The Road From Damascus

Sit for a Spell

2012-02-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

Shot this on Market Street -- liked the lines.

The Tip of the Iceberg

2012-01-04T05:31:00.000-08:00

My sister lives in Puerto Rico (she's stationed in the coast guard there), and my family all decided to visit her for Christmas. Following that, B & I took off for St. Thomas for a lazy few days on the beach.

Yesterday I took a snorkel tour off the coast, and brought my little SD-10 with me (Canon's underwater P&S). Lots of pictures of fish and turtles which frankly were super boring to me. Shot this one as our guide was delivering a lecture, and I instantly liked it.
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Serravision

2011-12-19T09:54:00.000-08:00

One of my Christmas gifts from Betsy last year was a membership at SF Moma. Since it's due to expire at the end of the month, I decided I would get the most out of it with one last quick trip through the place. I'd seen signs for the Richard Serra exhibit all over town (even in local cafes in Mountain View!), so I decided I'd hit that first.

I've seen Serra's massive metal sculptures in a lot of places -- the De Young, on top of MOMA, etc. This exhibit was more about drawing as a theme, which made it a little interesting. Some of it was stuff that felt more like a visual study to me -- kind of answering the question 'What does it mean to draw at scale?' Other stuff appeared to be pointed more towards abstracting away everything but the essentials of a three dimensional shape (e.g., reducing it to lines or solid blocks), or musings on repetition, like this one.

This scene was immediately recognizable as a photo to me -- took out my phone and had the shot on the first take. It came out a little overexposed, and I helped matters more in that way in post, since that's clearly where the image needed to be headed.

Hell is a Caltrain Stop

2011-12-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

Up in the city yesterday for my last photo walk in SF of the year, and Caltrain came through for another lengthy delay. :)

Snapped this with my phone as the mood started to head south.

Julie

2011-12-18T01:14:00.000-08:00

This is a PSA.

Julie Michelle, the photographer behind "I Live Here: SF", is going through some rough times.

Here are the relevant details from All City:

There is a fundraiser this Sunday (12/18) at the San Francisco Motorcycle Club to help All City friend and fellow photographer Julie Michelle and her partner Lee.

As some of you know, Lee recently suffered a massive stroke mid-November, leaving a lot of uncertainty in the couple’s lives. As you can imagine, the medical expenses are through the roof, even with insurance. Julie and Lee are currently in the midst of trying to relocate to a new home that will better fit Lee’s needs.

In addition to trying to run Lee’s companies, Julie is currently staying with friends and working on packing up their life belongings in preparation for the move.Julie has done a lot of great things for the San Francisco photography community and beyond, and chances are that many of you reading this either know Julie personally or are familiar with her work, so I’m hoping some of our local readers are able to attend Sunday’s fundraiser. If you cannot attend, you can still help out here:

http://julieandlee.chipin.com/julie-and-lee.

Your support is great appreciated!

San Francisco Motorcycle Club

2194 Folsom Street (at 16th Street)

San Francisco, CA 94110

3:00-7:00p.m.

If you're not familiar with the "I Live Here" project, Julie started it by posting an invitation on the internet to take portraits of people. She asks people to pick the place in San Francisco that means the most to them, and then will meet them there. Total strangers, sometimes in some totally strange places.

The result has been not only some interesting portraits, but also people doing the same thing in other cities.

Julie needs our help if she wants to continue her project -- if you'd like to chip in, just follow the link above and donate whatever you can.

Cleft

2011-12-18T00:48:00.000-08:00

Flew back from Alabama by way of New Orleans, which meant a day with B and the French Quarter. While she was working on a paper, I went for a walk, and saw a man entering a shelter for some building work. I chased after him so I'd get this shot just as he stepped into the light.

The Last Jam

2011-12-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

The night after my grandmother's funeral, my uncle Scott and my cousin Jacob got together and started jamming. Every came to the room to the listen, and my great-aunt Janet got to listen up close.

I've heard Scott play the guitar his whole life, and he's always been really good, but that night was singular.

Absolutely brilliant -- he and Jacob were on fire.

When I heard them playing, I walked into the doorway, and I instantly knew I had my shot.

Eulogy

2011-12-11T10:47:00.001-08:00

My grandmother, Norma Landry, died this week at the age of 81. Yesterday was her funeral, and this was the eulogy I gave.

The picture is one I took of her in May of this year, on a road trip Betsy and I took across the country. My mother had asked me then if I could take a picture of her, telling me, "I'm worried she won't be with us that long". She'd been telling me this for years, but I decided I needed a picture of my grandmother anyway.

When I asked my grandmother, she insisted that she get to put on her lipstick and take off her oxygen.

It's a simple portrait -- Betsy held the flash with a little LQIII portable softbox off to camera left, and I took the shot.

"Eulogy"

Mamaw always had a special place in my heart: She was the one who told me stories. I say this as someone who will always love my parents for reading to me when I was young -- it's just that I would sometimes be insistent on new stories, that no one else had heard. My grandmother would take bits of character and plot from movies or television we'd both seen, and begin there. Over time, the adaptions became more elaborate, and with a few years to refine her handiwork, they began to take on a life all their own.

Princess Leia became "Queen Pearl". A cloaked starship became hidden by "invisible paint" (helpfully suggested by my grandfather) -- and plots that began as space operas began to become shaped by the narrative trajectory of skits from Saturday Night Live and the Golden Girls. Every so often, I have occasion to tell a story of my own. When I do, my friends invariably comment (some charitably, some perhaps less) on where I could have dreamt up such things, and I just smile.

I know where the stories started.

One of my earliest memories of Mamaw was being at her house, and seeing one of the brass horses she had on the mantle.

I asked her why she had it, and she explained to me that it reminded her of her horse Bob, which she'd ridden as a girl. As she told me about the horse, her eyes lit up, and both she and I were transported back to the days where she was young, and had her very own horse to ride.

You could trace everything my grandmother did back to one central truth: She always had the heart of that girl she used to be.

Growing up, the thing I looked forward to every week was that come Friday, I got to spend the weekend with my grandparents. When people talk about the idyllic days of youth as a metaphor, those weekends are the literal image that springs to my mind.

Imagine a weekend where you could wake up on a Saturday morning, take off in a fishing boat you'd helped your grandfather build, shrimp for your own bait, then catch a double dozen redfish from a fishing hole in an undisclosed location in the marshes of Lower Alabama and Mississippi. Not enough adventure? Imagine the same trip, except with the biggest squall you've ever seen zapping the water feet away from you with lightning bolts.

Still not enough? Imagine being taken with an uncle to ride in a monster truck through a swamp. Or riding ATVs through that same swamp a few months later, only to discover there are considerably more snakes at ground level than at monster truck level.

At the time, these all seemed like regular occurrences. Sometimes, you don't realize you're having an adventure till it's over.

After a day like this, we'd generally end up nipping a few oysters from a bed, and then heading back home. The part of the day that came next was the most important. We'd get home, tired and exhausted, and my grandfather would sit outside shucking oysters on the porch. I'd come in, and there'd be Mamaw. Who'd fuss over me, listen to me talk about the events of the day (and whether I'd been scared or not), and then we would bake a pizza in the oven together.

