One Month Old Baby Boy and Three Month Old Baby Girl Portraits

Posted on February 6, 2021February 6, 2021 by cleary

It turns out that even during the pandemic of this past year, people are still having babies. I had a couple of new people into the studio this week. Meet Alexandria or AJ for short. AJ came in because all her older sisters and brothers came in to have me, Mr. Dan, take their pictures. AJ has two older sisters, nine years and five years, and an older brother turning 3. She didn’t want to be left out from all the fun we have during our baby photography sessions and asked her Mom to bring her in as soon as she was old enough. My year-long baby photography plan typically starts with a three-month session when the babies can hold their heads up and smile. AJ was at that point and was excited to meet Mr. Dan. Her older sisters and brothers told her all about the fun they had. I can’t wait for the next nine months of photography and watching her grow.

Jason was just one month old when he came in with his Mom, Dad, and older sister. Jason just moved here from California. His dad is in the Air Force and was transferred to Wright Patterson Air Force base. According to Jason’s older four-year-old sister, there wasn’t much for a kid to do at the dessert airbase Dad was last at and heard Dayton had great kids’ museums, parks, and schools. Jason wanted photographs with his Mom, Dad, and Sister because, as he put it, “you know, I’m not going to be this stinking cute forever!” He also wanted to see Mr. Dan for the whole year and asked his parents to sign up for the year-long Baby Photography Plan. In his case, a one-month portrait session, three months, six months, nine months, and a one-year baby portrait.

What happens when you bring your older brothers and sisters to a smash cake session? They want to help. That’s what happened when Annabelle had her one-year portrait session as part of Mr. Dan’s Baby Photography Plan. It is a big cake for a one-year-old, and it would be a shame for all that extra cake to go to waste. The older kids were more than happy to help make the cake disappear.

Mr. Dan with Cleary Creative Photography has photographed a few thousand babies in his career. Nothing thrills him more than to capture a precious baby smiling or doing something adorable and capturing it with a camera. Call Mr. Dan at 937-298-6776 or email him at Dan@ClearyPhoto.com, and he can tell you all about the baby photo plan.

Wright Brothers: Then and Now book

Posted on December 17, 2020December 17, 2020 by cleary

On this date, 117 years ago, Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic first powered flights. Orville flew first, traveling 120 feet. Wilbur then flew 175 feet. In turn, Orville flew 200 feet, and Wilbur made the last flight of the day, going 800 feet. Their flight experiments had worked. Orville set up the Korona 5x7 glass plate view camera, and John Daniels took the famous photograph of the first flight. Daniels was a member of the U.S. Life-Saving Station and knew little about photography. His job was to compress a rubber bulb, forcing air through a tube that pushed the camera lens's shutter release. Daniels didn't remember squeezing the bulb. I am very familiar with this type of shutter release system, and I can imagine that when he saw the plane take off, he pressed the bulb instinctively. The Wrights knew that the shutter had been released but didn't know if they had a photograph until months later when they processed the film in their home darkroom.

I have spent the last four years traveling various locations where the Wright Brothers did their flight experiments and demonstrations. I've revisited the sites where the Wright Brothers did their early flight research and demonstrations to create modern images. These include many locations in Dayton, Ohio, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Washington, DC, Detroit, Michigan, Le Mans, and Pau, France. and New York City incorporated a retelling of early flight experiments.

I have shown many of these photographs in the past four years, and given artist talks about the work. At the first artist talk, I was asked when will the book for this series be available? I am happy to announce that I will have the book Wright Brothers: Then and Now completed and ready for purchase in about two weeks. The bookstore at Carillon Park has ordered copies. The bookstore at the Air Force Museum is interested in putting it in their inventory. You can pre-order the book right now by emailing me at Dan@ClearyCreativePhoto.com or calling the studio at 937-298-6776. As soon as I have the book in my hands, it will be available for purchase from ClearyFineArtPhoto.com. There will be a couple of additional online sites soon, including Amazon.

