On Sharing

Me in Aladdin, WY

I've told folks at the Apple Talks I've been giving that my Local Time Vespa Tour Flickr Set will contain more images than usual because I want to give a glimpse into some of my thinking not because all the shots are good. I will be sharing way more than is probably smart for a professional to show simply because it's convention to limit images to only the best. Well guess what, there goes convention right out the window. (This blog will still serve as a forum for the better or at least more discursive stuff).

If I'm to live up to my stated notion of inspiring others then it seems appropriate for me to share my initial picks rather than just my final edits. For this trip, my process is to transfer the images into Lightroom, make my initial picks, give them some love, and then upload to Flickr. During that last upload I may delete a few but only because they are redundant or otherwise overkill. There you have it.

Incidentally, this picture shows exactly how I'm rolling (minus the camera which sits strapped over my right shoulder and rests on my lap/between my legs).

Make pictures, edit later.

Posted at 10:15 PM 3 comments  

National Parks Service Worker

Jimmy Manwell, Keystone, SD

I had the privilege of meeting the man responsible for the NPS workers at Mount Rushmore. He had swung into a restaurant to escape the rain. We chatted about Greenpeace, Harleys and my trip then went separate ways.

The next morning at the start of my ride around the Black Hills I saw him pulled over on the side of the road. I spun around to greet him and show him my Vespa. I asked him what he was doing and he said he'd seen a water bottle on the side of the road and stopped to pick it up. He then pointed out two cigarette butts and commented how folks don't see them or even water bottles as litter. Sad.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I snapped a quick portrait of him and he invited me to his shop to shoot his colleague Jimmy. That's who you see here. Natural light against a white wall.

Make pictures, don't litter.

Posted at 5:09 PM 6 comments  

Mt Rushmore Blur

Mt Rushmore Blur

I did it with the Taj Mahal and now I've done it with Mount Rushmore. With a symbol as well known as this, visited by thousands of people a day making essentially the same photograph, I enjoy making quirkier and original fare and the easiest way to do that is to slow down the shutter speed and allow for some randomness to enter into the picture. A little motion blur does the trick for me.

I made about twenty shots at about 1/30th of a second giving the camera a decent bit of shake each time. I knew what I was looking for and upon review, chose this one.

With a little photoshop love it was good to go.

Mt Rushmore, my style.

Make pictures blurry.

Posted at 4:55 PM 2 comments  

Real Food, Real Farmer

Ron Muth

I felt like I knew this guy. He reminded me a friend's dad. I met him because I'd stumbled upon an article on Grist.org while doing "research" into the local food issue. I learned about a small local food movement in Sioux City, IA., and once there I proceeded to meet Ron Muth.

He's a guy who spent 30 years building CAFOs and decided he'd had enough. Today he owns a fabulous little shop called the One Stop Meat Shop that serves as an outlet for all the progressive local farmers to sell their meat, produce, cheese and alike.

We caught up at the Saturday farmer's market and his gracious, frank style made my day. He shared stories, insights, and a laugh or two over the course of the morning. Since the normal omelet guy wasn't working that morning he turned me onto a diner that served his buffalo. In that diner I met folks who turned me onto a friendly soul to visit in Sturgis. It's a study in coincidence and good luck...local stlye.

This shot was made on the back of his truck. There's another in my flicker feed using some found open shade.

Make pictures.

Posted at 1:58 PM 10 comments  

BPI Plant South Sioux City, NE

BPI Plant South Sioux City, NE

I'm not kidding. This is where your food comes from. Last one and I'll get off my high horse.

This is the factory so impressively featured in the movie Food, Inc.washing ground beef with ammonia. BPI runs quite an operation and having seen a glimpse of their efforts on film, I needed to see what I could for myself.

Sadly, it was limited to an exterior on a drive-by shooting.

Make pictures to understand.