Every Saturday, like clockwork, for years.

For me, this was the definition of a happy childhood; but speaking it out loud, it sounds a little like a lot of people's idea of heaven.

I could tell you a lot more about my grandmother, but I think most of you here already knew her and have a big list of what made her unique. In the days since she's been gone, I went through just such a list in my head, since a list that describes who she was also describes why I would miss her.

What we lost when we lost Norma is a big list, but the biggest for me was the hour when I realized that if I or my sister ever have children of our own, they would never get to have those Saturdays.

It's just a story now:

"Mamaw and Brandon's Son, and the Saturdays that Never Came."

But if there's one thing you take away from the life of this 81 year old woman with a young girl's heart -- generous to a fault, and so loving of her children and her children's children, it's that her story doesn't have to end here.

Remember the best part of her. Remember what she gave to me, and what she gave to you, and try to give the same thing to the people you care about.

When you remember her story, remember that one too.

Airport Therapy

2011-12-09T11:25:00.001-08:00

I had a family emergency this week that ended up with me flying out of SJC at 6am. I was staggering bleary eyed around the new terminal, and I saw this. I had my d700, but it would have been just too intrusive to shoot with that in the largely empty terminal at 5-something in the morning, so I had to iPhone it.

I will say that photography is about the only thing that keeps me sane in airports, but maybe this is a sign I should take up meditation.

Time to Roll the Dice

2011-12-05T15:06:00.001-08:00

Snapped this at my company's holiday party. The theme was 'Carnivale', so they handed out masks at the door. Every photographer there should have written thank you notes for those masks -- can't get enough of this guy at the end of this table myself.

Shop Till You Drop

2011-11-25T13:58:00.001-08:00

My girlfriend messaged me from a Wal-Mart in North Carolina last night, where she was with her sister, waiting for Black Friday. I asked her what it was like, and she texted back:

"Hell."

Earlier in the day, I'd been to Whole Foods to Thanksgiving supplies, and it was like a scene out of a bourgie Bosch painting, so I suddenly was filled with visions of how it could get worse. So, I went to the local Target and Wal-Mart around 12:15. I figured to get the good rush pictures, I'd need to be inside first -- so no point in standing in line. I had to use my iPhone to remain unobtrusive, and this made things very touch and go -- even the 4s struggles to get a usable shutter speed in 'Wal-Mart light'. But when it worked, it *really* worked -- the stuff I saw was just total madness.

"The Jet Set"

2011-11-21T10:43:00.001-08:00

Snapped this waiting for B at the airport -- still lovin' the 4s camera.

Signs of the Time

2011-11-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

Ran into more protesters walking around SF yesterday.

The Streets of New Orleans

2011-11-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

I just got an iPhone 4s, and I've been messing around with its camera functionality. The short summary is: This is the best cell phone camera I've ever seen when it comes to noise, range, and probably overall default image quality. Apple also finally stopped being retarded, and now let you use the volume control as a shutter release.

The result is that the phone now makes for a really fun tool for doing street photography -- I snapped this shot in New Orleans last weekend when I was out for lunch with Betsy and my sister, while we waited in line and watched the pedestrians go by.

Return to the Camellia Grill

2011-10-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

We went back to the Camellia Grill again after my red-eye arrived in New Orleans. Along with the mix of locals and tourists there, I discovered I can't get enough of that zig-zag-y bar. :)

Streetcar Vignettes

2011-10-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

New Orleans has streetcars: not trolleys, not cable cars, but streetcars. They're all still super old school, and you still get a mix of locals and tourists taking them to school, for the view along St. Charles, or (of course) the French Quarter. If you sit and watch them as they go by, they're nicely partitioned, and have one window per seat, which (I think) makes them like a little stage, where every person sitting is an actor in them.

Probably the most famous photo from Robert Frank's The Americans is of a streetcar in New Orleans:

http://goo.gl/wzKnV

That one is an indictment of the racial segregation in public transportation in the South, and you could make a good case the entirety of The Americans is itself a political act.

While I think it's fascinating (and probably in agreement with Frank's POV), it's a lot more interesting to consider the viewpoint that catching a streetcar as it rolls by gives you. I snagged this shot at night, fascinated by how each seat of the streetcar is its own little cell, lit up like a stage for us to peer onto. The shades vary like a bar graph, and my eye catches a real sense of flow here.

I think this photo could be done a number of ways -- on my next trip to New Orleans, I'm going to catch this again with a longer lens, and break it up into three chunks. It'll give me better image resolution on the drama inside the streetcar, but I also think it might make for a fun study as a triptych.

The Reds and the Golds

2011-09-30T05:15:00.000-07:00

Today's photo is a little break from the Folsom Street Fair -- it's from my trip to New Orleans a month ago.

I went back and forth on this photo, and now, a month later, I'm sure I like it. I'm not alone in going back and forth on it either -- I pointed a good friend of mine to it, and he said, "The more I look at it, the more I like that man on the right, and HATE that woman on the left on the phone".

If I can't produce a thing of beauty, maybe at least I can show up with something that will enrage? ;)

At any rate, along with the contrast in color and the rhythm of the pedestrians here, it reminded me of one of my favorite facts about ancient Byzantium -- the city was split into political factions who manifested their disagreements by chariot races and eventually rioting.

Every time I see people wearing competing colors, I think of that.

Folsom Street Follies

2011-09-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

Another vignette from the side of Folsom Street.

Attack of the Y Chromosome

2011-09-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

Taking a photo of just men at the Folsom Street Fair is an interesting constraint, and I think it yielded some fun results here.

Rapture in Jade

2011-09-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

Shot this over at the Gold's Gym area of the Folsom Street Fair, where they had people on pedestals twirling these colorful flags.

Tight

2011-09-26T11:29:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, and I was up there about thirty minutes before the fair started.

I believe I've said this before, but it's worth saying again:

By far the most disturbing aspect of this fair is not any of the sexual or generally bdsm-themed activity that goes on. It's that the same vendors who sell garlic fries and grilled corn at the Mountain View Art and Wine festival also show up here, for this event. It makes me wonder: What is the life of one of these vendors like? One day, bourgie art & wine festival. The next, sketchy Central Valley carnival. Then *bam*, naked people are tying each other up in the street and getting whipped, and you're still there, peddling the same old fries. Anyway, just a fun thought -- maybe there's a photo essay in the lives of those folks. ;)

Anyway, back to the FSF. The light was awesome. I stayed for about four hours, and felt bad to leave even then, since the light was still going great.

The subject here is a man doing a demonstration of various types of masochism at once -- being blindfolded, whipped, and then also have more sensitive parts roped up. For my part, the hard part wasn't imagining dealing with the pain -- it was imagining how much time this guy has to spend at the gym. Regardless, he made for a wonderful subject, and the alternate title could almost be, 'Grace Under Pressure'. ;)

The Girl in the Crowd

2011-09-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

Some people stand out, even in a crowd.

The Lonely Road

2011-09-22T10:42:00.001-07:00

While I was walking around SF on Saturday, I found a road I'd never seen, called "Maiden Lane". I was taken by the fact that it's this little pedestrian only lane in a city that despite all the hype seems to love letting people drive everywhere, and at increasingly odd angles.The light there is particularly interesting this time of year, with the sun flaring around the edge of buildings.

