Bridge

Sauna

Foster City, CA

I went out last night with the wife to take pictures. We had a blast. She wanted to know if I got the shot. I told her I had no idea. When was the last time that happened? With polaroid and digital it has been years since there was any question whether I got the picture I wanted. You always knew right away. Now it feels a little like shooting with a blindfold on and makes that moment when I open the package from the lab exciting again.

It is like when I first starting shooting with my Nikon EM when I was fifteen. It took the Riteaid a week to process the film and there was always at least one gift: a photograph I didn't remember shooting that seemed to be shot by some other person. It was always better than anything I had planned and I was always grateful for it.

What does it mean?

I have been trying to make sense of this new body of work I am creating. Most of the time I am happy to go about my way oblivious to the bigger picture and concentrate on making the next image and hope I am not duplicating myself. While preparing to go to Review Santa Fe I have asked people what I should expect. I got some good advice from former attendees Mark Richards and Tim Archibald. They said I should be ready to talk about the work in a clear concise way. Jorg Colberg (not an attendee but a good recource on these matters) basically said to make sure I put my best foot forward and make sure the work is presented well.

I got this email from Jamey Thomas. We work together sometimes and he took the time to comment.


"Thomas, I've been following and enjoying your blog and thinking
about the images you're shooting. I'm assuming having a blog is an
open invitation to feedback so I'm going to take you up on that
invitation. The things that I keep coming back to are you and now;
why are you making this work, what do you want to say with this
work, what about this work makes it yours and what does this work
say about the here and now, why is it getting made now, by you?
Maybe that distills it: why is this working getting made now by you?
And that's not a shallow question because I certainly appreciate
that you are making it, now, and know fairly well what it entails
and how much of yourself you have to bring in order to make it. I
know how hard it can be to pull over. One thing I believe is that
great art argues for things, it has an agenda, it strikes a balance
between pornography and propaganda (see "The Invisible Dragon", by
Dave Hickey) in order to put forward something the artist feels is
important, meaningful. When we look at great art in a museum most of
that is gone because the artwork is plucked out of its place and
time and interned in a current institutions with its own agenda. But
if you think of a great renaissance altar piece, an impressionist
landscape or even a Mapplethorpe image of gay guys fisting and think
about what they meant in their own time and place I think their
"purpose" becomes more obvious, or at least the fact that they had
an intended purpose is clear. You don't need to know or have an
answer. Certainly you can make the work and see where it leads. Or
you can put forward any number of perfectly legitimate answers or
explanations. But this stuff above is what keeps coming up for me
when I think about your work. When Struth was getting up at dawn to
take empty cityscapes 20 or 30 years ago, was it the same? Is it
simply different person, different place? Are they documents, with
beautiful light, of the neglected and unseen, similar to the Bechers
plants and mills? Certainly after looking at them over ti
me I begin to understand them as you're pictures and they do cohere
into a body of work but my idea is that if you understand what you
really want these pictures to convey, their power will increase.
Sincerely, Jamey"


The truth is I do not know what I am trying to do. It started with the picture above. It was a scouting shot for a commercial job. I put the polaroid on the scanner and when the image came up on the monitor something happened. For a reason I still can not explain the image had some emotional power. It is kind of ugly and awkward. Up to that point I had worked very hard to make pictures that were perfectly composed and as beutiful as I could make them. And here, by accident , I stumbled upon an image that moved me. So when I sit down at the table at Santa Fe and I am asked what these pictures mean I will say I am chasing an accident.

Communication Arts Photo Annual

in

The Cure

Photo by Rob Prideaux
I got a call from a former assistant last week . He had just met with a picture editor to show his portfolio and the meeting had not gone well.The editor was not feeling the work and gave him a bunch of feedback he didn"t know what to do with. He was in distress.


I bid a job last week. The call with ADs went well and the word was I was The FAV. We were able to meet their budget and I was excited to begin work on the project. Of course, as often happens,  they ended up going with someone else. 


In both cases the solution to our problem is  the same. Shoot more. And then shoot again. Look at what you have shot and shoot again. 


All questions will be answered. All wounds will be healed. It is why we all picked up a camera in the first place.

Oakland, CA Sunday Morning

Suburbia exhibit over at Meter Gallery

http://www.metergallery.com/viewPhoto.asp?photoID=2144003520

In!!!

