New Construction Portfolio is Live

You may notice the new Construction portfolio that pops up on my homepage now. I wanted to feature the wide array of industrial photography that I’ve done over the past decade to bring sharp images to companies building new projects, both large and small. Shoot me a note if that’s something I could help you out with.

If you want to skip ahead in the slides, hit the button in the bottom-right that’s highlighted below and you’ll be able to scroll through thumbnails of all the images. Some of my favorite shots are in the Aerial section where I captured photos from drones while on the ground and from planes and helicopters while hanging out the window/door. Enjoy!

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Small Business Website Design

I’ve helped a few small businesses update their web presences recently, and figured I’d show off one here that turned out great, for Black Knight Chimney, just north of Pittsburgh. After making sure all their Google listings were up-to-date, their existing domain was switched over to this new site where they show off their services, give a few ways to get in touch with them, and are able to push out News updates to their clients.

EarPro Clearance with Various Helmets

A question arose recently about the various cut options on the Ops Core helmets. They offer various heights of cut around each ear, from Mid-Cut which hangs over the ear, to High Cut which is slightly above the ear, to the Super High Cut which raises the opening even higher. While providing less ballistic coverage square-footage, many users prefer the additional clearance for ear protection and communication headsets

Their Maritime ballistic shell material is lighter-weight than most competitors and was the state-of-the-art until their latest FAST SF line arrived. As far as I know, it’s been offered in both the High and Super High Cut configurations, easily distinguished by the number of vertical rail slots behind each ear.

Below I’ve glamorously modeled a few different sets of earpro with various helmet cuts. You’ll see across the three columns, bare, MSA Sordin Over-the-Head (OTH), then Peltor Behind-the-Head (BTH) and down the rows, bare, Ops-Core FAST Carbon High Cut, Ops-Core FAST MT Super High Cut, then Team Wendy EXFIL Ballistic helmets.

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You’ll notice on the High Cut there is some interference with the top of the Sordins, whereas both the Super High Cut and the Team Wendy offer clearance. The OTH headset works well in a semi-permanent capacity by removing a middle pad from the helmets and tucking behind the suspension - then they remain ‘attached’ to the helmet when donning/doffing.

The Peltor BTH model hangs low enough on the back of the neck to prevent interference with the rear suspension adjustment dials and is compact enough to fit under the regular High Cut Carbon helmet. Issues arise when latching the chinstraps, as the rear strap presses on the BTH strap and wires.

I prefer the BTH for times when I’m putting the helmet on and off a bunch, to share with others or do photography work - the ears can stay on to retain hearing protection as the helmet is removed. The OTH Sordins fit nicely when spending a bunch of time in the helmet, but lock you into needing to wear them full-time. A solid option is to get helmet-mount adapters like in the bottom photo, with the Unity Tactical MARK system. Then you can rotate the ears out of the way for venting or passing the helmet.

Overall, having the Super High Cut or EXFIL profile helmets offers reduced issues with various earpro options and some recent sales have made them much more attainable for those of us that buy them for ourselves.

MAWL-C1+ in Infrared

I rented a Nikon DSLR with its IR filter removed from in front of its filter, which allows it to capture a much wider frequency band of light. In this case, I put a visible-light-blocking filter on the front of the lens so I was only capturing light above 720nm. This allowed the infrared pointer and illuminator from the MAWL-C1+ to appear brightly and allowed for a direct comparison of the three different range modes. Thought it might be interesting to visualize for people that have just seen the charts B.E. Meyers puts out but not seen them in person through anything other than narrow NVG tubes. Target was about 40yd from the rifle on the tripod and camera lens was 17mm equiv.

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I find myself leaving the unit in the mid range setting 80% of the time for the wide splash around the area along with the nice bright spotlight around the target. This is mostly because the shooting I do is at gun ranges or outdoors at friends properties. When indoors the short range setting is fantastic for filling a room and lighting up everything within my NVG's view, without blooming super close targets. I still have yet to hit another shoothouse class and make use of the C1+ but would imagine I'd be flipping between short and mid quite a bit there. The long range setting does a great job when used in conjunction with a clip-on unit like the PVS-30 and its very clean beam pattern really seems to stretch further than restricted units that have noisy, blotchy laser projections. While I didn't understand the long range lockout function on the range selector at first, it works great for me to be able to easily switch between my most used settings very quickly without having to find the middle position. Long range becomes relegated to when I put it on a DM or bolt gun and don't want the mid range flood to splash off grass and other obstructions.