Travel

This past week I was asked to come up with a photograph inspired by another painting or photograph. My mind instantly went to one of my favorite images of all time, featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono taken by Annie Leibovitz.  I am currently reading her book, "at work" in where she describes how this photograph came about.  Sometimes, the best shots you take are the ones where you are not in complete control.  You will have to read the book to learn why.  Unfortunately, this was one of the last photographs of John Lennon before he was shot the next day. I love it when my friends are up to participate in my crazy requests.  I asked Jamie and Traci if they wouldn't mind recreating this photograph, but with a modern spin.  I didn't expect them to jump on board right away but they both agreed and thought it would be fun.  It was. I came over with a large ladder, sheet and my camera.  We moved all of the furniture out of the way to place the sheet o...

This week I am challenged to photograph my family in a unique way.  The timing of this project couldn't be more perfect.  As I blogged about it earlier, I am going through all of the boxes in my garage to either donate or sell .  This also means going through boxes and boxes of old photographs.  Many of these photos I haven't seen since I packed them away...whenever that was. I read an entry on the Lenscratch blog about another site called, Dear Photograph.  This site posts photographs of photographs taken in the past into the present.  I loved the idea and decided to go through the box of photographs I collected to see if I had any from my childhood home taken outside.  I sorted through what I had and found a few taken in the front of the house and in the backyard.  I decided to take a trip to my childhood home to see if I could line up the photographs I had. I haven't been to this house in over twenty years.  Even though it's only thirty...

I was challenged this week to create a typology. "Typology is the study of types, and a photographic typology is a suite of images or related forms, shot in a consistent, repetitive manner; to be fully understood, the images must be viewed as a complete series." I've done this in the past, not really knowing what it was called or really... why I was doing it.  A few years ago, I documented all of the textures I encountered on the ground during my travels with "What lies beneth" and every day for a month in 2009, I visited the same house on the beach at different times of the day with my "Race Point" series of photographs. This time, I took a walk around one city block in Long Beach and photographed cigarette butts laying on the ground. At first, I just shot each one as I saw them on the street or sidewalk without thinking. After a while, I started to notice them taking on unique personalities.  It was as if each one had a history and character by the...

In a new class that I am taking, our assignment was to tell the class a little about ourselves by answering ten questions in photographs.  On this blog, I thought about giving you the literal answer at the end of the entry about how the photograph spoke to me, or what it says but I will leave that up to your imagination.  Here are my answers in photographs that I took: Who are you? What did you look like as a child? What is your main character trait? What inspires you the most? What do you normally never take a picture of? What do you love about photography? If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be? What is the first thing you touch in the morning? If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? What is the meaning of life? Here are other photographic answers to these questions from photographers... What do your answers look like?

It's the project I dreaded...the self portrait.  I'm taking a class and needed to come up with a self portrait this week. As with most photographers, I would rather be the one taking the photograph and not being the subject.  However, I've seen some amazing examples of what some photographers are doing with self portraits.  One of my new favorites is Kelli Connell.   I also enjoy the self portraits from Jen Davis. Seeing so many wonderful self portraits from so many talented photographers can both inspire and discourage you, depending on what your brain tells you.  For me, I absolutely LOVE looking at photographs from all photographers and the group of self portraits that Aline Smithson presented were no different.  Very inspiring! Self portraits can be discouraging since it's such a daunting task for some, me included. I have many ideas in mind and I may or may not share them here.  I will however, share this one.  I took a break from my garage...

I've haven't blogged about my life in a long time.  Sure, I post things here and there when I am excited about accomplishing something with my photography and want to share that with you but haven't really talked about other things I've been doing. My Mother and Step Father are moving to Mexico.  I took this picture of my mom on the beach near where they are going to live.  Obviously, she's excited for the move. They've lived in a beautiful house in Sedona for ten years now and wanted to live near the water on a small budget.  They found a place right away that suited their needs so they are packing up and moving out.  I drove to Arizona to help my mother get ready for the move.  We didn't pack up what she would take with her.  Rather, we got rid of everything she has collected over the past several years.  We took trip after trip to the good will to donate a lot of the clothes she hasn't worn in the past six months.  Needless to say, the tas...

I had so much fun last June in Jackson Center, Ohio for the second annual "Alumapalooza" event!  Held on the grounds of the Airstream Factory, hundreds of dedicated Airstream owners gather to meet, learn, and mostly have a good time together with their common love of Airstreams. I wrote a little about my experience HERE and put together a slide show of some of the photographs I took while I was there.  You can see that slideshow by clicking HERE. I am thrilled that eight portraits I took (including the cover) are featured in the Fall, 2011 edition of Airstream Life Magazine.  Sign ups are already happening on their official Alumapalooza website , so I would get your reservation in early for 2012.  I hope to see you there next year!

I am thrilled that my photograph, "Brothers" was selected by the folks at Photographer's Forum to be included in their hardcover "Best of 2011" book (out in December).  I took this photograph while I was visiting the Vintage Trailer show during Palm Spring's Modernism week back in February.  I wrote about my experience during the week  HERE. When I am at an event, I usually stand around and observe all of the people around me as there were many characters at this particular show. These two boys stuck out in my mind right away and I immediately approached their parents and asked if I could take their photograph. The parents were visiting the show and said, "sure!" (For the curious photographer, the parents also signed a release) The boys were very animated by running around and making faces.  I was trying to tell them to hold still and they weren't listening until their father yelled something at them in French.  At that moment, my "stop ...