Sharing My Work

In early October, I started to realize that what had felt like a slump in my technical photographic abilities - my photos were all coming out dark and dull, no matter how great I thought the light was when I took them - might actually be a problem with my trusty scanner. After a week or so of web searches it seemed pretty clear that my problems were actually the symptoms of a “SuperCoolscan” 5000 ED in desparate need of cleaning and adjustment.  Worried I might make things worse if I tried this on my own, I packed it up and shipped it off to the Nikon facility in Mellville, Long Island.

Close to two months later (thanks to an out-of-production part, a post-cyber-Monday UPS bottleneck, and even a hurricane) my scanner is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow.  I can’t wait to get cracking on the 30 or so rolls of film I’ve got queued up, some from long before the scanner went bad.  I’ve got a project on maritime commerce in New York Harbor from June and July, August and September trips to farms in North Carolina and railroad lots in central Pennsylvania, several visits to Coney Island, Northern Virginia on Election Day and the awful aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  There’s so much I’ve been wanting to see and show people!

Meanwhile, the last few months have helped me realize how important it is to me to share my photos with others.  In general I’m a pretty active Flickr user, but as my archives of scanned photos have dwindled my posts have died down, and with them a part of my contact with the small but friendly community I’d plugged into there.  I’ve really missed it.

All of that has made me want to do more to get my stuff out there for people to see.  I started to think more about printing, thanks to a new contact on Flickr who was kind and generous enough to ask me whether he could buy a copy of one of my shots.  I made myself an Instagram account, so that I can post up some digital sketch shots in real time while the somewhat slower process of shooting, developing and scanning my film plays out.  And now I’ve made this website and blog.

We’ll see where it takes me.  I’m expecting it will be a little technical, a little personal, and hopefully a little artistic too.  I hope that you enjoy it, come back from time to time to see what’s new, and maybe leave me some comments.  Welcome, and thanks for visiting!