Posted at 10:37 PM 4 comments  

"Food Bank"

"Food Bank"

Well folks, this is where your food comes from. I'd love to say otherwise but it seems as though the overwhelming majority of this corn and soybean wonderland we live in (Americans anyway) have places like this to process, distill, reconfigure, mulch, crush, combine and alike. This is where your food comes from unless you are among the very few and fortunate to eat fresh, local, farm raised goodness.

Trains and truckloads of grains make their way quietly through an immense, sophisticated system of which I've only caught a peripheral glimpse and brutally efficient one one level and profoundly wasteful on another. I'm not getting into it here.

I like this shot because right next to the Cargill food factory, was a community food bank. I liked the double meaning one can read into the little sign in the lower right. Cargill, by the way, is a private company and clearly, accountable to no one.

Make pictures.

Posted at 7:51 AM 4 comments  

Lincoln Sample

Lincoln Cafe. Belle Plaine, IA

The mundane diptychs are winning my attention these days and this one seemed emblematic of the small and seemingly dwindling main streets I've been passing through. The grain operations get bigger but the perceived life in these towns is eerily troubling.

I obviously live in a very different place but the number of abandoned buildings, closed stores and restaurants, and lack of cars tells me these places have seen better days.

If I were to pick a business to be in other than corn and soy farming, it'd have to be a gas station/convenience store. At least have customers.

All that said, the landscape has changed for the spacious. Human-scale objects are less and less common and the sky has taken over as the dominant feature. I told it would happen and it did.

Make pictures.

Posted at 6:46 AM 3 comments  

Mundane Truck Stop

Mundane Truck Stop

I saw these textures from a distance and u-turned over towards the back of a truck stop. I think I saw the umbrella and wondered what might come of a closer inspection. I pulled up, straddled my Vespa, made the shot on the left, scooted 20 feet forward and made the shot on the right. The two images were shot with every intention of putting them together like this. At the time I didn't realize the odd shipping related text and symbols. It's like building trying to be a package. Very odd.

Also, I played with the size of the images embedded in this and a few other posts. I think it's better. Size matters...sometimes.

Make pictures.

Posted at 6:26 AM 7 comments  

Vespa Sample I

A periodic look at the wheels I'm rollin' on. Some are iPhone generated, some made with the big-dog Nikon D3x. Shared regardless.

Release Me

Exurban Chicago Girl

My portraits have been generating the most attention lately thanks to the Stobist shout-out. Good stuff. That post sent a whole lot of traffic my way and I appreciate the link. Of course, with that attention has come a fair amount of email-based questions and feedback. I hope to answer everyone but seeing as my time has been prioritized towards the Vespa Tour, forgive me in advance for not being overly personal in my responses.

That said, releases are a big source of inquiry and as a rule, I don't get them. It'll likely screw me in the long run but I'm not terribly concerned with that. I shoot for myself. And honestly, 99% of the time, this blog is the only "publication" it's going to have. For the Watchmen book, the actors all signed a release to the studio/production and since the portrait book is their property, it's not my deal.

When I approach randoms on the street, with few exceptions, I don't get a release. When I do, it's a simple one; little more than a paragraph. I once paid folks one U.S. dollar for photos in Uruguay but never turned the images over to stock so it's was just a waste of money.

On my current trip, I bought a flipcam to get a video release from folks but never remember to take it out after shooting portraits. This little girl would have needed her parents consent but I was only doing a test exposure with no expectation of making such a compelling shot. Go figure.

For anyone aspiring to shoot on the street as I do, I'd advise getting a simple release and having someone else get your subjects to sign it. It's better if the request comes from someone other than you. If you're a guy, have a woman make the request. The feminine vibe is much more effective when it come to litigious matters. Trust me.

Make pictures. Do as I say, not as I do.

