The Solstice is Upon Us and that Means the Fall Portfolio is Here!

For me and my family, 2022 has been a big year filled with soaring ups and pretty devastating downs.  First, we completely renovated and sold our old home on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Then, we picked up and moved our entire existence almost 700 miles away to Maine which we love and where we have dreamed of living for years. This meant however leaving friends and family very far behind us. Then in September I unexpectedly lost my mother before she was able to visit our new home.

Though these are tough events to handle, I’m finding it incredibly exciting embarking upon this new journey. You see, for the first time in my life I am faced with learning to build a whole new community of friends, which is actually pretty fun and interesting! Not just that, but I’m making a go at being a landscape photographer, full time. So “the future is wide open” as the famous troubadour Tom Petty said. All of this excitement however has contributed heavily to a drastically lowered motivation for making imagery of any kind lately whether it be photography, painting or sculpture, I find myself feeling pretty unsure about a lot of it.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love making photography. I still love drawing, painting and sculpture. In fact, I spend most of my time thinking about artistic pursuits and what’s coming next. I even got out quite a bit this fall on creative journeys. I went on a couple of trips and put together a half way decent portfolio for the season as well. No, I didn’t make any videos for Youtube but I think that the time off from YouTube recently has been a blessing, not a curse.

YouTube was taking up too much of my bandwidth for too little return. In short, I felt as though I was spinning my wheels. The time off has allowed me to regroup and to begin rethinking my goals for my work as a whole and for the YouTube channel in general and that has been exactly what was needed.

During my time away from YouTube, I have been working out how the new house will shape up (yep, we bought another fixer upper) and learning the guitar again for the first time in 30 years, and generally reshaping how I live. I did after all, move to the country from the city. No stops in between at all. My closest town is 10 miles away and my closest neighbors, at least on my side of the street are a quarter of a mile away. The trade off for this isolation is the view from the back of my house, the silence, and the access to the outdoors that I love so much. It’s spectacular!

Living with such beauty right outside your front (and back) door doesn’t come without dangers of course. Bears, sharks, and the occasional fisherman coming up the cove causing a ruckus. It’s all quite risky business you see, but I think I’ve decided that I can handle it just fine. The other danger is the over-saturation of beautiful things in ones life. Now, I never would have thought this possible but I’ve noticed that from time to time I take some of it for granted now that I live on top of it. I quickly rein that in however as I am well aware that I am fortunate beyond words and will never actually take any of it for granted. Besides, the lack of stress of the big city and the ability to just relax without interruption is amazing and something I have wanted my entire life.

Speaking of, there is one upside to seeing the beauty every day that I find very important. and that’s that I am learning far more effectively how to discern the difference between what I want to photograph and what is just “surface” nice, and therefore should just be for looking at. This is hard to come to terms with when you are spending short amounts of time in a location. You tend to “spray and pray” a lot, hoping to get a shot out of as many things as you can fit in to shoot during the time when the light is as you want it.

I can go on about all this “newness” infinitum, but it all starts to feel as though I am boasting, or bragging, or I don’t know, saying “look at me!” but that’s not my intention at all. I’m just working out the ups and downs of a new place and the positives and negatives that come with that.

All of that said, I hope you enjoy the portfolio. As I begin my journey working in Maine, the evolution of ideas and techniques is bound to occur. These are my first of what will be many many more works in and about this place we now call home.

All image are available as prints from 8.5x11 to 17x22 inches. Drop me an email on my website to inquire!

Click on the Images below to see the full size uncropped image! (Once in full screen left and right arrows will cycle through images)

Another Video From Maine! Dronelicious!

I pleased to show all of you my next video from Maine. This one is all drone footage! I would love to have a little challenge that pits my Mavic Air (selling) against my Mavic Air 2 (Just bought!). Can you pick out which shots are from which drone? Thanks for watching again and I hope you enjoy it!

Maine VLOG Episode 1

I am so happy to have been able to visit my favorite place in the whole world again. Upon arrival, I had to see to some chores. They were executed with welcome release. It’s good to see to things in a place you love.

