtown Indianapolis to check out their brewing process. It was fun to watch. The building they’re housed in is super cool and the morning light definitely heightened the scene. I’ve been doing documentary photography and drinking beer (not at the same…
Documentary photography from Indy Mural Fest, Indianapolis Indiana 2019
Aaron Scamihorn – Ronlewhorn Industries Indianapolis artist Aaron Scamihorn works as a graphic designer and illustrator. Under his company Ronlewhorn Industries, he creates illustrations, concert posters and design for companies like Indiana City Brewing, where he’s lead their overall design and can art since their founding in 2013. New Medium Last weekend, I photographed Aaron…
The NBA season is about to get underway, so I thought it time to finally share this shoot from last season. The Indiana Pacers hired me to document the inaugural game for their partnership with Motorola. I was brought in to capture some pre-game shots in the locker room and game action photos that highlighted…
Visiting Flat Fork Creek Park Flat Fork Creek Park is tucked away in the southeast corner of Fishers, Indiana. During this trip, Zach seeks different ways to capture the feel of this park at this time of year. Blue skies A bright sunny noon hour doesn’t often make for great photography, but sometimes you…
Our story this week features Turkey Run State Park in western Indiana. Carved by glaciers millions of years ago, this park features some of the most unique topography in Indiana. Walk with us through the ravines and sandstone gorges to see what this park has to offer. Please share this post with a friend who…
Earlier this year I headed up to northern Indiana to visit Angola Wire, a company that makes wire displays for retail use and custom wire parts. Shooting photos of industrial work and heavy machinery is always a fun task. And when sparks are flying, it makes for some cool images. I spent a half-day wandering…
Carmel Artomobilia is an auto show in the heart of the Arts & Design District. What could be better than world-class cars just a few minutes from home? Here are a few shots from this year’s show. If you’ve been following this blog or my Instagram page for any amount of time, you’ll see that…
Indiana Grown Marketplace These are images from the 2019 Indiana Grown Monumental Marketplace. This event only happens once a year and includes nearly 150 vendors from across the state of Indiana. I was hired to provide a comprehensive catalog of images for digital and print advertising and I only had four hours to do it….