Posted at 12:31 AM 12 comments  

Probably Illegal

Local Time Vespa Tour

Approaching Chicago I found myself amidst this BP-owned refinery. It's a barren, protected landscape of huge storage tanks and refinery-type structures. The sky was just lovely around 5PM but the strange military protection signs caused me to pull over in a less-than-save section of road. The timing of traffic lights gave me a 20 second window to make two or three shots before needing to scoot. Plus, I couldn't be sure I was even allowed to make photographs in this post-9/11 era. I did regardless and even banged the left one out as I pulled away by simply lifting my camera over my head and snapping whatever it could see form slightly higher than my scooter would allow.

Putting these diptychs together has been a rather tricky exercise this time. Not all my images have been compatible. And I'm torn between sharing the original images versus just the finished product. I'll work it out shortly. After Iowa, I think I'll have more time to engage my photos.

Make pictures.

Posted at 9:15 PM 0 comments  

Rear View Farm

Vespa GTS 300 Super View

I hadn't even been tempted to make a shot like this until I'd pulled over somewhere in Ohio. I think I'd only stopped to make a GPS reference photo with my iPhone when the scene caught my eye. Up went the face shield as I explored what reminded me of an intro to photo depth of field assignment. Oddly, even though I focused on the distance, the mirror itself seemed to blur the scene. Nothing was perfectly sharp but I've made a little promise to myself not to get hung up on focus.

In the past, I've almost always rejected images for not being sharp. Now I find myself attracted to the imperfections and evocative nature of blur. It may be a response to the ubiquitousness of high quality images or a new take on my love of camera-centric aesthetics. I made a shot of the Taj Mahal years ago that, with hindsight, illustrates a turning point for me. More to come.

Make pictures.

Posted at 9:12 PM 4 comments  

Rent

Local Time Vespa Tour: Rent

As I've already mentioned in earlier posts, the Vespa Tour has been a far more conversational effort. What has been catching my eye is the logoscaped weirdness of chain stores, restaurants and seed corn. I have no idea what this place was but between the pile of dirt, the strange residual signage, cloudless sky, and general parking lot loneliness I think I have a new topo winner here.

I've kidded my friends that the Local Time Vespa Tour should be dubbed the U-Turn Tour of America because I can't seem to get five miles without having to slow down, turn around, and shoot something along the road. It's the precise reason I'm taking my time and the Vespa makes U-turns a little more stealth and nimble.

Also, as an FYI, the loads of crappy iphone photos in my Flickr stream labeled as GPS Reference are just that. When I remember to do so, I snap a shot with the iPhone in the hopes of later syncing it up with its more composed and considered Nikon-made shot. Good concept, not yet well executed. I'm working on it.

Make pictures.

Posted at 1:53 PM 5 comments  

Rural Street Scene

Rural Street Scene

This may not be the most amazing photograph but it's a decent composite of what I am seeing repeated over and over in Ohio and Indiana. Those marquee-type signs, little ice cream-slash-burger joints, and grain mills. While there are endless miles of corn and soybeans, it's the human scale stuff that I find more interesting. I could be riding around in the early morning hours looking for the perfect farmhouse but that wouldn't be a realistic portrait of things. It may sell postcards and milk but it's not what I'm finding.

Frankly, this trip hasn't been overly photo-centric., I've been riding quiet back roads at odd times of day not overly conducive to strong photographs, I've been having conversations, and I've been thinking about the state of things in our economy and food system. Portrait opportunities aren't popping up as I might have expected. It's fine.

Yesterday, while talking to a sheriff about the cattle he raises and sells, I thought about making his portrait but held off to privilege the simplicity of conversation. While I never think of making portraits as anything short of a gift, it is a vibe-changer akin to getting folks to sign a release. There's a time and place for such things and that wasn't one of them. What he looked like is irrelevant in comparison to what he said.

Make pictures when you feel like it.

Posted at 8:57 AM 4 comments  

Festival Goer

Festival Goer

The Davisson Brothers and I arrived early at the venue. The All Good Festival was just getting going for the day and a steady stream of folks were making their way along the path behind the stage before the music began. With the sun still fairly low in the sky I saw an opportunity to make some portraits. I found a fairly neutral fence and tent combination that serves as a background and went to work.

