Grassfight @ Trees

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.

Contrast

I work for the city, so I see council members, the mayor, important business folks, etc., pretty often. The most frequent mash-up of these groups is at the "Mayor's Breakfast." Usually this fancy, early-in-the-AM deal is at a country club or event hall or something, but this fall it was near the food court at the front of Sam's Club a few days before it opened to the public.

People stand in line to get an 87 cent Coke or a dollar fifty hot dog combo where lots and lots of wealthy business owners and city leadership sat and clapped and ate a catered breakfast on white table cloths.

Which reminds me, I've been thinking a lot lately about the role juxtaposition plays in photogaphy.

For one, at the most basic level it makes photography possible. That is, nothing would be visible (or photographable) without light and dark standing in contrast.

Also, seeing two things that really don't belong together, or that beg to be reconciled, or make you consider how they work in relation to one another...crammed into a 700px by 500px space is a marvel, I think.

This breakfast photo certainly isn't a drastic example, but it made me think.

Grassfight @ Trees

My good friends who make up the band Grassfight (myspace.com/grassfight) put on a really, really great show in Deep Ellum a couple of weeks ago. I'll post more photos from it and words about it in the near future.

Jason and Maycee

Jason and I have been friends since 8th grade. Our activities in the last 12ish years include (and are not limited to) playing Gameboy Color at high school football games, exploring in the woods, making thoroughly scripted absurd videos, cooking giant vats of mac 'n wieners on the weekends, slipping hilarious misinformation into our senior yearbook before it went to press, surviving private school, counseling each other through various troubles during college, keeping up during the post college years, and sharing in engagement and wedding time this year. He and Maycee were great sports on this sweltering photo shoot.

35mm

This is from one of the first photo assignments I ever shot. I think it was in '05. Shot it on film and developed in the darkroom, which is now in a box in my garage. Trying to think of an excuse to set it up again...

Puppeteering

We just shot episode 6 of the kids' show the library and Denton TV do together. Lots of silliness. This is from episode 2. So far the puppets have visited the fire station, police station, airport, landfill, an elementary school and a library.

Outtakes

Last summer I considered these the outtakes from a couple of impromptu portrait sessions with these guys in downtown Dallas. Just came across them.