#northern virginia wedding photographer
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annelordphotography · 1 year ago
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Anne Lord Photography - Senior High School Portraits
Anne Lord Photography had the pleasure of photographing Marissa for her fall senior portrait. She was absolutely lovely and such a natural in front of the camera.
Anne used the backyard foliage for some of the images and is excited to share some of her images.
Anne Lord Photography in Leesburg Virginia is currently taking bookings for family/senior portraits, corporate head shots and 2024 weddings. Call Anne to book a session.
View more high school senior portraits on the website at https://annelordphotography.com/northern-va-portfolio/senior-portraits/
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suhana21 · 7 months ago
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The Best Event Lighting Services in Northern Virginia
Whether you are planning to host an intimate event or a lively corporate party in Northern Virginia, you will definitely want to make it special. Hiring professional event lighting services in Northern Virginia is one of the many elements that can drastically elevate your event as they add a personal touch with intelligent light fixtures, making the event worth remembering. Additionally, if you want to seamlessly enhance the various elements of an event, such as the center stage, ballroom, dais, or any key figure of an event, then you can trust professional lighting services to take your event to the next level.
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Here are a few tips that can help you find the best event lighting services in Northern Virginia
Comprehend your need: One should be clear about the mood, style, and ambiance your event would have. On providing your vision professional lighting services can creatively use lighting which will help bring that vision to life and turn your event into something spectacular. 
Do your research: Numerous companies are promising to offer outstanding event lighting services in Northern Virginia. Investigate and explore the companies on the Internet, look for previous track records, read client reviews, and analyze their previous projects before finalizing the lighting service provider. 
Enquire about the quality of equipment and technology used: Look for companies offering high-quality equipment that would not only ensure safety but would create stunning visual effects. Top-notch lighting service providers use high-tech LED uplights and tube lights, spotlights, moving lights, Gobos, laser lights, and other lighting options, as well as dimmers, controllers, and other gear to control the lights and craft unique lighting displays.
Enquire about additional amenities: Before hiring a lighting provider one must check if they offer seasoned professionals who can set up, monitor, and operate the lights during an event.   
Consider your budget: Your budget should be a priority while selecting a lighting service provider as several other elements need to be taken care of while organizing an event. One should look for companies that offer high-quality professional lighting services at the most competitive rates. 
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Summing Up
There can never be a dull moment in the presence of an efficient lighting system. From creating the perfect party ambiance, spotlighting the main elements of the event, and facilitating safety amongst the guests to creating a visually magical space ideal for capturing quality photographs, professional lighting service providers can turn your event worth remembering.
Whether you are looking for indoor or outdoor event lighting services or live sound in Northern Virginia, StratAV Sound & Video Services, can be your trusted partner. It offers outstanding disc-jockey services, lighting and audio for weddings and Kararoke parties, live sound services, and spectacular ambiance lighting services to their customers. Using their heart and soul, and 20 years of experience, they refine every last detail to the highest caliber. So, if you want your event to be the talk of the town, get in touch with StratAV Sound & Video Services and see how the lighting experts add the right colors, spotlights, and patterns to any area, turning your event into something sensational.
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partybusrentaldc · 1 year ago
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Searching for a Party Bus Rental Virginia for Post-Wedding Photos
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Make your post-wedding photo session an unforgettable experience by searching for a Party Bus Rental in Virginia. After the whirlwind of your wedding day, a luxurious party bus offers a unique backdrop for your post-wedding photos. Gather your loved ones, hop on board, and let the celebration continue while our expert chauffeur takes you to picturesque locations in DC. With spacious interiors and a vibrant atmosphere, our Party Bus Rental in Virginia ensures that your post-wedding pictures reflect the joy and excitement of your special day. Create lasting memories and stunning photos with Party Bus Rental DC that will be cherished for a lifetime.
After the wedding is finished and the guests go home you will be left with quite a few pictures of the event, maybe even more than you can handle going through by yourself. Grab some friends and go through your wedding photos to find the best pictures to post on social media and print.
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You may have photos of yourself at the computer searching for an “Cheap Limo Service Near Me, Party Bus Rental Northern Virginia or pictures with the wedding planner going over some final details. In the event that you have lots of pre-wedding photos you would like to share as well as during and after, try to get the photographs in order and make albums for each time period.
