Self Portrait: with model

I've been photographing this person for years and for a woman in her 50's, she has a terrffic body, this was taken after the more serious part of the shoot and was more of a fun photo.

Self Portrait: with junior majors

Self Portrait: Coffee Break at Kayak

Self Portrait: Cookies with Carol

Dinner tonight with my favorite painter and model, Carol. Carol decided that my self portraits were too serious and needed her lighter touch.

Self Portrait: Winter Storm

Self Portrait: with model

I've wanted to photograph this particular person for years and we finally got around to working together. She was a terrific model and I hope to work with her in the future.

Self Portrait: In the snow

Self Portrait: At the Party

Self Portrait: Teaching large format

My first class with my junior majors today, the introduction to the 4x5 monorail view camera. We managed to squeeze into three hours the intro to camera orientation, film loading, shooting a few pieces of film and even the basics of tray processing.

Self Portrait: In the Slide Library

I think I am the last one of the faculty still using the slide library in our department. Its not that I don't think ppt are bad, not at all, in most cases a lot of our slides are in very poor condition, but I love getting in there and just trolling thru the draws looking for images for my lectures. I am realistic enough to know it won't last long.

Self Portrait: In the office with Christine

Self Portrait: Watching President Obama

Self Portrait: Memphis BarBQue

Travel day today, NOLA to STL in 10 hours 15 min. and that includes 45 mins it took to eat a late lunch at Interstate BarBQue in Memphis.

Self Portrait: With Bronze Angel

I took my students to the Metairie Cemetery today and made this with one of the nearly life size effigy statues that abound in that place.

Self Portrait: At Parade, New Orleans

One of the charms of New Orleans is that you never know when you'll find a party, this was a second line I stumbled across in City Park near the Art Museum.

Self Portrait: At Molly's in the French Quarter

Self Portrait: with my pilot-Ron

Taken while shooting a freelance job for the museum of the landscape around the arch and its relationship to the city. It was a bone cold morning for a ariel shoot, 2* when I got to the airport. Thankfully, the R-22 helicopter we flew in had a "photo door" which means it had a decent window that could be opened and closed for the shoot. The R-22 even had a heater. I shot both cameras, the D3 with my 14-24 and my older D2x with my 24-85 and the session turned out great, but it was a super clear blue sky morning and thats half of it.

This post is a little early, tomorrow I'm on the road to New Orleans.

Self Portrait: with Self Portrait Class

Self Portrait: In the Office

Self Portrait: Making Big Prints

It may be old, and uses a lot of ink, but our Epson 9600 keeps cranking out the prints. The process is a little like watching paint dry, the big ones- 44"x44" take close to 40 min to crank out. This is the last big print I needed to make for my show in New Orleans that opens in February. The show will have 28 smaller 24x30 framed works and three larger prints, one 44"x44" and two 44"x36". Now all I have to do is figure out how to frame the big ones, then get them to my gallery in NOLA.

Self Portrait: After The Dinner Party

The thing about new cameras and digital is that you really need to read the instruction book and then, you really need to pay attention. Todays lesson was that in carrying the camera around with me, the "mode" wheel on top got moved into some "intelligent picture" mode, which I think is more like the mode your Aunty Bunny might use to make photos. This mode disabled the RAW capture and I spend almost 45 minutes trying to figure it al out.

As for todays self portrait, the seafood gumbo turned out to be some of the best I ever made. Everyone went back for seconds and the salad was not even touched.

Self portrait before the big meeting

With all the things I had going on today, I actually had a few self portraits to choose from for todays image. Today, it was the all school faculty meeting.

Self Portrait: Darkroom bitch

Amazing how dirty, chemical stained, and general disrepair a darkroom can suffer over the course of one semester. Makes me wonder if the work study staff that runs the place does anything. Spend a lot of time screwing in the bits and parts that fell off during the course of the Fall term, and collecting and setting up the gang black ad white lab at the school house. Almost ready for the Spring term.

Self Portrait: Freelance Job

Spent some time in the studio today photographing models from the architecture program. It was good to get back in the studio and actually make some images. These models however, at times look more like "magic stick art" than anything someone might live in.

Getting a root canal.....

Self Portrait: Driving with Patrick

Software work around.

I have overcome a lot of my software issues. The first was to follow some advice from Greg Coan and not rely so much on the automatic updater from Apple for the operating system and instead download the updates from Apple directly. The other was to use the Adobe dng converter to convert my Lumix raw files to a dng format. Its not such a smooth workflow, you first import all the images off Adobe Bridge, then, run them thru the converter. I tried to do the dng converstion directly from the Bridge importer, but it kept stalling during import.

A lot of this will be solved when I upgrade to CS4, makes me wonder if software issues ever go away.

Todays self portrait is taken in my digital den, this time of year, with the weather as unpleasant as it is, is where I'm spending most of my time. There or the studio at the school house. 

A new posing couch

My friend Jeff gave me a new posing couch for the studio. I have always been attracted to the "fainting" couch, my experiences in Italy looking at reclining nudes, and in the history of photography, the images of Bellocq from the Storyville portraits. I got my first antique looking couch a few years back, my sister found one on the side of the road in Storr, Ct.

I hope this will be a interesting new device to pose a range of people with different body types. Jeff told me it was given to him by two guys who insisted that when he didn't want it anymore, he had to give it away to someone. It has an odd color, but it is Italian leather.

On other fronts, I'm dealing with software issues. I recently upgraded my RIP for printing so I can use it with the latest OS for my computer 10.5. I ran into a known problem, "can not locate IP socket", in the end I had to reload the RIP software. My OS for my computer is also doing bad things, when the computer goes into sleep mode, it does not wake up and you end up crashing out the computer and restarting. Lastly, I'm into the learning curve of Lightroom 2, it seems easy enough, but while downloading images off the memory card from my new Lumix camera, the download stalled 80% into the job. Its done this for the second time now any I'm concerned it an issue with the Lumix RAW format or the SD card.

Self Portrait: Making perogies

January has to be a bad time to start a self portrait a day project, the weather is lousy, your indoors, its just after the holidays, so what's happening that could possibly be of interest?

I am learning Lightroom 2 however, it seems Lightroom is the only program I have that will open the RAW files from my new Lumix camera. I have never really warmed up to Apple's Aperture so Lightroom may be a good alternative. So many programs, so little attention span.

Todays self portrait is from the kitchen, making perogies for the Ukrainian Xmas dinner party on Sunday.

New Year, new projects

With the new year, I am once again going to start up an extended self portrait project. I have tried these in the past, the previous one only lasted three months, but I've always wanted to do this for a year. We'll see how long I can keep this up. Earlier versions were hard copy based, the first one I did with Polaroid and snapshot film, I'm hoping that doing this as a virtual project will make it a little easier to keep going.

The other project is one based on something I did hear on NPR, about a photographer and friends that makes one photograph ever day at the same time. I have proposed this to 6 photo friends and three have responded, I really like the idea that we're all doing the same thing, at the same time, as a way to link us al together, even when we're miles apart. I'll post the site for that project once it gets going.

My new fun camera for the new year is a Lumix LX-3, so far, it seems like a great little point and shoot. It seems to have all the features I love in a small pocket camera and it also has the cult/snob appeal of a Leitz lens.

Also with the new year, I have finally made my flight reservations for the SPE National in Dallas, still not sure if the conference is worth the money, but having missed the Denver conference, I thought it time to give it another try.