Landscape photographs for your company’s website

Posted on October 2, 2020October 2, 2020 by cleary

This week I’ve been working with a local company to update their website with photographs from the Dayton region. The two photos that they requested are my night photograph of the Miami River with the Dayton Art Institute, the Masonic Temple, and Grandview Hospital in the background. They also wanted this photograph of a couple sitting enjoying the view at Taylorsville Five Rivers Metro Park. The night photograph of the Miami River was created for Kettering Health Network and is part of a wall display in the waiting room at Grandview Hospital in downtown Dayton. The photograph was taken in June about an hour after the sunset. The night was almost black, but I had to wait that long for the Grandview sign to light up bright enough to see it. I made my first set of photographs on a Thursday night, but I didn’t like the sky in the images, so I went back on Sunday. The sky was better on Sunday, but the Dayton Art Institute turns all their lights off on Sunday, so it was dark. I had to take the exposure for Thursday photograph of the Art Institute and insert it into the Sunday photograph to make the final version. I also did some enhancement work to the Taylorsville photograph. I created this photograph in early October, and the leaves weren’t at their peak color yet. The grass was dry because we hadn’t had much rain. The picture also had a typical Ohio blue fuzzy cloud sky, so I added a healthy cloud formation to the photograph. The sky came from Santa Fe, NM. Fortunately, for me, these are all things available today to enhance pictures and make them better than the original images. To see a Youtube video on how I created the Taylorsville photograph go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvZUTlEzJVY&t=300s. You can see 200 or more landscape photographs that are ready to be displayed on your walls or on your website at www.ClearyFineArtPhoto.com.

Photoshop Tutorial For Landscape Photograph

Posted on September 28, 2020September 28, 2020 by cleary

Here is my latest, Cleary Creative Photography, YouTube PhotoShop tutorial. In this video, I will go through all the steps I took to create this photograph of a couple sitting enjoying the fall landscape at Taylorsville Metro Park, part of Five Rivers Metro Parks. I liked the picture of the couple sitting on the swing looking at the landscape, but I thought the original photograph could be better. I decided to enhance the color in this photo and replaced the sky. The video will show you the steps I took to make these changes and create a better image. I use the latest version of Photoshop CC 2020, along with built-in filters from NIK and Topaz. Many years ago, I switched from using a mouse only to using a Wacom drawing tablet. The drawing tablet lets me be more precise in working on photographs like this. You can see more of my landscape photographs from the region at www.ClearyFineArtPhoto.com.

Dan Cleary is a portrait and fine art photographer from Dayton, Ohio. You can see more of his professional work at www.ClearyCreativePhoto.com. You can reach Dan by phone or text at 937-298-6776 and email at Dan@ClearyCreativePhoto.com.

Dan holds photography classes at his studio throughout the year. They are called The 7 Steps To Better Photography. There he will teach you how to use your camera. He'll teach you what every button is and what every setting means. Right now, the classes are on hold with the pandemic but come 2021. Dan will be teaching again, so stay tuned for upcoming dates in 2021. To read more information about Dan's Photography Workshops go to www.ClearyPhotoWorkshops.com.

Graduation Photographs

Posted on September 3, 2020September 3, 2020 by cleary

I’ve been doing many graduation photographs lately. Graduates come in all ages. I received a call from a mother who wanted pictures of her son, who was graduating from kindergarten during the pandemic. The school didn’t bring in a photographer this year because everything was shut down. So after the shutdown was over, she called me, and I photographed her son in the studio. He was a great kid, full of energy, and was very happy to be here. I created a few photographs of him wearing the mask that all of us need to use right now.

The Contemporary Art Auction

Posted on August 27, 2020August 27, 2020 by cleary

The Contemporary, our local fine art non-profit organization, started its annual art auction yesterday. This year’s auction will be on-line. One hundred two local artists have contributed artwork to this year's event. Go to their website, https://thecontemporarydayton.org/, sign up and buy some local art. There are paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures. I donate a piece from my Marie Aull Note Card and the Aullwood Garden series. Marie Aull in the 1960s donated her 40-acre garden to The National Audubon Society. She lived on the grounds in her house until the age of 102. Marie Aull was very spiritual and religious and wrote little note cards that she pinned on the community bulletin board. I researched at Wright State University library about Marie and found the files with all these note cards in them. I photographed many of these note cards. Most of my background photographs were created at Aullwood Garden Metro Park. This image is titled “Art At It’s Best.” The quote is by Lewis Mumford and reads, “Art at it’s best discloses hidden meanings. It tells more than the eye sees or the ear hears, or the mind knows. With the aid of the symbol, man not merely remembers the vanished past, he takes us the emergent or the potential future.” Go to their website and buy some art before it’s all gone. Dan Cleary is a portrait and fine art photographer in Dayton, Ohio. You can see more of his fine art photography work, including his Wright Brothers: Then and Now series, at www.ClearyFineArtPhoto.com.

