World of Bikes has been offering women's-only fat bike rides through the winter because mostly dudes ride fat bikes, and what's up with that? In addition to thoroughly enjoying myself on a fat bike last Sunday, I brought along a camera and snapped some shots during the ride. 

Fat bikes extend the biking season through the winter, tackling ice and snow with 4-inch tires and gnarly tread. World of Bikes has a particular fondness for the bikes and has them for sale and rental. A $50/day rental will also go towards your purchase of one of their brand-new, beautiful bikes. 

Photography I recently did for the marketing department at Kirkwood popped up on an electronic billboard at the Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids. 

The "This is Kirkwood" campaign features the many faces of Kirkwood—faculty, students, and staff—and tells their stories using their voices. There are going to be videos, too! The multimedia for the campaign represents a closer collaboration between Marketing staff—coordinators and designers—and Media Production (currently, me). The experience has been very positive. Previously, jobs came to production as requests, "do this, this way." The new model brings together the expertise of both parties to shape projects from the beginning. When the collaboration goes as planned, both the quality and the fun factor of my projects goes up.

So far, I have done a series of portraits—some in the subjects' natural habitats, others with a blue wall as a background. For the blue background shots, I am using a two strobe set-up, with soft boxes on each light. The ad below, which features these portraits, ran in the Thanksgiving 2014 Gazette.

My photos made it to the homepage, too! This new campaign holds a lot of potential. I can't wait to dig into the videos, for which shooting begins this week.

Image homage to Iowa snow. One photo "during" from around the neighborhood and some "after" trudging about MacBride Nature Recreation Area.