scenes from the boston subway

did you ever see castaway? you know how a friendship grows between tom hanks and wilson, the volleyball? well, while we were in boston i made a friend kind of like wilson; he was hand drawn (with what i think was a light colored lip stick) on a tile wall of the alewife station of the boston subway (the "t"). i would pass this little guy every day when i would get off the subway on my way to work.

i first noticed him because of his simple shape - an arc, a straight line, a squiggle for teeth and two eyes. i thought it was pretty clever. i also liked how it was someone else's addition to the "established art" that already existed on the wall - the painted tiles (which i assume were placed there to break up the monotony of the brownish red tile-covered wall).



i also love how the tiles are all a little uneven - it gives the wall more texture.

i've included this detail from the picture just to give you an idea of how awesome the resolution is on 4x5 film.



there was just something nice about the porter square t station. i loved the big arching wall and the big pipes sticking out on the side. the next best thing about this t stop has got to be the absurdly long escalator. i swear it must go up like 5 stories. don't look down if you have trouble with heights!



edit: i just discovered that the escalator goes about 143 feet from bottom to top. and at an angle somewhere between 25 and 30 degrees that would put it at a total of 60 to 70 feet vertical rise (thanks pythagoras!). so i guess i wasn't too far off when i said it went up 5 stories!

nyc update

i took my long anticipated trip into new york city last tuesday, spent the day there, and hopefully will come out with some nice photographs. i started at the flatiron building, then headed down to battery park, then i walked across the brooklyn bridge taking pictures along the way and then finally ending up at brooklyn bridge park which has a great view of the bridge with downtown manhattan in the background.

i've sent the color pictures in to get developed and i'll develop the black and white stuff in my bathroom/darkroom soon. and as soon as i find a reasonable price to get them scanned i'll post some of them!

by the way, i was never stopped or questioned by anyone - but i'm guessing that was because i was prepared. if i hadn't gotten the permit i probably would have been stopped and told to leave!

a healthy dose of holga

for some reason i feel that the holga lends itself well to architectural photography. maybe it's just my own preference, maybe it's because the holga's plastic lens cuts out sharpness and detail and reduces objects down to forms, maybe it's the square format, who knows. whatever it is there's something unique about the way it captures architecture.

here's a dose of holga architecture photographs...


this is the foot bridge leading to the wells fargo building in salt lake city with one utah center in background. if you've ever seen this building and/or bridge at night it's pretty exciting - it glows this great shade of neon blue - it's not harsh, it's just nice and cool. i tried this same shot at night with the lights on but it just didn't work. the color detracted from the forms of the bridge.


the utah commercial and savings bank building was built in 1888 and has since been squished between the two newer buildings on either side. it makes me feel kind of sorry for it - hang in there little buddy!


looking back at the parking levels of the portland international airport i noticed the soaring framework above - i had to take the picture. i thought it was fitting for an airport to have such a lofty structure.


the southeast tower of the salt lake temple - nice day downtown at a wedding...

wading through the red tape

ever since we arrived here in new york i've wanted to do some large format photography in the city. i mean who wouldn't? there's so much to see there.

i soon discovered that this might not be as easy as i had originally thought it would be. a friend of mine told me that you need a permit to use a tripod in the city. so i did a search for permit/photography/new york and discovered that you did actually need to get a permit from the mayor's office of film, television, and broadcasting in order to be able to use a tripod in the city. apparently "handheld" photography has always been okay but if you had any other equipment you needed to get the permit. i believe they now include tripods in the "handheld" group. anyhow, given my recent experiences i figured i had better be prepared. i looked into the matter and found a form that you have to fill out giving your personal info and stating what, when, and where you will be shooting.

i had it all ready and i faxed it in but when they got back to me they said i needed to be more specific about my locations, and also that if i wanted to take pictures on the brooklyn bridge (that was one of my locations) i would need to get permission from the department of transportation. they very kindly gave me the contact information of the person who could give me permission. so after getting permission from the d.o.t. and sending a more detailed description of the locations i finally got my permit!

oh yes, so excited.

