I visited Lancaster Pennsylvania and saw some amazing sites. It was just after sunrise; this is an image of an Amish man driving a team of horses down the road. I shot this from my car window at about 40 miles per hour with a telephoto lens as I passed by. His gaze haunts me. As is so often the case, I see people I want to photograph but somehow I do not think they would appreciate me asking.
Do you think it is alright to ask someone if you can photograph them, or is it just rude?
This lighthouse at Cape Hatteras is beautiful and was hard to get to as several roads were washed away from the recent hurricane. This was a very hurried shot for several reasons. I got to the lighthouse very late in the day, about 40 minutes before it closed which left me little time to think about how to photograph it. I thought it would be best to go up in the lighthouse first to see the inside and the view from the top. It was 278 stairs and it felt like it on this humid day. And yikes - I found out I was not particularly fond of heights and wind and the little ring walkways around the lighthouse high in the sky.
After I made it back down, I went to photograph the outside. Did I mention the mosquitos? It is going to be hard to put this into words - lets just say there were a lot of them and they were huge, tenacious and like no misquotes I have ever experienced. I was prepared however, at least I thought I was as I had coated myself generously with repellant before I started this journey.
After walking across this wet grass I found myself in a mosquito feeding frenzy and I was the food. They were buzzing around my head, ears, up my nose and shorts in numbers I would estimate at 500 - 1000. I hurridly placed my tripod and mounted my camera on the tripod head. It was just about then I started to feel my back starting to sting. Oh, by the way, did you know mosquitos can sting you through your shirt? I took 2 images and ran for the car. My friend counted over 43 bites on my shoulders and back - and I have a good story to tell now.
I visited the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina last week and decided to climb the 287 stairs to the top. It was hot, humid and the stairs went on it seemed forever.
Oh, and the mosquitos - much more on that in a future post. I stopped to take this image...or maybe I stopped to catch my breath on the way up and decided to take this image - I really can't remember.
After a day of frustrating travel on the North Carolina ferry system, we were one of only 2 cars taking this late night ferry. It is odd being on a ferry with virtually no one else, on a dark night in the middle of the ocean. I thought the moisture on the windows was really interesting. I stepped out of the cabin to take this picture and thought somehow it was appropriate.
This is an image I took of my friend Jason. He retains many child-like qualities I have lost - like playing in the surf in street clothes. I think this photograph is a little window into his soul. The weather throughout most of the week on the coast of North Carolina was rainy. For me it was a pleasant change from the ever-present blue sky you see day in and day out in Phoenix. It was late afternoon, the tide was coming in and the sky was clearing from a rain storm.
I learned you can take image after image on the beach when the waves are crashing in and every one will be significantly different from the one before.
Here is another image from the Christ Church in New Bern, North Carolina. I love the arches, shadows and the fine wood details. New Bern is an amazing town and I wish I had more time to photograph here as there are many grand building that have been restored.
I visited this church yesterday and was fortunate enough to be able to tour the grounds. Christ Church located in New Bern is one of North Carolina's earliest congregation - the first church was finished in 1750. The craftsmanship is superb and if you didn't know any better you would think it was new. This staircase with it's magnificent stain glass windows is quite grand, leading upstairs to the balcony and the pipe organ comprised of 1397 pipes.
I happened onto this scene in Mebane, North Carolina in the early morning while the fog was still lifting. The little white flowers in the field gave everything an interesting light quality, a luminescence. Power lines are not something I would normally photograph but the contrast between nature and the man made steel structures were striking. It was a very serene place - nature wins.
If you look closely you can see a black cow in the distance, hardly visible at this size.
It is fascinating to photograph in Mexico where so many things are done the old fashion way. On my last trip to Alamos, Sonora Mexico we took a short walk from the alameda into the barrio where we were invited in to a local bakery. It was dark, humid and everything was made by hand. The bread was cooked in a wood-fired oven and the finished goods delivered door to door by a young boy on a bike at 2:00pm, mas o menos.
