At the moment, the sun is back out and the snow has stopped falling. That was not the case about two hours ago, as I watched this man lean into the wind and hustle down an alley.
I walk the line
At the threshold.
Winter has come to the Northeast, painting the landscape in neutral shades, and everything feels grey. Bare branches like lace against the sky. And a road winding to a warm house in a cold landscape. But there is a hushed beauty in moments such as this, and there's the knowledge all this will be bursting with lush, green vibrancy in a few months.
As the year winds down to a close, I look back on a year that was marked by highs and lows.
Expectation and disappointment.
New experiences and old fears.
The constant love of family and friends.
In other words, it was another year to be alive.
I look back on 2011 with no real regret, and I look forward to 2012 the same way I look forward to each new day: The chance to pursue something great.
Make your moments count.
(A note about the image: It was captured in northwest New Jersey with Camera+, edited in Snapseed and then run through Picture Show, to add the wear marks.)
Merry Christmas, a bit early.
Looking back on all of this
I was prepared to wax eloquent about the past year, about its challenges, its highs and lows. About how for all the hard moments there have been moments of joy. About how it's been a stretching experience. About how I'm not quite there yet, but I'm closer.
But you know what? This is about the images. So sit back and engage with some of my favorite images from the past 12 months (which, you'll notice is weighted heavily toward portrait work with essentially no news work, as opposed to last year's retrospective).
Portraits
(My good friend, old co-worker and roomie, and great web designer Adam, of whose beard-growing prowess I'm supremely jealous.)
(One of many colorful characters in Washington, D.C.'s 2011 St. Patrick's Day parade.)
(I couldn't have asked for a better backdrop than this one on the D.C. waterfront.)
(If the sun's out, I'll always look for a way to backlight. And it never fails to make me giddy.)
(Another portrait of Channapha, an amazing cook and CEO of Legacies of War.)
(This shoot was, outside of Facebook, the first time I'd met Crystal, but we had a super relaxed and fun time walking around Eastern Market in D.C. and creating images.)
(From a headshot session Los Angeles.)
(Sometimes the old-school Hollywood look you have in your mind's eye and what you do with the camera delightfully collide.)
(If had to actually produce a favorite photos list of reasonable length, this would be on the short list.)
(Joseph is a great friend, fine musician and all-around good dude to have in front of the camera when a happy accident like this happens.)
(Sometimes, the best place to shoot for a hair and makeup portfolio is a dingy, dimly-lit back alley.)
(Or, somewhere like that.)
(My friend and former co-worker, Fran, is a great photographer and also at ease in front of the camera.)
(Another happy accident, that occurred while I was finding the light. I found it.)
(In addition to having a camera-friendly face — are you paying attention casting directors? — Scott is an all-around good dude.)
(This was the first time I'd met Michelle, who had apparently not had the greatest experience with photographers in the past, but we had a relaxed blast shooting together.)
And, capping off this section, six of my favorite images I created this month with my friend Sarah, who's supremely photogenic and ridiculously comfortable in front of a camera.)
Weddings
(Shooting Sheridan and Jade's outdoor wedding was one of the last things I shot before leaving California for Washington earlier this year. It was a pleasure.)
Two months later, I documented Mario and Rachel's beautiful and all-out celebratory Malibu wedding...
Four photos that don't fit in other categories
(Joseph makes an appearance again, busting out some spacey, rockin' tones with his band A Concrete Mess.)
(The agony and the ecstasy in downtown Seattle.)These next two... Frankly, it's pretty challenging to take a bad photo of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. I mean, look at it.
The token "the iPhone is amazing" section
But in all seriousness, having an iPhone has breathed a bit of fresh air into my shooting this year. The absolute ease of always having with me a compact and powerful imaging tool cannot be understated, whether I'm using it as a visual notepad for future shoots, using it as a discreet street photography camera, or just being able to capture candid moments without carrying around a bulky SLR. (My most-used photo apps, in case you're wondering, are Hipstamatic, Instagram, and Camera+ in conjunction with a few editing apps.)
(Early morning reflections at the port of Edmonds, WA.)
(I probably waited a good 15 minutes for this shot at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport.)
(Conversely, I nearly missed this shot at Newark Int'l. Airport.)
(A rainy moment in Dupont Circle, D.C.)
(Downtown Seattle, as seen from lower Queen Anne.)
(Taking in the awesome, powerful view of Mt. Saint Helens.)
