View from the GWB.

I took this while riding my bike home across the George Washington Bridge the other day. Who could resist the god rays on downtown?

I shot these the other week for a co-worker that was needing head shots. Gotta stay in shape with the lights. 

Inwood III

I'll have to come up with a more creative title for these Inwood posts. I got a few more rolls of film back the other day, here are some of the highlights.

Inwood II

I got a couple of rolls of film back the other day, here are a couple of the highlights. These were all shot in the Inwood Neighborhood of Manhattan.

Chuc Nguyen

A friend of mine recently passed away. His name is Chuc Nyguen. Chuc was one of first photographers that I met at college that really blew me away. his work was amazing. I met him in the darkroom at Orange Coast College, it was my first semester there and I was just learning to print black and white. He was in a corner of the dark room by himself and I watched him as he did what appeared to be magic motions under the light of his enlarger. I was intrigued. He printed extremely dark, burning out everything that was irrelevant. He was also was a lover of printing on warm toned paper, he always had a box of the Illford variety with him. He showed me his prints and I was instantly in awe of his talent. He was far above what I even thought was possible. Even now looking back his prints are astonishing. Since his passing, I have searched the net to find what I could, but unfortunately there is not a whole lot out there. He was not into social media and barely made a blip on the internet. If anyone out there has a source where you can view his images online, that would be amazing. I have a couple that I can share.

The first is a way too small to do it justice, it is a too small sample of his fashion photography. The 2nd is from a series of photographs he did on the homeless in Los Angeles.

Eventually we became pretty good friends. We talked a lot at school. He worked in the labs there, and we went on several photo adventures together. The most memorable was a trip out to the Salton Sea that the two of us undertook. He was socially awkward, but it was in a really good way. He came with me to parties with my circle of friends and he seamlessly would blend in and even steal the show even though if  you were to look at us, you would wonder what we had in common, he was an obvious outsider that was incredible welcome. He was just able to do that. I don't know much about his life choices over the last few years, but I know he had problems. Only Chuc could tell you why he took his life, but it hurts me to know that he felt he had no other choice than to do it. I know this is a feeling that is shared by his family and all of his friends, most of them were probably knew him much better than I. I'll miss you Chuc. This has been a little bit of a rough year, friend #3 to go out, and all of them have been too young.

The rare self portrait.

This is a self portrait I recently made.

Self portraits are not something I usually do, but I needed something new to put onto my website and in other places where a picture of me is needed. The old picture I was using is almost 5 years old, and the other picture I tend to use is something like 25 years old. Can you guess which is which?

Dolly Would @ my studio August 16th.

I photographed Dolly Would last week at my apartment (I mean studio!) in New York. Yes, my apartment (studio!), in New York. With some clever rearrangements (stacking couches and shoving them onto one side, removing bike racks, etc) I was able to clear just enough room out to fit a seamless and a couple lights. Yes, I will be doing this more often, and hopefully even improving on the set up. Pleased? Why yes I am.

"That bass player's a babe. She makes me feel kinda funny, like when we used to climb the rope in gym class."

Inwood part one.

I recently starting shooting a new project up in the neighborhood next door to me; Inwood. A little bit about it I suppose, Inwood is the northern most neighborhood on the island of Manhattan (Marble Hill is the farthest north in the borough) it is home to Inwood Hill park, and is mostly populated by immigrants from the Dominican Republic. I started photographing in Inwood a few weeks ago as an exercise in black and white photography to reacquaint myself with film. I have a larger project that is in my head, and I am not sure of which black and white film I will be shooting it with. I also feel that living in Washington Heights, I have such great access to Inwood it would be a shame not to photograph something there! It reminds me a lot of Santa Ana except in a much more isolated form, while Santa Ana was smack dab in the middle of everything, Inwood is extremely isolated. Broadway is the only major street that connects it with Washington Heights, while Harlem River Dr and the Henry Hudson Pkwy are the highways on the east and west sides. This is a small neighborhood, and I mean this to be a small and somewhat brief project, but you know how things like that go. All of a sudden you have shot a couple thousand pictures and your somewhat brief project is taking a year to complete.

I am shooting this project with a variety of black and white films, so far I have used Kodak Plus X 125,Kodak T Max 400, Ilford Delta 100, and Fuji 400. I am photographing with a Canon F-1 New with either a 50 1.4 or a 20 2.8.