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.