The Un-Moment

I've meandered in and out of lots of construction sites the last couple of years. I'm usually busy documenting roofing and grouting and caulking in progress, but the grabbed frames hold more interest for me.

I admire Chase Jarvis for a lot of reasons, and this concept he shared from his Seattle 100 project makes a whole lot of sense to me:

"It was always my goal to catch the 'un-moment' -- that instant just before and just after such photographic moments that have been so historically revered in our culture. Even if the subject isn't moving, the image is just a millisecond 'off,' a sliver of time that captures the spontaneous..."

Snow Day Feb. 2010

I came across these while consolidating my Aperture library... It's always easier to be less critical after letting photos sit and simmer a little while, I think. It's tough having to immediately sit down and spend several hours with recently shot stuff.

This fun snow day ("Snowball fight on the square at 3! Tell a friend!") fairly quickly turned into punk kids throwing snow at passing cars, pedestrians, police officers, passing squad cars, parked squad cars with police officers getting out, etc. Had I felt more photojournalistic I might have documented the downward spiral into chaos, but I think we decided to just go home and have some tea or something instead. It was pretty fun for a while though. 

Tree Farm II

Our friends Ryan and Laura invited us along to a Christmas tree farm last month. Lots of trees and concession stands and hayrides and gift shopping and happy, sweaty, pink-faced kids. Ryan and I (as heads of our households) wandered around and hunted down the correct trees, used the super sharp saws provided to cut down our trees, tied our trees to our cars and put them in our living rooms. I think it might be a new tradition. (It was both couples' first Christmas.)

Tree Farm

The Jones Family

The Joneses are great. My instructions were "you guys be silly and hang out and I'll follow you around with a big camera." Couldn't have gone better. I think none of us were big fans of posing.