Smoke and Mirrors

2011-09-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

I pass this guy on Geary Street all the time. Lots of photos of him, none I was super happy with -- pretty easy to take pictures of a hard bitten guy who loves to smoke. This one though, it seemed to work for me -- nice time of day, nice rim lighting, nice slouch against the wall, nice reflections.*

Speaking of dozens of photos, this is now my 200th post. I hope if you're reading this you've found an image here that really sings for you -- something that makes you go back and look at it again, or when you see it again months (or years) later, you remember the feeling it gave you the first time you saw it. A good photo is always like taking a trip to this crazy new world -- one you've never seen before, but maybe was already there right in front of you.

So, hopefully there have been an image like that for you here. If not, keep watching -- the photos are likely to continue until they pry the camera from my cold, dead hands.

Breakfast, Camellia Grill

2011-09-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

The Camellia Grill is an institution in New Orleans -- a place that manages to stay fairly awesome despite being a destination for tourists and even a southern-flavored hipster or two. I shot this after about three hours sleep on a red-eye out to New Orleans, so for my part I was happy just to not be face down in my omelet.Despite not being damaged in Katrina, the place ended up closing for about two years, and is owned by someone new. Despite being all new wait staff and owners, the food and service still seemed pretty top notch -- and any place you can get pecan pie as a breakfast dessert is OK by me.

Laissez Les Bons Temps Roulez

2011-09-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

You know the parade is going well when the people marching bring bottles of tequila to pour down the throats of the crowd.

Ann Street Scene

2011-09-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

The crowd on a corner of St. Ann street during the Decadence parade was a nice mix of French Quarter denizens and people there from out of town for the parade.

Horny

2011-09-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

This is another shot from the French Quarter during the Decadence festival. The intersection of the jazz aesthetic and gay men being wonderfully shameless about their sexuality made for some fun pictures. :)

Eye Opener

2011-09-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

On a plane back from New Orleans, I was going through my shots from SF a few weeks back, and I found another one from 4th & King that I really liked.

One Man Band

2011-09-05T07:39:00.001-07:00

Another shot from the band at the Decadence parade in New Orleans.

Decadent Jazz

2011-09-04T15:37:00.001-07:00

Still in New Orleans, and it's still raining, but the tropical storm is at least edging its way north and out of drop-a-foot-rain-six-hours territory. This afternoon, I took the bus (the street cars are out because of branches on the tracks) over to the French Quarter, where they're busy having Southern Decadence, billed as a kind of gay Mardi Gras. True to New Orleans form, Decadence has a parade -- and in fact they managed to still have their parade right after Katrina. Unlike the Pride events in larger cities like SF, or even the big Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans, Decadence definitely seemed to be the sort of parade where you could get right out in the street with the marchers. Got this shot right near the end of the parade, as the jazz band marched right around the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann.

Rainy Gaze

2011-09-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend Betsy is living in New Orleans while she gets her masters degree, and I decided to spend the long weekend here with her. Naturally, just as I arrived, the mayor was on television, announcing a state of emergency while the city got ready for Tropical Storm Lee, which is estimated to drop 10-20" of rain our heads before Tuesday.

Undeterred, we went out for dinner at Antoine's in the French Quarter last night, and I happen to snag this shot in our cab on the way home.

They Might Be Giants

2011-09-01T09:48:00.001-07:00

More fun from the Caltrain station this weekend. I went back and forth on this, but I think the contrast makes it a good choice for a b&w conversion. If you'd like to see it in color, check it out here.

All Mouths Today

2011-08-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

Another shot from what is becoming one of my favorite locations: the 4th & King Caltrain station.

Dogpatch

2011-08-30T09:58:00.001-07:00

Despite the name, not shot in the Dogpatch. ;) The last few weekends I've been up in the city, it's gotten super overcast in the last hour of the day (at least in the Market Street/Union Square area). In that sort of overcast light, if you see something light, it tends to go blinding white in b&w conversions. The result was some contrast and geometry that I liked as this woman's dog parts the crowd before her.

Uptown Girls

2011-08-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

My ongoing quest to find interesting photos outside of the train stations as they whiz by continues. One day, I may publish a guide for when the best times of day are. :)

Shades

2011-08-21T23:31:00.001-07:00

Ever notice how some couples end up in subtle ways? Photographers do.

Round the Bend

2011-08-21T23:24:00.001-07:00

I walked a little closer to the tenderloin this Saturday, and I got a couple of shots there I liked. With the overcast and the stark setting, a black & white conversion suggested itself.

If Looks Could Kill

2011-08-21T19:17:00.001-07:00

The last shot I posted was driven by the looks of the people in it, and I think this one is too. There's a range of emotions upon disembarking from Caltrain, most of which are not pleasant. ;) Irritatingly, this is best viewed in a browser other than Chrome, which seems hell-bent on tinting it just a little orange.

Observers

2011-08-21T13:10:00.001-07:00

Despite my doom cold, drug my self up to the city yesterday so the weekend wouldn't feel like a total waste. Caught this moment when there was some really good partial directional light working in my favor.

Lookin' for a Ride?

2011-08-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

Caught this one on the way back from the city on Saturday -- as usual, fascinated by what's going on with the people at varying Caltrain stations. If the train is empty enough, I actually have a pattern of which side I should sit on for which station. ;)Trend towards more color in photos continues -- not sure why it was, but I was seeing a lot more of it this weekend.

Overshadowed

2011-08-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

Shot this on O'Farrell -- was up there last week, and thought I would come back and check out some of the afternoon light there. Lots of building reflections, and just a bit of drama. :)

Fans

2011-08-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

Caught this moment on Powell Street yesterday -- had gone up to the city to catch a few hours of afternoon light near Union Square and to wander around some streets I don't normally spend a lot of time on. Powell is an old favorite though, and it didn't disappoint.

The Boy in Green

2011-08-10T15:21:00.001-07:00

There's a bridge between the Bellagio and Caesar's Palace in Vegas. Every year I go there, and every year I think it's one of my favorite places to photograph people. Caught this one in a rare, partly cloudy moment -- the color and the expressions really caught my eye.

The Man in Red

2011-08-09T10:50:00.001-07:00

Just spent a week in Vegas, and came back with photos. :)This one is with the x100, which still managed to turn out something interesting in really low light and a subject all in red (where camera sensors traditionally go to die).Love this guy's expression, and the odd cut of the frame works here for me.

Airport Zombie

2011-07-28T12:21:00.000-07:00

I started out thinking this was a marginal image, but it's grown on me as I've viewed it large. Certainly, the geometry and the expressions reflect the bleak and somewhat askew world of air travel.

The Yucca Man

2011-07-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

Not to overdo a good thing, this is another portrait from that make believe Haitian village. Superior light here, and love this guy's expression.

He's grinding yucca back and forth on a log here, which they in turn baked into bread, which was yummy. :)

Artiste

2011-07-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

Whilst on our cruise, our one and only one shore excursion was the "Haitian Cultural Excursion".

