Mortal coil

I haven't been in the frame of mind for my usual amount of looking at pictures this past week, oddly. I couldn't tell you what frame of mind I have been in. It's maybe a little bit like a turtle withdrawing into its shell, trying to figure things out. But I've done some shooting, at least.

What I'd rather post today is a link to these two recordings of the same poem/lyrics by one of my favorite musicians, dose one. The first, a spoken version, is from his new poetry CD Soft Skulls. The second is a song by Subtle (one of dose's many musical efforts), off their latest album For Hero:For Fool.

Listen to both versions here. (via Mr. Sutter)

Winter in July

This has felt like the longest winter of my life.

A few weeks ago I was watching my breath billow out in visible puffs as I sat at my table and talked on the phone to my family about what they did on the Fourth of July. Fortunately, a heat pump has since been installed and I no longer have to wear several layers of winter clothing indoors and still be cold.

Although spending what seemed like an endless number of frigid days trying to remember what the sun feels like in the summer certainly didn't make the time fly, it's also strange to have winter just be... winter. To a girl who grew up on the northern half of the planet, winter is supposed to arrive late in the year. The dark days should be lit up by warm houses and holidays, and plenty of excuses to make lots of great food while gathering with friends and family. It's been so strange to have the cold be so uneventful.

Realizing that there's still more than a month to go, I am dumbfounded. But at least I get to spend the second half of winter whispering sweet nothings to my new heat pump. This hemisphere shit is bizarre.

Kristine Larsen

I'm enjoying looking through Kristine Larsen's editorial and illustrative work.


© Kristine Larsen


© Kristine Larsen

I like thinking about life in this way. There is always offbeat humor to be found in commonplace settings. I love that it can be found in a lot of contemporary photography, and I try to let it come through in some of my work. Maybe it's just part of the greater pictorial conversation right now. Or maybe we're all a bunch of weirdos.

Hey, Hot Shot! Summer Edition feature

I'm featured on the Hey, Hot Shot! blog again, this time for the Summer Edition. Check out the write-up here.

Jen Bekman intern Marina had some interesting things to say about my image "Winter Hit Hard". Speaking of winter, I'm currently bundled up in multiple layers under 2 blankets, sitting next to the fire. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to winter in July.

Liz Kuball

Since she was just featured on the Hey, Hot Shot! blog, it seems timely to talk a little bit about my friend Liz Kuball. Liz and I recently started e-mailing back and forth after she'd noticed an image of mine on the HHS blog and Flak Photo. Being the photography nerd that I am, I replied to her excitedly and we've been talking about life and pictures ever since.

Liz's work largely seems to focus not on people per se, but what is left idle in our absence. Whether exploring out of place industrial sectors or the spaces in which we dump our "gluttony of the material form," Liz examines what we often tend to sweep under the rug.


© Liz Kuball

For her series South of Cota, she learned the ins and outs of an industrial neighborhood of the same name in Santa Barbara. I love her use of straight-on compositions in this series, allowing the rest of the details to fall away and forcing us to consider the facades of these structures. I almost feel like they're portraits -- but of buildings.


© Liz Kuball

The project In Store takes a deeper look at the concept of storage facilities. Liz challenges us to think about what is actually contained within the cookie-cutter exteriors of these buildings. We know that behind each door sits a lot of stuff, but what is it exactly? What does it represent to the people to whom it belongs, and how did it end up behind door number 34 (or 33, or 32...)? I also like how some of the pictures bring us a glimpse at the kind of spaces to which we relegate our surplus things -- like under an overpass or next to the freeway.

Be sure to check out Liz Kuball's blog for lots of photo-related goodness.

Prints now for sale

About a week ago, I put some selected images up for sale on Etsy. You can buy a large print for only $100. Any money I make from this print sale will go towards the purchase of a Canon 5D, which I need in order to move forward in working as a photographer.

If you're interested in an image that isn't posted in the Etsy shop or would like to inquire about a smaller size, please let me know.

Phirebrush Issue 51

I was happy to see that my image "Immigration" is one of the featured pieces in Issue 51 of Phirebrush. Two other images from my Home & Away series are in the issue as well. Check it out, there's some great stuff.

John Szarkowski (1925-2007)

It's been all over the photo end of the blogosphere that John Szarkowski -- photographer, curator, historian, and critic -- passed away on the 7th. Many others have done a beautiful job of writing about the loss, so I've felt no need to do so. However, Raul posted this fantastic quote from Szarkowski's famous essay The Photographer's Eye, and I loved it so much that I was compelled to repost it here:

The history of photography has been less a journey than a growth. Its movement has not been linear and consecutive but centrifugal. Photography, and our understanding of it, has spread from a center; it has, by infusion, penetrated our consciousness. Like an organism, photography was born whole. It is in our progressive discovery of it that its history lies.