With your photos of the Limo service near me as well as the other limos and vehicles be sure to tag and share accordingly for people who may take your advice and you’re the services for their own weddings, for sharing is caring.
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The Party Bus Rental DC offers will not be the only highlight of your event, so keep a good ration on what pictures you share and print. You may find that the time put into sharing a single moment with lots of photographs depicting the same happening just is not worth the time.Instead find the best photos and move on to other interesting happenings.
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Encourage any guests with photos to share and tag once they are home or on the DC Party Bus Rental ride. Getting the word out and sharing as events happen is a great way to include friends who may not have been able to join. Call: (202) 765-2352. Check Out our latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajc6fqcnj8I
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Source: https://partybusandcharterbusrentaldc.blogspot.com/2023/11/Searching-for-a-Party-Bus-Rental-Virginia-for-Post-Wedding-Photos.html
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Northern Virginia Wedding Photographer
Some good essential thoughts to keep on the forefront of your thoughts, the further downtown you go, down across the boardwalk the more crowded it's going to be. So permit for more time, time your friends will need to get via visitors, extra time for parking and parking downtown Ocean City is generally meters and so when you can automotive pool with other marriage ceremony visitors attempt to accomplish that.
Love and Journey Pictures is a Wedding & Elopement Photography Firm based simply outside of Washington DC. We specialise in documentary marriage ceremony pictures coverage with a splash of inventive portraiture.
My couples want something totally different. They don’t want their marriage ceremony pictures to appear like each other wedding. We wish our couples not solely to see stunning images however to really feel them. Really feel the moments. Feel the love.Washington DC Elopement Photographer
It may not be a bad idea to get a Limousine to take you and your bridal get together to the inlet get married, and permit for a while for you and your photographer to snap some images, as a result of there are so many picture alternatives down there, like the pier, the boardwalk, the inlet with boats passing by or with the sun setting, or the jetty of rocks.
For me, artistic inspiration comes from the romantic love between couples, the love you are feeling for your loved ones and associates, and the awe of the pure environment that surrounds us. All these components are present in your wedding day and fill me with gratitude for the work I am able to share with you.
Our aim as wedding photographers is to make this one side of the planning process as easy and simple as it may be. Photography is more than simply images, it's a real part of your day!Our wedding ceremony photographers in Maryland are answerable for capturing it all; the beauty of the setting, joyous moments between family members, the precious particulars and unique reception ambiance.
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Frederick Wedding Photographer
Some good essential thoughts to keep on the forefront of your thoughts, the further downtown you go, down across the boardwalk the more crowded it's going to be. So permit for more time, time your friends will need to get via visitors, extra time for parking and parking downtown Ocean City is generally meters and so when you can automotive pool with other marriage ceremony visitors attempt to accomplish that.
Love and Journey Pictures is a Wedding & Elopement Photography Firm based simply outside of Washington DC. We specialise in documentary marriage ceremony pictures coverage with a splash of inventive portraiture.
My couples want something totally different. They don’t want their marriage ceremony pictures to appear like each other wedding. We wish our couples not solely to see stunning images however to really feel them. Really feel the moments. Feel the love.Frederick Wedding Photographer
It may not be a bad idea to get a Limousine to take you and your bridal get together to the inlet get married, and permit for a while for you and your photographer to snap some images, as a result of there are so many picture alternatives down there, like the pier, the boardwalk, the inlet with boats passing by or with the sun setting, or the jetty of rocks.
For me, artistic inspiration comes from the romantic love between couples, the love you are feeling for your loved ones and associates, and the awe of the pure environment that surrounds us. All these components are present in your wedding day and fill me with gratitude for the work I am able to share with you.
Our aim as wedding photographers is to make this one side of the planning process as easy and simple as it may be. Photography is more than simply images, it's a real part of your day!Our wedding ceremony photographers in Maryland are answerable for capturing it all; the beauty of the setting, joyous moments between family members, the precious particulars and unique reception ambiance.
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wizkidscomp-blog · 5 years ago
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Companies and organizations can benefit from the services of a corporate photographer in Washington, DC.
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heltgo-blog · 5 years ago
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Lighting is key to successful shots. Transform your wedding photography with these expert lighting tips from a renowned corporate photographer in DC.
