Can’t really overstate how special today is in the United States and in many different countries.

November 11th – Veterans Day. Armed Forces Day. Armistace Day. Rememberance Day.

It’s all a very special way to honor the men and women that have served our countries, in war and in peacetime, and that still continue to serve.

For one reason or another, I never joined the military. But the two men in the image at the top of this post did.

The young Coast Guardsman is my dad. He enlisted right after high school and served through the Korean Conflict. He was 20 years old at the time, and the shot was taken in front of his house in a small town in coal country Pennsylvania.

The other young gent is my mom’s father who I never got to meet as he passed when she was a teenager. It’s an old family photo without too much background to it. I did a little research and found out that the patch is the 2nd Infantry Division and the rope is a French award presented to the division for their actions in battle. Not sure which battle, though.

Perhaps they served so that I didn’t?

Let’s just get all of our service men and women back to peace time service.

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Oh and on a little side note…Today is the One Year Anniversary of the JerseyStyle Photography blog! Thanks to all my readers who keep coming by and checking this out. If you have any requests that you’d like to see more of (less writing/more photos, more “How I Got That Shot” types of things, etc) drop me a note and let me know. It’s been a fast, fun year and I love sharing some of my shots here, and getting your thoughts and reactions. Here’s onto to pushing through Year Two!

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved

Point 1: I loved having my Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series against the New York Yankees these past two weeks. It was great to see the Phils back. It was great to see it all on the East Coast. And if the Phils had to lose to someone, it may as well be the Yankees. Truth be told, I don’t hate them the same way I hate the Mets. I once worked for a company that was once headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the hometown of the Yankees Derek Jeter. In fact, his mom worked for this same company and I met her after the company moved to New Jersey. Having a boss that serves on Derek’s “Turn 2 Foundation” board and getting the chance to go to some dinners with ol’ #2, El Capitan, helped spur some good feelings toward the team as well.

Point 2: I HATED watching Walmart and other stores run Christmas shopping commercials during the World Series. Something needs to be done. Either Bud needs to keep the WS firmly in October, or dammit, don’t rush the season, retailers, OK?

Futhermore, I like Fall. I love Summer, but I like Fall very well. Don’t remind me that pretty soon I’ll be hibernating, sipping some Laphroaig to keep me warm on cold winter NJ nights.

About a year ago, myself and another local shooter headed over to Basto, New Jersey, an old, picturesque village in the NJ Pine Barrens, supposedly home to the Jersey Devil itself. It was a gorgeous fall afternoon, and the village was a spectacular place to shoot.

Landscapes and all are fine, but it’s always better, I think, to get a little human element in the scene, even if Mother Nature is doing her job.

Jen was just what was need to give this old saw mill some life. And, actually, she’s a pretty good shooter herself.

Anyway, I was a bit sad that due to my recent travels, I’d miss one of my favorite months in the Great State of New Jersey. In October, the days are mild, the evenings get a nip, and the color are tremendous. Little did I know, or expect, that it’s Fall in Paris (see the first frame of this post) and Russia as well.

The color in Saratov, Russia, was certainly there. I just needed to keep that warm, human element….

Hmmm…OK, maybe ol’ Vladie was a little stiff. I liked the gorgeous yellow birch trees though. Let’s see…maybe I could recruit someone else, someone a bit more pleasing to the eye and less tyrannical, to help me out as I got my dose of Fall color.

Yeah, Irina brings out the warmth a bit more, no? Irina actually works for my company and is based in Moscow. She traveled with us a bit, though, and was a HUGE help in overcoming the language barrier while we negotiated customs and restaurants. I think at first we Americans overwhelmed her but then she just let us do our thing. And, seriously, if she ever wants another career “Russia’s Next Top Model” may be it. Here’s Daniel, the photog’s assistant on the trip, shooting her in Saratov. She’s a natural, eh?

Now it’s November, the leaves are mostly off the trees. Me and my Little One have a hike planned for today. Maybe I’ll do some leaf peepin’ and enjoy what’s left of Fall before the swirling chilly winds arrive.

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS4 or PSE6 and Nik Software.

I gotta say…the wheels are turning a mite slow since I’ve returned back to the U.S. last week. I don’t know if I’m brain tired from all the sensory overload I saw while away or what, but I’m having a hard time finding the next image to make. Little daughters in Halloween costumes…and one landscape notwithstanding…I’m struggling to find ground back here in the every day world.

Anyway…I’ve enumerated the stats enough at this point: Three countries, over 19,000 air miles, no lost gear or sickness. Yada, Yada, Yada.

What gets lost, though, was that I WAS out there on a business trip. You know, had to bring some images back for the client….

Wait…*I* was the client in this instance.