Let me back that up a bit: When I say our cruise ship went to Haiti, it didn't actually go to what you might think of when you think of Haiti -- it went to Labadee, this private island leased by the cruise company. This island has about the same relationship to actual Haiti that Disneyworld does to the Florida panhandle: Which is to say, almost none.

They do have this little excursion where they take you to a 'model' Haitian village though, where you supposedly see how people live in an actual Haitian village. Super, super, super cheesy, although, I guess, there was peanut butter?

Oddly, the "cast" of the village all had an intense amount of character -- I found them all to be great portrait subjects, despite doing things calculated to appeal to ostensible tourists like myself.

This dude ran the arts & crafts hut at the end of the tour, where they upsell you on stuff they carved out of wood. Love his eyes, particularly set against the pattern of the staves and statuettes all around him.

Rough Seas

2011-07-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend and I decided to go on a cruise after our successful apartment hunt in New Orleans. Long story short: Cruises, even nice ones, are actually pretty horrible. After Betsy was attacked by a giant crab this morning, we decided enough was enough -- we're flying out of Jamaica tomorrow and spending our vacation somewhere actually nice. :)

This shot is from Haiti -- we didn't go to any of the unfortunate, gritty parts of Haiti -- just some private island owned (leased?) by Royal Caribbean. Liked the angle here as these folks pushed our boat out to sea. Did I mention the motor broke on the way out here, and then again on the way back? ;)

Express Lane

2011-07-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

Another shot from walking around the French Quarter in New Orleans with my new x100.

As you might expect, the French Quarter is a pretty amazing place for street photography. In an abstract way, it reminds me of that area around Market and Powell -- obviously very touristy, but also a place where there's a sort of collision between legitimate locals, tourists, and various seedy forms of entertainers. Seeing the interaction between these groups is a thing to behold.

In this case though, it's all about the interaction between Mr. Cool lighting up in his wheelchair and the woman dutifully pushing him, with the Quarter for atmosphere. The lighter tones at the top of the picture are a result of some flare from the front lighting -- the x100 needs a lens hood, but it's been backed ordered for months -- expect the flaring to continue until morale improves. ;)

Rain Break

2011-07-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

I'm in New Orleans this week, helping my girlfriend find a place to rent before she starts grad school here. I shot this from across the street when we got caught in a classic New-Orleans-style-downpour.

Simple and effective, and for once I felt like this shot worked well in B&W or color.

Angels Above

2011-07-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

This is another shot from the Cheer SF contingent, and as you can see, the only thing more awesome than flinging one person into the air on Market Street is flinging a bunch of people into the air. :)

I struggled with this photo, because I knew as I shot it there was something going on there that worked for me. At the same time, the other photographers involved got closer just as I shot, giving me a different composition than I wanted. Then in post, I realized I'd gone too hot on the exposure -- had been shooting at 2.8 before I switched to my ultra-wide, so I could blur the background behind people -- taking that to this sunny intersection, people ended up a bit cooked. I agonized about whether I still liked it or not, then finally found a square crop that made it go for me, and captured the feel I had while I was standing there -- and then someone instantly posted, saying they loved it. :)

In general, I feel like that it is a way (way) bigger problem in photography to not be self critical enough. Photos can be tied to feelings and emotions in your head that end up blinding you to the quality of the image. People have biases about what they like -- and fetishes about what they love, that is great for producing images only of interest to you. So, I tend to take a razor to images I post here on this blog, and can and do agonize over them for too long. Also a problem, but still nicer than having no self control and ending up with a photo blog just of cats or mannequins or the like.

Another great example of this phenomenon:

This is one of my favorite shots by Avedon. Fantastical, dreamy, gorgeous, masterful use of b&w, etc. I saw an interview with Avedon about the image, and he kept pointing out that had he to do it over again, he would have her dress flying out to the left. He said that over the years, he'd love the image, but he could never look at it without thinking what might have been.

Regret is bad, but photographic regret is a bitch.

Pride

2011-07-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

The best part about Pride is the basically unmitigated joy the people marching seem to be taking in it. It helps that the rainbows keep you upbeat visually and encourage me to shoot color, too. :)

Drum Corps

2011-07-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

As Pride goes on, the sun crests the edges of Market Street and starts roasting everything in hard light. I brought along my flash in the hopes of providing some fill, and got a few shots I liked.

I saw these dummers in black with white-white drums coming down market, and saw my shot -- the flash is used to light up their faces and pop the whites on the drums a little more.

Strike a Pose

2011-06-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

One of the pieces of advice I got for my portrait class is that I should embrace my inner Director.

Less charitable observers might refer to this as my inner fascist.

I saw this guy coming by and I loved the character of his face and the profile of his upper body set against the building. So, I gestured with my camera and shouted something like, "Strike a pose!". Like any good model, he gave me more than I bargained for. ;)

Up in the Sky

2011-06-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

Cheer SF is some sort of cheerleading organizations for adults in SF. They keep showing up at Pride and engaging in elaborate acrobatics -- which really makes for some interesting compositions (how often do you see people flung into the air on Market Street?).

Designing Women

2011-06-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lengthy delay in updating my blog -- I was finishing up portrait work for my class, went on a three week road trip, and then I've been catching up since then.

Every year in San Francisco, we have a ginormous Pride Parade. It's an amazing event, in part because its roots in a celebration of political freedom lead to a lot of personal expression in a lot of areas out on the street. I've taken some of my favorite portraits there, and I look forward to it every year.

The challenges in photographing Pride are manifest: Along with the general mob scene, for 3/3 years running the light has been scorching and cloudless once it jumps over the tops of the buildings on Market Street. The solution to all these problems is to show up early, before the parade starts, and just wander around to catch the early morning chaos.

The bad news for me is that I thought taking Caltrain was a good idea. It was thirty minutes late (swarming with parade goers), and they didn't bother to run an early train this year. So, I only had about ten minutes before the parade started -- but that's where I shot this.

Taking photos of mannequins in storefronts is normally a trap for photographers. I don't get a lot out of it, and I'm generally not moved. This scene, though, worked for me in a way that was unexpected -- and it was the first shot from Pride this year that I liked.

Jeepers Creepers

2011-05-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend gets her hair cut over on Haight Street, and I went there with her since we were going to a friend's birthday party afterwards. Haight was having none of photography by 11 -- lots of hard light, and kind of a slow day, so I decided to step into Golden Gate Park.

I don't spend a lot of time in GGP -- it's sort of out of the way for the places I go in the city, so I always discover something new when I visit. This time, I had a little something more specific in mind. A woman in my portraits class had been to the Conservatory of Flowers there a few years back for a shoot, and I was impressed with the light I saw. Never one to be denied good light, I decided to check it out. :)

It's an interesting place -- with some decent light, but even with the frosted glass, I felt like direct sunlight was really hammering things. Would love to see it on an overcast day!

Anyway, that left me taking pictures of flowers, which is really not my thing. Did manage to catch this interesting plant though, which is one of those pitcher plants, who helpfully also look like something out of our collective horticultural nightmares.

Rearview

2011-05-03T11:57:00.001-07:00

I've been spooked out by images in the rearview mirror of cars ever since I saw this Twilight Zone episode as a kid.

