I Miss Pay Phones, Snapshot Photos & A Simple Disconnected Society With Stories to Tell

Remember those tall glass structures that you could climb into to make a phone call, a space all to yourself that shut you off from the world, offered you a bit of silence from the street traffic around you? They were as ubiquitous as the cell phone in your pocket. They were everywhere, and ready...

Vernacular Photography (aka Snapshots): Time Slices of a Different Era

There's just something about a snapshot from yesteryear, with its ubiquitous white border, its black and white tone (and sometimes color) in sizes rather on the small size. Many of these photographs were 3x4" or smaller. Below is a gallery of photos selected from a case full of pictures purchased at a flea market that...

“We Want a Portrait, Not a Snapshot”

Some days are better than others as a professional photographer. Like today, for instance. A prospective client called looking for a portrait of her family members and mentioned her husband was a graduate of a prestigious art and photography school some years ago, and he's since retired his cameras, but she was looking for a...

Who is the Girl on the Stairs?

I don't know. She's not a relative of mine. You may be wondering why do I have this photograph and other precious memories of some families that appear to be (from clues in the photos) living in Kansas in the early to mid-1900s? Because a family lost them due to an unpaid storage locker. This...

The Art of the Snapshot (We’re Still Making Them Today!)

A couple of friends over for a BBQ bumping elbows. I have a love for old snapshots. There's something special about those photos that aren't meant for the gallery wall, that aren't going to win awards, but are just simply destined for the photo album--the "open-the-pages-and-reminisce book" that we used to create all the time...

Ah, The Difference a Print Makes

The photographic print defines today's photographer. That's it right there. Doesn't matter if you originate on film or a digital sensor, it's the print that defines the photographer. What have you made lately? Show me your work, let's see your photographs? I'd go so far as to say that those making photographic prints are the...

When the Audience Changes and We Have to Show Proof

A snapshot used to be a simple thing. We used a camera to save a moment from our lives to tuck it away under the bed in a shoebox or in a photo album, so that we could travel back in time at a future date and relive it. We even did it shortly after...