For obvious reasons, this woman caught my eye and she was more than happy to pose. That was a relief. I'd have been bummed if she'd said no. While shooting, I was worried about the sunlight on her hair but that proved a non-issue in Lightroom.

It was my first portrait session of the trip and of the dozen or so folks I shot that morning, she's my favorite. I'll upload more to my Flickr steam later.

Make pictures in West Virginia

Posted at 8:17 AM 3 comments  

Good Hope Mini Mart

Good Hope Mini Mart

Hometown Hotdogs needed a little back up image since I'm talking about collections, it's always good to see more than one of something.

Image-wise, I am doing almost all of the "manipulations" in Lightroom the a little kiss of the special sauce in Photoshop. It's about a 2 minute process per image.

I am strangely attracted to the vignetting offered by the lens correction slider in Lightroom, perhaps to a fault. We'll see.

Make pictures.

Posted at 4:23 AM 4 comments  

Hometown Hotdogs

Hometown Hotdogs

Because food has become such a big part of my trip so far, (something that has me a little shocked given my normal approach to travel) I am increasingly attracted to the road signage enticing folks to eat.

Maybe by themselves they aren't all that interesting but I suspect if I put my efforts towards this stuff, a collection of strong images would emerge fairly quickly. Let's see.

The idea of "collecting" images isn't an new one. It seems a body of work is just that, a collection of images on a theme. It bugs me to think that I'm just being a pack rat, just of a more artistic nature. Like most folks, I spend hours culling stuff out of my closets to give to goodwill and removing excess papers from my desk with too frequent abandon but it all manages to creep back in. Now here I am actively adding to my already burdened hard drive collection with road signs. It's a sickness that I can couch as the artist's bane.

Make pictures, collect wisely.

Posted at 4:18 AM 1 comments  

Hot Spots

Hot Spots

The left is a bar/lounge, the right is an abandoned gas station. I wasn't sure if each image was better by itself or as a diptych but when they lined up as nicely as this I was not going to quibble.

For me, there is a humor in this stuff that I suspect is lost on most locals. The simple approach to signage, the inertia of neglect, and fairly radical difference in priorities comes through over and over again while riding past these places. Thanks to the Vespa's nimbleness, I must have made a dozen U-turns today all in an effort to make shots of buildings and signs. It's what's catching my eye. We'll see what happens tomorrow but portraits just haven't been an option.

Make pictures.

Posted at 8:13 PM 0 comments  

Cones

Local Time Vespa Tour

Simple. I like simple. And it doesn't get simpler than this for harvesting chickens. After spending the better part the day yesterday on the Ayrshire Farm checking out the amazing grass, the herds, the gardens, and much more, my head was filled with tons of new knowledge. I was trying to file all the ideas that came from hours of quality conversation.

Upon entering this room I was drawn to the cones. I appreciated the simplicity by which the chickens were dispatched and I lowered myself to make this shot form about 3 feet off the ground. No lights were on. just the doorway illuminated the wall and metal. I can't figure out how I'll ultimately use this shot. It feels like it belongs with something else. I share it for now on it's own but I might use it again.

As a side note, the past two days have been far more social and educational. Photos have been made but not addressed beyond the camera. I'm hoping to get to more tomorrow. I thought 45 days would be a long time but it's quickly proving to be too fast. Each city, each region I visit is full of local color, local food, local flavor. Each person I meet suggests more for me. This could be a life's work. I am only giving a random sample.

Make pictures.

Posted at 8:19 PM 3 comments  

Heading Out

I made a little time-lapse video of me heading out of New York and into the Meadowlands. There's no sound. Enjoy!

Urban Fringe

urbanfringe

The approach or departure of a city using the quieter roads allows one to see what is often invisible to those following the numbered red white and blue shields. When you meander your way in and out at the mercy of traffic lights and potholes, the fringes reveal a less happy tale of urban blight and economic hardship.

Baltimore, which is where this diptych was made, felt like every other outskirts I'd passed through so far. It's not intended to single out but rather to represent what I'm sure to see again and again as I pass through our American cities.

