17
Apr
2013
Brian Miller
10
Apr
2013
Sketches: The Couple
Some relationships are meant for a reason.
Some relationships are meant for a season.
And a few relationship – just a few – are meant for a lifetime.
03
Apr
2013
Sketches: Moments
Moments gained. Moments lost.
A look. A gaze. A pause. A burst of energy.
Life comes in stops and starts, flits.
A breath, an exhale, a sigh. A smile. A frown.
And the world turns around.
Don’t blink. Here. Gone.
Moments gained. Moments past.
01
Apr
2013
Hopes and Dreams
Baseball, it would seem, has begun again. The twitters is all aflutter; boasts and threats and promises are being made on Facebook. Some are claiming that all is right again in the world; baseball for them is akin to civil rights, justice, even oxygen.
This is an image from my project-in-process: On The Bench, for which I received Rear Curtain’s Fellowship Award to support its completion. A bit of a preview, if you will. A teaser. Happy baseball everyone!
20
Mar
2013
Sketches: Applying the Lesson
Last week posted here were a series of images playing with shadows, darkness, and a creative vision with the camera that did not include respecting the in-camera metering system. It seems some of you liked it. I certainly have been enjoying making these images. They were all made with the Nikon D80, a camera that has a limited sensor while still remaining manually customizable. I enjoyed pushing myself within the limits of poor high-iso performance and a single lens.
Then, through the generosity of some incredible people, I came to be the user of a new camera – one with much higher ISO capabilities and manually customizable settings
At first I wondered if the camera might change my approach. But then I decided I didn’t want it to.
What I wanted to do was exploit this new camera’s capabilities while still forcing it to do my bidding.
Essentially using the tool to create what I wanted and not letting the tool dictate the image to me.
I’m happy with the results so far. What do you think?
13
Mar
2013
Sketches: Lookout-Your Pictures Are Getting Dark
I guess my wife is paying attention. The title above is something she said to me recently. I guess she noticed.
I have been playing with tones recently. I started last year as I decided to take a step backward regarding gear and emulate some of the old-school photographers working with what would today be considered outrageous restrictions – Kodachrome at ISO 50, in a darkened room, or at the edges of the day, without a tripod, or a monopod.
Think about it, these photogs shot with stuff you and I spend lots of money to get away from, and they made iconic photographs.
Damn, they were (or are) good.
So I grabbed my D80 and one lens last fall and committed to it. As others upped their sensor size and crazy-high-iso-capability-I-can-shoot-in-the-dark cameras I went the other way (story of my life, my parents tell me.) I grabbed a camera with an ISO rating that shouldn’t be legally rated above 400 and went at it. Man that was hard.
It was hard because out of the camera my files were not going to compare in quality to what others were shooting. Because I was going to miss and flub a lot of shots – and I did.
But I learned something. Those limits pushed me to look, to search, to seek, to struggle around the edges of things, and to learn to trust my eye and my brain rather than the light meter in camera. I don’t think I shot anything “properly exposed” according to the camera. It was a lot of “half a stop over” or “1.3 stops under” or even “3 stops under” My images began to look like what I wanted them to look, not what the scene actually looked like in front of me.
And that is when I started creating images. Took me some years to get here.
And now maybe a new camera….
06
Mar
2013
Sketches: Dance
Keith Sanchez, the musician I wrote about recently, was making a return engagement at Il Vicino Canteen recently and warranted another listen from me and my family. So we loaded up the car and arranged to meet some friends there for good food, good beer, good company, and good music.
27
Feb
2013
Sketches: Franken
There is a bit of a tradition in New Mexico of sitting out on a winter’s eve around a fire. It is not that different from other parts of the world where people gather to look into a fire, feel the warmth, commune together, and get lost in thoughts in the dancing flames. Except here in NM the fire is built in a Chiminea, a clay fireplace that is open on one side with a short chimney raising the smoke toward the stars. We had such a gathering in my neighborhood the other day – an impromptu coming together of several families from the block. Parents, kids, neighbors. Food, drink, good conversation. There was laughter, giggles, bantering, warmth, community. Eventually the food was shared and finished, the children were ushered to bed, the sun completed its daily recession, and the glow of the fire drew us toward its respite from the evening chill. Here my neighbor, Herbey, ponders.
19
Feb
2013
Sketches: Gone Fishin’
A two-fer here today as I play with the way I present these sketches and work through what I am photographing and presenting. A good friend asked a couple of weeks ago about these sketches and why I consider them so. In truth, I consider them sketches because I am trying things. I am trying things out in the field capturing the images, and I am trying things in terms of presenting the images. And I am learning, curiously learning; making stuff. To my mind, this is the process of art, no?
So today, an image – in color – harvested (pardon the pun) from a long series of images made on President’s Day as we spent the day with two neighbor families fishing at Isleta Lakes on the Isleta Tribal Pueblo here in NM. Following the color image is a series I shot with my iPhone and Hipstamatic’s app telling the little story of the day in broad strokes. Let me know what you think. I am playing with storytelling, both in single images and in series of images, and I am limited in my photographing explorations by the necessities of my family. So I do what I can, sometimes wishing I had more time to photograph, but grateful that, as I was reminded, I get to do my hobby all the time….! True that. It is the limits that forges the creativity after all.
The series below you may have seen already if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram as I posted the individual images over the course of the day. Here it is again with two additional images to round out the series. I attempted to capture the cooking process (stuffing the fish with garlic, lemon and herbs, and grilling them in foil) without much success. To my mind that is missing from this series. Lesson learned.
13
Feb
2013
Sketches: Love’s Lookout
It is Valentine’s week so an appropriately themed image to recognize this day of love, lust, Hallmark, Cupid, arrows, chocolates, roses, dinner dates, etc.
Cupid was on the hunt in Albuquerque yesterday