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vhandmonline-blog · 6 years ago
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Finding the right photographer to work on your corporate profile demands a thorough examination of options and careful choice. You need to ensure that your chosen corporate photographer can capture the essence of your company. 📸
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originsjava-blog · 6 years ago
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annelordphotography · 4 years ago
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Plan Your 2021 Wedding – Northern Virginia Photographer For Your Engagement And Wedding Photos
Plan Your 2021 Wedding – Northern Virginia Photographer For Your Engagement And Wedding Photos
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boyvenus · 7 years ago
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cickafark · 7 years ago
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Weddings and engagements are the moments that are so very special to everyone. These moments can be captured and preserved with the help of the photography. The majority of the people prefer professional photographers to document the moments that mean the most in there life.
Photography is the essential item of reviving the memories for engagement or wedding. The majority of the people like to arrange special photo sessions for this purpose because it is the most special occasion of their life. These things are in the demand these days because of delivering an affluent shimmer. Hire 
Wedding photographers Northern VA to make your wedding day special. Significance of a professional photographer Choosing a professional for the special occasions is the ultimate desire of all the women. Choosing an attractive location for wedding is the sign of the sophistication for those who like unusual and unique photo session. It is the real source for raising the splendor of your personality in many ways. A professional photographer knows how to make the event very special for you. They are well-aware of the worth of these moments so they can easily confine hem in the photos. In this way you will be able to recall these memories after sometimes. You can avail the facility of photography with the help of the professional photographer very easily.
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eventphotojournalismblog · 7 years ago
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Washington DC Wedding Photographer Rodney Bailey My style is all about capturing moments as they happen, not just poses. I work the entire time I’m at an event, I’m always moving. There’s always something to photograph and I’m there to get full coverage of the day. I still get butterflies in my stomach before every wedding.
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twiggybush1-blog · 7 years ago
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How to choose your right Best Wedding Photographer Northern Virginia
Because of so many wedding photographers, different prices, and designs, selecting the best wedding photographer Northern Virginia may become extremely tedious job for any couple and their families
To start with, internet or online world makes things easier, since you can see plenty of wedding photographers, but this will not tell you the most crucial piece of information, that will ultimately determine the best option for you personally
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Click here to hire Best Wedding Photographer Northern Virginia
Here are 3 tips for selecting Best Wedding Photographer Northern Virginia
#1 Who ever you select, you need to click along with them
An internet site will simply be the best method of discovering about attitude as well as the nature of the wedding photographer.
You will start the day with your wedding photographer DC, on your own big day from dawn to dusk and some time even inviting them in your dressing room, when you are preparing. The photographer will likely then work together with your family on that day. You have to find a person whom you can trust, and work with
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Click here to hire wedding photographer DC
#2 Who ever you select, you need to hire them  
Yes this is important! Anyone shooting your wedding day needs the best from you, which ultimately is a mixture of communication, and art of photography. You have to be confident that your wedding photographer can guide and instruct your family throughout the poses and group shots. When he or she ask can make yourself smile, make you feel easy, half the work is done
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#3 Choose whatever style you prefer There are many types of wedding photography ranging between stiff and formal, right through to complete documentary . Additionally, there are photographers that pull in elements of other photographic disciplines like fashion, fine art, etc.. In addition to that, there are a variety of methods the photographs are processed, which range from standard colour, white and black to totally gimmicky processing.