It’s my company that hired the shooter and art director. It was my job to make sure we stayed on point with the images. Hey, hard work when dealing with all these free-spirited creative types. If it was up to them, we would have had prancing unicorns and midgets dressed like flying fairies in order to tell the story. It’s my job to say “Nyet! Keep it real, keep it human! And whatever you do, don’t screw around!”

*Sigh* Didn’t always work out that way.

Honestly, it was great fun traveling and working with the team. Stephen, our art director and whom I’ve mentioned before, it one of the most perfect art directors I’ve ever worked with. He gets the “vision” of our company, he knows how to push the shooter to extract the best image…and he knows when and how to just break it down and have a good time to keep everyone loose and fresh. Believe me, that’s something that doesn’t go unnoticed.

Possibly the worst PS job ever, I know…

But the the whole crew knew when to push the gas pedal down and when to throttle back. Getting a chance to play dress-up helped too.

But believe me..there’s a few of me floating around like this too. I just haven’t had the chance to get any of those photo files yet. If I do, dear reader, you can be assured I’ll post them.

Yeah, sure, it was a lot of work out there…airports, customs, scout days, long shoot days. But sometimes you just make your own humor.

It goes a LONG way…

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS4 or PSE6 and Nik Software.

I shot hundreds of images on my recent trip. I’m sure you can imagine. And I’m still going through them. Friends and family want to see pictures, so I show them some. Then I got back to the hard drive and find more to process, more to add to the “Finals” folder. And I then want to show these images. So many I’m really enjoying….

Great scenes, great architecture. But it’s the faces that I keep coming back to. The faces that, literally, I’m sure will never really leave my mind. They may fade, but these people whose path I crossed have made an impression. And I’m happy I made their image using some pixel dust.

Like the old woman in Saratov, Russia, begging for a few rubles outside of a church we used as a backdrop in one of our photos. Saw her there two days in a row. Mother Russia personified perhaps.

Ramis, maybe the only person – aside from some of my Russia colleagues who were charms – we saw laugh and smile while there. He enjoyed having the camera pointed his way and we enjoyed shooting him. Very fun gent.

There were others from Russia too…Sergey, the doctor we met, his young patient. The talkative hotel bartender in Saratov, Nicholas. The personal trainer wearing the cowboy boots that we met in Kazan. Looked more like he was the personal trainer to the Russia Beer Drinking team, but he assured us he had a number of wealthy clients.

Then once we hit India, it was about the faces. Character etched on every one we saw. Whereas no one cracked a smile in Russia, you would have thought that the people in India were living on spun cotton drinking milk with honey with every meal. Smiles at every turn, no matter how destitute the surroundings might have been.

She was certainly happy to flash me a smile.

As was this young lad, in the heart of Crawford Market on a steamy Sunday.

Sometimes, all you have to do is bring the camera up…and the Pixel Gods smile down on you. Who can complain?

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS4 or PSE6 and Nik Software.

Ah…All Hallow’s Eve…..a bit of a special day here in the Great State of New Jersey. Not too many places can boast of their very own devilfied apparation that inhabits the dark corners of this state. But we have one…yes we do. And here is a little tale for you. True, yes, but taking everything you read with a grain of salt. But true nonetheless.

Way before Orson Wells decided to make New Jersey the launch point for the paranormal (ironically, his Martians allegedly landed not a mere seven miles from where I sit), the Jersey Devil had already been making it’s rounds. Even made it into an X-Files episode.

But the tale goes further than that. Search “Jersey Devil” on Google and you’ll get about 1.7 million returns. Much of it is flack, but those of us who live here hold a healthy open-mind for some of these tales.

To wit…the image that leads this blog was shot in Batsto, New Jersey, deep in the heart of the Pine Barrens. It’s an old village that is now open for tours. I shot it last autumn on a brilliant Fall afternoon. The leaves crunched underfoot and sweet smell of pine needles and birch leaves was in the air.

I can’t say for sure…but at the end of the photo walk….and as dusk was falling….I started to hear things. Kinds of like moans. It could have been the way the wind was swishing through the trees, or maybe since it was getting dark, my mind was playing tricks on me. But as I was shooting this old building, an old tale crept into my head…

No one is really quite sure when the noises started in that house in the Pine Barrens

Or when they stopped.

They do know that, curiously, often times people that would go into the old house were never seen again.

There was that guy hired to fix the roof.

The roof got fixed….but he was never seen again.

Then there was that salesman who stopped by once, and was never seen again.

Well, they did find his shoe.

Then, late one Sunday, that preacher stopped by.

Ah, yes…the preacher. That’s pretty much when all the stories really got started.

The noises – (screams?) – were loud that night.

That’s when the children started to tell the stories late at night, at sleepovers and around campfires.

They would huddle under their blankets with their flash lights on and tell these stories…

Stories about how a witch lived up there, stirring up her witch’s brew.

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble..

Stories about how the owner of the house had caught the Jersey Devil itself and kept it chained up in that lighted room.

