Irishman
I walked past him and instantly noticed the pipe. I paused knowing I had to ask for a portrait, and cataloged for a connection.
3, 2, 1, Go.
"I don't see too many people smoking pipes around here anymore."
He laughed.
My old roommate was Irish and smoked a pipe every Sunday and the smell was the same so I lead with that. He agreed to a photo and said he too was an Irishman and loved his pipe.
Nice guy. Took it this morning on our Sunday walk.
Story behind the photos: True Texas
We were driving around Crawford Texas with the GPS off just enjoying the gravel roads and the beautiful scenery. Our Jeeps AC unit was struggling to try to compete with the 102 degree heat outside. The earth was dry and parched except for small masses of low trees like mesquite and live oak. Each homestead was landmarked by fencing and some type of large metal gate.
Every once and awhile a truck would pass us and the white stone gravel would create a cloud that carried off long in the distance. More vehicles than not were large pickups with lifted tires and cattle catchers on the front. I looked deeply into each cab hoping to see a cowboy, but they were just regular looking people, going about their day.
I had my small fuji x100t with me, and Jen was driving letting me jump out to get pictures whenever I spotted something. Just about the moment she said something I was wishing for- a truly Texas picture. I was thinking of what would really sum up our time driving and the ideas of gravel roads, long fence lines, or big iron gates moved through my mind. A second later I was thinking about symbols of Texas and, of course, my first thought was of a longhorn. Sadly all we had been seeing were horses or traditional dairy cows and they were mostly way out in the fields or hiding under the low trees.
A second later she said, "Um, there is a cow back there with big horns."
"Really?" I said. "Let's go back and see it, I was just thinking how cool it would be to see one."
She turned around and we saw this big guy and I shot maybe 10 photos of him as he posed. What I loved was how perfectly framed he was, with dark foliage in the back and a small delicate tree above him that was perfectly lit by the sun. The tree was almost glowing and he stood perfectly still as I shot a few images. I need to keep processing these images but I got a few I am happy with.
Photo story - Texas - Anniversary trip
My wife and I started a tradition 6 years ago where instead of gifts for our anniversary we would alternate planning a secret trip for the other person. We alternate every year and this year was Jen's year to plan. This year she picked Austin, Texas and the surrounding areas as I have talked about going to Texas since we started watching the Fixer Upper show on HGTV. I wasn't really enamored by the show, as much as those cut away shots of the wide open countryside. Here are the images we took in Austin, Waco, Crawford, McGregor, and Taylor, Texas. Each section has a small description above it.
First a few big ideas:
1. Austin is hot in the summer. Like, really hot, above 100 everyday, sometimes 110. Our Uber drivers said stay inside between 1-6 pm and bring water everywhere. We napped.
2. Austin is about food trucks, and live music, and you can find them almost anywhere, at almost any time.
3. Austin is also known for bats. They have the largest population of urban brown bats in the country and seeing them leave at dusk from under a bridge is spectacular. PRO TIP: Go to the Four Seasons hotel and sit outside under the live oaks and drink till dusk, then walk down to one of the floating docks to watch them fly out. It's awesome.
4. Austin has a lot of HefeWeizen beer. It's light and fruit forward, so a few local people said it was very popular for the hot summer days. I really liked one called Live Oak.
Our Hotel - A small boutique hotel called the Heywood in East Austin - great location, amazing attention to detail. Minimalist modern.
Our day in Waco at Magnolia. Notes:
1. Waco is huge and so are the lines at Magnolia unless you go in the off season, like we did. We got up at 5:30 am to drive in and had a plan. A cop working crowd control I talked to said the worst time to go is between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We tried to get into the Magnolia breakfast spot in Waco but the line was 2-4 hours long at 10:00am.
2. Magnolia is smaller than we thought and isn't in the actual silos. Most of it is a shopping experience, with some food trucks and outdoor activities. The bakery was good, but again that line.
3. The cheapest thing at the Silos is a coffee cup at 18 dollars, so be prepared to pay for your experience.
4. The Dr. Pepper museum and some antique shops are right around the corner so that is nice.
5. Parking is available in the gravel lot behind the silos, but get there early if you want a spot.
6. Joanna's vision for the space was and is incredible, while there wasn't much for me to do besides shop, I did marvel at her designing an old industrial space into the destination that it has become. Impressive.
