The Gift of Meeting People, The Gift of Photography

Like I said a couple posts ago, the more you go out, the more people you meet. This time I went out to McIntosh Lake with a roll of Ilford HP5 in a Rolleiflex 3.5F to see who I'd find. I always start on the promenade--that's what I call the sidewalk that wraps around the...

Portrait Stories on 8×10 Film by the Muse’s Design

Sometimes I just feel like the writer taking dictation from the muse. As a portrait photographer making portraits of people I meet in public, I think of all the people I've photographed, and how little control I have over who I meet, who I approach, who says yes, who says no, who becomes a part...

My Satisfaction = Photographing Folks Where I Find Them

A photographer friend recently sent me a video link to a talk by a photographer named Adrian discussing photography and his expectation to fail, concluding disappointment was just a part of the process. In the notes of the video titled, The Curse of the Photographer, he wrote, "Photographers might be destined to permanently feel dissatisfied....

Grandma’s Gone With No Portraits To Remember Her By, Just Like in 1890.

I was talking to a woman at a yard sale last weekend and she said the reason she had so many photo frames for sale for 25-50 cents each, is because none of her children or grandchildren want the family photographs—she's moving to a smaller house and thought they'd want to have them. Wrong! She...

200 Photos To Give Away

LaVern Johnson passed away. She was in her early 90s and was the town matriarch of Lyons Colorado. The town held a memorial service in a park that was named for her a few years ago. Since her passing, I had been posting photographs online of her that I made over the years because I...

There’s Something About Portraits on 4×5 with a Graflex SLR

I went to the local lake with an Auto Graflex, one of the early 4x5 SLRs that didn't have a revolving back (RB) but a fixed back for horizontal photos. When I take a camera like that out in public, people respond with interest and wonder. It's a camera I picked up at a local...

Photographing the ‘Schmaltzy & Princie’ Hollywood Fringe Festival Poster

I was working with the writer and actor (and my partner) MaryLee Herrmann on making her poster photo for the Hollywood Fringe Festival where she will be presenting her solo show she wrote, Schmaltzy & Princie: Diary of a Not-So-Great Daddy's Girl, and will perform in June of this year. Tickets and show information available...

A Gift of a Portrait to Add to My Worldwide Home Gallery Collection

The greatest gifts are those that expect no return. I dropped these two photographs off to Norm, who I wrote about in a previous article. Well, those portraits don't matter unless I print and frame them and get them to him so his family can enjoy them for some time to come. And that's exactly...

Starting a 2022 Large Format Portrait Project

I'm inspired by many portrait photographers. Five I can think of right off the top of my head would be Judith Joy Ross, Duane Michals, Lora Webb Nichols, Gregg Miller and the masterful August Sander. August Sander. Young Farmers. 1914 Ross, Nichols, Miller and Sander because they documented people in a way that shows them...

What Makes a Street Photo?

There are many street photographers nowadays. But what makes a street photo? It can't just be anyone walking along the street--I can see that out the window. To me, there has to be a story (or it gets the viewer to create one). If there's a story, it's a street photograph. If it has no...