Exhibition Photos from "The Poetry of the Ordinary"

I have a photograph currently on display at the PhotoPlace Gallery in Vermont. Here are a few photos from this Facebook gallery of images from the exhibition "The Poetry of the Ordinary:"

My piece.

Here's the entire gallery of images from Facebook, and here's my post about the exhibition catalog from last month.

Shoewear for Photographers

This would be super handy. Practical too.

Monthly Challenge 2 of 12: a "4 a.m." Portfolio Book

For my February challenge, I created my first portfolio book. I've created my own self-published photo books a few times in the past, but they were never created with the intention of being a "portfolio." I received a coupon code to make a photo book through Saal-Digital (and they asked that I share my experience). So I got to work and downloaded their book-making software.

[click each image to enlarge]

Inside their software. Pretty simple and relatively intuitive.


Previewing the book as it's nearly complete.

Note that once you pick a book style and start adding photos and pages, it continually updates the price in the lower right: $142.59 right now (which was great because I had a $150 coupon code). My book ended up being 40 pages with a total of 51 images. About my only issue with the software was that it didn't have (or I couldn't find) a "fit frame to object" -like option when inserting images. I was constantly re-working their frames until they were about the proportions of my photographs. (I got an email from someone at Saal asking how I was doing and if I had any questions, and I asked about that, but got no response.)

The software - along with the saved project - is small. Once I completed my order, it then sent the design and the files along, and that took just a few minutes as it uploaded the full size image files from my computer:

It was shipped, and actually came a few days before expected. It was just over a week before I got my book. Here are some photos of my new "4 a.m." portfolio book:

[click each image to enlarge]

The cover is under 1/4" plexiglass, so here's a close-up of that detail.


Another image to show the thickness of the plexiglass cover.


The first spread: a full bleed on the left (that's just the edges
of the cover peaking around) and some small borders on the right.


Some full bleed Minneapolis bridges.


Some of my 4 a.m. "mini mural project" from a few years ago. Click here for more on that.


Three 4 a.m. images from my mini-photo residency this past spring.




Two more recent images to close out the book.

Notice from those photos above that it's nearly a true "lay flat" design - there's no forcing pages open or losing detail in the gutter. And the pages are very thick and glossy. The book is quite a presence as one flips through it. The print quality is what I had hoped (and I had high hopes) - no complaints there. As mentioned above, the book contains 40 pages and 51 of my "4 a.m." pieces from the last 6 years, arranged (loosely) in chronological order.

Nice work, Saal-Digital! Thanks for helping me with my February "monthly challenge."

"Poetry of the Ordinary" Exhibition Catalog

I have a piece in an upcoming juried exhibition at the PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont. The exhibition catalog was printed recently, and I just got my copy. The catalog is available for purchase online (and/or preview), and here are some screenshots of it:

The cover.


The title page.


The juror's statement.


About the juror.


The spread I'm featured on.


My piece.

I recently received my physical copy. It's a great little 7" x 7" book. Here are 2 photos of the actual book (as opposed to the screenshots above):

Click here to enlarge


Click here to enlarge

"... possessed by the idea that he can fix the images of the camera."

I loved the opening to the Introduction of L. J. M. Daguerre: The Worlds First Photographer and Inventor of the Daguerreotype:

Click to enlarge

Don't Be This Guy...

... just... don't...

Another STM Shot

Apparently there was a second decent photo that came out of the billboard photo shoot at my sons's school. This past weekend, another one of my photos was on the cover of the parish bulletin:

That's 3 of my oldest son's classmates, and 2 other kids I had just met.

The image also appeared on the Church's Facebook page, and also on the school website:

Click here for more on the initial shoot.

In The News: Three Photography Links

Here are 3 recent photography-related links... just things I found interesting:

• ONE: Highest Resolution Photo of the Sun:

About a week ago, Miami astronomers released the highest resolution images of the sun that anyone has ever created. It shows "a surface that’s divided up into discrete, Texas-size cells, like cracked sections in the desert soil. You can see plasma oozing off the surface, rising high into the solar atmosphere before sinking back into darker lanes."

The surface of the sun in motion.

Here's a bit about the technology behind it:

To observe the sun, you can’t just build a telescope the old-fashioned way. DKIST boasts one of the world’s most complex solar-adaptive optics systems. It uses deformable mirrors to offset distortions caused by Earth’s atmosphere. The shape of the mirror adjusts 2,000 times per second. Staring at the sun also makes the telescope hot enough to melt metal. To cool it down, the DKIST team has to use a swimming pool of ice and 7.5 miles of pipe-distributed coolant.

---

• TWO: Capa's "The Falling Soldier" Sold:

Late last year, Sotheby's Paris sold the famous photograph "The Falling Soldier" shot by Robert Capa, hailed "the most emblematic image of photojournalism." It sold for €75,000, or just under $100,000.

Taken in 1936, it captures the last moments of a Spanish Republican fighter, in a shocking and fascinating composition. Capa made this photograph while reporting in Spain. It became famous a year later, when it was published by Life magazine in large format. Since then, many have speculated (and many have "proved") that it was a set-up image.

One of Capa's famous quotes that I like to share with students is:

     "If your pictures aren't good enough, then you're not close enough."

---

• THREE: New York Times' "The Year in Pictures" for 2019:

I always like to share this because it's an important curation of photographs. Check out the The Year in Pictures 2019 by the NY Times: