Baby Steven

Baby Steven, Baby's Mommy & Baby's Daddy and I hit a park in Medford, MA for photos ...

Mommy Love

My personal fav

Happy baby, happy family

A Backyard Wedding

On July 18, my good friend Paul tied the knot with the lady of his heart: Amy.  Gotta love a backyard wedding -- Congrats!

Gettin' Married

Mr & Mrs

Thomas turns 3 months

Thomas turns 3 months. I was pretty lucky back in March to get to meet this little guy on the first day of his life. Check out those newborn photos here.

TJ askin for hugs

When a baby loves his Mommy!

Baby James!

TJ is Born!

Introducing (3 weeks early) little Thomas Joseph! I was lucky enough to meet and photograph him on his very first day of life.  It was a pretty moving experience to hold this teeny tiny baby with all the human bits and pieces ... just miniature.

We hadn't met him yet, but we photographed him a few weeks back. Check out the pregnancy photos here.

Grandma dotes on her first grandchild.

First family portrait. Look at those little feet!

Father & Son

Introducing Miss Kayla

Miss Kayla, welcome to the world, we need more beauties! Born March 29, 2009 I photographed Kayla and her glowing new Mom Hilary 3 weeks later.

Kayla is already a great baby. At times she closely resembled a cherub.

Babies have such amazing raw emotion.

Landscapes Ain't So Bad.

I taught this lighting class at the DeCordova this winter.  DeCordova, for being a smaller sized museum (and sculpture park), has a rather sizable photography collection.

As part of the course, I was encouraged to include the museum's collection in the "curriculum," as it were. Which I was pretty ecstatic about.

In Paris I had a class called "Museums." It was awful. I had to go to a different museum every week and see fantastic photography and learn about all the greats. Just awful.

So needless to say, this brought me back there and wishing .... well ... wishing.

Saw some amazing photographers and their work - not behind glass or in the pages of a book:

• Doc Edgarton (incidentally, the first place I ever heard of Edgarton was at a DeCordova show in the 90's)
  
• Walker Evans
• Larry Fink
• Charles "Teenie" Harris
• Jacobi Lotte
• Arnold Newman
• Edward Steichen
• Eugene Richards (heard him talk at an agency VII conference in London once)
  
• Arno Minkkinen
• Brad Washburn
  
• And a few others ...

We got to go up and close personal and had a discussion on light, subject, mood, composition, etc.

One thing I learned out of teaching this class that blew my mind was that perhaps I do like landscape photography after all. They bored me. I'm not afraid to say it. But seeing Brad Washburn's stuff, up close and personal, was amazing.

I understood for the first time how hard it is to take a picture of a mountain. I'd been spewing on and on to the students the importance of light -- creating it, taking it away, shaping and molding it. Well holy smokes! Imagine if you had no possible way on earth to "strobe" a mountain and / or "flag" it!? Jesus. That's some serious talent. Props brah.

Heidi is pregnant. OMG.

Some photos of my 7 month preggar college roommate. Nothing like new life to breath new life into you. Amazing shoot, thanks Heidi, I'm excited to meet the little bugger.

A Creamy Photo Retouch

I'm not too psyched that I have to display my before and afters like this, but c'est la vie. Can't seem to get the javascript rollover to work on blooger. Boo blooger, boo!

In any case, I decided to retouch this photo so the result would be a creamy monotone and her skin would feel like silk.  That is, if skin in a photo can felt like anything.

Check out a better before and after version and get some close ups of this shot at qretouching.com.

Golf cart, golf course, golfers. Must be a ... WEDDING!

John & Marlene tied the knot where they met: at the Vesper Country Club in Tyngsboro, MA. Gorgeous day full of fantastic sun for a wedding OR a round of golf.

Two are better than one, double the fun!

Those eyes

.... are amazing and oh so intense!

Fun with the SX-70

The whole look is real interesting

validation, y'all.

I don't think you know how good it feels when someone looks at your photo and sees a story in it. Validating. Appreciated. Talented. (Although there LITERALLY are 100 shots I took that day that I prefer).

The owner of the bag company sent me an email regarding this photo:

"Stark, girl in elegant dress, on elegant settee, in somewhat of a drab room with her 'art' hung on the wall. She looks like she doesn’t have much except that she has high quality style.

Her bags are so precious she uses them as art. She looks like she is waiting for someone(?).. maybe a little sad that “he” hasn’t shown up yet.

Beautiful color balance, and the lighting is great. [... ] That shot belongs in a high end glam magazine.

[...] The whole look is real interesting."

Bruce Davidson

The first time I saw work by Bruce Davidson, a member of Magnum, was February last year (2007). the Fondation HCB in Paris was displaying his harlem east 100th street (black and white photos here) series and his civil rights movement series time of change.  Two emblematic visual testimonies of 1960's America.

I recently joined CIPNE. you know, to "network" and be "a part of community" and such. I have no idea how they did it, but they got Davidson.

