So what in the world is Sparks in the Dark Enterprises?

Or maybe the better question is “who” is Sparks in the Dark Enterprises.

Bob and Davis Hammond are brothers who reside in Denver, Colorado and have way too many hobbies.

Around 1995 we decided to turn these hobbies into a home business and have some fun doing what we love and make some money in the process. Bob is a licensed electrician who works for the Colorado Department of Transportation. Davis is an electronic pre-press tech for a local printing company. That’s our jobs, but Sparks in the Dark is who we are.

First and foremost Sparks in the Dark is a concept, based on the idea of creating something new and unique using the skills and resources we have developed over 30 plus years of working and playing.

Both of us have had a life-long obsession with anything involving internal combustion, excessive noise, and hazardous consequence. Which leads us to what exactly we do at Sparks in the Dark Enterprises.

We are a photographic/recording studio that prints posters and makes cd’s while building hot rods and motorcycles and whatever else we feel like doing.

On the photography front, we have put together a self contained print and poster production facility. Starting with high resolution digital slr cameras from Kodak and Nikon we use both Windows and Macintosh computers and printers from Canon, Hewlett Packard and Macdermid Colorspan to produce prints all the way up to 60 inches wide. Davis is a certified computer geek who builds his own computers and is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Using this experience combined with 30 plus years in the commercial offset printing industry and a life-long love of photography he produces some very nice prints. While our main focus to this point has been making posters and prints of Hot Rods and Motorcycles, we are interested in many different subjects from sports to landscapes to abstract and fine art photography. Take a look at some of our stuff on the galleries page and if you see something you like, get in touch with us and we‘ll work something out, We hope soon to be set up for e-commerce and will have a store where you can buy some of this great stuff. But Pictures are only one facet of what Sparks in the Dark is About.

WE do music too. More to the point we record music. Both of us have been into some kind of musical pursuit our whole life. While neither of us is a great talent as an instrumentalist or singer, we have combined this passion with our technical skills to create a recording studio where we can pursue our muse or capture the moment for other people who have the same passion and real talent. The studio occupies a space in a little house next door to our home in North Denver. It’ about 500 square feet and has a main tracking room, a control room and a small iso booth. We use a computer based recording system capable of tracking up to 16 tracks at one time with a total track count that we can’t really pinpoint because we haven’t ever reached the limit. I would guess between 50 and 60, We have a moderately complete mic cabinet with several large condenser mics a few small condenser mics, a tube mic ,and several dynamic mics of various makes and models. We have 3 standalone mic preamps as well as a 32 channel digital console with full eq and dynamics capabilities. Several outboard processors and many more software based plugins give us a wide palette of sound shaping abilities. We also have several different instruments including guitars, a banjo, a bass guitar, 2 electronic keyboards, an electronic drum kit, and various other percussion and novelty goodies. For an equipment list go to our studio page and check out the pics. But wait, that’s not all.

We not only take pictures of Hot Rods and Mororcycles, we make our own. This obsession is a genetic condition that we both inherited from our father, John Hammond, who still likes to get his hands dirty even though he is definitely old enough to know better. He can be seen tooling around the streets of Denver in his 1933 Plymouth coupe, with the roar from the chevy 350 v8 letting you know there is more here than meets the eye.

Bob has a 40 ford pickup that he has been working on for a few years and is getting pretty close to finishing it, or as close to finished as any hot rod ever is. He just needs to finish the body work an sqirt some paint. He also has a 2001 Dodge Pickup that makes some noise and a 1985 Honda VT100 Shadow for the warm days of summer.

Davis is a little farther away on his project, a 1977 Corvette that he has had for 25 years. It is in need of a little resuscitation and hopefully soon it will get a full body off overhaul. He gets by driving his 2003 Ford F250 Superduty with a 6 liter Powerstroke, a 6” lift and some custom goodies here and there. when he gets that itch for some real excitement there is always his 2003 Yamaha VMax. 1200 ccs of high performance muscle that gets the adrenaline pumping almost instantly. Future projects and fantasies include building a vintage cabover over truck to tow our fifth wheel toyhaller. A custom sport bike like a triumph daytona or something along those lines, a 32 roadster pickup, a 51 merc, or maybe a.......

At any rate, this is a little bit about what we do and hope to do at Sparks in the Dark Enterprises.