The children would say how The Jersey Devil hated the light and would cry out (scream?) every time the little chain was pulled to light the bare, yellow bulb.

Others said it was Mrs. Jane Leeds herself, wailing at the thought of what she brought into the world.

The Pine folk know when it comes their way,
Slowly and quietly stalking.
But human beings are not it’s prey;
when the Jersey Devil goes walking.
Small animals hide in their holes away;
And ‘Hush, oh, hush!’ the campers say,
when the Jersey Devil goes walking.

No one is really quite sure what the noises were. Some still hear them, especially late in October, when the air is crisp, the ground fog is rising and the leaves rustle in the trees. They claim they hear this wail (scream?), the hooves, that makes the hair on the back of their scalp stand on end and their steps quicken to some place warmer and more well-lighted….

I keep an healthy, open mind. You should too. Even our favorite son, Mr. Springsteen, knows where it’s at. Check out this video: A Night With The Jersey Devil.

So, if your travels happen to find you in the Great State of New Jersey on this All Hallow’s Eve….give me a ring and come to some warm comfort. We’ll pour a drink, chat, and stay safe inside.

Because the worse thing would be to be caught outside on Halloween…and in the path of the Jersey Devil.

Thanks to Darren Debari, courtesy of YouTube, for his take on The Jersey Devil….

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS4 or PSE6 and Nik Software.

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Someone asked me today if I was happy to be home.

Well, of course I am. Happy to be home with my family and my pups. But for the better part of today I sat in front of a computer answering email and dreading doing my expense report. Last week at this time, roughly, I was standing in a lake bed at the base of the Himalyan mountains on a photo shoot.

Kinda hard to compare….

Still going though my images, trying to see which ones I like best. There’s a lot. I’m really happy to be home to have acess to my big desktop screen to edit on, as well as to my Nik Silver filters, which I don’t have on my laptop. As I started to look at a bunch of images from our time last Saturday in Chor Bazaar (i.e. Thieves Bazaar), I really how they reproduced in B&W using Nik. Here are some of my favorites.

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That first image here may be my favorite from the entire morning. The family, on a moped, coming back from a doctor’s appointment, apparent. Her expression is priceless. They passed within a few feet of me and that was meet pressing the shutter button while the camera was around my hip area. Sometimes, I guess, it’s better when I don’t look through the viewfinder….

Here’s some further reading on Chor (which means “thief” in Hindu-Urdu) Bazzar here. In addition to just being a superb place to do a photo walk, I bought a pair of antique cufflinks for about 50 cents and a small dagger that I’ll use for a letter opener for about $2.

You name it, Thieves Bazaar has it.

At a price…

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS4 or PSE6 and Nik Software.

Ah, Paris. Such a beguiling beauty. Ready to welcome you to her with open arms….Seduce you with her beauty and wine….only to then thrust you on a plane the very next day to the States. *pffff*

I dropped into Paris early on October 25. Stephen, the A.D. on the trip, was with me and we caught the train in from Charles De Gaulle airport, giving me the first of a few photos I liked. Simple shot but works, I think.

Once in town, we hit the streets running. Well, riding. We met Stephen’s daughter who is studying for a semester in the City of Lights for breakfast and after a great omlette and couple of cups of coffee, we rented bikes and hit all the high points: Arc de Triumph, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, a couple of cafes, a few bottles of red wine sprinkled through the day for sustenance.

I was digging the beautiful people and the fashionistas all over the place. Probably got looked at a bit funny at the Tuileries to get this shot.

Yesterday morning, it was up early for a quick photowalk to the Bastille, a few shots I like (like the one that leads off this post), a quick breakfast of baguette and coffee, and back to the airport for the final flight of the trip.

Lousy video to follow:

So this is it. The big trip has come to an end. I’m back here in The Great State Of New Jersey, trying to fight off jet-lag and spend time with my girls.

Some stats to note:
*17 days on the road.
*Six hotels (we stayed in the same ones a couple of times)
* 11 flights
* About 19,176 air miles
* No lost gear and/or luggage
* No missed or delayed flights
* No missed scout or shoot days
* And, perhaps best of all, no one got sick. Pretty unbelievable. Whether it was Allah, Ganesh or St. Christopher, someone was looking out for this crew.

I’ll spend the next few days going through all my images again on my big home desktop screen. Maybe improve on the processing of some, maybe tweak others, see which ones I want to print. Probably put a slideshow or three together for comprehensive viewing. This is definitely a trip I’ll always remember.

Thanks for joining me for it….more to come for sure!

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS4 or PSE6 and Nik Software

Time here in India is getting short. Really short. By tonight, I’ll have been checked out of the hotel here and booked on overnight passage to Paris. Don’t get me wrong – I’m wholly looking forward to a few hours in Paris. But it will be tough to leave India and the many great experiences – not to mention food – that I’ve had here. Doubt I’ll every forget it.

