Keets

My sister Katie. I love her.

Dave

Happy Birthday Dave! The big 9!

Lydia

Emma

This is one of a few favorite photos I took while at Silver Pelican. Emma had such great style--she showed up wearing this outfit and I thought--this is going to be good! A person's clothing can really make the photograph more interesting.

Green Peppers

Grammie & Grandpa

I love this shot of my Grammie and Grandpa. I'm not sure where they were headed but it looks like a shot from an old movie. I love the large number in the bottom corner.

Masters | Yousuf Karsh

My parents recently saw an exhibit of Yousuf Karsh's work in Boston. Thanks Dad for telling me about him. It is worth your while to check out his website and watch a short video clip of him explaining how he caught this shot of Churchill. It is a great story. He photographed some of the world's most famous people...Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein. I am a big fan.

Film is Better

November 08 GQ - Jeff Riedel Photo Essay from APhoto Editor on Vimeo.

32 pages of GQ magazine from one photographer, all shot with film. Need I say more?

2612

The light leaks, vignetting and double-exposures makes the Holga a fun and unpredictable camera.

Two Windows

Dahlia

A journal entry about Kensington Park:
Just before dusk is the most beautiful time of day. All sounds, worries and thoughts are calmed by the gentleness of light. The benches are full of silent, contemplative people. I wonder what they're thinking about. In moments and places like this one welcomes introspection. Acknowledging the Divine brings a richness and beauty to life. I will miss...the Peter Pan statue, the un-mowed grass between the trees, Kensington Palace, and playing Frisbee with friends.

Stairs at Hampton Court

Hampton Court was the residence of many famous nobility and royality. It was designed by Sir Christopher Wren (20 October 1632 – 25 February 1723). He was a 17th century English designer, astronomer, geometer, mathematician, physicist and one of the greatest English architects in history. Wren designed 53 London churches, including St Paul's Cathedral, as well as many secular buildings of note. He was a founder of the Royal Society (president 1680–82), and his scientific work was highly regarded by Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal. This is a photograph of the grounds.

Choose an author as you choose a friend. --Christopher Wren

Masters | Irving Penn

Spencer Tracey, by Irving Penn

Penn captured the faces, and personalities, of celebrities from movie star Spencer Tracy (I948) to author Anaïs Nin (1971), gradually changing his approach to portraiture over the years. In the 1940s, Penn positioned his sitters in a narrow corner created by two bare, dull theater flats, a device of his own creation. The set both physically and psychologically confined the sitters, putting them on equal footing with Penn.

I myself have always stood in the awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel. - Irving Penn

Photographing a cake can be art. - Irving Penn - asserted when he opened his studio in 1953

Standing on the White Cliffs of Dover

It was interesting to learn about the secret of the Dover War Tunnels that Churchill used during WWII. No one knew about them when they were first built during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s. The tour guide said that people are still secretive about certain parts of the tunnels. We took a tour of the tunnels and saw the immaculately preserved rooms Churchill lived in and used for correspondence and meetings. My dad, an avid fan of Churchill, would've loved seeing this. Above the War Tunnels are the famous white cliffs of Dover that edge the English Channel. We were told that on a clear day we would see France.

"I felt as if I were walking with destiny; and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial." -- Churchill

West-End Plays & Concerts

Interestingly, I was glued to this audience of people enjoying themselves and not the concert they were watching. Concerts like this happen all the time outside London's National Theatre. I had just seen A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. The plot displays many classic elements of farce, including puns, the slamming of doors, cases of mistaken identity (frequently involving characters disguising themselves as one another), and satirical comments on social class.

View From a Ferry Ride

Another skyline. Sigh. This begins the first of many photographs taken in London during my study abroad there in the summer of 2004. That time is close to my heart. I loved seeing this enchanting, vibrant, sophisticated, international, city through the lens of my camera. I did not do it justice. I feel sentimental about my London photographs. I find them especially interesting--maybe more than you will--because of my experiences tied to the photographs. I long for London and would move there if it made any tinge of logical sense. I was diligent in my journal writing efforts and will sprinkle my posts with some entries.

Bentonville Skyline

This photo typifies some of my feelings about my experience in Bentonville, Arkansas a few summers ago. I found myself photographing telephone poles and water towers. The blank skyline of a town, placed in the middle of nowhere, bewildered and intrigued me.

Fruit Basket On Wood Chest

Taken at my parents house. It's interesting to think about why fruit is the subject of so much art.