I was at an intersection and was looking in my rearview mirror. Brought out my 80-400 (which explains the focus and weird shake) and snapped this. Was flipping through it later in post and it kind of captured my imagination, and it's been growing on me.

Light Over the 80

2011-04-26T17:54:00.000-07:00

I had a busy weekend -- went to a bachelorette party in Santa Cruz, and then took B to Napa for Easter. On the way up, it started raining. Fortunately, the clouds broke a little as we headed up the 80, and then a little light peaked through. I reached for the camera, and tried as best as I could to shoot around B (who was driving), and managed to get this. It's not technically perfect (there's a little shake from all the scrambling around), but the light really sings here.

I used this as my class assignment this week for "light as the subject", and was pretty happy with it.

d20

2011-04-23T01:53:00.000-07:00

While this picture indelibly brands me as a nerd (which probably comes as no surprise), I also (no, really) think it actually works as an image. No cropping or anything either -- but I found myself looking at it about a half dozen times today, puzzled myself at why I felt like it worked.

Improbably, I still think it does.

Mind the...

2011-04-14T09:53:00.000-07:00

Another one from Powell Street this weekend.

Miracle on Powell Street

2011-04-12T17:37:00.000-07:00

Right after I shot "We Are Legend", I saw this guy walking down Powell street, and I chased after him. "Excuse me", I said, "I'd love to take your portrait since you just have one of those faces..." He interrupted me and answered, "Of course I do, I'm Santa Claus!"

That took a minute to set in, since when I saw him, I thought of precisely two things:

Santa Claus
Dumbledore

He went on to explain that his name was John Toomey, and he had been Macy's Santa for 20 years before they gave him the boot in an (imho) pretty gross display of Corporate Dumb. He said he had a new, more lucrative gig as Santa for Lefty O'Doul's, so it had all worked out well in the end.

John was an amazing performer -- the moment the camera came out, he only got more like Santa. On cue, the wind kicked up, and he cracked a big smile as he waved.

Awesome moment, and one of my favorite portraits from last week.

We Are Legend

2011-04-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

My assignment this week for my portrait class was to go up to a random stranger and ask to take their portrait. I was walking along by Powell (by that touristy pizza joint), and saw this group hanging out. You know how you can tell a group of people in a crowd is a group? All those subtle signals, and something just different about the geometry of how they're together?

Well, these guys had it in spades. And sure enough, when I asked to take their picture, they didn't require any direction at all -- the shot just happened.

I take so few group photos I'm happy with (read, none), that I was really happy to snag this one.

Facetime

2011-04-09T13:59:00.000-07:00

From my photowalk around SF last week.

Days of our Lives

2011-04-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

Saw this while I was in a cab in the city, and I immediately asked the driver to pull over. Unfortunately, the woman picked herself up right after that, dusted herself off, then walked away.

The Death of Sleep

2011-04-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

I've been taken more portraits lately, preparing a bit for the Art 227 class at Stanford I enrolled in this spring and that just started. The first assignment was "self portraits", so I set to work.

I have a condition called sleep apnea, which means that my airways close when I fall asleep at night. My case is really severe -- I actually "stop breathing" dozens of times a night, and with it comes a lot of subtle, awful symptoms that can be very hard to diagnose (I assumed I was just stressed, or getting old). I was fortunate enough to be diagnosed by a doctor at work, and my immediately awful scores on sleep tests resulted in me getting a machine and a mask I have to sleep with every night.

The good news is, I've never had a more dramatic medical treatment in my life -- using it was like feeling 'awake' for the first time in years. The bad news is, I'm kind of pushing a certain Darth Vader vibe at night as I have this machine stinting open my breathing passages with forced air sucked in from the room. And of course, some mornings I wake up and the thing that keeps me from suffocating at night has wrapped its tubes around my neck.

My inspiration for this piece was this shot by Richard Avedon, which shows Andy Warhol after his surgery. It's gorgeous B&W (being Avedon), but it's this picture of the results of a medical procedure that has left someone vulnerable, but also more than a little alienated from the norm (which was already Warhol, I guess).

I wanted to capture this vibe in my portrait, which I think I got at least a little glimmer of.

I brought my softbox into the bedroom for this shot, and had it angled down and really close to my face (like I imagined a surgical or dental light would be positioned -- though I really needed a boom). The camera I put on my lightest tripod, which I had to position on my chest and fire with a cable release. A lot of work, but I'm pretty happy (well, and unnerved) by the result.

Pulp Fiction

2011-03-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

As seen at the Mountain View Farmer's Market.

Masks

2011-03-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

Shot this when I was in New Orleans a few weekends back. Most of the people on Mardi Gras floats wears masks. Growing up, I never thought much of it -- other than "Hey, cool costumes". Coming back to it after some years, they actually kind of seem pretty creepy and maybe evocative of some unpleasant eras in the past of the South.

Which reminds me -- an old friend of mine's sister actually made a documentary about Mardi Gras in my home town called "The Order of Myths". Mardi Gras is this intricate social ritual in some Southern towns that was completely lost on me as a fairly nerdy kid from a not-so-well-connected family growing up.

Bystanders

2011-03-11T02:23:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras parades are definitely about pageantry, but the crowd is definitely something that's on display too. This was shot in the French Quarter, and most of the people were trying to peer over or around the crowd to get a glance of Barkus as it passed.

Off-topic for this post (but on-topic for the blog), check out this link:

http://www.formatfestival.com/artists/garry-winogrand

This is a rare color exhibition of Garry Winogrand's work, curated by Joel Meyerowitz (who shot with Winogrand). Every one of these images is striking (I would even say magnificent), and each of them has the property that if you had dropped them in my lap, I would have guessed they were Winogrands. They are utterly distinctive to him, and kind of a photo acid trip any time I see his color work.

Division

2011-03-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

Was tooling around with my iPhone last Saturday, and I shot this, which is fun. Like the Polaroid, the iPhone is limited in a lot of ways, but unlike the Polaroid, I find I'm capable of making images with it that I'm really happy with. My operating theory is that the iPhone is like having a ginormous viewfinder, which really helps me with composition.

Barkus

2011-03-08T08:58:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of parades in New Orleans in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras. Some of them (particularly the parades of the weekend before and actual days of) Mardi Gras are huge, while others are merely big. Despite what you may hear, they don't let any of the big ones into the French Quarter these days -- too many people, and too much of a hazard. There are a number of small parades though, including this one, which is whimsically entitled "Barkus". It's dog-themed, and lots of people go take their dogs and their music and walk it through through the high points of the quarter.

Snapped this as we were actually trying to get *away* from Barkus, which was so crowded you could barely see the dogs.

Her First Beads

2011-03-08T01:29:00.000-08:00

Shot this one on a trip to New Orleans last weekend. B didn't see the point of why people were going so nuts for Mardi Gras beads at first, but once I caught a set and gave them to her, she got right into the mania.

