An Auspicious Year

On New Year’s Day, I woke up wondering how to bring in an auspicious year. Browsing the Washington Post online, there was a photo of Great Falls National Park illustrating a weather forecast. Since I’d never been to the falls and have lived in DC for almost five years, I thought it would be a great start to the year to go visit.

I’ve been playing with my Graflex Crown Graphic 4x5 camera lately, a field view camera manufactured in the 1960’s, so I brought that along as I headed out to Virginia. I haven’t used it very much and practice makes perfect.

The first thing I’d thought I’d try is a basic view of the falls from one of the three observation points. I was surprised by the amount of people at the park as the morning was cold, gray and there was a light snow coming down that would soon turn to drizzle. I guess everyone saw the same weather forecast photo as me! Once I found a clear spot, I set up the camera.

The day being overcast, I brought along a yellow filter originally made for a Hasselblad medium format camera to handhold over the lens while I made an exposure. The yellow filter blocks out blue light, which increases contrast, making highlights brighter and shadows darker. The farther down the red spectrum you move in filtration, the greater the contrast increase.

As you can see, there is something to be said about using filters that are native to the lens. That big black thing in the corner of the frame is the filter I’m holding over the lens to increase contrast. Good thing it’s just practice!

 Feeling claustrophobic while out in nature is always discombobulating, so I decided to move down the trail to find somewhere more quiet. Moving just off trail, I found a spot that would provide solitude and a nice framing of the Potomac river. Just as I had finished setting up, a voice behind me said “Hey, can you take our picture?”

I immediately said “Of course!” I had been itching to make some portraits with the Graflex, and here one fell in my lap, and in a beautiful landscape to boot! They were a young couple and they made their way down between my camera and the river. The young man said to let him know when I was ready, and I told him to make sure and stay still when I make the picture because it’ll be about a one second exposure.

Thinking he had some kind of creative pose in mind, I cocked the shutter, removed the darkslide and said, “okay, ready.” He then reached into his pocket, got on one knee and opened a ring box. “Oh!” I said, stopping short of defiling the moment with the next word in my head. In happy shock, I made an exposure, said “one more!”, flipped the film cassette, made one more exposure and thought about how photography is really magic sometimes.

There is a phenomenon that happens sometimes when I’m out with my camera where I feel the universe is saying “yes.” Clouds part at just the right moment, surrounding a farmhouse in light against a stormy landscape. A person wearing just the right outfit walks around the corner, adding a narrative element I didn’t know was missing. Or someone spontaneously uses me to document their wedding proposal surrounded by nature. 

I gave them my deepest congratulations and thanked them for letting me be a part of this wonderful surprise. I walked out of the park feeling like this could be a really great year!

Capturing the Power of Protest Through Double-Exposure Photography

I have been feeling a little bored with photography, to the point where I feel it has become predictable. In most cases, I pretty much know how something is going to look even before I make a photo of it.

Also needing something new to sink my teeth into, I decided to start making more unpredictable photos by focusing on double-exposures in my personal work for the foreseeable future. Within that technique, I thought using the potential chaos of a double-exposed frame would be useful in communicating how it feels to be at some of the many protests Washington, DC has to offer throughout the year.

However, there aren’t protests here every day (even in DC). As a backstop against protest-less days, a second subject I’ve found is great for double-exposures are the different national monuments in the city. They all have clean, white backgrounds and are usually busy with tourists too busy doing goofy things for their own photos to be bothered with me using them as compositional objects.

The black and white images are from film I loaded into cassettes myself and I processed at home. I plan to start processing color at home in the near future as well, but for the time being, I’ve found a great place in Baltimore that will develop film inexpensively - Full Circle Fine Arts Services .

Despite all the commercial work on my website, street photography is really the reason I put the camera to my face. Check out some fresh work below and let me know what you think!

Attendees walk along the National Mall during the March for Life, Jan. 20, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Attendees walk along the National Mall during the March for Life, Jan. 20, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Washington Monument, double-exposures, Jan. 2023 in Washington, DC
Washington Monument, double-exposures, Jan. 2023 in Washington, DC
Washington Monument, double-exposures, Jan. 2023 in Washington, DC
Washington Monument, double-exposures, Jan. 2023 in Washington, DC

Commercial photography commission for Comcast Beltway

I’m proud to present some imagery I created for Comcast Beltway’s public relations team, published today to announce the installation of a huge solar panel array on the roof of their tech building on Michigan Ave. in Washington, DC.

The project was a technical challenge. The only access to the roof was a very solid, albeit utilitarian ladder. My first concern was for the safety of myself, my crew and the subjects, some of whom I worried might lack the ability to climb up and down the ladder.

Up in the bucket truck. It seems much higher up when you’re inside!

Up in the bucket truck. It seems much higher up when you’re inside!

Another concern was timing and the weather. Although we could have made great pictures in almost any condition, our hope was for sunny weather to emphasize the solar panels. Thankfully, we picked a day with full sun and decent temperatures. Also, there were no problems with people going up and down the ladder with the exception of one person who decided to take a bucket from a bucket truck for a ride down. Thankfully, the client is a cable company with plenty of bucket trucks lying around.

The bucket truck also came in handy for the last shot of the day, an aerial showing the entire building. Being up that high is always a thrill. We are also lucky for the easy access to bucket trucks since drones are mostly banned in the DC region.

Check out the results below!

Champion Cornhole Player Ryan Smith for The Wall Street Journal

Ryan Smith, a former defensive back for James Madison University, found his post-collegiate athletic calling through the game of cornhole. The object, to toss a bean bag 45 feet away into a hole six inches in diameter, is as challenging as it sounds.

I was able to photograph Ryan at a brewery, Twinpanzee, in Sterling, Virginia. The cavernous space offered lots of room to work in. Movable walls made of plywood the brewery uses to separate brewing equipment from the cornhole court created interesting, clean backgrounds and good visual separation between Ryan and what would otherwise have been a very cluttered background of tanks and hoses. The best part is Ryan had no problem at all with my strobe blasting away for the whole shoot. He continually dropped bags into the hole like he was standing right over it - it really was amazing to witness.

It’s a good thing we both showed up early, because I used up a half-hour attempting some stroboscopic images of Ryan tossing the bag, but there was just too much ambient light I couldn’t control, so I bagged the idea and moved the strobe behind and to Ryan’s right, really just to see what it would look like and to get some kind of visual starting point. As soon as I saw the potential in the first frame of creating Ryan’s silhouette on the wall and getting his beanbag in there, nicely separated inside the shadow, I knew I’d have a keeper.

My favorite photo is the first one below. I brought along a Q-Flash T5D-R, a small, powerful strobe that is easy to move around in active environments like the cornhole court.

The image also set a style for the remainder of the shoot. Luckily, Ryan was playing in front of a large stainless steel wall, inside which kegs of delicious beer are kept. The Q-Flash loves shiny surfaces, and with Ryan’s bright red jersey, blue beanbags, and outgoing personality, I was able to create images that, for me at least, made something visible from the invisible.

Check out The Wall Street Journal’s story to learn about his workout routine and how he keeps in shape physically and mentally for his upcoming busy tournament season. And see some outtakes and the tearsheet below.

Cover and feature photography for Maryland Leaf magazine's February 2020 issue

I hope your week is going well because it’s about to get a lot better after you check out the pics I made for my first Maryland Leaf assignment! We toured the grow operations at gLeaf Medical Cannabis in Frederick, Maryland for the February issue.