Full post returns when I’m out of the woods.
2019: 24 (Do The Hustle)
We’re now two weeks into our GoFundMe campaign, and we’re continuing to receive much support. Pictured above is the mock up of our self-published book. If you donate $50 to the cause, you get a copy of the book. There will only be 100 copies printed, so this may be the best way to ensure you snag one for yourself. If you are on the fence about contributing, I humbly ask if you would consider helping out. Even a small donation is a step towards our goal. CLICK HERE to contribute. A hearty THANK YOU to all that have already thrown in their support.
2019: 23 (Gaining Traction)
Our GoFundMe is underway for just a one week, and we’ve already received much support. If you are on the fence about contributing, I humbly ask if you consider helping out. Even a small donation is a step towards our goal. CLICK HERE to contribute.
2019: 22 (The Next Thing Is...)
Very pleased to FINALLY announce the next project I am bringing into the world. This one is particularly exciting, as it is a collaboration with two fellow members of the Latent Image Collective. Along with my photo compatriots Fábio Miguel Roque (who hails from Portugal) and Hean Kuan Ong (living in Malaysia) we are unveiling our book and exhibition project titled “The River, The Ocean, The Sea.” We have been working on this collaboration for almost two years, and it is now almost ready for “prime time.”
The idea behind the project is that each of us lives near a body of water that is a defining feature of the place we call home, and the place where we create our art. Each of has explored this theme in our own personal way. the results of this exploration will be released as a self-published book, and will also be the focus of an exhibition at the Albuquerque Open Space Gallery later this summer.
My part of the project features photos from the bosque surrounding the Rio Grande here in New Mexico, with most of my photos coming from within the city limits of Albuquerque. The project has forced me to approach my work in a new way, and it really opened me up to an environment and an aesthetic that was unfamiliar to me. I am proud of this new work, and extra proud to have connected my city with two other far-flung locations. We are united through photography, and through our reliance upon the precious element of water.
Our ambitious project now needs YOUR help to get over the final hurdle and out into the world. The cost of printing 100 books, as well as printing and framing over 90 photographs for the gallery exhibition is quite steep. To that end, Fábio, Hean Kuan and I have created a GoFundMe fundraiser to help offset the costs of this project. We are offering some really great, limited edition incentives for those who can support our effort. I would be humbled by any help you can provided.
To support our GoFundMe, please click here.
Water is life, as is art.
2019: 21 (Nothing to Say)
Silence might be golden, but right now I got nothing to shine.
2019: 20 (Somewhere Else)
Sometimes work life gets in the way of personal life. This was one of those weeks. In the interest in keeping up this weekly blog posting, I’m at least sharing a few images I made while focussing on a TV production. Long hours in prep and two 12 hour days on set left little time for anything else. I did find a few covered cars out in the field, so not a total disengagement from my personal work. See you next week.
2019: 19 (My Struggle)
Film vs Digital. The seemingly endless debate that has raged for years now. Do we really need more words spouted about this issue? As I pondered what this week’s blog entry would be about, the internal debate between pixels verses film frames swirled in my head. I recently made an investment in a medium format film camera. l hardly needed another camera, never mind a film camera, but the freezer full of film in my house keeps begging me to expose it, and why not add another relic to my collection? My intention is to run 35mm film through the medium format camera, thus rendering quasi-panoramic images on the film (see example above.)
I tell myself that I prefer the permanence that film affords, that I feel more centered when I shoot film, that it slows me down, making my shooting more intentional. I learned photography on film, many years before digital photography even existed. I suppose I feel a connection to my roots when I shoot with a film camera. I also have this warped thought in my head that somehow film photography is more “legitimate” than digital, that it is more “serious.” Which ultimately is a crock of shit.
