Welcoming the Muse in the Sandbox

I was reading quotes from famous artists, and one of them said something to the effect: "When I go to the canvas with a preconceived idea, those are usually not as good as the ones where I go with no idea what I will paint, and just paint." Effectively, going to the sandbox to play. ...

Photograph Your Love, Share Your Passion

As a photographer, there's nothing else that matters, no one else who gets to decide what is important, other than that which is important to you.  Photography is a creative expression, and when we stop looking to create images that will please others, and actually create images that please ourselves, that reveal a little something...

Creating Stunning Portraits That Capture a Person’s Light

Made with a Rolleiflex T twin-lens reflex camera on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado, it's a moment captured on film that has a feeling all its own.  And very few of the digital photos being taken today will last 50 years, like this will.  Because this negative is physical--I can hold it in...

With Her Parents: Savoring Scenes from the Movie of a Life

It's a feeling.  I suppose, you either feel it or you don't.  I certainly do.  There's a magic in that silver, I tell you.  Now there's a Tri-X negative in a sleeve that exists with that image.  And there is a print of each photograph in a frame, to savor those moments. Because photography wasn't...

Photographers Make Photographs

An observation: Photography hobbyists make lens analyses, compare versions of bodies, features and lenses, read DXO scores, look to get the next best thing, discuss purchases, workshops, latest tricks and techniques.  They do a lot more than make photographs. Photographers make photographs.

Don’t Smile For The Camera

I walked though the National Portrait Gallery's exhibit, AMERICAN COOL, last year.  I shoot for a client in Washington D.C. every spring, and usually there's a little down time when I can walk over to the museums and catch a few. In the American Cool exhibit, no one was smiling.  Well, not no one, but...

Dancing Free and Fearlessly

I love the moment and the rich black and white tones. Shot with a Rolleiflex 3.5F.  On Ilford HP5 film. The joy of dancing with no inhibitions or limits!  If only we could embrace all of life with such carefree of an attitude, what could we accomplish!

Content is King, Queen and the Whole Royal Family!

There's no substitute for content.  None.  You can have the most technically perfect, accurately exposed frame, with the best sensor in the best camera and the fastest lens on the market, and give me a 10-year-old point and shoot with a subject worth photographing, and I'll blow you out of the water every time. Because...