Before you decide to seriously take a look at selecting a wedding photography DC, select the style you desire first
Click here to hire Best Wedding Photographer Northern Virginia
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canaryrecords · 5 years ago
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"Love - the absolute circle of trustfulness - that's the secret of it all. I love the birds, the snakes, the society person, the academic, and the baby - all creatures of the universe are alike, and they will never harm you unless you fear them." -Charles Kellogg, 1915 Charles Dennison Kellogg was unlike any performer in the history of the American stage. He developed a few key obsessions - the forest, love, vibration, fire - into an irresistibly charismatic package and then sold that package in the form of himself through an uncanny use of the press, a vigorous appetite for travel, and a need to be the center of attention through a serpentine five-decade career as a pontificator and showman. In the early decades of the twentieth century, he amused and astounded heiresses and industrialists, yogis and artists, scientists and, most of all, the plain folk of most states in the union with demonstrations of his vision of a wholesome and interconnected world of all living things. His memory has largely faded, but he left behind a memoir, riddled with gaps and touched with hokum, many photographs, hundreds of press notices and reviews in newspapers, over an hour of sound recordings, at least one fragment of film, and a legacy of naturalism and invention that has entered into the lore of his native California. Kellogg was born October 2, 1868, the fourth of five children to Henry Kellogg (b. 1822 in New London, Connecticut) and Mary E. Carlisle (b. 1845 in Jefferson, New York) in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California’s Plumas County in a settlement called Spanish Ranch “nearly a hundred miles from the nearest railroad,” according to Kellogg. His father’s involvement in a nearby goldmine in the 1850s paid off, and he used his share of the profits to establish a provisions store for the area prospectors. Kellogg wrote that his mother was the only white woman in the area, and that he “lost her in infancy.” In fact, she left the family when he was about 3 years old, and his autobiography gives us an indication of the wound her abandonment left through the pains with which he purposefully wrote her out of his life’s story. (She died in Long Beach, California in 1917.) In his auto-mythology, Kellogg was as a child close to a Chinese servant named Moon and an unnamed Indian woman, who, he wrote, “taught me to fear no creature [and] taught me, too, the habit of minding my own business, letting the other fellow alone - bird, bear, snake, Indian and other humans. […] My earliest recollection is sitting with the Indians about their campfires or watching the Chinamen boil their rice between stones.” The impressions of the sounds and feelings of the wilderness in early childhood embedded themselves deeply in young Charles. He recalled it as a period of immense freedom, a world with “no doctors, missionaries, telephone, telegraph, schools, saloons, poorhouse, jail or gamblers; no police for there was no disorder. There were birds, grizzly bears, deer, wolves, foxes, skunks, badgers, mountain lions, wild cats, snakes, and all the smaller wood folk.” It was also here that before the age of six, he witnessed a wedding for the first time and learned about death and funeral rites among the Chinese. In this powerful paradise of vivid experiences, he was “lonely, but not unhappy,” spending his days “always preoccupied with birds and insects, listening to them and talking to them in their own languages.” It was between the ages of four and six that he began to experiment with his ability to imitate birds, forcing air through this nose with his mouth closed. He claimed throughout his adult life that this remarkable ability came down to an anatomical formation in his larynx similar to that of a songbird. This claim, repeated thousands of times, often backed up with the validation of unnamed doctors, was, of course, utter nonsense, but it is not clear whether he believed it, on some level, himself. It was many years after Kellogg had been sent off to live with his mother’s relatives in Syracuse, New York at the age of six or seven that Charles realized that he was in possession of a remarkable skill. In Syracuse, he learned to work with tools, to build furniture and fireplaces - skills he valued and worked into his persona as a woodsman. He attended Syracuse University and sang in the choir, aware that a relative of his father’s (by marriage) Clara Louise Kellogg, had become a famous soprano. But apart from mentions of his education in the manly, manual crafts, the period from the ages of seven to twenty-two when Kellogg became a civilized, college-educated Yankee were never mentioned in Kellogg’s stories. They didn’t serve what he was selling about himself. Almost immediately after graduation, we have the first press notice of Charles Kellogg as a performer, August 1891 at Chautauqua, New York, a hotbed of aspirational “edutainment,” where he debuted his unique bird-imitation talent. Realizing that he was on to something, he gave at least a half-dozen concerts of music with bird imitation at YMCAs, churches, and meetings around Pennsylvania and New York at the beginning and end of the year and another