My favorite part of the whole trip was turning off the GPS in the rental Jeep and heading out to Crawford, McGregor, and Taylor, Texas. Small towns with gravel roads after gravel roads. Such a nice afternoon. Jen and I took turns driving as I hopped out taking pictures. We got lunch in McGregor and it was straight out of a movie set. I had fried chicken and lemon icebox pie, of course. Here are some shots from that day:
On our last day- and our anniversary- I got up early to shoot some street images of the Mexican neighborhood where our hotel was, then we drank French press on the porch. After it got too hot we headed to Barton Springs where a natural spring creates a reservoir for the locals to cool off in the constant 68 degree waters. The water is a cold contrast to the heat, as everyday we were there it was between 100-104 degrees.
Street images - Syracuse - July 2018
Here is another batch of look up/architectural/street photos from our last walk in the city. It was early Sunday so not many people were out to actually photograph.
Join us! - Art walk for Art in the Windows - August 3 6pm
As many of you know, Jordan and I have been going down to the city to do street photography for almost a year or so to stretch our photographic skills. It hasn't been without its challenges and I can remember sitting in coffee shops drying off or hiding from snow/wind. Photographically, it has become one of my favorite genres, because I get to spend time with Jordan, and create photos, while feeling more connected to something bigger. This type of work is hard to do as introverts, but I feel both of us growing.
Last month, Jordan found out about a program called Art in the Windows and asked if I would be interested in applying for a grant. I said I was, but I was so busy with landscaping and drawing that he would basically have to do all of the leg work. He did and we were awarded a 750 dollar grant and now have our artwork on display on Salina Street in downtown Syracuse until September.
To celebrate, we would like to have a small get together at the Evergreen on Water Street around 6 pm on August 3rd. Our thoughts are to gather there, then take a gallery walk to view the images, which should not take long as there are only 6. Then, go back to the Evergreen to share a few drinks. We would love for you to join us!
Is it street photography or architecture?
Street photography is such a hard genre to pin down.
Is good work photos of people in spaces, and what is a good ratio of humanity to space? What if you capture a lonely street scene with only one person, vs a street filled with onlookers? What percentage is the right percentage?
Anyway here are few images from our last outing where, incidentally, very few people passed by early on a Sunday. So this is "street-ish."
William Wallace
In the time it took for us to take a few steps toward William, I thought about how truly lucky I am for all of the things I have been given and how generous life has been with me.
He looked up from his seat and asked, "Can you spare some change?", as I dug clumsily for my wallet.
I handed him some money as I asked what his name was.
"William Wallace," he said in a deep, muffled tone.
I asked if I could take his picture and I tried to get him to smile a few times as I knelt down and took three frames, but each time he kept his hand at his pocket, and gave me the same stare.
Practice, Practice, Practice
As I am leading up to the evening where Jordan and I are having a small gathering to show off our street work used for the Art in the Windows grant I wanted to reflect on something that has become so apparent lately.
"This is a world of action."
Getting the ideas for anything is the easy part, and you can say anything that someone will let you, but the real work of this world is still a physical one. Hitting the streets every single week, camera in hand in good time and in bad is what the essence of photography or dare I say life is.
I almost want to tell people who have such positive comments about my photography that it simply isn't the eye or the training or the gear, it is just going out to do the work. I want to be honest, I come away with far more terrible pictures than usable ones and I am no different than anyone reading this story.
"I made a commitment, that's it, that's the dam secret."
To be as honest and transparent as possible I will post some images from the more recent outing on Sunday. These are not instagram bangers, but are so important to the constant march of practice.
-Chris
The Story of America - Abandoned School - June 2018
My alarm went off sometime before 4:00am, but I'm not really sure. When your alarm goes off that early, you jump awake as if something is wrong. It took me a second to realize why I was getting up. Bryant pulled up in his white pickup at 4:45, but heroically he had already been up for hours. Urbex is a labor of love.
Last night we had decided that today would be a "School Day," and that we would go to 2 locations, both beautiful abandoned schools. One gritty and one pristine.
My plan was to just enjoy the work, move slower, and break out of my comfort zone by using mostly a 50mm prime lens. On your second time around these places you are afforded few luxuries except maybe taking a deeper cut photographically. I decided to really work the details and to notice the finer points. I would read the text, and see things I had not seen on the first go around. I let the lens shape me and the work.