Lucy | 9 Months

Chandelier

I love the challenge that every-day objects pose. This chandelier isn't really an every-day object but it illustrates how contrast, light and taking the subject out of context can trick the eye and make an image that is interesting.

Red Barns

It is interesting to look at black and white images and wonder what it would look like in color. What color would you have thought this barn was? I find something compelling and enchanting about old barns...especially red ones. (This one was red.)

Masters | Rodney Smith

The intriguing and mysterious Rodney Smith studied photography under Walker Evans at Yale, eventually earning a degree in Divinity. He was asked to lecture at schools like Columbia and Harvard, but he declined all invitations, instead riding slow trains in India, bicycling through the Camarque, strolling the streets in Paris. He still watches nothing but movies made before 1947. His favorite subject is men in hats.

Blinds

I love high-contrast light that forces shapes to become something else.

Aloe

To be honest, I'm not sure this is aloe but it kind of looks like it. I took a memorable trip to an Asian market with my mom. The colors, shapes and diversity of produce was a feast for the eyes (and camera). More to come later.

Isaac

My most attractive and available model. He is very patient with me. Thank you.

Masters | Richard Avedon

George Bush, Director, CIA, Langley, Virginia, March 2, 1976

Richard Avedon is probably my favorite photographer. His simple, blank-backdrop style eliminates all other distractions and allows you to focus on the person. He often used large 8x10 view cameras causing the line-and-gap black border, a signature trademark of his photographs. He was primarily a fashion photographer.

A few Richard Avedon quotes I like:
If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense . . .symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are.

Visit his website to see more.

Masters | Sally Mann

Damaged Child, 1984

"The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best. And unless you photograph what you love you're not going to make good art."

To learn more visit this website.

Fiddle In Case

Some of my favorite things to photograph are musical instruments and musicians. They inspire me because I was around them so much growing up. I remember one sitting I did for an up-and-coming saxophonist. During the shoot, he just lost himself in his music. I loved every minute of it. I got a little carried away and shot several hundred photographs...something I'm realizing: quality over quantity.

Masters | Diane Arbus

Penelope Tree in her living room, N.Y.C., 1962
This picture was featured in a Diane Arbus picture book. Arbus took a different approach:
"Tree was 13 when the legendary photographer Diane Arbus came across her - she cannot recall how - and photographed her for a feature for Town & Country magazine. She groans. 'It was torture, the whole thing. Now I know why everyone in her pictures looks like they do - because they have had to spend three hours with Diane Arbus staring at them.' It was a broiling August day, she was dressed top-to-toe in riding gear and told to lie down in a field. 'Now I know what she was trying to get: spoilt rich kid looking absolutely desperate in her own native habitat,' she says. When her father saw the images he was hopping mad and forbade them to be used."

"Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory." --Diane Arbus

This is how I often feel when photographing people. Inside I feel inadequate, questioning myself. It helps to put on the mask of confidence.

Millie On Stairs

Children, the constant challenge. I have a love/hate relationship with photographing children. Quality over quantity. I am the first to say I am guilty of shooting hundreds of shots in a matter of minutes to catch the perfect expression. Those photos always left a bland taste in my mouth. So many pictures, so little substance. I guess that approach isn't all bad but it's more of the digital camera/photographer approach. What happened to the approach of old-school photographers that photographed our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents with their large, cumbersome view-cameras, resulting in one priceless photograph with just one or two releases of the shutter? I see emotion, depth and simplicity in those timeless photographs. I see a photograph that will last and be admired through generations. As frustrating as my manual focus lens and 12 frames per roll of film may sometimes seem, I am grateful it challenges me to think, prepare and to choose my shots carefully.

Trees From My Dream

For some time now I've wanted to do a series of blurred photographs. Every time we drove past this tree lined road on our way to work I had the urge to take a detour and let the road take us where it may. This road is one from a dream. My house waits at the end of it.

The Art of Ironing

I wonder what comes to mind when you see an iron. For me, it is my mother. It is the distinct memory of my mother teaching me the art-form of ironing a button-up shirt as a 7 or 8 year old girl. Just drag the iron over the fabric right? Oh, no. I can remember her hovering over me. . . stretching, pulling, water-spraying, shimmying, arm strength, the collar first, then the shoulders, arms, front and back. You'd think that all of this work wouldn't be fun. Nope. My mom loves it. She'll iron for hours with Hoosiers on in the background. Well, it explains why my dad (and mom) always look so sharp. Thanks Mom.