Photography
Of all my interests, photography is arguably the most accessible. I need at least a few free hours to go on a motorcycle ride, or to go shoot a rifle, for instance. But I can (and generally do) carry a camera with me most everywhere I go - including to work. And it only takes a few seconds to pop off a frame or two. So it - photography - can pretty much always be there for you, if you want it to be.
There's something very special about being able to capture an instant of time, a slice of life. I've always been entranced with old pictures. You stare at the image and realize that what it captured that day is long gone. The people are dead. The places where they lived, the things that they thought, the situations that they lived through, the hopes that they hoped, the dreams that they dreamed... are all gone. All that remains is this tenuous image, the tiniest slice of a moment in time.
In a world of flux and change, one where a relative handful of years after we're gone we'll - most of us - be so unknown as to beg the question of why we ever lived in the first place, there's a glimmer of immortality that is captured in a photograph. A ray of hope that it all wasn't for naught.
Good photography is magic.
I should note that this website is full of photography. But the galleries you'll find under "Families & Friends" and "Motorcycling" are as much about recording particular people and events as they are about good photography. If I take a bunch of pictures at a family get-together or on one of my motorcycle trips, I'm primarily focused on capturing that event for posterity. The quality of the photographic display in those cases is clearly secondary. Said differently, I'm far more inclined to allow redundant, technically deficient, or aesthetically lacking images in those areas where there is a family or friend involved - where there is a personal emotional connection, in other words. The editing of images in this section will be a bit tighter.
This was a couple-hour street shooting session - work I did in conjunction with a Leica Akademie street shooting workshop - in and around the 'Occupy DC' protest down at McPherson Square. Had the protestors truly been disadvantaged I'd be able to point to the discontinuity, the contrast, between the images I captured in the city blocks adjacent to McPherson Square (the haves), and the protestors themselves (the have nots). Alas, I was unable to draw any such truth. (Which is not in any way to suggest that I don't fully get the very legitimate questions being raised by the 'Occupy' folks regarding the banking cabal, Wall Street excess, big business cronyism, and the abject failure of even the most basic regulatory mechanisms. I'll be the first to acknowledge that capitalism as we like to think of it, and common sense as it relates to things like executive compensation, have both been tortured beyond recognition.)
What I can say with pretty fair confidence is that the protestors are mostly young people from middle class families and they've found a cause around which to rally and from which they're fashioning a grand adventure. Just like those of us in my generation did forty years ago. May they look back on it many years hence with the same wistful fondness as we baby boomers do today with our own Woodstock era.
Reflections on the Noctilux. This was originally published on my blog (February 12, 2011). I wanted to also post it here on my main website in order to retain its accessibility.
The Plains is a small, picturesque town not far from where I live. I stop there frequently on my bikes while coming home from points west. Or sometimes I'll just stop by in the truck and walk around the intersection that serves as the "main drag," taking a few pictures. What the place lacks in size, it makes up for in character and history.
Here is a small web gallery of a few images I captured one cold winter night.
The fourth year of my PAW...
Cherry Blossoms, Washington DC, 2010
Working in DC has its advantages. One being that when something happens, like the cherry blossoms being in bloom, it's not too hard to get down to the Mall and the Tidal Basin. Just walk on down. And since I usually get to work by 6am anyway, I didn't even have to get up earlier than usual.
And so it was that on the Friday I determined to go down there, I brought a bag with a bunch of my Leica gear - M9, 35 Lux ASPH, 50 Lux ASPH, and my 75 Cron ASPH. I also brought my M7, a few of my last remaining rolls of Kodachrome 64, and a tripod. By the time I got to work I had decided to keep it simple... I shoved a spare battery and SD card in my pocket and picked up the M9 with its mounted 50mm lens, leaving everything else.
Simple is good.
Back in the office by 8:45am, I worked the day and then did a reprise, walking down once again in the evening. Beautiful day.
Despite living only a handful of hours away, I'm sad to say I that as 2009 drew to a close I had never been to New York City. Well, better late than never. All it took was a little serendipity.
Thorsten Overgaard (link here) a professional photographer from Denmark whose work I admire, announced that he would be holding a photo seminar there in early March. I figured what the heck. If I signed up it would compell me to make that visit I had too often put off.
And so I did, and it did.
It was great meeting Thorsten and the rest of my crewmates. It was terrific spending so much time thinking about photography, talking about photography, and actually doing photography. And New York is an amazing place. I definitely will go back.
Here are some images from my little 4-day trip.
And yet again. The third year of my PAW.
After mostly enjoying my first effort at a PAW in 2008, I've decided to continue with the tradition.
My first attempt at a picture-a-week effort.
On not letting the perfection of gear become an obsession
A few thoughts on the much-overdone film vs. digital debate.
Don't have a darkroom? Neither do I.
Black and White Film Developing
The process of developing black & white film is actually quite simple.
Film Developing in a Digital Age
Acknowledging that film gets alloted but a portion of my photographic time these days, I try to simplify my darkroom process to make it a bit less time-intrusive.