Worn Carpet

Odessa Motel

Dome

Motel Room

Picnic Tables

Gary, Indiana

Tomorrow morning I fly back to Chicago for the final time. My brother will be flying up the same day so he can see the city and then Ryan Mo will fly up on Thursday. We’ll be packing and loading up the moving truck over the weekend mostly, and then Mo and I will drive back to Texas after my brother flies back to Houston on Saturday night.

Having been away from Chicago a few weeks now, I can already tell that I’ll miss it. But I just wasn’t able to make it work in the short time we gave it. Sure, given a better economic environment, things might’ve worked out better, but I can’t say I have many regrets. The sun shines brighter here, and for longer, and warmer. The taxes are (far, far) lower. And in some ways, it might be easier to be an artist here. I haven’t figured all that out yet, but I’m working on it.

There are four people I met while in Chicago whose work I admire: Matt Irie, Daniel Shea, Brian Ulrich and Art Hand. You should check them all out.

Just outside of Gary, IN.

It’s hard to believe this was taken just a few short weeks ago. I’ve been enjoying the Texas spring weather for a couple of weeks now, and while it’s not necessarily beautiful in terms of the visuals produced, it feels fantastic. Shortly after this image was shot, Chicago saw a great thaw, which was a long time coming. I figure the ice on this tower was from the first major freeze, while the waves were still crashing wildly. I took it by walking… no, sliding out to the end of a man-made peninsula that was created off the end of a natural peninsula (I assume) out in Lake Michigan. The whole world was frozen out there; it was surreal.

I haven’t decided if this is the last image I’ll post from Los Angeles. It’s probably not. However, it’s quite disappointing to see it at such a small scale. Rather than provide a larger version of the entire image, I’ve decided to give you a pair of croppings. The first is just a crop of the subject:

The next is a detail that is a straight 600×600 pixel crop from the file. When I print these, I do usually scale them up a bit, as the largest scan I can get on an Imacon X5 or 848 is still not quite big enough. But I haven’t done that upscaling yet, just fyi.

FWIW, this was shot on Portra 800 color negative film of the 120 variety with my Hasselblad 80mm. If I’m going so far as to show you that last detail, I might as well give you the specs as well.

Grain is good.

Yet another image from LA in February. Kyle is teaching out at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, and he’s a rock star. Check out the photo they put up of him on their web site. I like mine better.

My friend Carla Aaron-Lopez at Venice Beach, Los Angeles, CA. The Birth of Venus came to mind. Carla’s also a photographer (among other things), if you couldn’t tell.

I’ve been off the radar because of our recent/current move to the Dallas-Forth Worth area from Chicago. We’ve been here a few weeks, but our stuff is still in Chicago until the middle of April. I’ll be flying up with my little brother Ryan and my buddy Ryan Mo. We’ll catch a Cubs game at Wrigley, I’ll show them what little I know of the city, then we’ll get to loading up a truck to move our stuff down. Should be fun/awful.

Andy Bloxham in Los Angeles

My friend Andy Bloxham (a great photographer in his own right) on our recent trip to Los Angeles for CAA. I think this is my favorite image from the whole trip.

I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago today—where my friend Katie Waugh is a grad student in the fibers program—and scanned 83 images from the past year in the highest resolution that the Imacons would allow. (That’s ~145 megs per RGB image from 6×6 negs, if you were wondering.) Maybe 83 Doesn’t sound like a lot to you digital shooters, but it took 8 hours, and I took essentially no breaks. Straight scanning. It was good to walk around after that. Expect some fresh images in the coming weeks (I hope).

Also, Stacy and I are leaving in a little over a week for Texas. Fortunately, we just got word that our lease will be terminated early (as we asked), and that means we will be able to look for a new place in May at the earliest. We’re really excited about that. Now, I just need some teaching jobs in Dallas. Anyone need a photography professor?

It’s been in the making for awhile, but recently we finally made the decision to move to the DFW area, back in our home state of Texas. There are a number of factors that contributed to our decision to leave Chicago. But unfortunately it can’t wait until our lease is up at the end of July. We’re hoping that our landlord will allow us the opportunity to get out early—at the very least, in just 60 days—but if not, we will be leaving most of our stuff here in storage until we have to move it out. At that point, a friend and I will fly back up and truck it down.

So that means Stacy and I will be driving down at the end of this month with Ginger (our golden retriever) and staying. It will be just in time for me to attend the annual Society for Photographic Education National Conference, which I’ve been looking to for quite awhile.

When we moved from Austin to Atlanta, I had Mo take a photo of me, which I’m reposting along with the one of Mo closing up the truck during a stop in Alabama.

I just got back from 4 days in Los Angeles for the annual College Art Association conference. For the uninitiated, College Art Association is the professional organization for those interested, specifically, in teaching art in higher education. However, CAA basically an art historian love fest.

