One of the strange things about the modern world is how everyone has cameras everywhere. A lot of photographers shot pictures of me bringing my Canon 5D mkII into the thick of the mud on Woodstock Poland, and it’s been entertaining to see these pictures as they slowly trickle in from all over the world. Some of the best I’ve gotten were taken by Krzysiek Zubiel:
Also entertaining is this YouTube video. I make my entrance at 0:34.
I apologize for the secrecy over the past month–I’ve been in Poland on a really amazing shoot for the New York Times Magazine. The pictures came out in the Look section of this week’s Sunday Magazine:
Woodstock Poland is the largest music festival in Europe, attracting over 700,000 people this year. I focused on shooting the mud pit, which is the Polish version of the muddy concert archetype. You can see more images online here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/28/magazine/LOOKmud.html
Just got back from shooting a personal project at Lake Havasu. I’m in the throes of editing but here’s an outtake.
While I was in New York a few weeks ago I saw the exhibit of moon photographs at the Museum of Natural History. The show was assembled and curated by Michael Light, who went through thousands NASA photographs from the moon missions and shuttle flights and created beautiful enormous prints of the best images. I saw a lot of art while I was in New York, but this show was by far the best.
It’s hard to do justice to the photographs in a blog post, so just go see the show. The pictures are stunning, and they absolutely transcend their scientific origins.
Yesterday I ran into one of our generation’s most prolific photographers:
I’ve never seen a Google Street View car and I was very excited. Especially since I’d just read this post on Conscientious about some new photo projects using Google Street view. I especially like Doug Rickard’s A New American Picture. I love the expansiveness of the pictures, the casualness of the people, and the sense of composition–this is one of the first street view projects I’ve seen where the photographer has found his own voice and style.
Google Street View projects really make me think about the process of conventional street photography. When I shoot on the street, I always feel very much at the mercy of the subjects I can find–a lot of the work is in the wandering and exploring. There’s an editing process going on in my head as I decide who and what to shoot, and these street view projects just delay that editing process until after the pictures are taken. It also seems like people respond very differently to a car-mounted robot-camera, so now I have a new item for my wish list.
It’s been another month of a lot of traveling: Palm Springs for work, Boston for a wedding, New York for meetings. Meanwhile, my friend Hugh McManus has posted some new (old) work of mine on his photo site Ninja Knives. It’s nice to show some looser work for a change. Here’s a snapshot from a 2002 winter climb of Mt. Katahdin in Maine.
I took this picture shortly after we reached the summit and were recrossing a high, exposed plateau known as the Tablelands. We’d been lucky to make it–we had to grope through dense clouds to find the top, the wind was blowing about 50 mph and kicking up snow, and it was extremely cold (somewhere below 0 degrees Fahrenheit). We were pretty elated, and as we hurried down to shelter I turned around and snapped this picture through my goggles with my trusty old Pentax MX.
My photos of Echo Park are being shown at the MOPLA closing party tonight in Santa Monica. The pictures are part of a joint project I’ve undertaken with the rest of the En Masse photo collective–we’ve each photographed different neighborhoods in Los Angeles to create a portrait for the Month of Photography in LA. Check it out:
Broadway Art Space
929 Broadway Street
Santa Monica 90402
April 30th 7-10pm
It’s the Month of Photography in Los Angeles and all of a sudden I’ll be showing photographs in a couple of places. Coming up first is a pop-up show with Edition One Hundred this Wednesday and Thursday as part of the Downtown LA Art Walk. It will take place at Edgar Varela Fine Arts and you can find more info on the Facebook page.
This picture of speardivers headed into the ocean is in the show:
As always with Edition One Hundred, prints will be available for purchase for $100, and 10% will go to charity.
I’m also working on a project with En Masse, the Los Angeles photo collective I’m a part of. We’re each photographing a different neighborhood in LA to create a portrait of the city that will presented at the MOPLA closing party. I’m working on Echo Park. Here is the announcement for the show:
See you out there!
Shot a really interesting story for Intersection Magazine tonight. Here’s me and my assistant with our roving studio setup, ready for battle on a cold cold night in NYC.