Another Chesapeake Bay Sunrise

My first video in 3 months. I am super excited. It’s not much and a little off the cuff but I enjoyed making a new video. Hope you like it!

Smalltime Fishermen, Two Decades Later

In late summer of 2002 I began a documentary project examining the lives of working fisherman primarily in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I was interested in the towns of Salvo and Avon at the time and developed a relationship with a group of local private non-corporate fishermen. Over time I was forced to walk away from the work and unfortunately the notebooks of information on the photographic work were lost to house moves over and over during the last 18 years. Now, I have decided to pick the project back up and expand its width and breadth to include the Chesapeake bay and Delaware. As I track down the people in these photos, the names and stories will return and the contrast from almost two decades of change will begin to become apparent in the story.

For now, I have these photos and hundreds more like them that I will release and talk about over time. As I regain the information about their subjects, I will update the stories to include them. While I create new work, with new people, I will post those stories here as well. Come with me on a journey that just may span another two decades outlining the lives and stories of a people that have always lived on the brink and deserve to be recognized.

The four men you see in these photos all are fishermen in their own right. They choose to work together to combine their boats and to lessen the load when completing a larger task like long netting. Nothing like the corporate factory ships that send out miles and miles of net and draw in half the life in a given area of ocean, these men use a net that spans no more than a quarter to a half of a mile and produces a fair level of sustainable take from the waters in which they fish. Well aware of what overfishing can and has done to small fishermen they are careful to follow the regulations and only take what is needed to stay under the levels required by law.

Once near the fishing ground, a large amount of pointing and yelling to get the three boats lined up takes place. It’s an intricate aquatic dance to coordinate three small boats in an effort to get a quarter to a half mile of netting out without a snag or a tangle though those things do happen at times. There is sometimes a man on board who can repair a net if you're lucky.

The docks where fish are sold are almost always home to a restaurant and are always home to many local cats for obvious reasons. They await the boats daily with a fervor that cat owners recognize well from feeding time at home.,

FISH!

My Return to Film Photography

Recently I decided to return to my roots and pick film photography back up. There are a number of reasons for the return, but my history with film is primary among them. Simply put, I missed film. I missed the uncertainty inherent in the craft/process and I missed not having to stare at a computer to make an image. I knew that I had to concentrate on what I wanted when shooting and I had to pre-visualize everything if I wanted to make a successful photograph. These things are important to me as a human being and as an artist.

Best Subs in DC In the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, people must go about many of their daily tasks regardless. (Nikon FE2 Nikkor 28mm F2.8, Ilford HP5 developed in X-Tol, scanned and finished in Capture One).

Twenty five years ago I began my path as an artist at the local community college. I learned all sorts of things there but primary among them is that I as an individual can decide my own path and as a result, I alone would be responsible for the decisions that would shape my life. I spent time learning to draw, to paint, to sculpt and to photograph. I studied art history and though I had been learning all manner of liberal arts curricula, the arts were what really stuck in my brain.

My Dog Bert (Nikon F100, Nikkor 24mm F2.8-D, Kodak T-Max Professional developed in X-Tol, Scanned and finished in Capture One).

When I finished at that fine institution I went on to what was at the time, the best public art university in the United States, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). I would attend VCU to finish up my undergraduate degrees in Sculpture, Studio Arts (photography) and Art History. Then I decided it was time to attack my masters degree and this is where it gets truly relevant. I made the life altering decision to undertake a Master of Fine Arts in Photography and Filmmaking.

The key word in that whole equation is film. I loved it. I built a dark room in my apartment. I eat breathed and lived photography. I bought cameras I couldn’t afford. I showed and showed my work in galleries all over town and then around the US. I stayed up all night on alcohol fueled benders developing film and printing until I couldn’t see straight and eventually crashed. I and my cohorts studied hard, drank harder and partied even harder. I always carried cameras. I had Leicas, a pair of Contaxs, numerous Nikons. You name it, I had one, all so I had the right camera to shoot with or be seen with. All the while loving everything about film. The truth is that I was a zealot for film. 

Tidal Sands (Nikon FM, Nikkor 50mm F1.8 AI, scanned and finished in Capture One).