I’ve now attended three CAA conferences in a row (NYC 2007, DFW 08, LA 09), and I can say without question that they are a monster waste of time for the vast majority of working artists. Sure, they have the career fair, which is essentially a big room full of tables and booths, where you either interview or simply drop off packets with the few schools who decide to send ambassadors. But without an interview lined up long before the conference, it just doesn’t seem to make much sense to make the trek to one of apparently only 4 major cities, UNLESS you are going to take in the sights of that town. This was definitely the case for me in NYC and LA. Dallas, being in my home state, was more of a chance to expose my friends from grad school to the great state of Texas. Austin turned out to be the highlight of our trip, however.

Anyway, back to why CAA is, well, less than impressive for artists (to be kind). I’ve TRIED to sit through lectures, which seriously amount to nothing more than series of truly boring art historians reading (DIRECTLY FROM) their paper on the most uninteresting of subjects. Even when the topics seem like they could be interesting, the presenters almost always fail to deliver.

This year, I didn’t even try to attend the lectures, with the exception of those geared towards those of us just starting out in our careers. It was fairly interesting, except like all CAA lectures, this round table went on too long by about 30 minutes. Well, I say that… we left after an hour.

As a photographer/photo educator, I’m fortunate enough to have a MUCH better organization in place to take care of my need for community. That’s SPE (Society for Photographic Education), and the annual conference happens at the end of this month in Dallas. Last year was Denver, and though I went alone, I actually made friends… something that seems next to impossible at CAA for a visual artist. Even though SPE is not necessarily an official professional organization (and therefore, far fewer jobs are posted on its web site), it appears to be a great way to network. I can’t wait for the conference.

Oh, and I shouldn’t close without mentioning a few quick points to those still considering attending CAA. If you go next year, DO NOT PAY FOR THE CONFERENCE. Only pay for your membership, as that is what gets you in to the job fair. The rest of it is a waste of money. I’m sorry to say I’ve paid for the conference, and when I realized that it was unnecessary, they refused to refund. So join me in never, EVER paying for the conference again. It’s just not worth your money. (Join SPE instead, photographers!)

=)

Hope came up to Chicago to visit us a few months ago. Shot this as we dropped her off at the airport.

It’s been three years since the last photo was taken of these guys. New neighborhood, new city, and they still live right down the street from each other. Pretty neat to see them grow. Make sure and check out the old photo. I plan to reprint/rescan the old image.

Did I ever tell you how I got started doing photography? (You are you, in this case, and I ask all of you this because I know the collective answer is no.)

The story goes, in high school I shot video (poorly) in band all the time. In 1996 or 97 my Aunt Nancy gave me an older SLR for some reason. I think she had let me borrow her new digital camera (we’re talking one of the first compact digicams) I really enjoyed taking tons of crappy 640×480 photos with it. So I think she figured I would have an interest in the film camera. I did not.

I went to college for music, and after a year I realized I couldn’t do it for a living. Burnout. So I switched to graphic design because I had been working with web sites since 1996. Turns out I was kind of a lousy designer… at least by good designer standards. But I remember always scouring the web for images for use in projects and never being able to find anything free that was any good. I didn’t know where else to look.

My mom had Sony Mavica that recorded straight to floppy disk at the time. Huge display, but the photos were 1.3 megapixels. I started shooting all the time. These photos were really lame and boring, but it was a start. I probably shot more in those days than I ever have.

One of the things that intrigued me was when I used the macro setting to shoot things up close, I would get this really shallow depth of field. That looked “professional” to my untrained eye. I had no idea how it worked.

Then, probably Fall of 2001 or so, I took a beginning photography class as part of the graphic design major. Black and White Darkroom, SLR camera required. I pulled out Aunt Nancy’s camera and shot with it until it fell apart a year later. Changed majors, and I haven’t looked back since.

One of my best friends from high school, Casey, in Huntsville, TX. We planned an hour lunch with him on our way to Houston, but it ended up getting stretched to two hours. Ah well, it was worth it.

I think that St. Louis Arch is the most impressive piece of public art I’ve ever seen. We were driving back from Texas, and this time I stopped. I spent about 20 minutes photographing it, even though I know it’s totally been done. There’s just something about it.

I love the way this building looks from the river (or in this case, across the river). And I love shooting B&W film.

Let’s see how long this lasts.

I’m missing the beach. The high tomorrow is -1° with a wind chill of -25°.

Blizzard’s a’comin. Wish the weather in Chicago looked more like this right now.

We saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that beautiful. I mean aesthetically, of course. But the film itself was really quite good as well. I felt fully immersed in it the whole way through. That is, until Stacy forced me to go get the Coke refilled (she did it at the last movie). I missed what I’m sure was a very crucial 45 seconds. (She contends it wasn’t.)

The movie is split in two, much like Titanic, where the old woman is essentially retelling this story. Well, kind of. Anyway, most of it takes place in New Orleans, and the present-day portion is happening as Hurricane Katrina is about to make landfall. The final scene (if I remember correctly) shows the flood waters entering a building. I just thought about this image… and even though it isn’t necessarily strongly tied to the movie’s theme, I’ve been thinking it would make a nice book cover. I really don’t have a body of work in mind or anything, but I mocked this up anyway: