Happy New Year!

A dedication

For those of us destined to learn photography through trial and error, no piece of "equipment" is as valuable as a willing guinea pig. The easiest people to drag into my own experimental photographic learning process has always been my friends.

Of these friends, Sean has always been one to particularly give whole-heartedly of his patience and self-confidence over the years. But while Sean has been valuable in learning the science of photography, as one of my best friends for well over twelve years, he was the one to teach me how to begin to perceive the small triumphs, the agonies, the beauties, and the little dramas present in the daily script of humanity. Though obviously I have many more years of learning to do, by showing me how to "see" the deeper conflicts beyond the facade of humanity around me, he has helped define the way I observe the world, the person I've become, and this is hopefully reflected in my images. These are lessons far more influential than lighting techniques and apertures.

So to you my brother, I wish you more than the best. May your turbulent and listless journey soon bring you to the joy, love, and fulfillment you so richly deserve.

Sheer Dumb Luck 1: Soccer Team Poster

You never know how things are going to work until you try. I got asked to create the cover for the 2008 Juneau Douglass High School soccer program this year. I wanted to try to set up a grunty kind of team picture. The general idea was to use a fog machine to create a curtain of fog behind the players. 

Turns out, fog machines don't create "curtains" of fog, they create nebulous blobs of millions of floating particles. Any sort of front lighting would light up each of these fog particles and negate any sort of backlighting I was hoping for.

MacGyverisms 1: Underwater Housings

At the end of 2007, I finally gave in and started doing senior portraits. And so began an adventure in juggling student schedules, soothing the occasional overbearing parent, and trying my best to figure out what kind of “look” each individual senior was going for.

It came from the Caribbean

I think everyone who is passionate about a particular discipline has an “ah-hah” moment, that instant where the spark of a budding interest turns into an obsession.

Mine was on a ship patrolling the Caribbean Sea. It was just after sunset and we were preparing to send a boarding team over to another vessel, myself included. We had geared up, and in the fleetingly relaxed moments before putting our “game faces” on, my friend Kevin and I were on the flight deck joking with fellow shipmates on the level below.

Having played with my first camera (a tiny point and shoot) for a month, I noticed then for the very first time in my life the varied colors of light surrounding the scene, and the tense yet jovial mood. Handholding my tiny camera on a rolling ship for a full second, I managed the picture above.

Now, this image is blurry, noisy, somewhat out of focus and perhaps not really a great image at all. Nonetheless, at that moment, I remember thinking to myself, “wow, cameras can do that?”

The images in this journal represent the years since that moment in 2004, that one second exposure in the middle of the ocean. They document my first, exploratory steps into understanding light, capturing humanity, and telling stories. It has been a fulfilling journey of learning and frustrations, but I also know the learning and frustrations have only just begun.

I can’t wait to see what challenges and opportunities to learn are coming next.

Keeping it on the down low.

Blogging is always a bit of a gamble. Either people will visit and honestly care what I have to say... or they will completely ignore my disjointed rantings and find somewhere more meaningful to browse.

But over the last few years of serious photography, I've been feeling the need to write down the stories behind certain images I take. Not necessarily because I have anything particularly wise or poignant to share, but because I really just want to remember the background stories for my own sake.

Thus instead of blogging, I think I will call this "journaling." This site will be written for those with whom I share a common interest of learning and growing in our mutual photographic endeavors. But I also expect this site to primarily be a place for me to write down my experiences, for my own, selfish sake. If anyone else can benefit from those experiences, or perhaps just gain an entertaining read, then even better.

Either way, expect to see some dirty laundry aired, as I start sharing some of the 95% of images that are sorted out to find the 5% that are keepers.

So it begins...

Herb