How you can get in touch with us:

Email: redbatphotography@gmail.com
Phone: 831-440-8550
Snail mail: Red Bat Photography LLC * P.O. Box 1358 * Santa Cruz, CA 95061-1358

Who we are, and why the red bat:

Red Bat Photography is a team of two friends, Patrick Logsdon and Rebecca Barnes. Contrary to what most people assume, they are not romantically linked in any way! They met via the internet a few years ago, ended up living in the same town, and decided to pursue photography as a profession.

ABOUT PATRICK LOGSDON

Patrick is a nearly six foot tall bipedal carbon-based lifeform. He has rather less brown hair on the top of his head than he once did, he has worn corrective lenses for as long as he can remember, and he has always seen the world just a little bit differently. He has not had jobs cleaning out chicken sheds, or scraping charred fat from grills, or busking for change in subways. The worst job he ever had was a brief stint working for the former lead singer of a christian heavy metal band, attempting to sell framed pictures of dolphins door to door.
Having gotten his lowest professional point out of the way early, Patrick went on to a variety of white collar jobs involving telephones, computers, and the internet. Web design worked out pretty well for about ten years, but in the end, it just wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing, and he couldn’t keep doing it.

He’d always been a storyteller, and thought that his destiny lay in the world of fiction, but destiny was a fickle and slippery fish. It eluded him until he picked up a camera. He was used to using his mind as a lens, but had no idea that an actual lens could be used as a filter for his mind. He started framing his world in a different way, looking at things from different angles, noticing details and edges and shadows more than he ever had.

Patrick was born to document. In words and in images, his purpose in life is to capture moments that have meaning and impact, moments that tell a story that goes beyond the frame, and beyond the present moment.

ABOUT REBECCA BARNES

Rebecca finds it strange to talk about herself in the third person, but she will do it for the sake of commerce. She’s awakened many times with her heart pounding for no discernible reason. When she was ten years old, she won the spelling bee and came home with a giant bag of popcorn. She felt like a hero that day.

The world is lovely, and sad, and looks great after careful processing in the photo editing software of one’s choice. Rebecca learned this about eleven years ago, but the means to create data-drenched photos didn’t fall into her hands until a lucky series of events landed her a nice Canon camera and a delicious fast lens. Suddenly her beloved nephew was rendered in gorgeous depth on her screen, and an obsession was born. Bring on the sad, lovely world. Click.

Rebecca likes reading novels in the bathtub, walking in the woods, following her toddler nephew around in search of cats, and pretending not to stare at people on the bus. She likes parties where people don’t know each other and have unpredictable conversations. She’s been spotted painting Victorian rabbits ice-skating, in between stints at a small private liberal arts college in the Berkshires. She’s lived in Illinois, Mississippi, South Carolina, Massachusetts, and lately California, but she wouldn’t mind seeing more of the planet. (Destination wedding, anyone?)

After the untimely death of her little brother, there followed grief, carrot juice consumption, depressing mix cds, and eventually, comprehension—life happens fast. Recording it means something, when everyone is trying to keep up with the pace of change. Also, if you take a lot of pictures and stare at them for hours, you see the most fascinating colors. The most astounding expressions! The sweet incongruity of being alive!

She gets kind of carried away sometimes.

ABOUT THE RED BAT

The bat’s meaning varies among cultures, but no matter where this animal shows up, it represents the power of transformation. Throughout history, the bat has been linked to death and rebirth, a guardian of the transition between worlds. Bat watches over life’s critical passages, when old reality disappears into darkness and new reality is born in its place. Life compels us all to change at every moment. Bat embodies the vectors of desire and destiny that point us towards our future.

We’re inspired by the symbolism of this bat, especially combined with the color red. The red bat is an odd cousin of the bluebird who sits on your shoulder. Magic runs through its veins. In China, red bats are exceptionally lucky omens; the word for bat sounds like the word for happiness, and the color red is believed to ward off misfortune. For us, the lucky red bat embodies the transformational flash that occurs when the truth is revealed.

Like the bat’s sonar, our cameras act as an extra sense, allowing us to see everyday wonders: tender vows, dripping flower petals, long exposures that show the tracks of stars, sultry close-ups, triumphant dance moves, emerging identities, and countless other easy-to-miss instants. We take your picture to find your emerging story, and the magic of what you’re becoming with every click of the shutter. Your most important moments are as brief as a heartbeat, but our photographs stay with you for years to come.