Review Santa Fe. Really this time.

Morro Bay 1

Me: What do you think?
Wife: I like it a lot and its weird. But it's not really a bridge picture is it?
Me: No...

Morro Bay 2

Salinas

Gonzalez, CA

The Blogosphere Tends to Eat Itself

Driving back from Morro Bay this weekend I got a call from my friend Tim Archibald.

Archibald:"Dude you got to get back here. Your wife has gone off on APE. The blogs are on fire!"

Me: "That doesn't surprise me but I don't have time for all that drama. I am all about shooting these weird pictures no one seems to know what do with. I have fallen in love agin with the whole process and don't want to kill my buzz by looking at blogs."

Archibald: "No really. Its off the chain. Like the Chip Simons story mixed with Abu Gurab."

Me "Whatever."

So I turn up the latest Mexican Gangster rap band that I am into and look forward to a family trip to Target upon my return.
24 hours later I am knee deep into it. I am constantly checking who said what and chiming in and staying out and getting emails from all over the country and people I don't even know are calling me and...well you know.

The blogshere is like the mafia. I am Michael Corleone in Godfather 3: I keep trying to get out but they keep sucking me back in.

Getting out of the car

I just came back from a short photo trip to Salinas and Morro Bay. I bought a new giant 8x10 camera that weighs a ton and takes forever to set up. It wasn't getting up each morning at 530 for good light that was difficult. It was pulling the car over and commiting to take a photograph that was the challenge. I think marathoners say the same thing. It is not the 8th mile or the 20th that is the hardest but taking the first step out the front door.

Review Santa Fe

I'm in!!!

(Not really but making progress. I was 8 on waiting list and now down to #4. )

I take solace in the fact that Alec Soth did not get in the first time he applied and that Albert Watson's wife supported him for 10 years. I can hold my head up high knowing I only borrowed money from my wife (then girlfriend ) once when she was living on food stamps.

Car Shot

Shot this car for a magazine. Up at dawn to for good light and we end up in the soup.

Eagle III

I went back a third time this weekend unable to let go of the idea that there is a picture here. 8x10 this time.

8x10x2

8x10

I have been shooting 4x5 for a while and brought out the 8x10 to see how different it would look. Carrying the camera with lenses and holders was a huge pain in the ass and I wondered why I was wasting my time. I have gotten to the point with my 4x5 and a manbelt where shooting large format is almost as easy as 35mm.

I climbed down the side of a hill to shoot this bridge under construction. Two minutes before sunset it looked terrible and messy and I was sure I would get nothing. 15 minutes later it happened and like a curtain rising at the begining of an opera I got the light. The Misrach light I have been chasing. It seems like in that little window I could point the giant camera at anything and it would be beautiful.

Content

I was excited when I first saw these toll booths on my way to Vallejo. How cool would it be to photograph a location like this totally devoid of people?

Apparently not that cool. I was disappointed when I saw the film. When I was there I imagined it would look surreal and mysterious. In reality it looked obvious and uninteresting. The success of the image was overly dependent on the object being photographed. That sounds ridiculous- let me explain.


I think this project (CCTWWWTB) works best when I am pointing the camera at places and spaces that are not inherently interesting. It is the choices that I make when I interact with the locations that adds meaning to the images. This is a double edged sword: On one hand the success of the project is not reliant on finding the most remarkable locations (think Iceland, Cuba, the moon) on the other hand I am always in danger of making images that are incredibly boring. My hope is that I will know how to tell the difference.

Bird Deux

I went back and reshot this bird. The first time I shot it-it looked good in black and white but kind of fell apart in color. Still not sure if I have it.

The Holy Trinity of Photo Careers: Editorial, Advertising and Art ....and a story

Is it possible? Is it like the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot, an urban myth? I want my cake and eat it too AND I want one of those free chocolates you get after desert at fancy restaurants.

We shot this guy for magazine in an alley in San Francisco. I found this location 15 years ago when I first moved to the city. My roommate worked in a restaurant on this street and I used to wait for him to get off work at the bar.

