shift

Today I spent a few minutes on Main Street, with some good coffee and taking a few photos. It helped remind me to keep things simple. It helped remind me that I enjoy documenting this time and place we live in.

I then scanned some of the things I've shot in various parts of California over the past year, in LA, in the Bay Area, in the central valley, and closer to home. And there's a lot to work with.

It's got me thinking about an in-state road trip sometime this winter to find and photograph a few new places.

holiday

Yesterday I slept late. Today, I ran errands, paid bills, all the mundane things; and read for a while. Didn't touch the computer until after dark, left my phone upstairs.

And I still have a weekend in front of me. The break feels good.

I'm feeling a desire to do some fairly straightforward and minimalist portraiture, but at the same time not in any particular hurry to make it happen. I have offers to shoot in San Francisco and Chicago, and the first thing is to decide when to be in those places next.

But first, I'm tempted to spend a few hours in the darkroom, pull together sets of related images and make prints, something I haven't done in months. Maybe it's almost time for another exhibit?

cold

I had found the location one day while trying to access a nearby location; a trail ran alongside the historic Illinois and Michigan Canal, and less than half a mile from the parking lot, I'd walked past the ruins of a late 1800s steel mill. Now, it was part of a county park in the far southwest suburbs of Chicago, a recent acquisition. Surprisingly, few areas were fenced off. Except for the steepest dropoffs, it was open and accessible.

Now, weeks later, I arrive with Claudine. It's almost an hours drive, so we have plenty of time to talk. It's late afternoon, the weak winter sun hanging low over the horizon. It's 36 degrees, but at least there isn't much wind.

We walk in, and begin with a set of concrete arches; actually, in a rear chamber I hadn't even found the first time. We're a few hundred feet from a busy commuter rail line, and even closer to a small road serving local industrial facilities, and no one can see us. The concrete walls shield us from prying eyes.

We walk through the structure, carefully choose locations, talk thorough sequencing, positions, angles. Those decisions made, Claudine drops her clothing into a neat pile. Here, in full sun and out of the light breeze, the cold isn't too bad. We spend perhaps 10 minutes on the first few sets of shots.

Covered up again, we walk to a second location, a few hundred meters to the north. This one is a jumble of concrete ruins, sunken below ground level, guarded only by a "warning, dangerous ruins" sign. Moving through this jumbled landscape without care could indeed be dangerous. We climb down slowly, choose two spots. The challenge here is to edit things out, to simplify the composition among the chaos of rubble. We work with two small openings in the rock. Again, we're out of sight. Trucks drive by and no one sees a thing.

The third set is a little more challenging, because it's in the open, fully exposed. The sun is also about to slip below the horizon, and now there is a distinct chill in the air. Claudine stands on worn and eroded concrete polygons and rectangles, carefully avoiding the glass of broken beer bottles in the depressions, her smooth naked skin contrasting with the cold, hard substrate. We work quickly, pausing twice when people bicycle past on the trail barely a hundred feet away. We almost don't see or hear the pickup truck that follows, and Claudine is caught in the open this time. All she can do is drop to the cold ground and not move. The driver is thinking of other things though, eyes straight ahead. He never looks in our direction, never knows what he missed.

We return to the car a few moments later. I've only brought three rolls of film, intentionally, to minimize the length of the shoot on such a cold day. 108 frames. The whole thing has taken only an hour, with easily half of that devoted to picking locations. Now we drive back north, talking about the experience, laughing about almost being seen, comparing notes on our past experiences. She says something that surprises me, something I need to think about a little.

We part ways, already thinking about what to do next time.

pause

I've just taken a few moments to file negatives from earlier this year, and I'm seeing a departure from my usual patterns of shooting.

For one thing, I'm only seeing about 16 models so far for 2008. I'm probably forgetting a couple, because the purely digital work isn't here, I'm looking only at film negatives. But that's about half the number I've worked with each of the previous few years.

A few of those have been unknown or brand new local girls, basically people I agreed to shoot with just for practice, not expecting too much from them.

One reason for the drop in total numbers is that I've worked repeatedly with a few favorite models this year: especially Inga and Claudine, about three times each so far, and twice with Iona Lynn. And I'm liking that, really finding the nuances, finding ways to get very different results from the same individuals over time. There are a few others from this year I'd shoot with again if the opportunity presents itself... Shae, Heather, Wenchi, Amy.

