My partner, Joe, is such an inspiration to me!  Having retired from years of practicing as an attorney, he decided that sitting around does not do much for him at all.  When he was thinking about the next chapter in his life, he thought back to his earlier years before he went to law school, and he remembered his dream was to become part of the entertainment industry.  However, life (and his mother) had different plans for him, and law school was the road he was to travel. 

Now at a time when he has the option of doing whatever he wants, he has been training to become a voice actor.  He comes to life behind the microphone, and it's amazing to see what a range he's developing.  His passion is infecting, and I can feed off his enthusiasm. 



I was recently asked by a couple who are expecting their first child to shoot their maternity photos.  My first thought was, "No way, I've never done anything like this before."  However, the words that came out of my mouth were, "I'd love to.  I think it would be great!"

I met with them a few days before the day we set to do the shoot, and we went over images on the net in order to find out what kind of style they liked.  Gina was adamant -- no outside photos (they just didn't do anything for her,) and everything they'd pulled up were done black and white with a black background.  I talked to them about the fact that with the black background especially, it'd be best to wear anything but black.  However, when they showed up at the shoot, they were both dressed all in black.  So one of my challenges was to make sure that their clothing didn't just disappear completely into the background (Photoshop helped me out there).

As always, whenever I allow myself to open up to new experiences, they turn out to be wonderful learning experiences, and I end up making closer connectons with people with interesting stories and life experiences.  And if, in some tiny way, I can do something for them that makes them feel good, that's what photography is all about to me.

Barbara Morrison

Barbara Morrison, jazz singer.

This is part of a "Park" series I am working on.  I've gotten the inspiration for this series because Joe and I have gone to the Long Beach Muncipal Band Concerts held free every year throughout Long Beach.  There's such a wonderful sense of community and family that goes with this event.  I've met people who have been going to these concerts for the last 30 years and have sat in the same locations all along.  People bring their dogs, and even the dogs are on their best behavior during these evenings.

The woman above is Barbara Morrison, the guest singer who performed several weeks ago.  She was an amazing singer, and she was just beautiful.  With the evening sun hitting her just right, I just had to do some images.

My park series will end up being printed on tintype, a method of photography that was in use in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  I am doing a modified version as the original chemicals are extremely caustic, but the end results are very similar.  However, with Barbara, I just had to print them out in color as I felt her glow was exquisite.

The next two images I photographed of people with their dogs.  These are regular prints at the moment, but I will be in the next couple days be printing them with my tintype series.

I ultimately shied away from this project.  I was in a public park, and most of the people I shot I talked to before.  However, I was seeing some wonderful spontaneous moments with families playing, and I started to try to capture the community feel I had.  Unfortunately, one woman approached me and asked why was I taking pictures of her and her kids.  I explained to her what I was doing and showed her images that I had taken; however, I came away from that encounter feeling "dirty" that someone was questioning my motives that I just couldn't continue the rest of the summer.  Other photographers have told me I should have continued with the series, but I'm really not one for confrontation.  I understand the extremely suspicious society we live in and street photography has become much more difficult.  I just wish we didn't live with these fears though.  But there are plenty of other things to shoot.

Colin, LGBT senior series.





"In the Park."

This is part of the park series I started but let go.  This particular image I worked with and turned it into a tintype photograph.

One of my favorite ways of creating my photography is printing my images on tintype. 

The original method of creating tintypes  in the 1800's and is still being used today was to coat the tins in a wet solution  where silver halide crystals are suspended in a collodion emulsion that is chemically reduced to crystals of metallic silver.  Then the tins are put into light-sealed holders, placed into large format cameras, the image is taken, and the tins are taken back into the darkroom and developed -- all while the tins remain wet. 

Since I don't have access to the type of camera needed, chemicals necessary to complete this process -- which are also extremely toxic -- I am using an alternative "dry plate" method of creating my tins.  In the darkroom I take the uncoated tin and coat it with a emulsion solution that has been heated to take on a syrupy consistency,  Then these tins are dried in light-sealed containers. 

Once I'm ready to create an image, I use an image I have taken on my digital camera, I print a "positive" negative the actual size on photographic transparency paper, place the negative on the tin and create a contact print.  Then I go through the usual developing and fixing methods.

When I was in school and using the laboratory equipment, this was fairly easily done.  But since I don't have access to this type of equipment at home, I am developing my own techniques of working with this medium.

Steve, 55, LGBT senior series.

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I was watching the news this evening at dinner and saw that here in Long Beach there was going to be a memorial vigil honoring the 399 teenage soldiers who have died serving their country since 9-11.  The service was supposed to happen just minutes away, so I grabbed my camera and headed over to where everything was happening.