half-dozen in California a few months later. There were more shows in California in 1893-94, then back to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in 1896-97. All of February and March of 1898 was spent touring Pennsylvania and Ohio. January through April of 1900 was spent on the road through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, D.C., and Virginia, by which time he was claiming to have anywhere from a 9 1/2 to 12 1/2 octave vocal range. After getting married for the first time, he spent November 1900 to April 1901 touring the same states again plus Connecticut and published an article in Success magazine called “The Wickedness and Folly of Killing Birds.” In early 1902, through Horace Traubel, friend and executor of Walt Whitman, Kellogg met the naturalist John Burroughs, thirty years’ Kellogg’s senior, with whom he traveled to Jamaica during January and February. Kellogg held Burroughs (as wells as naturalist John Muir, with whom he also spent several days with at one point) in esteem and treasured the memory of their trip. Burroughs was certainly an influence on and model for Kellogg. Whether Kellogg was aware of Burrough’s fierce denunciation in a 1903 article for the Atlantic denouncing contemporary nature-writers tendencies to anthropomorphize the natural world is unclear, but it was major news among naturalists for years, ultimately drawing comment from President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1904, Kellogg and his brother bought a 45 acre plot in North Newry, Maine, where they built the Kellogg Nature Camp, a Summer vacation resort for city folk wanting to spend time in with the woods. They built cabins connected by boardwalks, a common-house with a large fireplace (a specialty of Charles’s) and powered it with a waterwheel. It is now part of a nature reserve with many of the structures they built still standing. And each year during each late Fall, Winter, and early Spring, in an ever expanding radius, Kellogg began to cover the country with shows of his knowledge of and ability to replicate bird song - Tennessee and Kentucky by 1903, Nebraska and Kansas by 1907. By that time, shows regularly lasted two hours and received glowing reviews everywhere he went. His break came at the age of 43 in 1910, by which time he had left his first wife Emily and relocated to San Francisco and had ingratiated himself within a world wealthy socialites, where he was a favorite at parties. On December 4 The Call newspaper ran a, glowing illustrated full-page article on him titled The Man Who Sings With Birds in Their Own Language, which crystalized in print the stage-show that Kellogg had been assiduously developing, year after year, for nearly two decades. "He has the uttermost faith in the power of love and kindness,” the article asserted. “’It is all love," he says. 'Anybody who goes into the woods with the spirit of love in his heart without the faintest desire for destruction or possession can make friends with the birds if he is merely tactful and patient. Birds can read the heart better than men. They know their friends and are ready to love them.' In Kellogg's mind, there is no place for fear or hatred [...] Fear creates fear. Hatred breeds hatred. Love engenders love. These are the cardinal tenants of Kellogg's creed." His count of 3,000 performances in 24 years was, like almost everything else he said, likely an exaggeration but not so far from the truth that you could discount the claim out of hand. Twenty years of stories, stage patter, and tricks caught the public imagination. Less than a month after the article appeared in San Francisco, Kellogg went to Camden, New Jersey to cut his first trial disc for Victor Records on January 24, 1911 and then another four performances on the 28th. Victor didn’t release any of them. When Kellogg went back on the road on the east coast from October to December 1911, he had a new repertoire of claims for his abilities. This is when his press notices begin to claim that his throat is abnormally formed like that of a bird’s. And that: -He’d been to Paris and Berlin and received high praise. (His sister-in-law did invite him to perform at a private salon in Paris, where he met August Rodin, but not until 1912.) -His throat had been examined at Harvard. (He had been claiming that he’d “baffled scientists” there for years, and that they’d measured his vocal range from 64 cycles a second to 49,560 cycles.) -He speaks 15 animal languages and can communicate with bears, rattlesnakes, worms (who, he said, can sing), lizards, squirrels, etc. -That a man could (theoretically) be pinned motionless to a tree with the use of sound. -And, most crucially for his career from this point forward, that he could extinguish fire with sound. In February 1912 an article making many of these claims along with his belief that “vibration will ultimately take the place of electricity as a motive force” ran in syndication across the country in advance of his having signed with the Orpheum chain of vaudeville theaters for whom he performed three shows a day (a matinee and two at night) for months across the west coast - Winnipeg, Spokane, Los Angeles, etc - from April 1912 until April of the following year and then, without his standard Summer break, for the rest of 1913 across the east coast plus Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, and Kansas. In New York City, he gave a demonstration of divination for water for another