There are times when I’m shooting and big, heavy thoughts come into my head. I think about how the photo might be symbolism for the meaning of life or wonder how images alter the behavior of people. Fortunately that doesn’t happen often or I might be goofier than I already am. But there are times when I’m out enjoying the world while I have a camera in my hand and the scene is just classic pretty. This evening I was […]
This weekend I have an art show in Pensacola, Florida, which is a long drive from New Jersey. Since 18 hours is too much for me to drive in one day, I looked on the map to find a place that was a little more than half way and came up with Knoxville, TN. Looking closer I saw there is a town named Kodak, so I had to look into that. It turns out that a postmaster in 1892 heard […]
Tonight was the annual Halloween costume contest at The Hungry Hound where dogs put up with their owners desire to make them look funny. Some dogs handle it better than others, wearing a wig and a hat isn’t something that comes natural to many pooches. My favorite of the evening, and the official winner, was Gia, dressed like a funky hippee from the ’60s. Gia was far out and groovy and matched the look of her handlers. She also was […]
I witnessed one those things in nature today that I doubt if I will ever see again. I went to a state park in Cape May near the lighthouse to see what birds might be around this early in the year. As expected, there wasn’t much activity but I went to a blind on a pond to take a look. I’ve gone to the blind a dozen times before and probably didn’t shoot a frame and I really didn’t expect […]
I used to be in fairly decent physical shape. It has only been seven years since I did a 30-day bicycle ride from San Francisco to Somerville, NJ. So when Lisa Lacasse asked me if I wanted to do a sunrise shoot from Mt. Tom in Woodstock, Vt. I didn’t think anything about it. I even asked if she wanted to invite her photographer friend Derek MacDonald to join us. The full moon would be setting, so there should be […]
We traveled to Denali National Park on our bear search. On the way, we saw a pretty coyote sitting along the road. So, of course, we screeched to a halt and went back for some shots. You can drive 12 miles into the park and then you have to take a converted school bus the 89 miles to the end of the road – unless you know somebody. Walter has a client doing road work past where the buses go. […]
What a first day in Alaska. It started with arriving at the Anchorage at 2:30 a.m. and then catching a 6 a.m. flight to Fairbanks. That meant catching a few winks in the airport, very few. Walter and I hit the ground running, heading right out to shoot in the beautiful weather. Our plan was to head to Copper Center near Wrangle-St. Alias National Park, the nation’s largerst and least visited. We stopped in North Pole on the way to […]
I was sitting in a slow line at the McDonald’s drive-thru for what seemed to be 20 minutes. Yea, before you ask, I was there for a salad. I wasn’t in a big hurry, so it didn’t really matter how long I was sitting there, but the guy behind me wasn’t taking the wait too well.
I went back to the big pond on the property I visited yesterday. It was the perfect day and place, the air was warm but not too hot, the scenery was beautiful and the only sounds were frogs, birds and wind. It is a place of total relaxation, I’ll be spending a lot of time there.
I had dinner tonight with Robin and her sister Penny at our favorite restaurant, Chao Phayo in Somerville. We call it “cheap Thai” because we can get out of there about as cheap as any place and the food is always good and plentiful. We go there at least once a week. The only thing Robin doesn’t like about it is they have small wine glasses. She likes those big ones that fill up your hand. Robin hasn’t seen a […]
Yesterday I photographed the strange horse statue, today it is a real horse. I was on a grueling bike ride with Kathy Johnson through the Hunterdon County countryside. We are training for the upcoming MS Coast the Coast ride in three weeks. Please donate! It was over 95 degrees, which I’m not acclimated to and we were planning on doing 35-40 miles but I could barely make 25. As we were heading back to the cars, I saw two horses […]
When I first saw it, I almost crashed my bike. I was riding along a backroad, not really sure what town it is, I’m guessing Readington. Out in the middle of a field, nothing else in sight, is a statue of a horse rearing up. I’ve gone past it many times since that first sighting, and when others see it for the first time, they have the same reaction. Why would someone put that in the middle of a field? […]
I had another day in the photo studio at The Hungry Hound. Today I photographed Domino, a black and white Cocker Spaniel. Most Spaniels are nuts, rather hyper and Domino wasn’t much different. I always give dogs time to acclimate to the studio, do their sniffing and calm down enough to After shooting for 20 he finally calmed down enough that I could get in close and tight with my macro lens.
We now have two Bernese Mountain Dogs, Sophie and new addition Zian. They are both about 85 pounds and our house only has room for 90 pounds of dog. It is tight in the house, everywhere I walk I run into dog. The biggest problem is training, Robin and I aren’t trained. So we called in the expert. Kristian Hammermueller used to work for The Seeing Eye, that great place in Morristown that trains dogs for blind people. Kristian has […]
I talked to kids at a local high school career day this morning about being a photographer. It was a small group of kids brought together by Middle Earth, run by Dan Puntillo, who I went with on the bicycle ride across America. The other speakers were a nurse, radiologist, police officer, attorney and dancer, who performed with Up With People for five years in the 1980’s. I only knew she was a performing artist when started talking but I […]