The first thing that hit me when I got there was the string of crosses and stars of David that lined Ocean Blvd all the way from Redondo Avenue to the Long Beach Art Museum.  Each symbol had its own sandbag ready to be lit at sunset along with the photograph and name of the service person being honored.  It caught my breath because looking at these guys and girls, they were about the same age as my dad when he went into the service during World War II.  I immediately felt a wave of gratitude that my dad made it through WWII and the Korean War when he was called back to serve.  These soldiers weren't so lucky.

I met a number of wonderful, warm people at this memorial  -- just regular people who had family serving our country.  I'm glad I took the time to show up.

I've been working with a local church group that goes downtown L.A. to Skid Row and feeds and clothes the homeless.  They're called Dare to Care for the Homeless.  They want to reach out to other organizations to help with money, food, clothing or people to volunteer.  The people who do this work have the biggest hearts, and it's so inspiring being able to help them in any way I can.

This last weekend, while I was with them photographing what was going on, I had the chance to talk to a number of different homeless people and spend a few minutes with them.  I wanted to share a few of the wonderful people that I met.

            J.R. and Yolanda.  Just a couple kids trying to take care of each other.

                                                            Leroy.

Bob.

Lou.

Joe

I never tire of working with Joe as a model.  After all these years together and with all the changes we've both gone through, I love to see him in new ways, and my photography has allowed me to keep exploring him.

One of the things I love about photography is how I can explore different ideas and thoughts and create them in a visual way.  With this self-portrait, I am remembering that throughout my life, I have spent so much time watching the world go by looking from the wrong side of the window, but how I'm coming to realize how wonderful it is to open my doors and walk in the parade.

I've had the great pleasure to take a Photography on Location class with Tom Paiva, an architectural photographer with many, many years of experience.  His website and blog is located at tompaiva.com.  Please check out his site and see the incredible work he does. 

One of the assignments was to shoot at night in an industrial area looking for mixes of lighting of different color temperatures.  You can see this when one light appears to be white while another one may show up as a yellow light or a range of other colors.  I went one night down to the industrial area in Long Beach near the refineries and railroads with a friend.  If you want to try this, I strongly suggest going with one or more people, because these areas are dark and dangerous.  I was nervous as heck, but I was able to capture several images I was happy with.

Because it was so dark, the exposure times on these images were from approximately 30 seconds up to one minute for the bottom image where I had to boost up the ISO to 1000 because it almost pitch black.  This has been such an eye-opening experience into all sorts of photography that I'd only seen but never knew how to create!

I just went on a road trip to the Salton Sea along with fellow photographers and spent an interesting time learning new techniques and great hints on working with the environment by Tom Paiva, the instructor for this Photography on Location class.  His website and blog at tompaiva.com is a real inspiration.  

I used this opportunity to also shoot a couple friends in some wonderful indirect light.



Lumen Prints.

One form of alternative photographic process is called the lumen print.  This consists of taking a sheet of regular black&white photographic paper out of its light-sealed envelope, placing it in direct sunlight, placing different vegetation on top of the paper and letting it "cook" for a couple hours with a quick fix at the end.  I love the images that can be made using this method, but it goes against everything I was taught in my b&w class about never exposing your paper to light.  I still cringe whenever I bring new sheets out.

While experimenting with this technique, I thought about how to combine this with photographic imagery.  I printed out digital negatives of an image on transparency paper and then placed that transparency on top of the plant material and let it sit.  The almost ghostly qualities of the final prints make me want to explore this whole art form further.  The nice part is it only takes a few minutes (once you've printed your transparencies) to do your setup and then walk away for a couple hours to let it process.  This gives me plenty of time to work on other ideas.

These are two images of my favorite model Rachel.  This idea stemmed from an assignment on a Photography on Location class I'm involved in which has led me to consider expanding this into a series.  I already have several other concepts in mind.  I really like this image; however, in doing the shoot and looking at the final images, I want to try this image again but slightly differently to add yet another layer to it.  My model is willing to go again, so we'll see what happens.

My dad just passed away.  During his life Dad loved music; and throughout his life he played the piano, the violin and the viola until his hands wouldn't work any longer.  In the last years of his life dementia slowly took his memories until he forgot about his music too.  The day before he died, I brought my camera to the nursing home where he was being taken care of, and I dealt with things the way I know how to -- by taking pictures. 

When I was in his room looking out the window, I saw this small woods right next to the building, and all the trees were bare.  In looking through the trees into the sun, this reminded me of the journey Dad was on:  working on his way through the brush into the light.  Looking at the two images, I felt compelled to combine them into one photograph.

After the funeral, and after the reception afterwards and everyone was gone, we were all tired, and I was taken with how wearing the day had been on my mom and sister.