cathedral of saint john the divine

Using a photo-stitching application, I created this image of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, located on Amsterdam Ave in New York City. It's amazing to me how these programs can detect similar features in photographs and "stitch" them together to create these larger images. I'm also a fan of the fisheye effect here.


click on photo to enlarge

venturing into the world of film

I've done it! I shot a couple of rolls of 35mm black and white film, developed them, and created some contact sheets. Next week, I learn how to enlarge! I don't know how to convey my excitement here(!) without throwing exclamation points left and right, but too many exclamation points just looks stupid. What you see here are not printed photographs but unedited images created from scanned negatives. (Thanks, Todd!)



Getting into the darkroom has been on my list of things to do for a long time. After shooting in digital for so long, it's amazing to pick up a camera and have to do everything manually, including winding the film after every photograph I take. I love handling the film, rolling it myself, and inhaling the chemicals as I bathe the film and bring it into the world. It is through this process that I truly come to understand and appreciate those who describe photography as "creating images," rather than simply "taking photos."



Film photography, as wonderful as it already is, provokes quite a bit of anxiety. Not being able to review each image on an LCD screen means that it may be a while before I see the result of my efforts. Film also carries with it an unspoken need to be frugal. I can't just take as many photographs as I want. Film costs money! And it runs out after 36 frames! Then there is the reality of having to create all the settings and focus manually. Imagine being outside during the winter, trying to take photographs of a fiancée who gets cold very easily, and fumbling around with the camera just to take one photograph...



I've been shooting in manual on my digital camera for a few months now, paying more and more attention to the interplay of ISO, shutter speed, and aperture, but nothing makes me learn how they work better than the pressure of shooting in film. I've been recording the lighting conditions, aperture, and shutter speed for each photograph, experimenting a bit with the settings while using the built-in light meter as a guide. Fred Parker's Ultimate Exposure Computer has also been immensely helpful. The goal is to be able to get the correct exposure without the light meter, but I am a long ways off from that!



On another note pertaining to stress, imagine my disappointment when I developed my very first roll last week only to find out that a damaged shutter curtain in the SLR I had inherited rendered my film unexposed and imageless. Yes, 36 photographs down the drain. I had an inkling as I shot that something was wrong, especially as the shutter made more and more weird noises to the point where it stuck and only released when I advanced the film. I took the camera to Nippon Photo Clinic, a highly recommended camera repair store. The man took one look at my camera, shook his head and made a face, and told me to go buy a new camera. But I'm a graduate student with no money!...



See the rest of the album here.

photographing children

One of the reason I love photography so much is the ability it gives me to capture and preserve moments that otherwise are fleeting. Our emotions flow from one to the next, but there are times when we want to revisit a look of love, a proud smile, or the intense grimace that comes along with chasing a soccer ball down the field.



Children possess qualities that make them so fun to photograph. For one, they don't hide much. If they're happy, they show it. If they're sad, angry, embarrassed, or surprised, you will know that, too. They also don't worry so much about who else is around to witness what they're doing. They get absorbed in their own little worlds and whether or not someone is standing by with a camera to document their every move matters little to them. Finally, they're constantly moving around and they're so unpredictable! I never know what they will do next or what expressions might show up on their faces.



One of the things I love most is putting myself on their level, whether it's crawling around on my hands and knees so I can see children eye-to-eye or lying on my stomach to photograph a crawling baby. I see the world from a very different perspective -- theirs -- and gain a bit more understanding of how children see things.



This past year, I've been incredibly blessed to gain new family, which includes two of the most adorable boys. They do their share of "performing" for the camera, but more often than not, they're content to let me snap away while they do their own thing.



I took these photos at a wedding this fall, and during a trip to the Children's Museum in Boston, MA. If you're looking for a place to let kids run loose, the museum would be the place to do it! Special thanks to their mom for letting me spend time with her kids and share these photos. Special thanks also to my amazing fiancée, who has brought some wonderful people into my life.

fantastic mr. fox

Taking advantage of slightly warmer, but still wintry, temperatures, Bonster and I visited World's End in Hingham, MA, a 251-acre "coastscape" maintained by the Trustees of Reservations just 15 miles south of Boston.

I had high hopes for the sunset and the light it would cast over the frozen land and water, but alas, the sun retreated behind thick clouds two hours ahead of schedule, never to return. I managed several photos that capitalized on the clear, bright afternoon, the firmament just beckoning for images created in its likeness. Mere steps from Boston's urban sprawl, our eyes drank in the vistas and the rich scenes: deep blues with scattered puffs of white painted across the sky, reflections in the liquid mirror below, hardy gulls and ducks slowly treading water in search of food.