he-man, army guys, and ducklings

one of the great things about the holga is that its lens suffers from a bad case of astigmatism (among other optical "defects"). this means that the further away the object is from the center of the image (towards the edges of the frame), the more out of focus it will be in the picture. although most people would find this to be a problem, it actually adds to the aesthetic of the pictures it takes.

one way to take advantage of this feature is to center the subject in the picture. this isolates the subject and makes it stand out more in the picture.

here's fisto from masters of the universe hanging from my rear view mirror with some onlooking army men.

and here are jack, kack, lack, mack, nack, ouack, pack, and quack following their mom, mrs. mallard, on their way to the boston public garden.

fun with fuji in the fall

a very generous photographer friend of mine recently gave me a supply of large format film including some fuji instant color film. it's like polaroid film but this stuff is so much more spectacular.

when you look at a print it feels like you are looking at the scene through a very clean window - like you could reach in and touch it. the colors are bright and clear and since there is no enlargement in the print, the details are as sharp as you could ever imagine.

here are a few pictures taken on the fuji instant film with my large format camera. unfortunately my scanner can't reproduce the quality and detail in the pictures so you'll have to use your imagination.

elliot and sam in our front yard (sam had just thrown some leaves up in the air)



the first test run of the fuji instant film

elliot actually took this picture of me

a run-in with the authorities, pt. 1

we just returned from a trip to washington dc to see some some friends and some sites. we had a great time but on the way down we had a little run-in with the authorities in cherry hill new jersey.

the whole story begins a couple of years a couple of years earlier while i was at byu. i was just getting into large format photography and i discovered a book by george tice called "urban landscapes". he had gone and photographed typical scenes from typical places in new jersey - his home state. one of them in particular caught my eye. it was a photograph of a gas station in cherry hill, new jersey at night with a huge water tower looming in the background - the tower just barely lighter than the dark night sky. it's a beautiful picture.

as we were getting ready to head down to dc i noticed that we would be passing through cherry hill. i thought it would be neat to see the water tower so i found its location - thanks to google maps - and we planned to stop there. it would be dark by the time we would get there so i packed up my large format camera to get some pictures of it 34 years after the original picture was taken.

it used to be a mobil station but now it's a lukoil station with a 7-11 next to it. we pulled into the parking lot, i set up my camera, and started taking some pictures. with large format photography the process is quite involved and so we ended up being there for about 45 minutes while i took the of pictures.

i had noticed a "no loitering" sign when we pulled up but i figured that was probably just meant for local hoodlums, not us. anyhow, as i packed up and got ready to go maryirene mentioned to me that there was a guy in a car in front of us that had been there for quite a while and that occasionally he would turn around and look at us. i thought that was weird but didn't really think much about it. i went inside to use the bathroom and as i walked back out towards our car the man stepped out of his car and said "could you come here please?" and then "could you put your hands on the car, please?"

i was totally and utterly confused but i complied. he started asking me questions like "what are you doing?" and "have you ever been arrested before?". i explained that there was a local photographer that had photographed the water tower in '74 and that i wanted to do the same. his reply was "you want to take a picture of a water tower? at night?" "do you know why this looks suspicious?"

by this time - and quite suddenly - about five more police cars had arrived and there was a cop talking to maryirene. they asked us a ton of background questions - where we were from, what we were doing, and where we were going (maybe to see if our stories matched). luckily i had printed out a copy of the original picture and i had some test shot polaroids that i had made before they showed up. i think this may have helped back up our story.

honestly i never would have thought that taking pictures of a water tower at night would be a problem. apparently when people start taking pictures of infrastructural things in a community those concerned with homeland security get very very worried.

eventually they let us go - after about 45 minutes - and we continued on down to dc.

part two:

i figured that i would have no problem photographing in dc given its popularity... but i was wrong.

my friend and i got up early to photograph the lincoln memorial and the washington monument at sunrise. after a few shots right by the reflecting pool we hiked up to take some pictures from inside the lincoln memorial. once again i was questioned about my photography. "what are you doing?", "what website are you going to post the pictures on?", "you can't have a tripod anywhere on the monument.", "you can't post pictures from inside the monument on the internet.", etc., etc.

