My mother hauled me out of school one rainy day in November of my senior year to drive her to Lynchburg, Virginia. She had been hired to shoot the small, seminary campus for an upcoming brochure. She had never gotten her driver’s license… mostly walking or biking to work all the years I knew her. On this particular Friday, she had decided that I would drive and that I would also shoot with her. Fine by me.

I remember sitting on the cold floor of the men’s dorm quietly watching the two guys studying at the end of the hall. I took three frames and in one of them the pipe completed the composition… I am not sure if they knew I was there.

Later, Mom studied these, smiling, and said they weren’t necessary for the brochure… she gave me one of the most important photographs of my life.

So many cranes… it was all bigger than I expected. We walked from Wall Street over to the windy construction site… big enough that you can’t really see across it very well. Caught in the steady traffic of the walking rush hour, we worked our way over to The Winter Garden where there is a place you can look into the site. Couldn’t get past the inner images of the way the streets must have looked that day.

Today, they are dedicating a more beautiful space to so many people… I wonder if we will ever heal.

The year was 1965… the summer I was 14. Walkabout wasn’t the term we used then but it best describes the type of wandering with cameras that we did. On this sunny day, Mom and I were exploring downtown Roanoke, Virginia… a bigger place than our own town of Salem about 20 minutes away. We were near the train station and I remember she took a great shot of a man walking on the tracks… we were almost above him on an overpass and the light was snapping off of the black rails. Down on the platform I found this luggage cart… it was shot on Tri-X in a Yashica Twin Lens Reflex…. I loved that camera and used it until my last year in high school when my Nikon life began.

Fast forward to 2011… one of my goals is to archive my portfolio. This project involves culling the strongest pieces in my files so that I can create a body of work that might survive into the future. This particular negative had gotten so beaten up that I couldn’t have printed it straight… lots of scratches and holes from traveling all over the country in my many moves. I have learned to take better care of my film since but all of it will need a certain amount of coddling. The final outcome should be everything in one place, scanned, reworked and archived to last.

What I love about photographs is sharing someone else’s viewpoint… sitting behind their eyepiece. I don’t know what will happen to my work when I am gone but part of me wants to think that others will enjoy it somewhere down the road.

I think we have had four sunny days this month… I know we played hooky for two and did much needed yard work for two. Today might be one more. Our weather is a real tease this time of year but I am always grateful to live here. A few days ago, Opera Boy and I went to Woodburn to see the Tulip fields. Of course it wasn’t one of the sunny days, but tulips aren’t around all the time. I have tried twice before to be there when the fields were full of color without too many people… this time we got it right.

I took my Nikon with my 60mm but I also took my Kodak Duaflex, circa 1950, for a very different treatment. The next four images are from a merging of old camera and new camera… I hope you like the look.

The sky was as much a part of the show as the flowers… we only got a little rain but we sure were a muddy mess when we got back to the car!

Venice. This time in the beginning of February, 2007. (I try to word it in such a fashion that by some happy chance, I’ll get to go again someday.) Opera Boy and I were there for four fog cloaked days this trip… a much different city than in the Spring. Funny that both arrivals and departures were on sunny days. 

We had come in on the midnight train from Paris… twelve hours of rocketing through a dark landscape I’d liked to have seen. The first sight of Venice is one I have not photographed yet… it is a place where all of the land vehicles stop and all of the water starts. So far, it brings me to my visual knees and I am consumed just being there. Next time I will collect myself and make a point of catching that amazing transition. Our first chore this trip was to find our hotel and a laundromat.

The fog settled in and we spent the next couple of days wandering at will.

This day brought me a blister, a few small pieces of local pottery and three glass cherries each for me and my sister. Best of all, it gave me new vistas at every turn… a veritable treasure box of images.

The Straw Bridge, the lower one with the crowd on it is pretty much what the whole city is like. Tourism is huge here and probably not a little abusive. I came away from both trips with a sense of wanting to help preserve this special place. If you go, treat her gently.

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

~ John Lennon

November has been quite dark… made darker for me by the face-in-computer-time, I’m sure. More than half of my brides this year were after August and before November. That makes for a lot of work all at once. Sometimes all of that work backs up in my brain and wakes me at 4:00 AM… I worry it like a manic terrier of some sort and then whoever is in charge up there wanders off to look at other things. Last night, my brain took me back to California… Laguna Seca in 2007 to be more specific. It wanted to look at this old taxi cab again… the old De Soto reminds me of so many crayons in the sunlight.

She and I have been friendly strangers forever… I wave, she smiles… always at a distance. Since I haven’t been in her neighborhood for 30 years, I thought I’d try for a real conversation this trip. We decided we would try a Monday visit since no one goes anywhere on a Monday. Damn if the line wasn’t longer than the one at the Vatican… long enough to suck up an entire day. So we decided to ride the Staten Island Ferry instead.
I waved. She laughed.

New Mexico was a game changer in my life.
In 1994, I stashed most of my ego into a back pocket and signed up for a workshop in Santa Fe… it was a little rough for a very short time. My photographic education was completely homespun to this point. My parents were both serious photographers, if not full time professionals… they had vision and enthusiasm to spare but technique, in our small house, was limited. So I brought a bit of a chip to this class and discovered, to my delight, that I was in a crowd of my peers… we were all there to fine tune a thing we already knew.

Long story short, I found that a solid week of photography and photographers was a balm to my inner skin… no phones, no real housework, no outside life… no contest.
The textures and light that make up Santa Fe and it’s near neighbors were a healing time to me and they return to tease my mind on many a grey day here.

My teacher that amazing week was Kent Barker. Out of Dallas at the time, he was subtle and easy to talk to… a sweet sense of humor, his work was very strong.
He took us two hours north of Santa Fe to his friend’s art gallery in Tres Piedras… a hot pink adobe schoolhouse sitting all by itself on the Taos Mesa.
Imagine 18 photographers, 10 white dogs and a stormy afternoon sky… it was like a dream.

New Mexico pulled me back for many trips in the next seven years. I went until I couldn’t afford to go again but I am not done.
My camera will dance under those wide skies again some day.

My lucky life has more of this in it… the oddities stumbled upon. Seems as if I spend a great deal of time working at the computer for other people these days and I miss the sense of adventure… maybe chance is what I should call it.
I need to grab a little more time for me. That’s a given.

This particular scene is on the way into Santa Fe… right there on the side of the road. Seems that the owner/artist has a blow-in insulation company and he has crafted all of these life sized foam creatures in the yard by his house.
I passed by it a couple of times before I drove up to the house to ask permission. I am pleased to share the planet with all sorts of people. ;0)

The massive crab on the Governor Hotel used to show up every summer in the ’90′s… it was a promo for Jake’s Grill and I was always amused to see it up there. Well, one day I got serious and went downtown on a mission. Having waited too long on a few other things in my life, I was determined to make sure I showed up for this one.

My favorite personal film for the longest time was Kodak’s Infrared… all of the images in this post are that flavor. For all that digital has made reasonable progress, they have yet to bring this one to the table. I will keep my fingers crossed.

The Pterodactyl in Pioneer Place was a real surprise. I wish I had taken note of the artist’s name so that I could give proper credit here. It had a full, articulated wing span and I left out the beautiful wings and their supporting structure in this picture because I needed it to be more organic somehow… in film I didn’t have the chance to leave out the shiny metal rods. Makes me wonder how I might shoot it today since I have more tricks up my photographic sleeve?
Makes me wonder if that is a good thing…

I do believe photographs should be honest and I will try to keep that promise to myself.