It was exciting to learn that I made the front cover of Greensboro’s local rag Yes! Weekly. I know it’s only because the play is fantastic and not because of the photo, but it’s still nice to see.
If you go to the article here you can see another photo that I took with credit.
I also did one more video to promote the final weekend of Fox on the Fairway. If you’re local, you only have three more days to see it so don’t miss it! Get your tickets here.
Recently, I had the pleasure to do some promotional work for local theater group Twin City Stage here in Winston-Salem, NC. It’s for their upcoming play Fox on the Fairway which is about golf…I think. I mean, everyone had a golf club in their hands and they were constantly yelling at each other so it must be golf, right?
Anyways, here’s a nice article about the play in our local arts rag.
If you want ticket information, please visit Twin City Stage.
And below are the promotional photos and videos I put together. With direction from Philip Powell.
And some videos:
Fox on the Fairway – Meet the Cast from Ioannis "Yanni" Batsios on Vimeo.
Fox on the Fairway (Do you like comedy?) from Ioannis "Yanni" Batsios on Vimeo.
I almost walked into a black widow as I entered my attic. Thankfully, I noticed something black hanging just above my head before just before I did. I took a photo with my iPhone so I could send it to my brothers. Hahahaha. What a joke. I had to break out the macro to actually see what I was shooting.
Then I made this to show why the iPhone shouldn’t be used for most photos:
I’m sure the camera phones will get just as good as an SLR, but it’s still a ways away.
A local community service, El Buen Pastor Latino Community Services, contacted me to photograph their upcoming 5K run. It was my first time doing this kind of event so I didn’t know what to expect. Elizabeth, the director of operations, told me where to go to pick up good running shots near the halfway point, but by the time I got there, the first couple of people had already passed. That’s when I realized that the first person was going to cross the finish line in fifteen minutes from the start of the race. I had no idea Olympians would be running! So I had to hustle myself to the end of the race to get the main shots.
I took several thousand photos, edited them down to about two hundred. If you want to see them all, click the link for my website here. Below are some of my favorites from the shoot:
They built a large ferris wheel in downtown Atlanta called the SkyView and it’s pretty cool. At about 20 stories high, it’s pretty large. I was there for the opening, but didn’t get a chance to ride it because of the poor weather. But I did get my camera out.
I’m still working on the photos I took while shooting this spider.
This one was shot with a 100mm macro with an extension tube. Then I cropped the photo. I don’t know how people know which percent it was cropped so I don’t know how to tell you. I just know that this is about a third of the original size.
Cash American Pawn, Winston-Salem NC 2013
Sunset over laundromat, Winston-Salem NC 2013
Kaleidoscope, Winston-Salem NC 2013
This past St. Patrick’s Day eve, my friend invited me to come hang out with him and his family to watch his new Celtic band Banna perform. Celtic music isn’t my cup of stout, but I had a good time. The band was good and festive and there was Guinness.
While the band performed, I took some pictures. Below are some of my favorites.
I live in a very nice, well-to-do suburbs in North Carolina. I love it here. It’s peaceful, quiet; safe. Everyone here is nice. The roads are maintained, lawns are well manicured and it’s only fifteen minutes to get to anywhere you want to go.
I used to live in Detroit. Yes, the REAL Detroit, not the suburbs that everyone calls Detroit. Detroit is not peaceful or quiet. If it wasn’t for the bars, food, music, casinos and sports teams, it would suck. The homes aren’t maintained, roads suck and it’s an hour to get anywhere you want to go. Yes, it’s the polar opposite.
It was an easy transition to make. I got sick of watching my back. Multiple break-ins, car being stolen and a gun to your head will do that to you. I miss it from time to time. Especially when the sports teams are doing well. But I’m glad I moved.
The only problem is that I’m used to danger. Excitement. So I have a hard time coming up with photography ideas while I’m home. I see the same stuff every day and it’s clean and neat and safe and I can’t find anything to photograph! That’s why most of my work is shot outside of North Carolina.
My friend told me to grab my camera and go for walks. He said I’d find something interesting to shoot. You just have to put in the hours.
So I decided to take his advice and have been walking around with a big ass lens making people uncomfortable. Only one person has said anything to me, and that was about the camera. He wanted one. Anyways, I’d be dead in Detroit already. No one wants you photographing their crack house.
I decided to make some fake memories of the life I never had. Or wished I had.
This past April, I drove from North Carolina to Kansas to pick up my mother and move her to Michigan to take care of my father. It would have been exciting if my father’s health wasn’t so poor, because my mother hated living in Kansas. It’s a desolate place where there isn’t much to do. My mom doesn’t have many hobbies, but she likes to play bingo and the nearest place to play was a half an hour away and she had to rely on friends to take her because she had no car.
I’ve been there numerous times to visit her over the past decade, but I hated going. Really, there’s nothing to do. There’s maybe two stores in town – a grocery store and a pizza store – and only the pizza store had VHS tapes to rent. Yes, VHS. And some DVDs, but their selection was very small and I’d mostly seen everything they had to offer. And most of the time, the store was closed – either seasonally or in transition of ownership; I didn’t care to know why, I wasn’t staying.
But there’s a weird thing about towns like this – they’re ripe for photo and video opportunities. I could shoot thousands of fantastic things out there if I had the time. Of course, you have to be careful; there are many people there that grow weed or make meth and they don’t like it when photographers start taking photos of their homes – as I learned. If I didn’t have a business card on me showing my website, I may have been in trouble.
Below are some photos I took while I was there in April and a short video I made to remember the town by. Most likely, since my mom moved, I’ll never be going back.
The life of an amateur 