(Another moment I nearly missed along the waterfront in Edmonds, WA, as this couple stopped moving just long enough for me to pull out my phone.)
(Downtown Seattle)
That last image is from somewhere along Interstate 5 in Northern California, taken as I left behind my home of the past decade-plus and headed for WA. As I head into a new year still marked by certain uncertainty, it's an apt image.And with that, I bid you a happy new year. When you get right down to it, the new year is just a changing of the calendar, but it's still a good time to look back, reflect, and look ahead and make the most of each new day.
Easily amused
New lens and neo-noir.
In addition to seeing some much-missed friends while in Southern California last week, an absolute highlight was getting to shoot with my friend Sarah, who has a knack for looking effortlessly in home in front of a camera. It was a rollicking good time of messing with lighting, gritty backgrounds and moody expressions (and putting my new 50mm to use).
This next photo? An absolutely happy accident. It's a little soft, but still...after an accident like this, I can pack up and go home.
When the pressroom goes quiet
(Given recent developments, I felt it was a good time to share some images I captured several years ago.)
My first day on the job, a fellow reporter gave me a walk-through of the paper. Where the bathroom was, where the break room was. The tour capped off with the cavernous pressroom, that she described to me as a good place to blow off steam now and then.
Over the next few years I would blow off a lot of steam in that room. Sometimes I'd wander back there mid-day when it was quiet. It was like a hushed, industrial cathedral, the only sound my steps and breaths, inhaling the incense of ink and paper, afternoon light pouring through the windows. Sometimes I'd stalk back there late in the evening, at the tail end of a tiresome shift, when the room was alive. The hulking old machine whirring whirring whirring and pressmen shouting their conversations.
I certainly believe that newspapers must adapt. The methods of news gathering don't really change all that much, but the methods of delivering it to the public certainly do.
But I couldn't help feel a pang of nostalgia and loss when I heard of the paper's recent decision to outsource its printing to another location.
Change can certainly be a good thing. Physical newspapers will probably continue to be phased out. And that will have certain benefits. But there is nothing quite like seeing, hearing, feeling and smelling a product through from start to finish — from the haggard reporter on the phone culling facts, to papers coming off the press to be prepped for delivery, all under one roof.
Family business
One light, handheld, working fast to capture a portrait of Rod Waters, whose family has owned a small chain of Seattle-area farm stands for decades. This was an image that wasn't used for a story posted over here.
Passive observer
What's pretty great about photographing dogs is that, unlike most people, they tend not to get too annoyed when a stranger shoves a camera in their face.
The Things We Should Never Forget
New York City, January 2011
As a general guideline, I prefer to keep my blog postings directly related to photography. But today, 10 years after evil touched America in such a dreadful way, I feel compelled to share some of these thoughts.
Prologue
I was 22 and it was a Monday. The bleach blond in my hair from the previous winter had finally grown out, thankfully. On all other details I draw a blank. Ten years after the fact, that’s all I can recall about Sept. 10, 2001. Just another Monday early in the school year. Almost 90,000 hours later, I wish I could remember anything about that day. I would pay dearly for details, faded scraps of history from the day before the world let out a collective gasp.
When I was young
I stand next to the floor-to-ceiling window and press my forehead against the cool, thick glass, flush with the outside of the building, and gaze straight down. Down there, way down there, silent and microscopic, Manhattan hustles and bustles. I look up and I can see all of New York City, and the very world stretching out forever.
My father and I are on the 107th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. I’m about 10 or 11 years old.
We had made the trip into Manhattan from New Jersey on a sunny afternoon. A relative in Poland had sent over for my mother a crystal vase, in the care of a man who worked at the Polish embassy. He left it at a counter in the lobby of the towers. A carefully made piece of crystal craftsmanship, packed quite unsecurely in a wrinkled, brown paper bag. Was the man simply so trusting that something easily broken would not be in danger of damage?
Somewhere in my parents’ house there’s a yellowed photograph my father snapped of me on the sidewalk outside the towers. As massive as they were, the Twin Towers never looked as imposing from afar as they did right down at street level. Down on the floor of Manhattan’s echoing canyons of glass and steel and concrete, down where the air is laced with the aroma of cigarettes, tar, hot dog carts and car exhaust fumes, I craned my neck upward, trying to grasp the sheer size and symmetry. It was so much to take in. It was a marvel.