During that period, there were rumblings that digital was coming but those cameras cost many tens of thousands of dollars and it seemed unlikely anyone would want one let alone actually own one of those monstrosities. They were sacrilege. They didn’t use film. Sure they used our lenses but the sensors at the time were a joke. Nothing anyone could ever want. I mean, why would they?

As time moved on so did the photography world. As I was running a successful commercial photography business I stayed the course. I refused the digital movement. Even when I did finally buy a digital camera, I rarely used it for much. I was still singing the praises of film and calling anyone who went with digital, traitors. 

The Precarious Nature of a Tree Living Near the Bay (Fuji GW690 (6x9 Rangefinder) Fujinon 90mm F3.5, Fuji Neopan Acros 100 developed in X-Tol).

And then it happened. Not one, but three of my clients all wanted nothing but digital, all at once. I thought, sure, no problem. I’ll just get the medium format film scanned and no biggie, I’m in like Flynn. Not so fast. It turned out to be prohibitively expensive to scan film at resolutions and qualities that magazines and commercial organizations wanted. I was trapped. I was forced to shoot digital. 

The rest is history of course. I made the transition. I stopped using film and I packed all of my film equipment carefully with the fear that I might again need it. Those days didn’t come. I began the disassembly of a dream and I got rid of the Leicas and the Contax. I kept a Skeleton crew of film cameras and one of my three darkroom setups because I felt I had to.  My excuse was for no other reasons than posterity and shelf display when I’d point at the shelf and tell people this is what the old days were like. The rest, the pair of Mamiya 645s, the horseman 4x5 and the lenses to go with all were sold. Film was dead. There was no reason to consider it.

Tulip Tree by the Bay (Nikon FM, Nikkor 50mm F1.9 AI, T-Max 100 developed in X-Tol)

Even during my years as an Adjunct Professor of Art, I too rode the wave of the digital high. I told students not to bother learning film and I even went so far as to vote for the photography department to get rid of the traditional darkroom classes. Thank God they didn’t. What was I thinking? 

Digital has been a boon. Timelines are compressed to a day that once were weeks. Jobs can be shot and passed off in a blink. You can see what you shot immediately. Even if you aren’t an adept photographer, you can take enough shots to make it seem like you are because as Picasso said about his many masterpieces, if you throw enough darts at a dart board, you are bound to hit a bulls eye.

There is just one problem with digital. With all the convenience and instantaneous gratification, the art of the craft has been lost. If you fuck up a shoot, you can likely fix it in photoshop. Hell, cameras even have dual memory card slots because people are so unable to accept it when something goes wrong that they insist upon massive redundancy. It would be good for all photographers to have an entire roll of film lost, screwed up or otherwise unusable just so they can feel what it’s like to have to do a small reshoot and maybe even get it better the second time. This is completely unrealistic with the ad agencies of the current era. That kind of mistake just might get you fired.

Tool Shed With Aged Taxidermy (Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex (6x6 TLR), Ilford HP5 developed in X-Tol)

The frantic nature of things exists on all sides. My friend Paul who is also a landscape photographer is fond of saying things like, “I don’t shoot just one thing during a sunrise because I might miss something if I do.” That mentality is the world we are in now, and I am guilty as the next photographer of it.

I’m sure you know where this is going of course. Lately, and with the Covid-19 Pandemic in full swing around the globe, I decided to shoot film again. I decided I needed to really slow down. I had already been slowing my pace when shooting to the point where at times, I would go out on a landscape shoot and come back with one image and nothing more. I am thoroughly enjoying film. I love that I can’t check my images after shooting them to see if I got it. I am of course fortunate to have been weened in the time of analog cameras so I don’t have the insecurity that the digital only community posess regarding their ability to capture an image. I too know that rarely but sometimes I won’t and that that actually doesn’t matter. There will always be another opportunity. As they say, the opportunities are where you make them.

Tons of Tones (Fuji GW690 (6x9 Rangefinder) Fujinon 90mm F3.5, Fuji Neopan Acros 100 developed in X-Tol).