On thing about photos of B -- they're always best in wild color (how can you not, with her hair?), and shot fast. You don't catch a grin like that tromping around in the basement of 1/250ths of a second. 1/500 or go home. ;)

Rancid

2011-03-07T01:50:00.000-08:00

The first camera I ever owned as a kid was a Polaroid. Unfortunately, I got my camera just as the tough times of the early 80s hit, so I basically got the camera only to not have any film for it.

Flash-forward to this Christmas, when I found my nearly thirty year old camera in a closet at my parent's house in Alabama. By a fortunate series of events, it had survived two floods, Katrina, my mother's love of yard sales, and general entropy to be right there on the top of a stack of boxes when I opened the closet. The only hitch: They don't make Polaroid any more. And what (expired) Polaroid film there is left will cost you an arm and a leg on eBay.

I'd heard about this company called "The Impossible Project", who were trying to bring back Polaroid. They'd bought an old Polaroid factory, and were now rolling out their own film -- pretty awesome hack!

So, I ordered three packs of the stuff and went crazy with my Polaroid.

I have to say, it's kind of a miracle that the IP people have replicated something close to Polaroid -- but more often than not, I felt like it was a miracle that it worked at all. :P

Here were the challenges:

Your Polaroid 600 never tells you what the results of metering are. You have a slider to adjust the metering, but this always feels a bit like the blind leading the blind. ;)
The Impossible Project film is extremely light sensitive as it develops. Even though it has a chemical on it to shield it from light once it leaves the camera, if you don't physically shield it from light in the first minute, it loses contrast big time.
Make sure it stays horizontal so the developing goo is evenly applied
Make sure the temperature is 'right' in that first minute. Too cold, and you lose contrast. Too warm, it turns too toasty amber (not a fan of deep sepia). Just right (maybe room temperature?), it's closer to b&w.
Fitfully check development, only to learn that the rollers on your 30 years old camera managed to poorly distribute the goo over the film, and half of it is overexposed.
Fitfully check for factory defects in the film, where regions of the film don't have developing chemicals at all
Worry at night how long the print will last if it's not stored in some lead-lined box away from all high energy particles which threatens to dissolve the glue from the back.
Worry you may have to sell more shares of stock to pay for more exposures (~$2 a shot!)

Given the sort of high maintenance nature of the IP film, I ended up mainly using it for portraits of my friends. This is the only one from the street that I got that I found remotely passable.

I saw this kid sitting on the steps by Union Square, and he just had the perfect expression, and was just in the right light. I asked to take his portrait, he was happy to (and in fact, didn't even change his expression much).

The result was...

a perfectly white image, because my camera failed to roll goo over the film properly.

The kid was pretty zen about the whole thing, and I happily gave him the missed exposure as a keepsake. What you see above is my second shot.

I have to say, I "get" that it's fun to have this random element in your exposures, because it can force you to see new things in an image. But it feels like there's a line where it stops being random, and it starts being irritating. :P

Basically every photo I took with the IP film had that error at the top, where there just wasn't any developing chemical. Once, it's a beauty mark. Twice, it's a blemish. The whole pack? It's the plague.

Still, there's something to the idea that I got a physical artifact out of the whole deal, and I do love the character in the piece. But life seems a little short to deal with all the problems this film has -- maybe not for me. I think if I'm going to shoot film, it'll be something where I have just a bit more consistency and control. :\

For another take on this image, you should check out my friend Damien's take. He went ultra-wide, and at a very distinct angle -- fun contrast to my polaroid work.

Chasing the Dragon

2011-02-20T02:18:00.000-08:00

I've been falling apart all week: doom cold, threw a filling and had a piece of tooth fall out, and then the humidifier in my apnea machine broke and I sneezed so much on Friday my ribs were sore today.

Naturally, the only cure was to go talk a walk in the rain and shoot some pictures.

The big event today was the Chinese New Year Parade -- weirdly, it was about two weeks after the actual New Year (though I approve of Mardi Gras-like multi-week holidays as a matter of general principle). I got a little carried away shooting some of the Market Street locals out with their umbrellas, so I showed up with about fifteen minutes before the parade started.

Brad over at Citysnaps had some good advice -- the best shots were probably with the 'prep' phase of the parade, where everyone was getting assembled and had their guard down. Not only are people in a different frame of mind when they're marching, unless you've got the equivalent of a press pass, you can expect to have intermittent access to the actual parade as it rolls by (the cops rousted us from a median on Market Street, since naturally we couldn't be trusted to stand on a patch of sidewalk without a guard).

I got a decent, though not great spot on Geary near the connection with Market, and was shooting people as they walked by. IMHO, pretty boring photos -- largely documentary stuff, made a little more challenging by the colors of the parade getting a little sapped by being in the rainy twilight hour.

I decided to do something a little different with this shot, and tried to pan with the motion of the dragon as the kids ran past me. Fair warning: I kind of suck at panning. But to the extent it works, its because of the jagged line of that dragon and because I was following the lead girl and trying to get her sharp. As a bonus, it actually had a little more magic in B&W, which was surprising to me, since I was all set to go color for with all the reds and yellows in the parade. (You can see a color version here for comparison).

One that note, bed time -- hopefully some of you were out there shooting the hell out of that parade.

Forrowed

2011-02-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

Shot this walking through the Mission on Tuesday on my way to Taqueria Cancun (love their super quesadillas!). The sort of chaos and general disarray of this scene appeals to me, though I think the lack of contrast is going to nag at me for a while.

Sleepwalkers

2011-02-15T23:53:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a lot of chance to work on photos -- busy with work, Valentine's Day, and then a monster head cold that's lasted the better part of a week. I had the day off today, so I decided to wander around SF a bit. Got a few hours in before I felt zonked again, but I shot this on market. Like "Picnic on Union Square", I think this one is driven by a kind of triangular composition of the people that appeals to me.

Change?

2011-02-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

Snapped this near the French Market in New Orleans. Lots of panhandlers in New Orleans, most of them with some sort of schtick -- didn't get to hear this guy's pitch, but the looks of the people he's hitting up say it all.

Material Girl

2011-02-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

For the time I was on Market on Saturday, it was hard, blasting light everywhere. The smarter thing to do is to probably walk away from light like this, but I'm persnickety and kept trying anyway. Eventually got this little moment, which I liked since the bricks were kicking up enough light to act as a bit of a reflector for fill.

Picnic on Union Square

2011-02-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

I went up to the city on Saturday for some photos, and wasn't super happy with the results. For most of the day, it felt like I was fighting the light (hot and hard). Got a few shots of a pro-Egypt protest by Civic Center, then came back to Union Square.

The second time I saw the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at SF Moma, I noted one really important fact: Here was a man who really, really, really loved to photograph picnics. So, picnics were weirdly in the back of my head all day, and I actually came upon some people having lunch at the corner of Union Square. Very happy with the composition, though I don't so much like the default presentation on Flickr (the image works best viewed larger).

Top 12, 2010

2011-02-02T00:50:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was going to go through my photos and produce a 'best of' set of about ten of my favorites. It took a little longer than I thought (perhaps because I uploaded 2,500 photos in 2011?), but it was a useful exercise for me.

Here's a little blurb I wrote by way of introduction on our photography@ list at work:

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst."