He stood in front of a screen that projected his various series (the dwarf, Brooklyn gang, time of change, coal miners, east 100th street, subway, central park, stills from movie misfits, Paris nature) and chatted. He shared stories. There are things that I would like to remember from his talk. I will put them in a list with bullet points.  Because if it were me reading this, I would never pay attention to paragraphs.

From the mouth of b. davison:

• dude shot 100's of annual reports (note to self: stop being too proud)
• he shot the harlem series over 2 years, and his central park series over 2 -3 years (note to self: photography takes time)
• worked for LIFE magazine, then quit, looking to work on the things that mattered to him (note to self: you can be proud sometimes)
• his early career he shot with a leica.
  
• the harlem series he shot using a 4x5 ending up with over 4,000 negatives.
• he was asked why he used the 4 x 5 for this series. it affected me, his answer:
  
• the 4 x 5 is not a camera you can be quick with. you cannot escape the presence of the camera. the use of the 4x5 must be methodical, and requires complete collaboration from your subject.
• when the 4 x 5 came out, it was called the "miniature camera."

And the number one thing b. davidson said:

"To edit is to face your truth."

That quote deserves another blog. Loooooook out.

b. davidson himself:

The Shredder

Last night I had a dream that I literally took my Photographers Market 2007 book and shoved it through my shredder.

Thoughts?

How Dare You? Times 12.

So I happened upon this blog post. It claims there are 12 things you must photograph before you die.

I was instantly annoyed at such in the box constraints. But of course that lasted all of 6 seconds before I got paranoid and decided I must prove that i have taken all 12 of them!!

So then I actually read the post. I suppose I agree with the first two:

1. A perfect portrait
2. A complete story

Although in agreeing that one must take a perfect portrait and make a complete story, I also disagree, of course there is ever the portrait or the complete story.

Every photograph taken leads to the next one y'all, so don't stop now!

Feast your eyes on a portrait of Clara. i wouldn't say it's perfect but I love it.

Sometimes, even a truck is a camera.

http://www.cameratruck.es

Too many favorites

We messed around and moved around so much for this shoot that it resulted in a ton of unique and interesting shots with different moods.  Every time I think I know which my favorite shot is, there is another one I am enamored with.  I only wish we had a wardrobe change in there somewhere. Out of about 3,000 (560) photos - these are my absolute favorites.

Special thanks to Katie, Karla & Kristin & dress by Ari.

Memory and the Absence of War

You're lookin' at it. The final final. Someday I'll show you the two that didn't make the cut. For now we focus on winners only.

If you click anywhere in this sentence, you will be taken to a page where you can view larger versions of each image.

Next, I'm going to paraphrase the artist's statement that was a required accompaniment to the photos.

"...

During the month of August 2007, I was lucky enough to find myself in a situation where I could photograph many World War II historic locations in and around Normandy, France. My paternal grandfather had been a Lt. Colonel in WWII, giving over 37 years of his life to the United States Army. His death at age 92, 9 months prior, had left me with an insatiable curiosity about the events surrounding D-Day. The army was never far from his thoughts. In the end, as his physical health deteriorated, his mind returned to those same battlefields where he had felt the most alive.

This series of photographs explores the notion of war and time. More specifically, it explores the effect of war and time on a physical location, as well as our collective human memory. The idea that the monstrous and bloodied events that took place in Normandy could ever fade seems cruel and unimaginable. Yet the jarring sounds of guns and wails of dying soldiers dissipate into the calming quiet of a rolling ocean, as the cries of children at play permeate the beach, some 60 years later.

..."

and on and on. and. on.

Happy Valentine's Day Photography.

Happy Valentine's Day

Photography ... My ass has been officially kicked. I am smitten with you sky photo.

Once again, the object of my desire is a photo taken with my SX-70. the camera, incidentally is still in the shop.

Moment of silence.

I am conclusively in motion. I am putting together a submission for a juried show in the spring.  What happened was this.I  did a little visualizing.  I imagined myself at the show with none of my photos on the wall. I surmised there could be one of two reasons for this. One would be that I gave it my all and simply didn't make the cut this year. The other would be I was too depressed, self involved, or lazy. Unable to summon courage to lay some sometimes not pleasant stuff on the line and submit work.

I decided the latter felt a lot worse.

So, look out!  The flood gates are open. I am a scan-o-holic at the moment. Skim scan skitchin' my Normandy, Nice & Ireland polaroids like it's goin outta style.

From the view of a photographer

I didn't take this picture, my mom did. It's a picture of Christmas dinner at my grandparents house. I look to be about 5 or 6.

I sent it to my mom after my grandfather died to highlight the sad fact that 4/7 people in it are no longer with us.

She responded that she was sad that it was a family picture and that she wasn't in it; thus making her not important.

I told her that in fact, she is the most important person in this picture. Everyone (except me) is looking at her. She is the focal point. And actually, the biggest point to be made here is that the photo wouldn't exist at all if she hadn't taken it; making her absolutely the most important person to this photo.

So the phrase "from the view of a photographer" is facetious. Just look at their pictures.