syndicated news article. He spent 1914 touring the west coast and midwest before returning to the Philadelphia area where he remarried to Sarah “Sad’i” Fuller Burchard on January 14, 1915 in Wilmington, Delaware. One month later, he went again to Camden, New Jersey in February 1915, where over two days he recorded the first four performances that were issued on discs. He was almost 47 years old and had spent the past 25 years on the road developing his act in halls, theaters, auditoriums, clubhouses, churches, tents, homes, and high schools. Kellogg’s assessment of vaudeville does not have the ring of disreputable behavior that has often been handed down through the years: “Back stage is not such a fry cry from the forest, for on these vaudeville stages I find conditions that are congenial to my own habits of the woods - conditions I do not find elsewhere in the world. In hotels, railroads, and even private homes, tobacco and other noxious odors, and not infrequently even uncleanliness such as cuspidors, are not unusual. System, punctuality and order are seldom the rule. In the forest, in all nature, punctuality, order, and system are the very breath of life. The stars, the tides, the migration of birds, the appearance of herbs, the trees, the flowers are all on time, giving that sense of harmony felt, and rejoiced in by all. Back stage, I find pure air in perfect ventilation, no tobacco, no bad odors, scrupulous cleanliness, system, order, punctuality - in a word, the perfection of organization, bringing quiet and a reposeful atmosphere in which to work.” Kellogg’s first vaudeville tour was a 1912-13 run at the west coast Orpheum chain, run by Percy Williams who was known as the first vaudeville impresario to pay high fees to the acts he wanted. The west coast Orpheum houses were run locally and, according to Joe Lurie Jr’s Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace (1953), unlike many of the rowdier and down-market vaudeville theaters, “they were all fine, clean, well-appointed theaters, running clean shows, and were a credit to their towns.” Kellogg performed at shows with as many as eight other acts on the bill. The shows in Washington opened just after Bert Williams’ run and included a spoof of the domestic morality play Everywoman titled Everywife, the blackface comedy duo McIntyre and Heath, the Fearless Ce Dora (“one continuous thrill through the seven minutes which she spends revolving at railroad speed inside [a] golden globe”), and Thomas Edison’s early, abortive attempts at talking pictures. Through 1915 and 1916 Kellogg was headlining in the eastern U.S. for both Orpheum and B.F. Keith’s circuits of vaudeville houses in the eastern U.S. and Quebec as well as Majestic Theaters in the midwest and Texas, where others on the bills included dog acts, monkey acts, the Dennis Brothers’ rotating ladder act, and various acrobats, singers, and comedians. At the end of each show was Kellogg, standing in front of a painted woodland backdrop. Second on the bill for at least one of those shows was the Three Keatons, including 20 year old Buster, who was on the verge of leaving for Hollywood. Kellogg himself appeared second on the bill in late 1916 only under Nora Bayes, arguably the most popular singer in the U.S. His proclamations to the press at the time ranged from the flatly false (that he did not believe “that wild animals die unless molested by man or that they struggle with each other, because I have never seen them do either,” that he did not know his own age, that hat he spent 9 months of the year in the wilderness and came “into civilized society only when the call of a friend proves too strong to resist”) to the simply peculiar and the nearly-true (that he had “never read a book through - print disturbs me - although I believe in the teaching of the Bible as I have heard of them from others, because I have seen the proved true in my own life,” and “I have never tasted fish, flesh, or fowl, although I am not a vegetarian,” that dogs will die from long durations of discordant sounds) to the charming, bordering on visionary (“Fear - that’s what causes all sin. Fear of money, fear of getting caught, fear of wounded vanity, fear of public opinion, all all the rest,” and “I can take the recorded songs of a thousand birds and they will be harmonious. That’s because they are in tune with nature, while man and his instruments need to be attuned.”) Kellogg was an avid photographer, claiming never to take a gun (or a compass, claiming an inborn sense of direction) into the woods, but producing photographs prolifically from 1902 onward. We know that he had performed in Rochester, New York, home of the Eastman-Kodak company, by December, 1900, around the time of the introduction of the “brownie” camera - the first cheap, popular device for making photos. It is unclear whether he might at that point met Gertrude Achilles Strong (b. May 4, 1860; d. May, 1955), a recent divorcee and the daughter of Henry A. Strong, co-founder and first president of the Kodak company, or whether they met much later in the late 1910s in Hawai’i. Regardless, their meeting and relationship was pivotal for Kellogg. His first disc for Victor certainly sold very well, likely in the tens of thousands, and he claimed that he could earn $4,000 a week (a staggering $100,000 in today’s money - and more than half of the $7,000 a week that the Orpheum paid Sarah Bernhardt, their highest-paid entertainer) performing in the 