And it’s the faces too. The people that we came in contact with on this trip either directly or indirectly. It might have been snapping a pic of a couple of boys who were so excited to have me do so…

Or one of the unique fellows at the jewelry bazaar. Was he a holy man giving me a blessing or just saying hello to a tourist? I’ll go with the former. Why not? I can always use another blessing.

Or maybe it was the gal who just happened to wander into our shoot scene.

Going about her daily life, for 10 minutes she became integral to ours. Did she know that she’d become part of a photo shoot when she woke up yesterday morning? Doubt it. But she had the look that we loved to include in the shot.

And just to give you a quick glimpse as to what that crazy shoot looked like, check the video below. The set up was to get some of our talent out into an “Bombay” like scene. However, the shoot started in a mall, one that can be found anywhere from Forth Worth to Freehold. Not really saying “We’re In India!” So we did a quick scout and found a street across from the market. A little breakfast joint on one corner, little shop on the other. Narrow. But, at least when we were there, teeming with life. We shot there for about half an hour and got what we needed. And we didn’t let anyone get run over. So in this clip, you’ll see our photographer, Elizabeth, a bit of her assistant, Daniel, my art director Stephen, and yep, Ms. Banana Hat. And yes, Corporate Legal…we did get a consent form from her.

Even if her signature was her thumbprint…

So we’ll wrap here today, check out, kill some time and end up in Paris. More to come…

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS2 or PSE6 and Nik Software.

Pulled up stakes from Chandigarh this morning and headed back to Bombay. (Bombay and Mumbai are the same places but for the sake of the title, Back To Bombay worked better.)

Flight #9 proceeded without a hitch.

Had a dinner business meeting and then just took some time to relax on the last couple of days. Met some nice people and made some new friends. These guys were anxious to be the next wave of photo assistants. (I’m the blonde one, by the way…)

Joe McNally, in his last book, mentions about never packing your camera away until you’ve left the job site. He illustrates it with a pretty sweet photo. Guess this is my version of that type of shot. Getting ready to leave, climbing into the van, 50D in hand, I turn and look back. These kids were enthralled by the van and the gear and the general hub-bub in their little village. And the evening sun was just kissing them. *Snap.*

And my little travel companion Flo made a friend today too, a Mr. Singh. This hit me like a bolt of lightening at breakfast. Needed to shoot Flo in Chandigarh before we left and I hadn’t gotten anything. The city is know as a basis for the Sikh religion. And the men who practice sikhism resolve to not cut their hair, wear special undergarments and carry a dagger (along with two other things which I’m lapsing on.) I like the “carry a dagger” part. But truly they are very friendly, nice individuals and I thought this would be a great photo to remember the time we spent in Chandigarh.

Shoot day tomorrow…

Oh…and the new header? Back of a truck near Saratov, Russia. Liked the colors.

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS2 or PSE6 and Nik Software.

After midnight here in Chandigarh, India, and, frankly, I’m surprised I’m still awake. Remember how I said we had that 4:30 a.m. call time today? Well, yep, it stuck. I was up at 3:45 a.m.

So for the first hours of today, I sat in a van traveling the dark, bumpy, pot-hole rutted route from Chandigarh to Baddi. Didn’t thing my kidneys would survive.

But we got there, did the shoot that we needed too…plus a few extras…and, by late afternoon, we were ready to pop a Kingfisher beer and call it a day and a shoot here in Baddi.

Before that, though, we decided to pull over and explore some of the markets in the village of Pinjore. Thought we’d do a little Scott Kelby-like photowalk and see some of the local community.

I hung with one of my colleagues, Rada, who traveled with us from Mumbai to Changarth. He’s familiar with the town and pointed certain things out to me while the others walked on. The shops are located along the main thorofare, so it’s a composit of rushing commerical goods trucks, mopeds, motorcycles, sari’s and cows (see the top of this post.) It’s just a teeming mass of people going about their daily day.

And us six.

It was great. Rada pointed things out to me, bought me some poppy seed-inflected sweets and generally kept me from getting run over. Our team took some time to pay respects at a local Hindu temple. Off with the boots, turn them away from the doorway…

The swamis were very gracious, even offering us some sweet treats similar what Rada and I had just purchased. We happened to be there at sundown, one of two mandatory prayer times of the swamis.

We walked around for another hour. I purchased some small gifts for my girls at home as well as a kaṛā, or circular iron braclet, for myself to remind myself of a great stay in the Southwestern Solan District of Himachal Pradesh, Northern India. A little good karma going forward can’t hurt.

Dark fell quickly and the market stayed lively. Just a great rush of honking horns, people and colors.

Another travel day tomorrow. Back to Mumbai for another three days, then the final leg of the journey.

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS2 or PSE6 and Nik Software.