Teaching How to Make Magic in the Film Camera, To Print Photographs They’ll Hold Dear

It's a generous medium, photography.”Lee Friedlander I've been teaching film photography to several different people the past few weeks and it's so rewarding to see how they light up when they finally understand their camera and realize that they can do it, they see how it works, and that they can make actual film photographs....

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....

Documenting America’s Decline Circa 2022

Waking up to the NY Times headline, Supreme Court Ruling Overturns Roe v. Wade After Nearly 50 Years, I saw how a divided America is moving backwards by taking away women's rights and maybe losing the last vestiges of the dream of being the greatest. Because right now, we're not. Not even close. Come on....

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...

What You Can Get with an Ask

Sometimes you just have to ask. You might get what you're asking for. I was recently in Urbana Illinois and I thought to look up online if there were any photography exhibits happening locally. I got the first result: Urbana Museum of Photography. Wait, what? There's a museum of photography right in this town? Wow,...

If Only There Were a Way…

...to make the picture a little wider to get both children into Dad's birthday video. If only! Maybe the next iPhone will have that feature. They have the best engineers working for them. There has to be a way, no?

Reaching Out, Asking For What You Want

I was traveling through Illinois recently and stopped for the night in Champaign/Urbana. While there, I googled "photography exhibits" and one of the results was the Urbana Museum of Photography. What? There's a museum of photography right in the small mid-western town where I'm staying? And it's dedicated to analog photography? I'm so in. This...