May
04
Mom and Dad sat for one of my early portrait sessions back in the mid-1980s.
Apr
14
A young boy peers out through a shattered wall in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
(First published 30 years ago)
I can’t really say why I went down to Haiti in the first place. A friend of mine, who lived there, wrote and suggested I make the journey to “see some places and faces that would fill a whole book.” As every egocentric photographer knows, that’s all you really need to hear. What a jerky reason to go.
Feb
23
El Castillo is the main pyramid at Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, Mexico.
It’s good to not know what I’m doing.
My wife texted me on a recent Thursday afternoon, asking if I was into a last-minute cruise.
“Okay, cool!” I wrote back.
Early Friday morning, we hopped into my Prius and drove south out of Detroit and snow squalls toward sunny New Orleans. Read More
Crunch Time: the Picture Editing team putting together the 120-page book at The Mountain Workshops.
I met Zach this past fall down in Kentucky at The Mountain Workshops, a week-long intensive dive into photojournalism. He was one of our students in the Picture Editing sequence that I’ve been lucky enough to help teach each fall for a large part of this millennium.
Zach made us laugh, worked really hard and helped us — with our other students — pull together a 120-page book of photos and stories in less than a week. But I think I bonded with him during our shady drug deal on the streets of a small Kentucky town.
Dec
17
Rodney’s razor, midway through it’s too-short lifespan.
Launched in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 2 just left the solar system.
Opened in 1883, 150,000 vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge every day.
And songs from one of the earlier metal bands, Led Zeppelin, are still being played today.
So why is it that I have to replace my razor blades every dang month after using them, at most, only every couple of days?
Read More
The autumn sun shines down, setting a gentle lens flare on one of the Hopewell Mounds.
It’s a first-frost-on-your-windshield kind of fall day. The sun creaks above the horizon and the frozen blades of grass quickly melt onto my shoes. Walking out among the mounds, I step back in time.
I wasn’t allowed to express my opinions.
I’ve photographed some of the best and brightest politicians — Bill Clinton and Al Gore — and some of the least auspicious, like the fun mayor of Concord, New Hampshire, who moonlighted as my Social Work professor, while I was working on my Master’s degree.
When I photographed politicians and political campaigns in the past, I had to be objective and not let my own personal preferences sway my journalistic integrity. Spending so much time traipsing around the Granite State during The New Hampshire Primaries, I did indeed form opinions about the candidates I covered. But I had to keep those opinions to myself.
Aug
09
The missileers gave us a test printout from their old thermal printer, which is still in use. Note the face circled in the code at the bottom.
The alarm beep, beep, beeps and we jump behind the curtain shielding us from sensitive, Top Secret information coming in over the Comm system.
30 seconds later, the curtain slides back open and the missileers — one man and one woman — continue explaining their roles in this bunker, this completely secured capsule dozens of feet beneath the … where, I can’t tell you.
Read More
It’s a far cry from THEN to NOW in New York City apartments. Photo at left of tenement life by Jacob Riis. Photo at right of my daughter and roommate by me.
I think it was somewhere during my sixth or seventh trip up or down my daughter’s East Harlem apartment stairs that I realized just how lucky we are, how good we have it. Living on the fifth floor of an old building with terrible heat and no air conditioning, my daughter attended grad school at Columbia for two years.
The lack of heat wasn’t an issue as we moved her, though; outside it was 91 degrees. Inside it felt even hotter. But I can’t believe how fortunate we were, we are.Read More
My two classes in one month, writing and photography. ABOVE: I snap a panoramic while the class writes. BELOW: The photo class poses for their own panoramic.