Tony often speaks with his hands.
He is very expressive that way, so today I was watching his hands as he spoke, telling me of a 28-year-old mystery in regards to a band that he likes, Balance. He received in the mail today pieces of a puzzle that might be able to fill in the gaps and lead him to a new discovery of an old favourite.
As he talked, I photographed his hands.
Board games bring families together. Period.
My son suggested the other night that he, my daughter and I play Monopoly. Three days later, we finally finished, with my son taking the haul. It was a wonderful time together, and we’re about to do it all over again.
When I was a child, I used to play board games almost daily at my grandparents’ house. It seems fitting to post this then, on what would have been my grandfather Ray’s 111th birthday.
Happy Birthday Ray!
I am about to teach a class on the period of photography from 1974-1984.
One of the photographers that we will be studying is Cindy Sherman, so I needed to come up with a Sherman-esque series of photos as the example. My friend Kira is always a willing photography model for me and agreed on the spot to pose for a series of photo-booth-style photos, similar to those that Sherman might do.
Here is the result: sometimes quirky, sometimes cute, sometimes sad. That about sums it up for me.
It’s very foggy today and I love to photograph in fog.
Here are a couple of shots that I took using my new camera.
I will never be without dogs if I have any say in it.
They are a part of my family and always have been. These are my three dogs, Kelly, Jack, and Bugsy. Kelly is the matriarch and gets two photos for that. Jack thinks that when you take a photo, you take someone’s soul, so he rarely stays still long enough to have his picture taken and howls when you try to take it. I did get his eyes and nose at least. And Bugsy, well, is Bugsy.
As a professional photographer, I own many cameras.
The oldest working camera that I own is from the 1940s. I have a lot of film cameras that I still use and find valuable to have. Not so much for digital. When I first became a professional wedding and portrait photographer in 2001, the camera that I used for most of my work when I finally went digital was a Fuji S2-Pro, a 6 megapixel DSLR. My back-up was a Nikon D70, also 6 megapixel. I used both of those cameras for over 10 years before I finally felt the need to catch up to the rest of the digital world and up my megapixels. My cameras had become virtually obsolete.
That’s what gripes me the most about digital. You spend a lot of money only to have your gear outdated and almost valueless in a few years. My Rolleiflex from 1950 still works as well as it did when it was first produced, and has held its value. I can’t imagine any of my digital cameras doing that. BUT…I have to keep up, and so I did.
Two years ago I upgraded my digital gear and purchased a Nikon D800 for my professional work. It’s a great camera and takes wonderful photos, but on a recent 7-mile photo hike I realized that it had one real problem for me: it is heavy. Along with the zoom lens I regularly use with it, it can cause pain to my shoulder and back after only a short time.
Because it’s heavy and really expensive, I started leaving it at home a lot. I found myself using my iPhone to photograph more often than not. I love taking iPhone photos, don’t get me wrong, but I started to miss the manual control I had over my images. Yet I didn’t want to carry around my D800 with me.
So I researched smaller mirrorless cameras to find an alternative to my D800 that is not so heavy but still takes great photos and allows me to have control over my images. I desperately wanted a Leica M Monochrom camera, but I couldn’t afford the $10,000+ it would have taken me to buy the body and a lens to go with it. So I quickly put that one out of my head and decided on a Fuji X-T1.
Today I took it out for its first shoot, a casual walk the kids, Jack, and I at Reynolda Village. I kept it on the black & white setting for today (the one with a red filter) and was really pleased with the results. I didn’t have to do any post-processing on the images, just crop them.
Once I get a small case for it, I’ll be taking it out with me a lot. It is fun to use and the dials remind me of my old film cameras. I will still use my D800 for professional and studio work, but this little guy will come in very handy for my everyday shots.
Here are some photos with the Fuji from today. Emma even took a few…
These are but the every day for me…
Nick intently playing video games or watching a movie. Emma on her computer chatting with her boyfriend or doing research on a pending project. Dogs jumping on laps. All commonplace.
Yet in the quiet of this room amid the everyday, I find my greatest peace.
I was back in my studio today, looking out the window, thinking…
The first photo is a reflection of the windows on my computer screen. The second image is the window itself. The third and fourth images are details of photos I had already taken that are on the wall. And the final photo is the entrance to the studio with my reflection in the window.
I’m feeling kind of lost today; it shows in my photos.
I was up early for this one…
Around 6:45 a.m. I took my camera and tripod out into the cold to try to get a good shot of the amazing colors in the sunrise. I wanted to manipulate my shutter speed to control the colors so that I didn’t have to do any post-editing. The only thing that I used Photoshop for in these photos was to crop them, as they were large files.
I was able to make the photo lighter or darker depending on how slow I made the shutter speed and what ISO I used. I tend to like darker images that make the color parts stand out more. The “ray” effect was made by using a zoom lens and pulling it in or out while using a shutter speed of 2 seconds.
Folks tend to forget that you can control so many aspects of your photo in-camera and without post-manipulation. We’ve made it really easy to get funky effects by the press of a button. I just wanted to do it the old fashioned way today.
Today I learned that a dear friend is losing her battle with cancer…
I went into my studio to be alone. I looked around and saw this window, damaged yet somehow functional, which to me represents so many emotions: lightness, darkness, imperfection, beauty, ugliness, clarity.
I often process my emotions through my photography. It’s my way of dealing with the complexities of my mind.
I’m sure you’ll see more like this…
Mid-Century Me 