Perspective

The above picture was taken by my friend J. Adam Huggins.

Adam is a photojournalist who often shoots for the New York Times. He's a great guy and an inspiration to me. This photo in particular got my attention because of the caption.

The man pictured above is the same age as myself and he's standing in front of his home which has just been consumed by a raging monsoon flood.

After looking at the photo for awhile the differences between my life and his began forming in my mind.

We've both been on this planet for the same amount of time but our experience must be so vastly different. Now I don't pretend that this is some sort of epiphany and yeah his life could be summed up in one word, "tough," but it's still interesting to think about for a bit.

I don't want to end with some sort of saccharine diatribe about being grateful and appreciating the small things but I can say that this photo did make me happy for roofs and air conditioning and being above the high water mark.

Fashion/Modeling?

I've sort of been jumping around as far as what kind of photography I want to get into. I love the idea of changing the world with poignant shots of the unfortunate victims of third world circumstance but... there's always that side that says hey why not just point the camera at some pretty faces and make some money.

Being in Tampa right now with the aforementioned world changing shots thousands of miles away I have decided to turn my lens towards the fashion side of the business. I started a model mayehm account and am waiting for approval. Until them I'll be semi-creepy and pull models from CraigsList.

So goes the life of a freelancer just getting his start...

P.S.

I got a job at the St. Petersburg Times so now I'm not a total derelict yay!

Big Time

Sharper, faster, more megapixels, bigger sensor, more saturation, more depth. Digital photography is a beautiful thing but lately I have been turning more towards film. There's just something about the softness and unique imperfections of a film image that draw me to it. John Chiara has taken his romance with film to the edge of reason, building a massive pinhole camera. Watch the whole video and check out his website. It's one of the more interesting things I've seen lately in the world of photography.

Sagan got it right...

With all the gloom and doom that the media is spewing out these days (mostly with good reason) sometimes it's nice to look at something that puts things in perspective.
This does that for me. And although it makes me feel a little lonely it also makes me feel a lot better...



"We succeeded in taking that picture from [deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity--in all this vastness-- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us... To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." -Carl Sagan

Film

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
The pictures, aren't particularly interesting but there's just something about the soft desaturated look of film that I love. I wish I knew how to develop my own and had access to a darkroom... but I don't so I have to rely on the dorky, excitable CVS clerk near my house.

These were taken with an old Canon AE-1 that was gifted to me by a friend. I destroyed my first couple of rolls by being a little naive so this is my first complete set.

These were shot with Fuji Superia X-tra which I am told will bring out blues and greens. I don't know enough about film yet to distinguish between different types but I am going to start experimenting...

Look for more in the future...

Getting back into it...

I've been getting complacent with the frequency of my posts. I'll take the time this week to get back on top of things. Here is a quick link to a project that James Nachtwey is working on. The footage is graphic and intense so fair warning.