Years later after he moved away he called me to ask if I wanted to go out to dinner. My wife and I both liked him and had not seen him in a while so we heartily agreed. He and his girlfriend were traveling up and down the west coast on an eating and drinking bender. My friend is not destitute by any means but like all bachelors of a certain age is challenged in the money managing department. Needless to say we were a little surprised when he chose the only five star restaurant in San Francisco to meet. ( As I have recounted perviously on these pages when I was a bachelor I was working two jobs and making steady money but my wife, who was living on food stamps , was much more financially steady than I was.)

We had a terrible time at dinner. My friend's girlfriend (a surgeon as it turned out) was fantastically boring and brought along two equally uninteresting people. There were seven courses and a different wine with each course. We thought we were going to die and considered calling in bomb threat just to make the evening stop.

Finally the check the came and we recoiled from it as if it were on fire. We don't drink and had not signed up for this torture. My friend grabbed the check and I could see it was close to two thousand dollars . He opened his wallet under the table and said, "I got it" . I could see his wallet was completely empty. Not a lucky penny. Not even a library card.

His girlfriend protested and they went back and forth like that for a while. Eventually she of course won out and paid the check. I imagined this wrestling match repeated over and over from Spago's in LA to the French Laundry in the wine country- like a WWF pay per view event.

Standing outside

Vallejo, CA

While waiting for light in the morning my mind tends to wander. I worry how this new way of making pictures will work in the commercial world.

This weekend up in Vtown I imagined myself on the set of an ad shoot with this house or maybe the eagle as the subject of a giant campaign. It's cold and everyone is pissed we had to get up early and they are all hung over from drinking too much at dinner the night before. There is a motor home and breakfast and coffee.

I am standing with my back to the camera looking at the dawn sky wondering what kind of shadows we will get. The AD walks up to me.

AD:Hey when are you going to start shooting?
ME:I dunno maybe not at all. We'll see what the light looks like.
AD: Uhhh ok.

The AD goes back and approaches the account executive ,coffee in hand.

AE: What'd he say?
AD:He says its going great and he is going to nail it.
AE:Why is he not taking any pictures?
AD:Its part of his process
AE; Not taking pictures is part of his process of taking pictures.
AD Exactly
AE: You shittin me? What am I supposed to tell the client?
AD Hell if I know. That is why you drive the BMW and I drive a Honda

AE goes into the motor home.

Client: How is it going?
AE: Fabulous
Client When do we get to see something?
AE: Any minute...

Artist Statement

I hate most artist statements and have had to crank out a few recently and they all kind of suck.

Emily Nathan said this about my work and thought it was the closest expression of what I am trying to do:

"Your photographs leave your viewer standing in an empty crosswalk having forgotten what they left the house for. "

Up at 3.

I woke up at 3 this morning. The 2nd oldest kid was throwing up. I got her a bowl and turned on the coffee maker while in the kitchen. I tried to fall back asleep and listened to NPR. Three people talking about Global warming. The upshot: We are screwed. I fell asleep at 4 and then up and out of the house at 5:15 with a cup of too strong coffee.

I arrived at Mare Island in Vallejo at 5:50. I had scouted the location earlier in the week but had done a lousy job of it. The dry dock I had planned on shooting was totally enclosed by fencing. Again I was screwed. I wandered around scrambling to find something before the sun came up. I found a giant house on blocks and settled on that. Shot too much film on it until sunrise at 6:25. I figured if I couldn't get a quality image then I would at least burn through a bunch of holders and make it seem like I was doing something.

I drove around the island and came across this giant eagle in a case. Shot it like crazy until I found this angle. I wanted it to look like a snap shot. Everything I had shot of it up to that point made it look like I a was trying too hard. I may have come to it too late in the morning. The light is perfect for 15 minutes before sunrise and then most of the time it all falls apart. Milton Berle used to smoke five packs of cigarettes a day. He was a chain smoker but only liked the first couple puffs and then he would throw the cigarette away and light another one. Sometimes I feel that way:only using the best light and throwing the rest of the day away.

Discover Magazine

My Fan Base Grows By One

"WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP SENDING ME THIS CRAP!"

This was the response I got this morning from one NYC ad agency after I sent the html email above to a few thousand of my closest friends.

They tell us nobody looks at sourcebooks and they all chuck out the direct mail they get. They are too busy to meet with us and then are surprised when we bombard them with email.

Hey. I am just trying to winnow the list of people who love love love me.

LA