Frozen
I’m probably about 16. It’s a sunny summer day. Along a fence at the edge of Liberty Island my sister and I pose for a photo with the Manhattan skyline in the background, the Twin Towers jutting out like redwoods in a forest of scrub oak. A moment frozen in time, when the thought entered no one’s mind of how things would change. It seems the possibility of trauma never enters our minds when it should.
Fixtures
For years, the Twin Towers were one of many details of life. Every day as I drove to work, if it was a clear day I relished those few seconds when I could steady my hands on the wheel, look east out the passenger side window and see the towers straight out in the distance. Stalwart. They were simply a fixture, a seemingly permanent part of the landscape.
On a Tuesday
The ringing of the phone in my ears grows louder as I force my eyes open. My bedroom is bathed in the cold, grey light of an unseasonably overcast California morning.
It’s my mother calling from New Jersey. She tells me the World Trade Center has been attacked, but it simply doesn’t register. Still groggy and half-asleep, my honest, initial thought is that she’s putting me on, that this is some strange way of forcing the point that it’s been too long since my last call. Nothing is registering. It quickly becomes clear that she is gravely serious.
The dorm I’m living in is a converted apartment complex. I throw on some clothes and a few of us head upstairs, to our resident director’s apartment where people are already huddled around the TV.
It does not make sense.
Over and over and over the footage replays. Over and over and over, seared into our brains is an onslaught of horror.
Most classes are cancelled. Gray clouds and an uneasy stillness hang over the campus, as we shuffle around not knowing what to think, watching the news on a TV in the student center as the same soul-crushing images play over and over and over.
The days and months and years tick by. Once a year the same footage is trotted out to be replayed over and over and over to remind us that Something Terrible happened. “Never Forget!” shout the slogans. As if we could forget. As if we’d somehow erased from our memory when all those lives ended in fireballs and choking smoke.
Epilogue
It’s a bitterly cold January day in New York. I’m in the city to meet a friend and shoot some portraits. I’m bundled up, walking the streets of lower Manhattan, where the afternoon light barely filters down to the canyon floor. It feels cold and harsh. And then, as I stop on a street corner I see it. A shaft of light from out beyond the city walls has penetrated, throwing its golden warmth across a small stretch of sidewalk. For seconds, each pedestrian who passes is bathed in illumination. Out of the shadows, back into the shadows. Somehow, the light finds its way through the darkness.
I, like the rest of you, will never forget what happened ten years ago. But I am weary of forgetting the other things. I am tired of not holding closely enough the small moments, the exchanged words — the good, not simply the bad.
Every day has the potential to be the day before tragedy stands at your door. Every day is a chance to see the sunlight crash down through the darkness; to hold tightly the good things; and the opportunity to shine that light into another’s life. Today may be all we have. If everything falls apart tomorrow, what will you recall about today?
That is something worth never forgetting.
I was 22 and it was a Monday. The bleach blond in my hair from the previous winter had finally grown out, thankfully. On all other details I draw a blank. Ten years after the fact, that’s all I can recall about Sept. 10, 2001. Just another Monday early in the school year. Almost 90,000 hours later, I wish I could remember anything about that day. I would pay dearly for details, faded scraps of history from the day before the world let out a collective gasp.
When I was young
I stand next to the floor-to-ceiling window and press my forehead against the cool, thick glass, flush with the outside of the building, and gaze straight down. Down there, way down there, silent and microscopic, Manhattan hustles and bustles. I look up and I can see all of New York City, and the very world stretching out forever.
My father and I are on the 107th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. I’m about 10 or 11 years old.
We had made the trip into Manhattan from New Jersey on a sunny afternoon. A relative in Poland had sent over for my mother a crystal vase, in the care of a man who worked at the Polish embassy. He left it at a counter in the lobby of the towers. A carefully made piece of crystal craftsmanship, packed quite unsecurely in a wrinkled, brown paper bag. Was the man simply so trusting that something easily broken would not be in danger of damage?
Somewhere in my parents’ house there’s a yellowed photograph my father snapped of me on the sidewalk outside the towers. As massive as they were, the Twin Towers never looked as imposing from afar as they did right down at street level. Down on the floor of Manhattan’s echoing canyons of glass and steel and concrete, down where the air is laced with the aroma of cigarettes, tar, hot dog carts and car exhaust fumes, I craned my neck upward, trying to grasp the sheer size and symmetry. It was so much to take in. It was a marvel.
