Cardboard Tube For Arm

This was the first week of first grade.
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I thought it looked like he was listening to the ground for something.

Maze with Space Scenes #1

Commercial Break #5

Found this issue of Men's Journal with my story on Timothy Ferriss while I was in Schenectady so I could share it with my parents. Of course I told them that we had to shut down the street for 3 hours to get the shot. Nahhh. Just the quiet financial district at 5:00 pm in SF.
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A guy stands on his hands for you, it's often likely that that will be the shot, you know? I can't argue with that, and it was kinda cool. I did also like this out take that p.e. Jennifer Santana selected but never got to run, shot in the redwoods of Mill Valley, below.

The Love

There are times as a photographer when you feel , oh...less than satisfied...and there are times when you feel just in love with the medium and all that surrounds it. Right now is the love: spent yesterday and a day last week shooting an editorial project I could really explore with real people and no spin controlling, working on an estimate with Tidepool on a potentially rewarding project, got a nice note from a p.e. about possibly using a Echolilia photograph as an illustration, and preparing giant 40 x 40 prints for a forthcoming show at Todd / Browning Gallery in Los Angeles. Why is this great? I guess it's the mix of Art and Commerce that feels good to juggle when it is working...and just trying to dodge any shoot that could lead to a massive dent in one's creative libido. Don't want to dent that thing, don't want to walk with a limp...but when it happens it usually takes a while to repair...

My Son In My Original Bedroom

Summertime

Another World

August in Schenectady N.Y. always carries a sense of foreboding, this subtle sense of doom. It is the end of the summer, and carries with it all that that implies: 9th grade may be starting up soon, and I'm just not looking forward to wrestling with the academic and social stuff I'm about to get thrown into. Again, preparing to leave town to go away to college, leaving the local security of being in the same school from Kindergarten thru 12th grade to enter this new semi- adulthood. And then I'm sitting in my bedroom of my parents house, done with all education, planning to move out of Schenectady with my girlfriend and my enlarger in her station wagon...not really knowing what the point of this move really is. Its August. It's the end of the chapter, and it has happened so many times.

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This time I'm here with my my wife and two kids. My son likes to take photographs and I show him where I held my first real job, running a one hour photo machine. Like all of these Re photographic Surveys done by photographers like Mark Klett, Byron Wolfe, etc, these visits always carry a chunk of history. The power of how things change and how things stay the same never really goes away.

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On the left of the above photograph is Another World Bookstore, a landmark pornography store and theatre that has been in that location since 1938. On the right is 151 Erie Blvd, now the home of The Gun Store. I worked in 151 Erie at two points in my life: first when I was 16 and it was a one hour photo lab and then again when I was 22 and it was an art supply store. On days that I rode my bike to work, I would lock it in a small alley wedged between the porn store and my store. At age 16 I loved the symbolism of all of this and none of it was lost on me...it would easily be the opening scene in the movie about my life that ran in my head. Processing snapshots and having a view into the most personal moments of people's lives...they were all there right at my fingertips. That to me was it...that was "another world", and it all came out of the processing machine. By the time I was 22 I really just felt like a loser: same job, same hobby, same bedroom, working next to Another World.

Greatest Arbus Story Ever

In 1988 my girlfriend ( now wife ) worked at Moto-Photo One Hour Photo in Laurel Maryland. A heavy set older guy came in, dropped off some film and started a conversation with her. She told him she was into photography and studying it in college.

"Oh, you might know the work of an old girlfriend of mine, she became a big deal in the art world, " he says. "Her name was Diane Arbus. "
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To me, it was the first time that the whole " Six Degrees of Separation " thing ever made any sense to me. Here was a person I knew, who spoke to a person who was close with Arbus. Someone here had touched on the magical and mystical, the keeper of the secrets.

I thought of this all when I read this greatest Arbus story ever on the blogosphere, via Christopher Paquette, via James Danziger, all due to writer David Segal of The Washington Post. m
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It is totally great, read it HERE.

Quiet

Cirrus Minor

Sorry all, but the comments on the blog seem to be malfunctioning. Sometimes they show up, sometimes they seem to disappear, and I don't really know why. Honestly, I haven't deleted a comment since S.F. photographer Jeff Singer commented that one of my images reminded him of Cookie Monster. Jeff's comment was accurate, but I feared it would take the comments on a humorous tangent I didn't want them to go on. Gotta steer this blog at the appropriate times, you know...

Yellow

Options

Adam Moore at Sugar Digital is working on an image for me...here are some options we are looking at.

I'm trying to post alot this week and then disappear from the 11th-18th for a family vacation...so please stay tuned.

Commercial Break #4