For those interested in reading about Mr. Szarkowski's life and works, here are some places to start:

Reference & reading:
Wikipedia: John Szarkowski
John Szarkowski: Photographs
Amazon.com: John Szarkowski

On the news of his passing:
New York Times
Heading East
Greg Wasserstrom
Shane Lavalette / Journal
Mary Virginia Swanson

Prints now for sale

Due to the frustratingly limited job opportunities in Nelson, I've been looking to start a business with a local I met a couple of months ago. Sadly there has been a long series of delays (not on my part), and I'm starting to worry that it's just not going to happen. Yesterday while perusing the terrible selection of jobs posted in the newspaper after a few optimistic weeks of not looking, I considered my options... and there aren't any. The only choices are to either get really lucky and have this business venture work out, or go to a temp agency.

So I started, for the 800th time over the past few months, thinking about other ways to earn some cash that will help me pick up some much-needed photo equipment. I want to get in the digital SLR game so I can start looking for work as a photogapher. The cost of film in New Zealand is not going to make it feasible to do so shooting solely with my Hasselblad. For a long time I've been considering selling some prints online, and I decided to give it a try.

I've posted selected images from my portfolio for sale on Etsy. 100% of any money made from selling these prints will go directly into my Lane Desperately Needs a Digital SLR Fund. If you like my work, please take a moment to check out my prints for sale. If an image from my portfolio or a print size you're interested in purchasing isn't there, just let me know and I'll be happy to post it.

Further down the rabbit hole

Yesterday I discovered for myself just how shocking the price of film is in New Zealand. I shoot nothing but Fuji Professional 400H or 160S, and have done so for several years now. Until recently, I was stocked up thanks to a sizeable B&H gift card Jason had gifted me for graduation. Now that I'm down to my last four rolls, I started shopping around to see what I could find within the country.

And the numbers made me choke. $112.06 NZD for five 220 rolls of Fuji Pro 400H. At B&H in the States, this same box of 5 rolls goes for around $36.00. The exchange rate does not even begin to account for the huge gap in these two prices. $36 USD currently translates to about $46 NZD. It's true that most things are astronomically priced in this country, so I shouldn't be surprised -- still, my jaw dropped when I saw the numbers. If you do the math, that's over a dollar per frame for color negative film. As much as I like to support kiwi businesses, not only can I not afford to pay it, I refuse to pay it. Looks like I'm going into the business of imported goods.

Eric McLaughlin

I'm excited that my good friend and fellow San Francisco Art Institute alumni, Eric McLaughlin, is finally starting to put some of his photography online.



I met Eric on my first day at SFAI -- he and I were in the same orientation group. We ended up sharing some classes in our first semester, and struck up a friendship. Even though we saw each other regularly throughout the rest of our time at SFAI, I rarely got a chance to see his work, but when I did I was always excited about what he had to show.

As a filmmaker and photographer, Eric tends to stick to black and white, and it suits him. The result is a sleek film noir style of street photography with an emphasis on vacant architectural spaces. More often than not, my favorite images stem from his nocturnal shooting habit. He often haunts the late night San Francisco streets with his 35mm camera and discman in tow. (As an aside, Eric is also somewhat of a music snob connoisseur and refuses to buy an iPod. He also has immaculate taste in food and films, so you can trust his opinion on either of those subjects.)



I love how the stark silhouettes of office and apartment buildings rise up against the fog, and the occasional illuminated window stands out as a beacon of light among the city streets -- or as in the photo above, scattered signs of life in flux.

Though his website isn't yet online (I'll be sure to post a link when it's finished), you can keep tabs on Eric via Flickr. Over the next month or two, he'll be making a permanent return to his native Southern California, and I can't help but wonder what affect it may have on his work. I look forward to finding out.

New images & exhibition planning

I've added four new images to my work in progress, Home & Away. I am also on the look out for exhibition opportunities for later this year and through 2008. Right now I'm most excited about showing my recent work, but I'm also open to exhibiting anything I've done previously. Please contact me if you're interested.

Currently, I'm planning a solo show at Gallery 203 here in Nelson for April 2008. I'll be sure to post more information early next year.

I recently revamped my personal blog, Pink Elephants. My hope is to use it like a sketchbook for works in progress and to write more about photography.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

I may not be able to ever remember this photographer's name, but some of the first color images to ever have a profound impact on me were these by... let's just call him Gorskii.

Supported by Tsar Nicholas II, Gorskii performed a photographic survey of the Russian Empire prior to World War I. As he documented subjects like architecture and ethnic diversity, Gorskii used an innovative technique to create color images. He would expose each scene three times on his glass plate view camera, using a red filter, then green, then blue. He later used a light projection system utilizing the same three filters to display the images in color.

The U.S. Library of Congress purchased these images in 1948 and has since scanned Gorskii's glass plates, digitally rendering them in their intended full color. You can read more about this process here. Be sure to browse the galleries of his images as well.



Though Gorskii was not the first to use this innovative three-filter technique, he produced a body of striking color photographs from a time that in present day, we often resign ourselves to viewing only in black and white.