I warned you earlier I have a thing for crosses - I find them wherever I go. I like the symmetry of the two crosses and the far near effect. These crosses can be found at Tumacácori National Park outside of Tucson Arizona. Tumacácori is perhaps the most mispronounced word I know of - so don't worry about pronouncing it correctly because nobody does.
The Tumacácori Mission was established in 1691 by Father Eusebio Francisco Kino. It was established one day before the Guevavi Mission, making it the oldest Jesuit mission site in southern Arizona and there are some really cool things to photograph there.
I am a big fan of the Art Deco style and the inside of the 30th Street Train Station in Philadelphia really sums it up for me. The whole interior gives you the feeling you are back in the 1930's. Wait a minute - I was not alive in the 30's but that is how I imagine it looked. The statue is beautiful and really intimidating; the wings on the back are elegant and frightening at the same time.
I took this image in the San Carlos Borromeo mission in Carmel, CA several years ago. I really want to go back there again to photograph. I will post more images of this mission in the near future.
I love to photograph buildings with interesting architecture. This is the Tempe Center Of The Arts in Tempe, Arizona. There are a lot of cool things around there and the time of day can really influence how it all looks. I am smitten with the light poles in the parking lot; that is what caught my eye.
I found this beautiful piñata in a resort in Sonora Mexico. Maybe I have led a sheltered life but I was taken by the craftsmanship and had really never seen one this nice. I liked the fact it was signed on the back by the collar too. I never got a chance to find out how much one of these costs or what they are stuffed with. If I go back I think I will have to buy one and there were many to choose from.
This is from my trip to Cannon Beach, Oregon about 5 years. I had the opportunity to photograph some landscapes on the last day after it stopped storming. Unfortunately this negative was severely underexposed and was unprintable in the darkroom. I gave up trying to print it and the negative actually ended up on the floor of my darkroom for several days before I picked it up. It became severely scratched but for some reason I kept it.
I ended up scanning the negative about a year ago and was able to recover enough density and fix all the scratched to make this image.
This is the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. It is quite an amazing building and literally looks different from every vantage point. It is fun to photograph and they are very friendly about letting you go all over their property to take your images. I found it best in the early morning. I decided to drive over to Los Angeles in the middle of the night to get to the building by sunrise. I left Phoenix about 1:00am very tired and woke up going 80 mph off the road in the desert. Moral of the story, never drive when you are tired!
This image is from the Chihuly Exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden last year. I found the glass sculptures very challenging to photograph - it is just really hard to capture their beauty in 2 dimensions. I have other images from this exhibit that I may post at a later date.
This building should look familiar as it is the same one I posted an image of yesterday just under very different weather conditions. This was taken during a late afternoon monsoon storm. With very little depth of field mixed with the dust, rain, in black and white with a little bit of toning takes on a very different feel.
I love the look of this building, one of the few interesting ones in downtown Phoenix. The contrasting materials used in the office space and parking garage make it a very tactile visual. When I saw the horizontal lines meeting the sky, and the sky reflecting back into the glass I had to stop. This building looks nothing like this until late in the afternoon when the setting sun is reflecting warm light back into structure.
I took these images at Steele Indian School Park in Phoenix Arizona yesterday. I was excited when I saw the shadows on the wall and hoped I would like it as much when I got a chance to look at it more closely later. It is still very hot out here even though we are already into September. That sun can make you feel old and weathered if you stay out in it long enough, so I decided to make these photos look the same way I felt. Actually, I thought this was a fitting finish for photos from a historic site - maybe the way it might have looked if photographed back when it was built.
The circular wall image with the tree shadows is found on the east side of the park. The image of the building is the beautifully restored Memorial Hall, built in 1922.
An Excerpt from Wikipedia About Steele Indian School Park:
"The park is on the site of the Phoenix Indian School, one of several boarding schools owned and operated by the U.S. government, designed in the late 19th century to socialize and assimilate Native Americans into the dominant Euro-American socio-cultural system. These schools became controversial in later decades for the alleged mistreatment of their students, as well as the suppression and prohibition of the students' indigenous culture and languages."