Also I knew Bryant was really good at what he does, and it would be hard to compete with his photographic skill. I wanted to compliment the images he was taking, and maybe take the less obvious images. Enjoy the images below, I will add more as I process them. Jump over to nightfoxcreative.com to see more of Bryant's work!
The power of practice
You can't take practice, especially photographic practice, for granted. Not only is it wonderful to walk and experience this world, this world, is one of action. There really is no substitute for putting good stuff in front of your lens. No new gear, no matter the features, the sensor size, or the click of the shutter will move you forward faster than good old fashioned practice.
Today I went out for two hours and did my usual setup. 2 hours, in 2 locations, one hour per location. I started down on a side street near SU, for the first hour and then followed up, with an hour near the Niagra Mohawk building.
Did I come up with amazing images? No, not really. But that isn't the point.
Abandoned Gift Shop
Jordan had been trying to talk me into this one for quite awhile. We had scouted it, but for some reason I just wasn't really into it. Well I have to say he was 100% right. What an amazing spot! We went through an overgrown lot to a small local gift shop that closed about 10 years ago. Jordan wanted to get into this spot for years as it has been rumored to be torn down soon for new development. We just could not let this place get demolished without documenting a spot as special as this. This location specialized in Christmas decor and also farm fresh fruits and vegetables. Sadly spray paint and damage from young people had taken it's toll on this place.
Story behind the Photos: “ Signs”
Story behind the Photos: “ Signs” We wanted to take an RV trip across New England but that got scrapped as soon as we saw the price. It was cheaper to fly to San Francisco and spend a week exploring the Bay and going to wine country. She had no idea I was going to propose. She loved wine, lights, and fancy dinners and I knew if she was going to be my wife, this was the perfect place for us to start. Weeks previous I had landed a huge landscaping job and I was stressed from the pressure cooker to exceed my own expectations. I was distant and I blamed it on the job, but I was nervous about a ring, a proposal, and the resulting marriage. A loner by birth, I was scared. How does one even go about proposing? I have to admit, I wanted a book, or a concise Youtube video on the topic, but the way someone else does it is irrelevant. How you propose has to be about you, and her, and the time has to be right. You just have to know, you have to feel it with every ounce of your being. I leaned against her parents kitchen counter and asked if it was ok if I married their daughter, and they said yes. I secured a diamond, and the trip to here began. On the trip, I was acting really weird, paranoid, and a bit distant; it was hard not to. I thought I would lose that dam ring. I kept checking my bag, almost like someone who is nervous about setting their alarm for work the next day. Checking, rechecking, every time she went to the bathroom, I double checked that damn ring. We spent a few days exploring San Francisco, then rented a car to drive up to Napa Valley for the night. At Sterling Winery we rode a gondola up to the top and I knew this was the place. She had a beautiful dress on and looked so good, I lost my train of thought. Every time I went to drop down on a knee, someone would come by. I was sweating, and gave up; I couldn’t do this with anyone else around. On the way back down on the gondola I gave myself a mental pep talk and came up with a plan. Closer to the car there was a secluded vineyard and I could lure her out there with the bait of taking a few pictures. She agreed and we spent a few minutes taking picture of each other. I saw my chance and got down in that soft dirt, and here we are today, married with a beautiful daughter. I wondered back then if I had seen a sign, or knew, that it was right. How in this life of endless choice do we choose a direction? When I got home I developed my images and saw this grape leaf that overlooked our proposal. If you look closely you can see a perfect heart shape cut out of the center of the leaf. What cosmic energy had caused nature to leave us that sign? I’ll never understand, I just know to trust it.
Story behind the Photos: “Through the Eyes of a Child.”
4. Story behind the Photos: “Through the Eyes of a Child.” It’s no secret I love the Fair. A capstone of the summer heat, you can clearly see the diversity of people, running into limitless excess. The air is always hot, with an ever-changing scent of fried food and the smell of warm, over-crowded people. The scent changes with every few steps you take. For a person who likes to study people through a lens, the Fair is what I would call a target-rich environment. Every type of photography exists and can be taken at the fair. I work the barns for animals and the farmers that care for them, the night to get long exposures of spinning rides, and the people for the street photography potential. It’s a safe place to practice photography and you don’t have to bring rations. Here is a photo of Gracie enjoying the fair from her stroller with her parents, Mike and Jamie. Adults can rope off the sensory overload of the fair, but how can the child make sense of what the fair is? Strip away all of your clear logical thought and understanding, then you’ll look at the fair through the hearts and minds of children. The reflection inside her glasses is exactly what the fair looks like to me, when I think of what it looks like to her.