– Henri Cartier-Bresson

I'm no HCB; I felt like my first 100,000 photos were my worst, but I can happily say that as I come up on my third anniversary of owning an SLR, I feel more things clicking.

I also have a clearer idea what I'm trying to do.

I believe that there is a universe of moments all around us. Some of these moments almost anybody can see, and they cluster in a great big majestic swath of time -- stuff like a sunset over Market Street; a steady juxtaposition of old and new; or the architecture of modernism triumphant. These can be great and awesome, but I find that these vistas are less of interest to me than an entirely different class of moment.

I believe that as we drift (some, perhaps, are dragged -- others, pushed?) through life, we are surrounded by little slivers of beauty which persist only for a moment. Blink once, and they're gone. Don't even blink, and you might actually see one.

The most miraculous thing about a camera is that it opens you up to this world of minute moments -- both in its capacity to capture such instants, and because it necessitates teaching yourself a way of seeing which is outside of your day to day experience. These moments have always been there, but it took a camera to let us see them for what they really are. The camera can allow us to capture a scene that some artist should paint, but never would without a camera to see it.

I don't always (or even generally) capture these moments, but I find that when I do, I feel like that I have discovered something. Sometimes I have to chip away a bit (maybe with the crop tool), or remove the extraneous (color), but there is the impression that what is there was somehow waiting to be found.

And that's the type of photo I like best.

Without further ado, here's my top 12 for the year:

And, to see where I was coming from, here was my top 100:

Many of the photos from this blog were in the top 100, but a number of shots crept in that weren't normally posted here just because I tend to emphasize street photography (which is my favorite) and portraits (my second favorite type of photography) on the blog.

I could write a lot about these photos, but I think it's better now to just thank everyone who helped -- all my long suffering friends [and their pets] who for the last few years have let me photograph them over and over (some of whom now pause like a hunted animal at the click of the shutter), and also all the photographers on the internet who are inspiration to anyone doing my type of photography. The Bay Area is lousy with great photographers, and it's a pleasure to see a steady stream of amazing shots from my home.

And of course, my girlfriend deserves the most praise of all -- for inspiring (and putting up with) me. During the time we've been together, I've brought a tripod on our first fancy date, rushed to the edge of the water near her family's vacation home to photograph an alligator, snuck away at night to photograph downtown Las Vegas, and even fired away in the French Laundry when they bought out the foie gras.

She took it all in stride -- thanks B. :)

The remaining question after conducting an exercise like this is 'What next?'.

At the beginning of last year, I made a few goals:

Take more street photographs (and get better at them)
Do a few projects
Make a place to highlight my favorite photos away from the flotsam and jetsam of Flickr

The good news is, I think I've done all these things, even the part about getting better. Looking back over just a year, I think I can see a definite improvement -- if nothing else, getting a lot better with using my primes with a wider perspective (28mm, 35mm), and stepping away from longer lenses with which I was producing consistent if not eye-opening shots.

I'm not sure where I should go next. I'm pretty happy with my weekend trips up to San Francisco to shoot on the streets, along with hitting the right sort of events (I think of them as the ones 'with character') at key times and dates. "Walking the beat" with my camera on the weekend has slowly begun to give me a set of street photos I really like -- maybe the next step is collecting some of those in a book or a showing somewhere?

Troika

2011-01-31T12:14:00.000-08:00

Was up in the city on Sunday to take B to see the last day of the Cartier-Bresson exhibition at SF Moma. For brunch, we met our friends Ian & Tara at 2223 Market, which served me the best cinnamon-pecan bun I've had in years. ;)

It had just stopped raining outside and the clouds were breaking, so the light was going nuts through the windows -- saw these guys sitting in a sort of triangle, and shot this. Love the way the light is rimming the guy in the foreground, and the general geometry of the scene.

The Friendly Skies

2011-01-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

I'm on a roll with the airport theme lately. Shot this at the airport in San Jose de los Cabos. We disembarked onto the tarmac, and there was actually a human line of people to mark where we should walk (there was a non-zero risk of walking into machinery or propellers). I thought it was pretty cool that we had actual people sort of welcoming us (even if they weren't always so excited about it), and I liked this shot I got of one of the guys with the zig-zag of the ramp in the background.

Security

2011-01-22T13:33:00.000-08:00

Our trip to Cabo san Lucas also brought me face to face with my first Mexican airport. Parts of it were identical (maybe modulo a decade or two), but what I wasn't prepared for was stepping off the tarmac and into a giant room of people shouting about timeshare deals to me. I'm not talking about a few people peddling, I mean institutional support for airport spam. Imagine a whole room of people behind desks, all of whom were ostensibly offering you rides to your hotel -- in return for listening to a time share pitch. It was actually impossible to distinguish between legitimate taxi companies and time share companies (it actually wasn't even clear if there *was* such a thing as a legitimate taxi company).

The coolest guy in the giant was this security guy shoved off in a corner, way more alert than his lazy dog snoozing underfoot. Loved this shot of him, and the framing of bystanders really gave it an interesting perspective.

Vending Wall

2011-01-20T02:52:00.000-08:00

"

Our hotel in Los Cabos had a private beach, with a catch. Every few minutes, vendors would wander by the roped off area, hawking random bits of touristy junk. They were pretty adamant about selling you something -- make eye contact with them for even a second, and they immediately start calling to you with an offer. Some of them would stand in a position, others would wander by -- persistently offering their wares every few minutes. After learning to tune them out, I managed to snap this frame as they started chatting amongst themselves.

The Sunset Cruise

2011-01-18T23:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, B & I took a cruise around the southern tip of the Baja peninsula to see The Arch at Land's End. It was nice -- biggest catamaran in Mexico (so nobody got motion sickness), super friendly crew, and an open bar that never stopped flowing. Since I had some hopes of an interesting landscape shot of the Arch, I naturally got an arrival time that was about 20 minutes too soon before sunset, another boat in our way, and a perfectly flat, boring sunset. So, we fell back to our preferred vacation past times: drinking and people watching.

Saw these two dudes relaxing up on the deck, and one of them moving his hand to point, and the random factors aligned (or at least, my fifth drink hit me). Classic, and nice to get some composition going on at 70mm, which I often struggle with.

Beachcombers

2011-01-17T22:55:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I met a friend in the Mission for lunch, then went out to take some pictures. It was cold enough that my fingers started to freeze -- "too cold!". I had this realization about the time I realized I had MLK day off work, so I made plans with my girlfriend to go somewhere warm. Hawaii was cloudy and rainy, so I decided to go somewhere I'd never been: Cabo San Lucas.

I snapped this shot yesterday, as I was walking along the beach near the end of the day. Long shadows are a favorite of mine, and I like the alien quality this picture has to it.

The Jazz Man

2011-01-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

On our trip to New Orleans, we decided to do the Sunday jazz brunch at Arnaud's. The musicians went table to table, offering to play songs for patrons. I was a little irritated that they actually felt a little off that morning, and I much prefer conversation to music right up close (a perennial problem with me and most bars). That said, they were awesome characters, and so I had my camera out when they came by.

Break

2011-01-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

Short and sweet -- I loved the character here.

So a Horse Walks Into a Bar...