And I'm not being political here. So far it's a pattern. No different than suburban strip malls and multiplex parking lots. These areas are just more textured, more layered, and more complicated on many levels.

Make pictures.

Posted at 5:30 AM 1 comments  

Circle & Sky II

Circles & Sky

So for anyone who isn't aware of what I'm doing, check out my little mini-site for the Local Time Vespa Tour. One of the more striking aspects of the trip so far has been the annoyance of traffic lights,the economic hardships of the times expressed in empty and abandoned shops and homes, and the abundant and distinctive visual vernacular of commercial businesses. I'll be sure to share more as the days unfold but for now this shot does a nice job of distilling it down.

Since I was moving slowly along a quiet road on the outskirts of Wilmington, past a bunch of refineries, an abandoned mall, and otherwise familiar neglected urban fringes, and having logo fatigue already numbing my brain, this rather clean shot appeared almost made for me.

I'm not sure what it means that my first thought was "that's the old Pepsi logo" but sure enough, I stopped and made the shot. I like that it goes nicely with the Burger King circle shot I < a href="http://blog.clayenos.com/2009/07/circle-sky.html">blogged about earlier.

Make pictures.

Posted at 10:07 AM 1 comments  

Circle & Sky

Circle & Sky

I had just pulled over to make a few phone calls. I knew I was near an airport having seen the tower a few minutes earlier but wasn't overly concerned with it. I was more intrigued by the McDonald's and Burger King sitting on adjacent commercial lots and the guy holding a sign doing roadside advertising. Just as I hung up and started moving I saw the plane coming in for landing. I calculated that if I framed things just right I could get the Burger King logo in the corner. Two frames later I had it. This is the second.

Now to be fair, I cropped it a touch and that's not my normal M.O. but with a twenty four megapixel Nikon and a helmet on my head, it's going to happen. If I'm rushing and can't get the camera flush to my eye because of the face mask I widen out a bit with the understanding that I'll crop later. This image is a case in point. You have to work with what you've got.

Make pictures, crop 'em if you got 'em.

Posted at 9:19 AM 2 comments  

American Flag on Freeway Overpass

American Flag on Freeway Overpass

I like this photo for two reasons and neither is because it's a good photo in the classical sense.

I was crossing the freeway on Route 1 in New Jersey when it caught my eye. As mentioned in my earlier post, flags had been more abundant than usual marking the July 4th holiday and for whatever reason they were catching my eye. This one did so because it was "backwards." I scooted past, noted the reversal and carried on. Then I realized that flag was probably always there and it wasn't hung for me. It was hung for the freeway-goers below. It's a flag like so many I'd seen before as I sped beneath them. I'm usually down there on the highway, not up on the local streets, not up where things move slower. That little moment made my freeway-free rule real.

And it was quickly followed by something else nearly impossible on the freeway, the immediate U-turn. I will probably be making a lot of u-turns over the coming days to make photos that otherwise would pass me by. Even though I'm wearing my camera over my shoulder and around my neck, I need my right hand on the throttle, not poised with my finger on the shutter. Hip-shooting just isn't an option. You understand.

Make pictures.

Posted at 5:12 AM 0 comments  

The Dash on Fifth Ave.

The Dash on Fifth Ave.

Yesterday proved a success as I made my way from NYC to Philadelphia on back roads far more traffic light-laded than I expected. As it's the holiday weekend the landscape was draped with more American flags than usual. My next post will share those.

This shot is part self-portrait, part show and tell. It's what I'm going to spend the better part of the next month and half looking at. That's my iphone on the left and my little point and shoot on the right which I used to make time-lapse movies of my ride until the battery died somewhere in Jersey. With every bump the monitor pops on unnecessarily wasting power. It's a kink I'll try to work out. I'll share the little video of my ride from Manhattan to Jersey City shortly.

Make pictures. I am.

Posted at 5:00 AM 4 comments