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...

Backyard Families: A Photography Project

I’ve found backyard parties a quite magical place where families come together and are most able to be themselves. Working as a photojournalist, I have been documenting backyard parties for years and continue to add to the Backyard Families photography series collection, whether it’s a dinner party, a photograph of three generations of a family...

I Didn’t Get To See Ethan Hawke

I heard Joel Meyerowitz had photographed Ethan Hawke for the current edition of T Magazine, a glossy, high-quality style magazine inserted in the Sunday New York Times newspaper. I like Joel and I like Ethan and so I was looking forward to seeing the photographs. But unfortunately, it wasn't a photograph of Ethan, it was...

What Are We Photographing For?

What's the plan, Stan? We get a car to drive places. We get a house to live in. We get a chair to sit in. We get a TV to watch shows. We make photographs... For what? I know I've asked this before but it keeps coming up. What are we making photographs for? Why,...

Here Comes Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day: April 24th!

I pulled my Leonardo Pinhole Camera out to complete an assignment for The Photo Game and did a quick check to see how to best calculate exposure and saw that World Pinhole Photography Day is coming up the last Sunday of April, the 24th. Will you be ready? Will I? MaryLee saw this Leonardo Pinhole...

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...

Where is the Eggleston, the Shore, the Arbus of Today?

We used to have titans in the photography world. I'm thinking of William Eggleston. Robert Frank. Diane Arbus. Garry Winogrand. Stephen Shore. I think it was all because of John Szarkowski, the photography director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He mounted shows featuring their work and they ended up with book deals and...

Art Photography Versus Documentary Photography–It’s Really Not a Competition!

I was reading on Twitter this tweet that got everyone's in the Twitterverse photography community feathers ruffled. (See what I did there.) Why do people have to tell others what to make and what is valid and what isn't? Like there's any truth to their opinion. There are multiple types of photography, from scientific to...