Ascending from The Bar up toward Planter's Hill, we spotted a red fox out for lunch. A bold fellow, he did not mind our presence at all, allowing me to get relatively close. I'm pretty sure he cast several looks in our direction, contemplating us as a potential meal. Then he began trotting in my direction, muscles tensing up. I lowered my camera, readying myself to flee this carnivorous beast. And in that instant, he pounced upon a field mouse. I heard the dying squeal of the unfortunate rodent, the cracking of bones as our fox devoured his prey. I knew at that moment that any hope I had of becoming a National Geographic photographer had vanished: I had failed to capture the kill. Not an event for the queasy-stomached, it definitely made our trip more than worth it.

The rocky coastline, icy coves, and distant views offered by glacier-carved hills offered beautiful views of the water and surrounding terrain. I marveled at the sheets of ice that had collided with one another, rupturing the icescape and creating frozen fields that sat in disarray. It required only a small leap of imagination to envision myself alongside Amundsen, Peary, Shackleton, and Byrd, the great Arctic and Antarctic explorers.











For the full album, including more photographs of the red fox, click here.

reverie in white

Heavy clouds suspended overhead,
no late-afternoon glow.
Soft flakes of snow emerge from the
vast,
             gray
                             sky,
growing larger, falling faster
with each passing minute.

The cemetery possesses a special aura,
keeper of the bodies of those
who have already walked this Earth.
A quiet peace enshrouds these grounds,
augmented by the white blanket of snow
that arrives with Winter.

Who were these people and how did they live their lives?
Where are they now?
Do their souls wander aimlessly?
Or have they new bodies,
and embarked on a new chapter in this journey of Life?




   

cutler state park

Who knew that I would upload two posts in a row that featured cell-phone photography? I was out on a walk in Cutler State Park yesterday, a sunny yet crisp afternoon, and wished I had my camera to capture the bare trees, lonely cattails, and deep blue sky. Image quality is obviously lacking, but here are a few of the images I captured, directly from the phone and unaltered aside from some cropping.


A row of trees sits atop a rocky incline which opens up onto railroad tracks that serve freighters and the commuter rail coming out of Boston. This tree looks so majestic, standing tall against the clear blue sky behind it. Perhaps it's because of its bareness, which separates it from the other trees around it and allows the sky to peek between its extended arms and fingers. Regardless, I have never been so captivated by these trees during the other seasons, when they're fully covered in leaves.


How is it that during this season, when most other forms of plant life wilt and wither away, when animals slow down, some migrating to warmer climes and other retreating into hibernation rather than confront the biting cold each day, do these cattails manage to stand so straight? They do not possess the sturdy trunks that trees do, yet their delicate stalks manage to withstand the elements and to preserve them through the winter months. It was awe-inspiring to look out over fields upon fields (or should I say marsh upon marsh) of these cattails running in all directions around us.


This is the photograph that would benefit from a more formidable lens than the cell phone can offer. The trees in the background lack definition and sharpness, and the loss of contrast between the trees and the sky makes this image a bit less stunning than the actual experience of taking in this scene. Subtract the snow from the bottom of the frame and the vista reminds me of African plains in winter. Flex your imagination hard enough and you can begin to see lions roaming through the tall, brown grass, stalking wildebeest and zebra for their next meal.

cell phone photography

The latest fad in photography seems to be a shift toward less equipment, smaller cameras, lower resolution: cell phone cameras. Everywhere I turn, there's a new book or a new blog displaying what someone has done with their phone. Perhaps I would jump on the bandwagon if I hadn't spent so much money on a DSLR not too long ago. Or maybe I would be more inclined to whip out my cell phone to take photographs if my Motorola sported something better than a 1.3MP camera (there was a time when 1.3MP was amazing!). Nonetheless, here are a few of my own creations, taken in the past year.


the largest mozzarella stick ever
courtesy of the brickhouse café, dedham, MA


dogs driving a mini-cooper
princeton, NJ


a walk in the snow


sunset over the charles river
watertown, MA


sunset over a parking lot
dedham, MA


clouds at sunset
(i love the lighting created by standing with the sun at my back, but beware the digital zoom -- it wreaks havoc on already questionable image quality)