Baby Portraits

Posted on July 22, 2020July 22, 2020 by cleary

Call Dan before your baby grows up!

2020 is the year of the Corona-19 virus. Everyone has to stay home, social distance and wear masks. Babies are being still being born and children are still growing up. Time marches on. Dan is back in the studio doing social distancing photography sessions. It’s interesting how many new parents are calling to have him create portraits of their children before the year is up and the children have grown a full year without any quality photographs of themselves. Dan has been photographing babies and children for many years now. Many of those children he has photographed are now driving and graduating from high school. What Dan does best is capture expression. For a split-second babies and children will give you that perfect look, that perfect pose. Dan has the experience and timing to capture that photograph. Call or text Dan at 937-298-6776 or email him at Dan@ClearyCreativePhoto.com to set up an appointment for your baby before they have grown up and you’ve missed that first year of their life. Especially during this weird year when everything seems to have been cancelled or postponed. Don’t postpone your babies’ professional portraits, call Dan now.

Memorial Day 2020

Posted on May 25, 2020May 25, 2020 by cleary

Memorial Day 2020

On July 18^th, 1944 Frank Cleary, my Dad, landed at Utah beach 30 days after D Day. He was an artillery forward observer in General Patton’s 3^rd army. He had never been instructed what a forward observer did and was scared. Before he went out on his first assignment, Dad was standing up looking out from inside his tank, General Patten walked up, looked right at him and said, “Your job is to take Brest” and then walked down the line inspecting the rest of the battalion. On August 24, 1944 he was transferred to the 212^th Artillery Battalion. He was asked to volunteer for the position of an air forward scout. The 212^th had taken many causalities and the man he was replacing had died in the line of duty. Frank was a very devout Catholic and knew he had already made it through hard fighting without a scratch. He said to me once “I was saving someone else’s life because I knew I’d be OK.” He was part of an eight-man crew. Two pilots, two observers, a sergeant and three enlisted men. The enlisted men were mechanics and cooks. The sergeant’s job was to find a new place for the planes land every day. They were ahead of the main army and on their own. They would go up in the air in the morning and call in artillery strikes on the enemy positions. On December 11, 1944, five days before the Battle of the Bulge, the division was being shelled heavily so they quickly jumped in their planes and went up looking for targets. He and his pilot, Lou Blumberg knew the general direction where the enemy shells were coming from. Every time they would get within visual range the shelling would stop. They decided to keep flying lower and lower over the enemy until someone fired on them, as he put it “We were hoping some enlisted man would get nervous and take a shot at us”. The plane they were in was a light, cloth covered airplane and one rifle bullet could take them down. Finally, a German solder did fire on them, they pulled up and called in the artillery strike. For he and his pilot’s bravery they were awarded the Silver Star for valor. The Silver Star Medal is the United States Armed Forces third-highest personal decoration for valor in combat. The Silver Star Medal is awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States.

Wilbur Wright Working In The Bike Shop

Posted on May 14, 2020May 14, 2020 by cleary

Wilbur Working In His Bike Shop

Wright Brothers: Then and Now photography series

This one of the early photographs that Orville took of Wilbur working in one of their bike shops. The historic photograph was taken in 1897 so a few years before they were concentrating their efforts on flight. This is one of my images that was well thought out. I liked the historic photograph and I liked the quote from their nephew. All I had to do was take a photograph inside one of their bike shops and hope they work well together. I went to the bike shop in Dayton, Ohio which is part of the National Park. What I didn’t know is how well the two photographs would fit together. In the historic photograph Wilbur is working on a lathe. At the bike shop there was the actual lathe he had worked on in the old photograph. Many of the tool scattered on the work bench are the Wrights actual tools. I like the history of the old photograph with the history of the old tool in me photograph. I was able to include the floor from my recent photograph throughout the entire photograph, so it looks like Wilbur is standing on the current day wood floor. I like playing with time and space in these photographs.

The quote from nephew Milton Wright in 1904 from a newspaper interview. “History was being made in their bicycle shop and in their home but the making was so obscured by the common place I did not recognize it until many years later.

To see more photographs from this series go to ClearyFineArtPhoto.com.