Story Behind the Photo: Letchworth Camping “The bigger picture.”
3. Story Behind the Photo: Letchworth Camping “The bigger picture.”- As you age, you see your life through a different lens. Around age 26 your prefrontal lobe starts to firm up the way a fresh egg firms up on a cast iron skillet. This is your brain on change. You start to understand the world from a bigger perspective and you’re able to see the world from more places than just from the bridge of your nose. My twenties was mostly a haze of me and my ego, what I wanted, and I how I thought I should feel. My thirties started to become a little more complex, a little less about me. Instead my thirties kept writing the story of the energy behind the matter we see everyday. In your twenties you see the house, you sit in the living room; you take both for face value. “I’m in a house, in a living room; it’s nice,” you would say. In your thirties you see a home, you see the love, you read into the deeper story of the people that occupy that space. That living room starts to become less about the stuff, the matter, and more about the energy. I got little glimpses at first, little vignettes about parts of life I disliked. When I was younger I thought boredom was to be avoided at all cost. I thought boredom was the absence of meaning because I only saw the exterior shell of the situation. In my thirties boredom became a special treat. I learned to embrace boredom when I had it. I also was able to realize gratitude in where I was, who I was with, and how the day unfolded. I learned to own gratitude. I started to see when I looked critically at my life that I should not look at the face value, but deeper below it. Here is a picture I took of my wife and our thirties at Letchworth State Park, overlooking the falls below. Our first camping trip of many, where boredom would be welcomed.
Story Behind the Photos: "Quiet Riot."
2: Story Behind the Photos: Quiet Riot. You would have to live under a rock to not know teaching and learning are under attack in this country. As teachers we feel helpless. Cogs in a machine helpless. Jen, Larisa, and I quietly boarded a coach early in the morning in East Syracuse and sped off to our state capital. It was like heading into war. Bus after bus of soldiers. No guns, our weapons, were markers and grammatically correct signage. A polite group of people who were sick and tired, of being sick and tired. You could see it on their faces. We knew complaining about our plight in the teachers’ lounge was going to bring no relief, but how on earth would shaking a sign matter? We went that day to make a very small ripple in the universe. There was an uneasiness in the group as we stepped off the last stair and were led to the rally. We had never trained; teachers are good at turning the other cheek. I brought my camera to tell the story. I walked around the reflecting pool of Empire State Plaza and headed to the back of the crowd. It was a huge concrete oasis, unusual buildings with large facades lining the rectangle. There was a lot of shouting and lots of signs and I had to get away. My introvert kicked in and I needed quiet time. I walked to the back, what seemed like miles away from the shouting crowds. You could hear the megaphones in the far distance. On my way back I spotted this man, sitting on a bench, fighting his own way. No screaming, no shouting. Just a determined man with his Diet Coke. I asked if I could take his picture, and he quietly said yes. I wonder what he taught? Was he an introvert or a pacifist? He held his NYSUT umbrella and fought the good fight. He was making a ripple in the universe. I wish I had asked him his story, I bet it was a good one. Here is the photo of the man that day.
Story behind the Photos: “Gratitude”
Story behind the Photos: “Gratitude” The young waiter said loudly, “too much, too much” after we had tried to order one item from each section of the menu. He was trying to protect us from ourselves. We were still trying to figure out ordering on our second night in Rome. We sat for hours, marveling at the food off the beaten path. The restaurant looked like a movie set, a movie set of what an Italian restaurant was supposed to look like. Drinking wine and saying how lucky we were too many times to count, was to become the theme of the night. The emotion was a mix of excited, in love, and scared shitless for me. It’s hard to be out of your comfort zone, to be that person, who has no idea how things work. I was glad I married the woman across the small table, she was a great travel planner, and went with the flow in new situations. We decided over espresso to go for a midnight walk, one of our favorite activities. A quiet stroll would round out the night nicely. We payed, looked around one last time, and knew that was the best it got. That feeling deep in your gut of supreme gratitude, we both had it. Our gratitude tanks were full. We stepped out on the street and started our walk, no direction at all. I used my camera and tried to capture the feeling of the moment, but I knew it was futile. The water on the cobble streets, the warm spring air, the smells, my camera would miss all of that. Here is one of the photos I captured that night on the walk.