so off to the washington monument we went leaving mr. lincoln unphotographed.

i can understand the importance of national security but it made me sad that i was so restricted in my innocent pursuit of pictures.

the wonderful world of large format

large format cameras are as their name describes - large. most use film that measures 4x5 inches however some go up to 20x24 inches or larger.

the main advantage with these cameras is the size of the film. a 4x5 negative is 13 1/3 times larger than a negative from a regular ol' 35 mm camera. sweet detail. another advantage is that the front (the lens) and the back (the film) can be moved independently of each other - this lets you adjust the focus in the picture and also control the perspective. imagine looking up at a building - how the sides appear to lean in. the movements on these cameras allow you to keep those lines parallel. check out wikipedia's page on view cameras for another explanation.

this beautiful piece of work is the graflex graphic view 2. this is what i currently have - ebay, $330. it was probably made some time in the 60's and it still works beautifully today.

here are a couple pictures that i took with my large format camera when i was in san francisco with my dad last spring.

on the golden gate bridge just after the bridge police tried to boot us out (because our tripods might interfere with the pedestrians).

a view of the bridge from china beach

here are some links to some of my favorite large format photographers: joel meyerowitz, george tice, tom till, and jack dykinga. if you're ever in moab, ut check out tom till's gallery (he's a large format nature photographer) so you can get a feeling of what large format photography can do. it's amazing.

fun with an old polaroid

this cumbersome piece of machinery is the polaroid 101 "automatic" land camera named after edwin land - polaroid's founder. it was made in the mid-sixties and originally cost about $135 - i got mine for $35 at an antique store in parowan, utah. sweet.

one of the things that makes this camera fun is the way the pictures are made. after taking the picture, you pull a small paper tab which comes out completely but also exposes another tab. as you pull this tab a small pocket of chemicals is broken open and is spread over the picture. you wait about a minute, peel the picture away and there is your picture! the black and white film worked well overall but i was thoroughly unimpressed by the color film.

these were all taken with my polaroid land camera...

the kids

the girl

sammy watching for trains in boston

stay tuned for a post about the champion of instant photography...fuji large format instant film! oh yeah!

the holga

"Did you think your eyes were open?"

"I'm afraid to say that until this very moment they have been closed. The unassuming Holga is here to save you from a future of digital pixels and images shared on small screens on cameras or phones. We have all become numbed with photography, there is no denying it, but a chunky camera made almost entirely of plastic has been put on this Earth to save us. It will reawaken your vision, fill you with joy, make you see beauty when you thought it had disappeared forever, and bring out sunshine on a cloudy day."

- www.lomography.com/holga/

the holga is a cheap, plastic medium format camera (it uses film that is about 2 1/4" wide) - and it only costs about 30 bones.

the beauty of this camera is that it really makes you rethink the way you take photographs. the process is as follows: after estimating the focus of the camera, choosing one of the two aperture options, pointing it in the direction of the subject (the squinty viewfinder is only somewhat effective in framing the shot), and tripping the single-speed shutter you hope that the picture turns out alright. in the end you will be amazed by what this camera can accomplish given it's extremely rudimentary design.

i took the following photographs with my holga when we lived in cambridge massachusetts last summer.

central square, cambridge massachusetts

harvard square t station

round 2

i'm giving the internet another chance. this blog will essentially be my photograph depository. i had another website/blog (round 1) that i worked on consistently from october of 2005 through february of 2007. if you haven't been there, check it out [not there anymore, sorry]. i've got family info and news, fun stories and pictures from our lives during that time, and even a couple songs for your enjoyment if you can find them. you'll also find a gallery there of some of my favorite photographs from that time. unfortunately maintaining the site was kind of labor intensive - i built it myself using dreamweaver. so this time i thought i'd give blogspot a chance and let it do all the work.

i don't intend for this site to be a comprehensive gallery of my photographs but rather a sampling of what i've done or am currently doing. over the years i've experimented with many types of photography - large format, holga, 35mm, instant (polaroid), digital, pinhole, etc. and i will try to present a variety here on this blog. thanks and enjoy!