As we move through this worldwide problem. We will come out the other side changed. Societally, mentally, and emotionally. That doesn’t mean of course that clients will suddenly want me to shoot film for them, but I do hope it means that we will all slow down and that I will continue the craft and the art of analog photography. There is an unbelievable sense of zen that comes with knowing the medium, creating the thing, and ending the action with a successful piece.

This week, I will go on a film only landscape shoot for the first time in 15 years. I will endeavor to bring back a shining example of what film photography can be for landscape work, but then again, if I don’t, there will always be another opportunity, or there won’t. Fortunately, that is within my power to decide.

One last note. All of these photos were shot over the last two weeks. I have plenty of film in my freezer that I did keep for the last 15 years. I still had that nagging feeling that I’d need it one day and here we are.

.

Lands End (Fuji GW690 (6x9 Rangefinder) Fujinon 90mm F3.5, Fuji Neopan Acros 100 developed in X-Tol)

THE WEEK IN PHOTOS PART II, AN EXPERIMENT IN MEANINGFUL PHOTO SHARING

This week I am continuing my attempt at meaningful photo sharing. It’s not important if you double tap, it’s not important if you follow, what’s important is looking at the photos, maybe commenting and sure, there’s nothing wrong with clicking like. I hope you enjoy my second installment of this experiment in meaningful social sharing.

These posts will include photos that I find particularly interesting or good from my week of shooting. The rules for me will be as follows: The photographs all have to be made within the week between Sunday to Sunday. I'll try to get them out every Monday or Tuesday of course. That's the only rules.

Week in Photos 02-24-2020 03-01-2020

The Week in Photos, an Experiment in Meaningful Photo Sharing

This week I am starting a new process. I am going to make an attempt at sharing my best, or at least photos I like from the past week. I am hoping that it will be a more meaningful way of sharing my imagery than Instascam. It will also be interesting because it removes the daily upload aspect and allows me to curate my week in a way that feels more genuine and attached to the non digital “real” world. So here goes, this is the first post. Ill be sharing to Flikr as well so if that’s your preferred medium, then click that link instead. I know that I prefer it on Flikr since the image resolution is definitely higher. Thanks again for visiting and enjoy!

Week in Photos 02-16-2020 02-23-2020

The Sheer Beauty of Shenandoah National Park in Winter

Shenandoah National Park is surprisingly beautiful this time of year. I take you along on a trip to Big Meadows and for some sunrise fun in the mountains! Camera used for stills photography: Nikon Z7 Camera used to shoot this video: Fujifilm X-T3 Gimbal: Zhiyun Weebill Lab App used for footage shot with iPhone: FILMIC Pro Paul's 500px page:

Shenandoah National Park is surprisingly beautiful this time of year. I take you along on a trip to Big Meadows and for some sunrise fun in the mountains! Ca...

Office-Talk. This week we review the Weebill Lab and compare the Z6 to the XT3. Come on Fuji!

This week we review the Weebill Lab from Zhiyun. We also compare the Z6 to the X-T3 and talk about why Fujifilm can't seem to get it together when using a Zhiyun gimbal. We wander the Navy Yard and hit Hatoba, one of DCs best Ramen places. Come join us for an amazing adventure!!! @Zhiyun_tech @Hatobadc

This week we review the Weebill Lab from Zhiyun. We also compare the Z6 to the X-T3 and talk about why Fujifilm can't seem to get it together when using a Zh...

Jug Bay is Scary Calm and Beautiful!

For this episode, I head to Jug Bay on the Patuxent River just outside of DC to see if there are any photos to be made and yes, you guessed it! Its a less than optimal day. I find lots to see and shoot and even get some nice drone footage. Proof that a nice day isn't necessary for some good results in landscape photography.

For this episode, I head to Jug Bay on the Patuxent River just outside of DC to see if there are any photos to be made and yes, you guessed it! Its a less than optimal day. I find lots to see and shoot and even get some nice drone footage.

World Press Photo Exhibition 2019 Opening Reception

“All in attendance seemed to absolutely love the show. Constant murmurs of awe and excitement flowed through the hall and everywhere were people in connective meditation with the work that they were surveying. Familiar faces were all around including Focus on the Story’s very own Chantal Wong and Mike Jett.”

Read More