1910s, and his family was relatively wealthy. But they weren’t Gertrude Achilles Strong wealthy. Almost no one was. When she died in 1955, she left behind a fortune of over nine million dollars, making her the single richest person in the history of the state of California at the time, well into the top half of the richest 1% nationally. In 1913, Kellogg bought over 88 acres in Morgan Hill, south of San Francisco, an area he dubbed “Ever Ever Land,” where he built an inventive and “environmentally responsive” open plan cabin that he called “The Mushroom.” Around 1920, Gertrude Achilles Strong bought his land and more than 500 additional surrounding acres. She built a mansion for herself there at a cost of $276,000 (four million today) as well as a house for Kellogg and his wife and put him on her permanent payroll as property manager. He built water systems for her property and built and patented a riding fruit and nut picker for the property, while he lived comfortably with his wife Sad’i and two young live-in maids for the rest of his life. Each winter from 1915 through 1919, Kellogg toured from coast to coast, stopping in Camden, New Jersey to record a few performances for Victor Records, where he cut a total of 26 performances, six of which the company the company destroyed without having issued them. On February 15 and 16, 1916, he recorded four light classical pieces, imitating birds and following along the well-known melodies, as if a bird were singing the tunes in its down language. On the 15th, Alma Gluck, a star of the Metropolitan Opera and one of the most popular sopranos in the U.S. also recorded three of her best-selling performances. Although she did not record on the 16th, and Kellogg possibly traveled more than 100 miles north to Dalton, Pennsylvania near Scranton to visit friends on the 17th when Gluck recorded “The Bird of the Wilderness,” with words by Rabindranath Tagore, he joined her again in Victor’s studio on the 18th for two bird-themed performances on which Kellogg provided bird imitations. When the single-sided 12” disc of “Listen to the Mockingbird” was released in the Spring along with a significant marketing push by Victor, its sales exceeded expectations. When “Nightingale Song” from a mid-19th century operetta called Der Vogelhandler (The Bird Seller) by the Austrian composer Carl Zeller, was released a month or two later as a less-expensive 10,” it became one of the best-selling records of the decade. Apart from the two sides recorded with Gluck, Kellogg’s recordings are evenly divided between the bird-imitation novelties with musical accompaniment (an unenduring genre that grew in popularity both on stage and on records in the early decades of the 20th century) and segments of his stage act in which he would lecture on his relationship with the wilderness with demonstrations of bird-calls interspersed. Seven of those sides remain a fascinating glimpse of Kellogg’s performing persona. The last of them, titled “Bird Chorus,” recorded without commentary on January 14, 1919 is an extraordinary and unheralded moment in the history of sound recording. Starting in January 1915 and through all of 1916, Kellogg added a section of his stage act in which he turned on “an orchestra” of six Victrolas borrowed from local dealers in each town, and played discs of his bird-imitation and then proceeded to perform with them, simulating, as one reviewer put it, “a voice from the deep forest.” For the “Bird Chorus” disc Kellogg simplified the process to a single disc of his own performing along with a live performance, ingeniously weaving two continuous sequences of songs together to give the impression of multitudes of birds singing together. It is the first instance of overdubbing. Notably lacking from Kellogg’s discography are examples of his most spectacular and longest-lasting piece from his stage act - the “Blade of Flame.” By the beginning of 1912, Kellogg introduced a gas burner on stage which produced a four-foot blue flame inside a glass tube. Kellogg told his audience that because all of nature is connected through vibration and because of the gift he possessed of a vocal range many times that of highly trained singers and larger than that of a grand piano, he could cause the “blade of flame” to dance and ultimately to extinguish it using only his voice. It was, next to his bird-imitating, his best-known and best-loved routine. He augmented it with a demonstration of the technique of building fire by wood friction (a skill he imparted to the then-nascent Boy Scouts). Naturally, his fire performances in enclosed theaters were of some concern to local fire departments, and he made it a regular public relations stop to visit fire houses in each town during the afternoons to demonstrate the act, reassuring them of his control of fire and wowing them along with the local press. The only footage apparently extant of Kellogg is one silent minute of a newsreel outtake Kellogg giving this demonstration for a group of Boston firemen on November 5, 1926. (The film, including ten precious seconds at the end of Kellogg demonstrating his bird-imitation technique facing the camera is available online at the University of South Carolina’s Moving Image Research Collections site.) He continued to elaborate the routine, using bowed tuning forks. In the mid-20s he arranged a series of radio broadcasts intended to demonstrate his hypothesis that vibrations broadcast at sufficient amplitude could