Frozen
I’m probably about 16. It’s a sunny summer day. Along a fence at the edge of Liberty Island my sister and I pose for a photo with the Manhattan skyline in the background, the Twin Towers jutting out like redwoods in a forest of scrub oak. A moment frozen in time, when the thought entered no one’s mind of how things would change. It seems the possibility of trauma never enters our minds when it should.
Fixtures
For years, the Twin Towers were one of many details of life. Every day as I drove to work, if it was a clear day I relished those few seconds when I could steady my hands on the wheel, look east out the passenger side window and see the towers straight out in the distance. Stalwart. They were simply a fixture, a seemingly permanent part of the landscape.
On a Tuesday
The ringing of the phone in my ears grows louder as I force my eyes open. My bedroom is bathed in the cold, grey light of an unseasonably overcast California morning.
It’s my mother calling from New Jersey. She tells me the World Trade Center has been attacked, but it simply doesn’t register. Still groggy and half-asleep, my honest, initial thought is that she’s putting me on, that this is some strange way of forcing the point that it’s been too long since my last call. Nothing is registering. It quickly becomes clear that she is gravely serious.
The dorm I’m living in is a converted apartment complex. I throw on some clothes and a few of us head upstairs, to our resident director’s apartment where people are already huddled around the TV.
It does not make sense.
Over and over and over the footage replays. Over and over and over, seared into our brains is an onslaught of horror.
Most classes are cancelled. Gray clouds and an uneasy stillness hang over the campus, as we shuffle around not knowing what to think, watching the news on a TV in the student center as the same soul-crushing images play over and over and over.
The days and months and years tick by. Once a year the same footage is trotted out to be replayed over and over and over to remind us that Something Terrible happened. “Never Forget!” shout the slogans. As if we could forget. As if we’d somehow erased from our memory when all those lives ended in fireballs and choking smoke.
Epilogue
It’s a bitterly cold January day in New York. I’m in the city to meet a friend and shoot some portraits. I’m bundled up, walking the streets of lower Manhattan, where the afternoon light barely filters down to the canyon floor. It feels cold and harsh. And then, as I stop on a street corner I see it. A shaft of light from out beyond the city walls has penetrated, throwing its golden warmth across a small stretch of sidewalk. For seconds, each pedestrian who passes is bathed in illumination. Out of the shadows, back into the shadows. Somehow, the light finds its way through the darkness.
I, like the rest of you, will never forget what happened ten years ago. But I am weary of forgetting the other things. I am tired of not holding closely enough the small moments, the exchanged words — the good, not simply the bad.
Every day has the potential to be the day before tragedy stands at your door. Every day is a chance to see the sunlight crash down through the darkness; to hold tightly the good things; and the opportunity to shine that light into another’s life. Today may be all we have. If everything falls apart tomorrow, what will you recall about today?
That is something worth never forgetting.
Prints available for purchase
When it comes to photography, my niche and my passion is emotional portraiture and documentary coverage. That said, there's something I find soothing and reflective about capturing the occasional landscape images. So, after getting requests for prints, I've finally selected a handful of images to make available for purchase. They represent landscapes and details I've seen in my travels over the last several years. Please take a few moments to head over to my Imagekind page and peruse what's available, make a purchase if something speaks to you, and at the very least ... tell a friend.
The day after.
It's the day after an all-day wedding shoot (see previous post). What do I do? Relax by the pool? WRONG! Gear up and shoot more awesome images. I had a great time working with some of my favorite people on Sunday night, capturing images for hair-and-makeup rock stars Lola and Lovy. Here's a few I picked out today.
As a side note, Michelle felt a bit apprehensive before the shoot. I don't know what kind of experiences she's had with photographers in the past, but by the end of the night I was thrilled to hear what's become my favorite compliment from clients (aside from "great photos!"), that she felt really relaxed.
This next image is another in a series of happy accidents in my journey as an artist. I simply asked Scott to stand there while I tested the lighting. What I wound up with was an image I love. (Note to self: consider a collection titled "Perfect Mistakes.")
And finally, an image of Sarah, one of my favorite people to photograph. She's got killer eyes (which, of course, you can't see in this image) and makes posing seem so effortless.
Wedding bliss
That image right there pretty much sums up the feeling ALL DAY for Rachel and Mario's Malibu wedding. Their deep love for each other was so evident, no one was stressed out and everyone was having a good time.
I had the pleasure of capturing their engagement photos earlier this year, and had a blast shooting the wedding. I've many images to sort through, but here's a (big) handful of initial favorites from Saturday.