It may affect how I shoot from here forward. It's complicated because those faves are anywhere from 250 to 2,000 miles from here, as are most of the other people I really enjoy shooting with. And identifying the rare muse is a lot of work, both upfront in culling from all the online possibilities, and then in the actual shoots, finding the relatively few who have the talent, the compatible personalities and interests, the right energy.

halflife

I managed to squeeze in one very quick shoot before returning from Chicago. Claudine came out for the end of the day, and we worked for about an hour in the cold (36 degrees) and fading late afternoon light. About 12 hours later I was on the way to the airport.

On the ride back we talked about the usual photography related things, traded old war stories about past shoots. It suddenly struck me that I'd just talked about working, only four or five years ago, with models who are now pretty much gone from the scene. Of five in particular, two I'm certain are "retired" and I'm assuming a third is also, at least I haven't seen any recent images of her, or heard anything; and the other two are in transition, working mostly behind the camera as photographers these days and only rarely accepting modeling gigs.

There are plenty of 20 and 30 year veteran photographers around. It's so unusual to hear of a model who remains active for more than a handful of years.

paradigm

Last night we experienced a significant political realignment. This will rumble through society from now until January 20, and well beyond... and it will be a long time until any of us know what it really means.

In Barack Obama, I see a charismatic man who has defied odds throughout his political career. Things break his way in part because he refuses to believe otherwise. If he can convey his optimism to America, if he really can reach across different colors and classes and beliefs... if he can defy all the rigid boxes of modern American politics, all the special interests and ambitious advisors who would tug him every which way... great things could happen. Certainly, it must be an improvement over the past eight years; after eight years of an infamously dysfunctional administration, how could it be otherwise?

Some presumably fear change. How deep into the abyss must we plunge to open those eyes?

One of Obama's greatest strengths is his grounding in constitutional law, expounded on at length in one of his books. An essential skill, because part of the problem is that we've broken loose from the moorings set by the founding fathers... imperfect as they were, and even after more than two centuries of a changing world, those famous and powerful experiments in democracy continue to define us as a people. We must not forget, in fact we must re-learn. In a time when most accumulate a chaos of unrelated beliefs similar to those held by their peer group, molded by marketing campaigns and special interests... this is one path back to a core set of beliefs upon which to base important decisions.

For a little over two months this will be a nation, a world, in transition. Unlike Obama, many of us on the "down-ticket" part of the ballot don't need to wait. We can do our little incremental bits to change the world now, or at least within days. And I'm honored to have been a winner on that same paradigm-shifting day, one which will go down in the history books as a day of profound change.

new

Finally, I've uploaded the new web page. Actually most of it has been there for several weeks, but now the new index page is up. There are still a couple of minor glitches... some text that needs to be kicked in away from the margin, things like that... but everything works now, I think, except the couple of things that clearly say they don't (a couple of bits of writing still in progress).

I'll need to add to it. The above mentioned writing, which is perhaps another hour or two of work to add. More images in a couple of the galleries (some of which are already scanned). I need to clean up the punk memoirs, which are linked about two layers deep, they've been there forever and are starting to look dated and have lost a few images through accidental deletions over the years. Those pages get a lot of hits, so they really need to be fixed. I keep meaning to do a major re-write and expansion, but that will require time, something that's in short supply at the moment.

The biggest differences from the previous version: A lighter look, a bit less edge. More words. Changes in the way images are grouped and presented, less abstract than anytime recently. New images, some shown before in other places, some not. Old words, post-punk words, written a long time ago but only read by a very few people until now.

The old version is mostly still there, on blind links, although I'll probably delete almost all the old pages after a transition period. Got to keep all the kids who hot link images at least a little honest.

Usually I like to update the site once a year or so, as a very rough average. It's been a lot longer than that, it was overdue. Hopefully the next update won't need to be put off as long.

It's ironic that even as I tame down the site a little, I'm mulling some fairly extreme concepts, and corresponding with a Bay Area model who just might help make some of those concepts into reality.

home

... for a little while. it felt so good to get a full nights sleep, and then take a nap mid-day. I almost feel human again.

No more travel til at least Thursday afternoon...