The irony is that even when I do shoot film, I end up digitizing it with a scanner. Which takes time, on top of the money I spent on film and processing to begin with. And even after the scanning, there’s the retouching of a multitude of dust specks and hairs that invariably muck up the raw scan. The random times I’ve ended up in the darkroom over the past few years have yielded more frustrations than rewards, and more time spent setting up than actually developing and printing. Never mind the chemicals being inhaled while I agitate some prints in the developer tray. And how many of those precious 36 frames from one roll of film are “keepers”?
So why do I continue to shoot film? Why do I feel the need to flagellate myself in the service of the film deities (that might not even exist…gee, how existential.) Why must I fetishize such a labor intensive, unpredictable, costly frustrating process? And who really gives a shit if an image was shot on film or with a digital camera, or even an iPhone? (and to be clear, I’ve created books and exhibits that have featured images from all of these methods.) Does the viewer care? Does the audience put more value in one method over the other? Does anyone really apply more worth to an image if it was the result of hours spent in the darkroom, or if it was a quick hipshot taken with a mobile device while waiting for the traffic light to turn green?
And to push my puritanical inner demons one step further: what are the limits of using Photoshop or Lightroom? Cloning out dust on an image scanned from a negative, that’s ok, right? What about converting images from color to black and white? Film simulation presets in Lightroom, making a digitally capture image appear more film-like? I have software that can make a digital image look like an antique wet-plate photograph. I have apps that replicate light leak damaged film. Foul or no foul? Really, am I the only one who cares about this? I’d love to hear your thoughts. And by the way, don’t even get me started about my vinyl LP collection.
2019: 18 (Revisited)
Wandering back through work from last year. It’s been a liberating experience revisiting work that was published in one way, and now processing them in a completely different manner. Any reluctance I may have felt about messing with the “sanctity” of previously published work has disappeared, as I find infinite new ways to express myself, all courtesy of Lightroom.
As I write these words, I’m sitting in my office, scanning negatives from a recent shoot on Good Friday. Scanning film, re-working digitally captured files, the give and take between old methods and new… such is the life of a 21st Century photographer.
Covered cars remain an obsession for me; serial photography has its rewards.
2019: 17 (Holding Pattern)
After a chill Easter weekend in Santa Fe, I guess my body rebelled against too much rest and relaxation and I ended up getting a wonderful, early Springtime cold. This one has been stubbornly holding on for the past four days, and my frustration continues to mount.
In the meantime, it’s giving me time to stop and reflect on what might come next for me, photographically speaking. I have a few ideas for new projects, but nothing concrete, and a couple of these ideas will push me out of my comfort zone for shooting. I’m also sitting on about 15 boxes of Fuji peel-apart film for my Polaroid 360, and once that film is gone, it’s gone. Since it’s been discontinued, I just can’t justify paying $50 per box on Ebay. At the same time, I’m struggling to come up with a worthy project that will do justice to the unique quality of that film. I’m open to suggestions, dear readers.
I’m trying to be patient and ride out this “in between” time, as I know I’ve been on a tear creatively for the past year or so, so time to breathe is welcome, even if it’s through clogged nasal passages.
2019 : 16 (Good Friday)
Every year for the past 4 or 5 years, on Good Friday, I’ve made a sunrise climb to the top of Tomé Hill, outside of Los Lunas, New Mexico. This is one of two main Catholic pilgrimage sites in the state, a much smaller, more intimate kind of experience than one would have up north in Chimayó. I like it because it is low-key. is a fairy challenging, yet short hike to the top of the Hill, and it always rewards my waking up at a criminally early hour with a glorious sunrise over the surrounding valley.
Though I’ve shot here numerous times, I tried to take a different approach this year and devote myself primarily to shooting on film. Those resulting images will have to wait for developing and scanning. I did take a few shots with my iPhone as well, but restricted myself to capturing in high contrast, black and white.
Though I am pretty much by this point an agnostic, there is still something about the Catholic exercise of faith that draws me in creatively. And spending a sunrise morning on top of a hill above the beautiful New Mexico desert is not a bad way to start a day.
