Chinatown Window

This is two photos pieced together. They were shot in a Chinatown shop window when I was on sabbatical a year and a half ago. I made pieces out of a couple of similar images, but never ended up using this for anything.

Good Graffiti

If you're going to do something, you should do it well. This graffiti, shot in Amsterdam a couple of years ago, is a good example of that. It's nicely done, the kind of graffiti I wouldn't mind seeing more of.

Persepolis II

I found another photo of the sculpture I posted photos of yesterday. This one was shot last summer. That's my friend Michael shooting a photo of it. This photo gives you more a sense of the sculpture's size. I bet it was magnificent when it was complete.

Persepolis

This is a Holga camera photo taken at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. The piece in the photo was discovered in the ancient city of Persepolis in what is now Iran.

It'a a beautiful piece, and probably my favorite item in that museum (which is a great place to visit, by the way). This photo doesn't show the size of the sculpture well. It's huge-from the end of the nose to the top of the head is at least six feet.

I don't often show my more 'serious' work here. I save that for my other blog, Lightbender. I'm making an exception now, because I think it's interesting to compare the original photo with way I ended up using it.


This is a gum bichromate print made of the photo. It's a duotone print, I used black and magenta as my colors (gum bichromate is an alternative photo printing process that uses watercolor paint as part of a hand painted light sensitive emulsion). This print was part of the work created during my sabbatical a couple of years ago.

Another Warped View

A week ago, I posted a photo of a warped reflection in a window of the Art Institute of Chicago. Here's another photo shot the same day. I like this one. There's a light on inside the building which results in the bottom of the photo looking yellowed and bleached out.

Photos Of Photos

I'm visiting my mother over Memorial Day weekend, so this is likely my last post until Monday or Tuesday. To make up for that, here's a couple of photos that have (kind of) a related theme.

The first one was taken at the Art Institute of Chicago last fall. My partner Kevin was shooting a photo of a Sol LeWitt piece with his digital camera, so I took that opportunity to shoot him and the image on the screen of his camera.


These two photos were made a couple of years ago. I was just playing around in my studio, and stuck some old negatives on my light table and shot them using a macro lens.

San Fran Skyline

I can't believe it's been over a year and a half since I last visited San Fransisco. I love that city. This was shot on my last trip out there. It's a Holga camera shot of downtown taken from the top of Coit Tower. Several hours of heavy rain had just passed, my flight home had been canceled as a result, and I had some extra time. So, I made the leg-killing trek to the top of Telegraph Hill, then up to the top of the tower. I used expired film for this, like I always do in my Holga. This time, I got a distinct cyan cast to the photos.

Mom's Yard

I was given an old camera a couple of months ago. It's a twin lens camera that belonged to old family friends. There's nothing special about the camera, but I threw a roll of film in it and walked around my Mom's yard shooting photos, just to se how they would turn out. The photos are pretty decent. There's a bit of vignetting at the corners. Exposure looks good, especially considering that there is no light meter in the camera (I used the sunny 16 rule to determine exposure).

Warped View

A couple of years ago I was meeting a friend in front of the Art Institute of Chicago. I was killing time shooting random photos, when I noticed that some of the windows were warped looking (I suspect they are plexiglas), and were reflecting distorted images of buildings across the street. I shot several photos of the reflections. Maybe another will show up here tomorrow.

Comic Comic

Here's another of these images shot on a light table. This one's from an old comic book. Looks like a Spanish language one.

Woman/Girl

Here's another one of the magazine shots that I discussed in my last post. I kind of forgot about posting again until now, but this week was final exam week , and I was busy giving exams and finalizing grades. I'm done now, and off for the summer. Now, if it would only warm up a little!

In Just One Washing!

When I'm between projects (like I am now), I keep myself busy by shooting random things. Occasionally, something sticks, but most of the time, I end up with a bunch of photos I never do anything with. This photo was shot a couple of years ago. I'd been taking old homemaker's magazines from the '50's and '60's, as well as old comic books, and shooting them on a light table through a macro lens. The resulting photos are closeups of both sides of a magazine page. I'll post some more examples over the next couple of days.

Carousel

This Holga shot of a carousel at Navy Pier in Chicago was shot on a hot summer day a couple of years ago.

Beautiful Budapest

I shot this photo in August, 2007 while visiting Budapest. The historic Chain Bridge is near the lower right, the domed building in the distance is the house of Parliament. Budapest is beautiful, as should be evident from the photo.

Blue Island Holga

I recently added about thirty Holga photos to my Facebook fan page (you don't have to be a Facebook user to look at it). Many of them have appeared on this blog, but some of them were quite a while ago, so you might want to take a look.

Today's photo was taken last summer in Blue Island, IL, which sits just south of the Chicago city limits. When the weather is good, I like to stick one of my toy cameras in my bike bag and ride around shooting whatever I find. This was taken on one of these trips.

Art Institute

The new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago is opennig in about a week. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I was designed by Renzo Piano, and I've always liked his work.

These are photos of the models of the new wing that I took a couple of years ago. I posted a couple of these photos here before, you can see them here and here. The first link has a kind of amusing story that occurred when I was shooting. Read that post if you're interested.

I also made large cyanotype prints of fifteen of these images. You can see several of them here.

Shine

I took this Holga photo a few weeks ago while on a long walk around my neighborhood. I like how the colored turned out with the expired film I was using.

San Fran Rain

This is a nearly identical view to yesterday's photo. This time, I think I'm in my sister's kitchen, not her living room. I shot this with my digital camera, not my Nishika. And, it was pouring rain, so I focused on the rain hitting the window instead of the city.

San Francisco 4 Times

Here's a photo taken with my Nishika four-lens camera. It's downtown San Francisco, shot through the shade covering my sister's living room window. Her apartment has the best views-from various windows you can see downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Coit Tower. You can see all the sights of the city without leaving her apartment!

Chinatown Bus

Another rain photo today. It rained most of the day in Chicago, and was very humid as well. I'd love some sun, but there doesn't seem to be much forecast for the next few days.

This photo was taken on the Chinatown bus in New York City as it was about to leave for Philadelphia. I was visiting friends in Philly, and we decided to go to New York for the day to go gallery hopping in Chelsea. The Chinatown bus is quick and cheap: $20, and about an hour and a half from Philly's Chinatown to New York's (that's when it's not rush hour. On the return trip, it took nearly an hour just to get from Chinatown to the tunnel into New Jersey). It was actually a nice day, the rain didn't start until we were on the bus.