Category : A totally babbling mess

Dance like no body is watching when you know that they are watching

Well, I’m packing up for a week in NYC to bang on some doors and hopefully meet some new editors. This trip is a long time coming and I’m pretty excited. I’ve gotten some great response from my hand made promo dealy – Whoo-HOO! – and a couple of appointments before I even get on the plane. It’s all very encouraging. But the process of going and showing your folio isn’t like going to apply for one of those job […]

Doris … take a memo!

Well my little promo is finished and out the door. I’ve spent two solid days just typing simple little promo cards with 2-3 sentences on them to try and set up appointments for my upcoming trip to New York.  I have such respect for the secretaries of the “old day” before word processors and “correct-o-type”. Those people were trained beyond what most of us would have thought possible. I’m so happy that some brilliant people have made spell check because […]

It’s not magic, it’s hard work

I was walking down the street yesterday pushing a cart filled with my strobe case, light stands and tripod, loads of power cables, oh and camera case too, when two ladies meet me at the crosswalk in the middle of a conversation.   The lady with the dark hair says to her friend, ”The problem with technology is the people who don’t understand it.” Well this gets me thinking so I butt in and say, “That’s because they confuse technology […]

All my bag-age

Ok I'm going to admit that I have something that I should get off of my chest. Ya see, I have a problem and it helps to be open and honest about it. Here goes … I'm a bag junkie. Where some women have more shoes than they possibly need, kinda like my wife, but not as many as they want, I have loads of camera bags, keep getting more and lusting after ones that I don't have. When we […]

“Uhmph! You would never know that you are a photographer … “

Wayne said over my shoulder while I gleefully made photos of the cup in front of me. Two weeks ago Wayne was actually the subject for an assignment but this time he was just the guy next to me as we sipped some very nice mead.  Turns out that he and I are members of the same home brewing club the Indian Peaks Alers. He's a board member and I'm the new guy. I've been a home brewer for about […]

How did I get here?

Caleb brought up a good question from my last post: what made me want to not pick up a camera for fun but with “serious” intention? I’ll give it a go. Here’s the long form answer:   You see I had been making photos since the age of 8 due to the fact that I went to a school that was a kind of experimental deal where they were trying to push the boundaries of education. This was in the […]

A love story

Alright folks it’s time to warm up the Wayback Machine a bit. Ready? Whirrr-ZaM! Ok here we are in the long forgotten time of 1993. I was still working at the camera store but had used my employee discount to get me my first serious camera, a Nikon N90. I had a Minolta, remember them?, with a useful but admittedly crap lens. I knew that the future of photography, and thus my future, lied in equipment that was faster and […]

Copy cat, copy cat!

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Herman Melvile I had a very interesting thing happen the other day. I went to my mail box, the physical one, and on the cover of a publication was an image that stopped me in my tracks. So I went inside and showed it to my wife whose eyes got very large upon seeing it. “How can they copy you like that?” she cried. She was rather upset […]

I love the smell of fixer in the morning …

yes because it smells like ammonium thiosulfate which is a bit like victory but mostly because it doesn't have to do with all the issues of color balance. Gad but I hated making color prints. I used to do it and frankly only moderately well. Not like my B&W printing prowess as I must say I can make a great looking print in that realm. With a B&W print it's all about your tones and there are loads of options […]

I’m not Gary Larson, or “How big of a pigeon do you think I am?”

I'm in the process of putting together some new folios for the spring marketing push and as chance has it there has been some interesting talk lately about promotion on the interwebs. I was reading how one photog mentioned that he annually spends enough promoting himself to buy "a nice German luxury car". Zounds! I think to myself, "Self! If you had $50,000 to spend every year just to let people know that you exist and do good work I'd […]

I was dreaming …

about developing film the other evening. Really and no it wasn't because of eating too much spicy food. Ok I'll admit that in the dream I was developing it in a fish tank while the lights were on but hey – it's a dream so cut me some slack jack! Now from time to time I am shooting film and developing it but I haven't in a while. So this all got me thinking. What does it mean? Well I've […]

2010 – I’m so excited

Huh? Am I crazy? Nope my eyes are open and my heart is eager for the upcoming year. Yes everything is in flux and moving too fast. Yes the economy is still faltering and markets are precarious. And I’m certainly aware that clients are tightening their already taught purse strings. I don’t care.   Why? Because we photographers, especially the ones who work on location, are used to adversity. Things never go “as planned” in our work so why should […]

11 hours, 1755 frames but I got more than just soggy shoes

So my friend LuLu tells me that she and her long time sweetie Chris were finally getting married. Since their little mountain town throws a huge party on 4th of July they thought "why not join in?"  She is a chef and he is the drummer in the popular Phish tribute band Phix so you know that it was going to be a good time. How's the day going to start?, I ask. "Well", she says, "we are riding the […]

Please don’t yell at me but …

I don't get it. Photography, and being an artist in general, is about trying to see beyond the obvious. We are to try and explore the external and internal world in an attempt to reveal some kind of truth and encourage the audience to engage in a dialog about our subject and point of view upon it. Right? Yet every few years there is a resurgence of portraits that seems to me to be taken by photographers who are using […]

Snow is my blanket – death the lulabye

One of the reasons that I quickly decided not to pursue becoming a conflict zone photographer was the same reason that  I couldn't let myself become a psychotherapist: I feel too much. I can't be fully objective, clinical or detached. I'm pretty good at putting on my professional mindset and being fair to a subject that on my own time I wouldn't want to be around. I've had to photograph people who I don't at all care for but I […]

It proceeds me

I just finished a quick shoot which means one hour to load in, figure it out and set it up while only needing 5 minutes to make the pictures I needed of 4 consultants. As I was loading out one of them confided in me that they were worried about the shoot. He said "when we saw what you did with him" pointing to a cover shot that recently hit the shelves, "we thought that we aren't nearly that cool. […]

Something new, something old.

Just a few days apart came my two new cameras and man-o-man are they different from each other.     First, since I do a lot of photography of people who are not used to being photographed the smaller my gear is the less intimidating the gear is to my subjects. The D200 was the first small Nikon DSLR to be pro quality so I’ve been happily using them for the last 2 years. But I must say that I’m […]

Starry, starry night …

So the wife and were at a big fundraiser dinner thing for a museum the other evening. Not the kind where you wear a tux. Nah, that wouldn't be my style. Rather it was a fun event with a bunch of local restaurants serving little dishes of nosh to go with a slew of superb craft breweries who were our real interest anyway. We went with some new dear beer friends and well we all had a splendid time. While […]

A strand in the web

I was listening to NPR today and they were talking about the classic story by E.B. White, Charlotte's Web. I love that story and upon reflection what now really seems to be the moral is not that Charlotte put all the animals to work to save Wilbur the pig from becoming bacon nor was it Charlotte's loving selflessness. The animated version, as book adaptations tend to do, changed and added a few things. One of which was the ending. It […]

At our Italian restaurant …

Just a little moment I saw while at a local Italian restaurant. I have no idea what it all means but then does every image have to “mean something”???

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