Rachel and Mario elected not to see each other before the ceremony. From a photographer's standpoint, that's sometimes a little bit of a logistical headache given the frequently detailed nature of wedding-day timelines. That was nowhere near the case with this wedding. It all worked out perfectly.
These next four images are also a study in looking for backgrounds in unlikely places. The first two were shot at the edge of a dusty parking lot, the third was down at the base of Pepperdine University's iconic Theme Tower, and the last was shot in an empty classroom lit by nasty fluorescent lights.
I don't think I've ever photographed a wedding where either the flower girl or the ring bearer didn't cry.
The Pepperdine chapel is just a little bit amazing.
Late afternoon light? Check. Veil? Check. Couple very much in love? CHECK.
There was a lot of this at the reception...
This week...
No work makes Jack a dull boy. So...the other day I and and a photog friend (and former co-worker) took a few hours to work on portrait technique and, since a photographer should have portraits of themself, shot portraits for each other. I've got a bunch to work through, but here's two of Fran I like very much. I used to be all about shooting with natural light, but in the past year I've started introducing more controlled light into my portraits.
A moment of stillness
Steely, rainy skies over Edmonds on a recent afternoon. But sometimes, for even just a few moments, the light breaks through, and you capture a moment of stillness amid the drama of nature.
Parade of images
Not a cloud was in sight as Edmonds residents crowded the sidewalks this morning for the town's annual July 4 parade. I and a fellow photographer geared up and made our way through the crowd, capturing images, striving to capture the essence of small-town Independence Day.
Respect America. Because if you don't, I'm pretty sure Smilin' Joe Spanglepants here will hunt you down.
It would've been easy to miss some of the smaller participants...
Lord Vader, I find your lack of red, white and blue disturbing.
Face off!
A sunset kind of love
After a few weeks of circling the runway, so to speak, I've landed. I moved into an apartment in Edmonds, just a little bit north of downtown Seattle. It's a great little shoreline town that reminds me in some ways of Ventura, California.
Yesterday, I capped off an afternoon of garage sales and furniture hunting by walking down to the waterfront, taking in the sunset and capturing a few images along the way.
This is probably one of my favorite images recently. It's candid, well-framed and (despite being just a little blurry) tells a story of a moment in time. This couple only stopped long enough for me to pull out my phone and quickly frame a shot before they moved on.
A photo I didn't take, a story I want to be told.
I wish I could say I took the photo below, but I did not. It was taken by the uber-talented photojournalist Zoriah Miller (Please visit www.zoriah.net to see his excellent work, and consider financially supporting tireless photojournalism). It's a wonderful candid image of Jerry Delakas, who's run a newsstand in New York City's East Village for the past quarter-century. It's a great portrait of a purveyor of a rapidly disappearing facet of life, when so many get their news from websites and Twitter updates.
Photo: Zoriah Miller
Why am I posting this? Because New York City, through its network of red tape and bureaucracy, is threatening to toss Mr. Delakas' piece of the American Dream from Cooper Square like so many discarded newspapers, and that's a shame. It's a shame to see things like this happen to a small business owner.
Mr. Delakas was willed the business license by the owner, who died several years ago. He's a neighborhood fixture, and runs the stand seven days a week.
So, all this to say, I'd encourage you to visit www.savejerry.com, look at the photos and read Jerry's story, and sign the petition to allow him to keep his business, his livelihood.
In a NY Daily News story earlier this spring, Larry Schultz, who lives across from Mr. Delakas' stand, said: "Jerry's here rain, snow, sleet, blistering heat. ... He's just a real important part of our community. We think the world of him.
Seattle moments
The past month has been crazy. After nearly 11 years in Southern California, I packed my life into the car and headed north, to the Evergreen State. It's time for a new chapter, a new season. So I'm settling in and getting acquainted to life in the Pacific Northwest, moving into a place minutes from downtown Seattle.
While I've been doing a lot of iPhone shooting lately, a few days ago I pulled out the SLR as well, and wandered downtown with a fellow photographer. Seattle is a great city for street shooting.
Coming and going...
I've fallen in love with the iPhone as a photo tool. There's nothing like having a quality image capture device on you at all times, particularly one that is part of your phone and takes up no extra pocket space.
Lately, I'm shooting mostly black-and-white images with Hipstamatic.
In the night
I did some photos the other night for my good friend and former bandmate Joseph. We got some really great stuff that will make an appearance here soon enough. For now, here's one of my favorites. This is pretty much straight out of the camera, and those flukey lens flares couldn't be in a better place.
