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

A Midwestern Holiday

Photography: Road trip photos of Missouri

I married into a family that has many more traditions than my family. We go to my wife's hometown of St. Louis at least three times a year, and every time I go, I add to an ongoing photo essay of St. Louis and the region. St. Louis is different in a way that is hard for an outsider like myself to describe, so I do it with images.

As some of my other personal work is about the environment and our impact on it, some of the pictures I make relate to this theme. However, I also make pictures of my in-laws and their home. It's a quiet house on a quiet street, with a quiet dignity to the area that is different than the suburbs of San Antonio I grew up in, hewed out of South Texas caliche and live oak scrub.

As we become more alike in the Age of Information, I still try to celebrate the regional differences in America that give each place it's own particular flavor.