extinguish house fires. His proposal was that in the future each house could be scientifically tuned such that fire departments would need only to broadcast the appropriate frequencies to put out the fires. The seed for the idea seems to have originated with Kellogg’s exposure to Herman Helmholtz’s book On the Sensation of Tone which had already been published in two editions in America before Kellogg began making theatrical use of its central concept, that the air around us is a medium through which vibration is transmitted in waves. Kellogg was so enamored with the idea that in May and June of 1913, Kellogg added a bit to his stage act in which he explained to the audience that mental vibrations are crucial in love and marriage and that “tuning” of a silent “mental wireless” to a compatible frequency with one’s mate was central to harmonious love. Newsprint reviews of his attempts to demonstrate this with his wife were decidedly snarky. The audience didn’t get it, and it was quickly dropped from the act. Kellogg’s greatest and most enduring “hit” as a showman was neither a stage-act nor a recording. It was a vehicle made from two large pieces. The first was a Nash Quad, a four-wheel drive truck capable of hauling four tons. The second was a 22-foot section of a fallen redwood log eleven feet in diameter. He obtained the former in early Summer 1917 from the Nash Motor Company in Kenosha, Wisconsin while they were being produced for use in the First World War. Kellogg convinced the company’s namesake president of a vision of the beauty of California’s enormous redwood forests (and, very likely, the publicity benefits of Kellogg’s scheme) and took the Quad to Bull Creek Flat in Humbolt County, where with the help of several axemen from the Pacific Lumber Company they spent months sawing off a section of a fallen tree, stripping its bark, and carving out its interior into a living quarters with beds, cabinets, kitchenette, and bathroom. Mounting it on the chassis of the Quad, he polished and varnished the whole thing a copper color and installed electric lights. By November of that year, he drove the wooden cabin-on-wheels that he dubbed the Travel-Log cross-country, stopping in Kenosha for work on the radiator and “finishing touches” (including their brand name, it seems). Using his celebrity and press-savvy, he toured the machine, giving talks on the beauty of the great redwoods and the dire need for their preservation, taking a piece of the forest to the people. In the process, he introduced America to the idea of a mobile home. It now resides in the Humbolt State Park’s visitor center, reportedly only yards from where the tree from which it was hewn grew for centuries. Kellogg recorded 11 more performances for Victor during the period 1924-26. Seven of them were discarded by the company without having been released. The remaining four were re-recordings of his first two records using the new invention of microphones. While he continued to perform, his schedule gradually slowed as he shifted his first to attention to Gertrude Achilles Strong’s property and then to a fascination with Fiji, where he first traveled in the Spring of 1925 from Hawai’i. Fixated on the idea of wooden lali slit-drums and their use in communication over distances, Kellogg arrived alone and presented himself as a naturalist to the Chief of the Native Department on the island of Suva, who showed him a the instrument and for him to visit to the island of Baqa to witness fire-walking (after Kellogg had given a demonstration of the “blade of flame” routine, having thoughtfully packed the gear needed for it, and gave a performance of “Narcissus” as a bird-imitator) in the company of a British medical doctor. Kellogg was suitably impressed and incorporated discussion of both lali drumming and fire-walking as further evidence of his central theme of the need for vibratory attunement in his subsequent performances through the 1920s and 30s. In 1929, Kellogg survived a near-fatal car crash immediately before he self-published The Nature Singer: His Book, a profusely photo-illustrated collection of impressions drawn from his life and career and a document of his own self-invention, which went through at least two printings (all of them signed; the first 1000 are numbered), wrapped in the attractive but exceedingly brittle birch parchment that he used as stationary and for press notices. That year, he also patented an automobile ignition that started with whistling. He continued to criss-cross the country, giving talks based on his experiences in nature combined with pleas for conservation. There was talk of a movie that never manifested. In 1940, he and Sad’i adopted a 9 year old girl named Shannon who had been born in Honolulu. (She subsequently married a Charles Newton, nine years her senior, in 1961, divorcing him in 1967, and died in 2007.) When in 1946 Paramahansa Yogananda published his Autobiography of a Yogi, describing his encounters with spiritual teachers and his travel in India and U.S., he briefly recounted in a footnote having seen Charles Kellogg do the “blade of flame” bit in Boston in the ‘20s. And that’s who Kellogg has been for the past century - a remarkable and unlikely figure at the intersection of science and art and showmanship and the spiritual. Charles Kellogg’s health declined through the 1940s before died of a heart attack on September 3, 1949 at the age of 80.
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