2011-01-07T14:18:00.000-08:00

I was having drinks on Bourbon Street with B and my old friend Lou, and one of the mounted policemen rode into the bar. Just had a second to grab my camera and shoot this -- if you ever wondered what kind of town New Orleans is, this is it. ;)

One Man Band

2011-01-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

I've never seen a city more willing to put on a parade at the drop of a hat than New Orleans. No surprise: Dozens of competing Mardi Gras krewes who spend a year planning their *next* parade, jazz funerals, the nearly complete lack of open container laws...

Anyway, B & I were at our favorite breakfast place in New Orleans on our last day, having Bloody Mary's and mimosas while we were waiting for our table, and I heard this parade kick off outside. I asked a bunch of the help what it was about, and they were as clueless as me. Stepped outside, and it was apparently for the Sugar Bowl, but they had turned out a lot of local high school bands and the like to march. Saw this kid, and there was my shot.

Four by Five

2011-01-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

I'm in New Orleans for New Year's, and I shot this right outside of my hotel on Bourbon. Very cloudy day, with the light pretty soft everywhere. Noticed people walking single file by this building, and caught them as they were spaced just show.

I went to college in New Orleans back in the mid-90s, before I had any interest in photography. Now that I do, all I can say is: Wow, is this place ever a gold mine for a street photographer. I'm going to have to do some research on Flickr to find out who all is shooting here, and what their stuff looks like.

Shucks

2010-12-29T22:35:00.000-08:00

Coming from a small town on the Gulf Coast, one of the things we ate a lot of growing up was oysters. Along with frying them (which ends up being done to most food in the South), the preferred way to eat an oyster is raw, opened up in the shell with a knife. As a kid, they were so commonplace, I wasn't excited by them. Once I left, I discovered the joys of (sweeter) West Coast oysters, and getting them served to me on ice, and now I have them once a week from the Farmer's Market near my place in Mountain View.

This week, I'm back in Alabama, staying with my family and with my girlfriend visiting. She'd never had raw oysters before dating me -- though now that I convinced her to take a chance on them, she loves them too. But she's only had her oysters bourgie style, not like what I grew up with. Fortune intervened tonight in a classic Southern moment:

We had taken some new pants I'd gotten over to my sister's mother-in-law's house to get them hemmed. My sister ran into to deliver the pants, when she came out gesturing to us, "Guess what? Mr. Kent is opening up raw oysters out back!". We got ushered in and were shown classic southern hospitality -- let onto the back deck, where an old Southern gentleman was sitting there, shucking one oyster after another, tossing the shells as he was done. Best oysters we'd had all week! As he shucked them, I shot this frame -- one of my favorite pictures of my trip home thus far.

Purgatory

2010-12-26T07:31:00.000-08:00

I shot this one early morning in Atlanta back in July, passing through there after a red-eye to the east coast. I think the feeling of being trapped on the inside while the good stuff is going on outside is a multi-functional metaphor for the holidays: trapped travelers, people snowed in with their families, those days after Christmas when you're dreaming of going back home, or just the people wondering why we save all the champagne for New Year's Eve. ;)

The Waiting Game

2010-12-24T22:49:00.000-08:00

The use of pet photography may mark an artistic low water mark for the blog, but that's what you get on the holidays. My sister's dog Freckles evidently loves sitting on top of the couch and staring out of the window. I used to do this a lot as a kid: waiting for my father to come home from work, the ice cream truck to drive by, my mother to bring back interesting mail, or just randomly staring at clouds, wondering when they'd turn into thunderstorms (we lived on the Gulf Coast, so this happened a lot). Now that I'm much older, I don't do as much waiting by the window anymore, but it's nice to see the dogs are picking up the slack.

Exeunt Omnes

2010-12-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Shot this in the Denver airport this last June -- normally advice is to 'go towards the light', but given how miserable air travel is these days, the light at the end of the tunnel is likely to be a train. ;)

Best Of

2010-12-23T10:26:00.000-08:00

I shot this a year ago on Haight Street, while B was off at a hair appointment.

I'm about to try an exercise where I pick what I think are my best photos of the year that I've posted, then ruthlessly boil them down to 10 or so picks.

One of the hardest things in photography (certainly for me) is to edit and cull your own work. In part, this is because it is hard to be critical of things that we love. In equal part, there is an almost inescapable association between the emotions that accompany the taking of a photo with the feeling it gives you -- every photo is a key to a door that leads to the memories and emotions tied to that time and that place.

This task is also made only harder by the ubiquity of digital, where it's easy to take hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of images over the course of a year. The dark side of "pixels are free" is that "attention is priceless". If you want your photos to be noticed by people, you need to have a visual elevator pitch ready -- a short, pithy summary of why your work is worth noting.

This is as true if you do photography for art, journalism, or even for memories -- less will be more, until we all live a lot longer (and even then, longer lives will probably follow the same curve for attention as hard drives do for being filled up).

Of course, the really hard part: I'm still not done processing for the year. ;)

The City & The City

2010-12-22T15:36:00.000-08:00

My holiday party for work this year was at the Bentley Reserve. I shot this when we stepped outside to catch a break -- the overlaying of old and new immediately caught my eye, and I tried to get an interesting framing. The title is inspired by a recent book by China Mieville, which has a theme of juxtaposed cities.

The Rotting Husks

2010-12-21T02:33:00.000-08:00

Apologies for not posting much in the last week -- I've been super busy with the end of the year at work, finishing up travel plans for Christmas (Austin, Alabama, and New Orleans), and the tortures of holiday shopping.

Today's image is actually one I took in my home town two Christmases ago. My father and I were out for a drive around the coast, and it was completely socked-in foggy. The town's primary industry is seafood, so there are always boats around in various harbors -- but there are also numerous shipyards, where some very large boats are kept out of the water for extensive repair work. These two hulks had seen better days, but were lit in a crazy specular-but-not-quite way by flood lamps, scattered around by the fog. They're also arranged so that the ships are complimentary to each other -- where one ship almost echoes the other. The result is one of my favorite images from my first year of using a dSLR, and I've considered getting it printed.

In keeping with the general theme of decay, I realized when I was looking up the RAW file for this image in my archives, it simply wasn't there. I'm generally religious about backups: Files go onto laptop -> desktop -> backup drive on desktop -> weekly to NAS, then monthly to usb hard drive. I try to keep three instances of every image I like (though sometimes the third is just a jpeg on Flickr). Problem here: I had a very dark period in my life in late 2008 when I managed to lost three laptop drives in as many months. Two of the drive failures were in the same month, and while I was traveling -- resulting in about a week of lost-forever RAWs. It was this set of failures that prompted me to move from spinning disks over to SSD drives, and I never looked back (SSD drives can fail, of course -- I just think I was losing more drives than expected because of general traveling abuse and the combined clumsy factor of the TSA + me).

A fair amount of anguish here, because knowing what I do now about processing images, I can already see things I would do differently that I probably could not do with a jpeg. Bits can be rotting too, I guess. :\

Every Which Way But Loose

2010-12-15T11:16:00.000-08:00

This one is from this summer, when I was visiting Charleston. A bunch of families converged on a fountain and started going nuts with the water. Love the reactions here.