PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY.com

I came to Washington in 1994 as a young reporter. Having been raised in Southern California - and having spent some time, as well, in the Midwest and South - the nation’s capitol was different than anyplace I had seen.
For one thing, the city is flat-out beautiful. Say what you want about its politics, but when Pierre L’Enfant designed this place based loosely on the design of Paris, he knew what he was doing. The city’s beauty may be lost on most tourists who spend most of their time parading up and down the Mall looking for the next tour bus. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course - I even encourage my out-of-town friends to do it. But the fact is there is so much to Washington, D.C. and most people who don’t live here never get to see it.
As a photographer, I could probably write a book about getting great images in this city. There are very few places I have ever been that offer the photographer more variety and more consistency. So this post should not be considered my last effort on the subject since I will no doubt post many more D.C.-related photography.
Of course, one big challenge shooting in Washington is the fact that there are very few cities more often photographed. But don’t be daunted - take it from an insider: there are many places to go where you can find unique photographs if you find yourself with a bit of time to get off the beaten path.
The Mall. The area of green that stretches from the Lincoln Memorial east to the Capitol and straddled by the Washington Monument - is filled with opportunities. If not the largest park in the city it is by far the most heavily visited. Most tourists bounce from monument to museum and miss seeing the crowd itself. But I love photographing crowd. That’s where you find people, after all. And people are among my favorite photographic subjects. What’s great about the Mall is nearly everyone has a camera. Nearly everyone is taking a picture. So it’s easy to blend right in. Sometimes a simple image of a tired tourist resting on a park bench, the whirl of the Carousel, the sun beating down across this peopled landscape, can make a heck of a picture.
Continue Reading »

Popularity: 6% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed!

For some time now, I’ve been frustrated with the look and feel of this site. I use Wordpress and while the theme I was using was quite attractive, it had some serious limitations - not the least of which being that I felt it did not complement the images on this site. Fundamentally, while I believe a site about photography should be attractive, I don’t think the site itself should distract from or compete with the photographs that I am showcasing.

So with that in mind, I have applied my seriously feeble Internet skills to this new look. I like it so far but I may still do some tweaking.

As always, let me know if you have any objections! Like if all of a sudden you feel nauseous. That would be bad. So please don’t hesitate to speak up in that case.

Popularity: 2% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed!

It wasn’t until college that I finally realized I was meant to be a reporter. Before that, I’d fancied everything from paleontology to the priesthood (well, that only lasted until I discovered girls). And then, it suddenly occurred to me that there was no career more exciting, more “in the moment,” than journalism. At least that’s the way I saw it then. I still do.

While I didn’t end up a photojournalist, I have crossed paths and befriended many of them through the years. And I’ve always been struck by the idea that with every photograph they make - they are out to capture “the decisive moment.”

It’s a phrase first coined by the legendary photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, who many consider to be the father of modern photojournalism. In fact, “The Decisive Moment” was the title of a book Cartier-Bresson published in 1952.

It goes without saying that the man was an exceptional photographer with an amazing portfolio of images. I never tire of finding inspiration in his images. But his mastery of that “decisive moment” - the precise point in a photograph where an action achieves its climax - is what sets him apart from all other legendary photographers.

Continue Reading »

Popularity: 14% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed!

I have added a new feature to this site that I hope will be helpful - a glossary page with definitions of photographic terms. It’s new, so it’s no doubt incomplete and I will be adding to it regularly. By all means, if you can think of terms I’m missing or spot any errors in it, please let me know. For the most part, glossary terms will automatically be underlined in posts with pop-up definitions so you won’t have to go to the glossary page every visit.

Popularity: 3% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed!

In college I briefly studied psychology and explored it as a potential career. But in sophomore year I was stopped cold by one thing: statistics. I literally shudder when I type the word. S-T-A-T-I-S-T-I-C-S. Anyone else hear the ominous echo? Seriously. I’m shuddering.But occasionally I get just enough of a grip on my highly rational fear of number-crunching monstrosities to take a look at the … well, you know… the numbers for this web site.

What struck me the other day when looking at these numbers (gosh it feels so much safer not using the s-word) is how many of you are using the Firefox web browser to access this site.

In fact, if one looks strictly at browser versions, Firefox 2.0 is the single most widely used browser on this web site. Of course, Internet Explorer is more heavily used if you count both version 6 and version 7 users. Still, even accounting for that difference, Firefox users represent nearly 40% of the traffic on this web site. And that’s remarkable I think since Firefox holds only about a 14% market share web-wide.

Enough of the…numbers. Yikes, my head is spinning.

But the point is, it would seem that a lot of photographers - at least a lot of the ones visiting this site - are well aware of the tremendous benefits of Firefox. So with that in mind, I thought it might be helpful to share with you my top ten list of favorite photography-related Firefox extensions:
Continue Reading »

Popularity: 49% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed!

There is a printing technique some art photographers use called giclee. The ink is literally sprayed onto paper or some other medium and it can yield a very painterly effect - even a bit too painterly, if you ask me.

I recently came across the work of one artist whom I won’t name. His photographs, applied to canvas via giclee, looked so much like paintings I had to wonder why on earth he hadn’t just picked up a paintbrush instead.

While photography and painting are two very similar things - both being visual arts - they are nonetheless inherently different. And in my view, we ought to celebrate those differences, not try to erase them.

That said, at the same art show, I came across the photography of Katherine Drew Dilworth, a marvelous photographer with a really unique style. While many of her paintings are very “painterly,” they each preserve a unique photographic quality that leaves no question for the viewer that they are looking at a photographic image. The image above is one example of her work. Oddly, I don’t think it translates so well in a web photo where the almost three-dimensional qualities of her images can’t quite come through. But trust me, if you see her work in person, the textural qualities are quite amazing.

Dilworth’s description of her own style is interesting:
Continue Reading »

Popularity: 6% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed!