Clayton Salem

labour day

2010-09-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

It's been an active eventful August and beginning September. I'm sharing a few pictures from this weekend's trip to the Cape. More pictures and pictures of Tiara and Athea's wedding are posted on Flickr. Apologies for the sideways pictures, somewhere in the image processing they lose their verticality.

heavy

2010-07-14T18:28:00.001-07:00

chromes

2010-06-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

I've started shooting 4x5 fuji velvia and provia transparency film. This is quick snaps my first batch. Unfortunately, some key pictures are either underexposed or slightly out of frame. I'm not sure of the reason for either of these problems, probably just care and practice.

100 years!

2010-06-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

My Grandmother turned 100 years old this past week. We had a celebration at the nursing home. It was also an oportunity to hang with Sara, Mat and Isabel. We went out to breakfast, shopped at the farmer's market and chilled on a bench. Isabel, Tiffany and I ran some races. Isabel took some pictures. Here's the whole mess in no particular order:

chicago

2010-06-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

I guess I forgot to post pictures from our trip to Chicago. Michael and Bina got married in April in Chicago and a bunch of friends went. Here's some pictures a lot of which include me.

I'm eating a bicycel coming out of Tiffany's head.
Here's me and a William Eggleston print
Me and the great conceptual artist Kristin
Me and the great boozer and newly married Michael
Jeff and Mara

Rainy day shooting

2010-06-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

Mira took me to an old state school that was shut down sometime in the 90's. I've seen so many pictures from this place it was sort of deja vue. I'm looking forward to the chromes.

Not so secrest place, but unnamed here.
because the place it out of bounds and gets burned by vandals.
Mira taking some snaps
a lot of the place is light-less.

most 'uman

2010-06-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

I have a tendancy to collect things: paper, pictures, cardboard, knick-knacks, cameras, tools, picture frames, etc. I was organizing today and moving it all around, and I made this relization. I am most human, me personally, when I'm moving all this usefully useless stuff around. Organizing and reorganizing. I would be a fool to think that I could ever lead the austere existence of my dreams. Or maybe it's the fight between the pack-rat and the bleached underwear wearing person, that makes me human. Just a thought.

my weekend starts on thursday

2010-06-04T18:13:00.001-07:00

Sequencing is very important in these posts. Unfortunately, the uploader is poorly organized and it reverse how it places picture, I swear it does. Anyway, I'll just live with the random order that appears. Instead of explaining each and every picture I'll just say that I had a tiring week and Thursday morning was spent in slow contemplation of our little cubby-hole apartment.

some of that works... some doesn't

looking back over the months

2010-06-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a while so I thought I'd post some key pictures to this spring.

Evening light in the kitchen

Au Revoir skiis

Pruning

Another kind of pruning: glassine envelopes for 4x5 negative

Fluorescent light and light

MY MUG

SHOES

Tiffany was accepted to do her Montessori training this summer. This is her application photo

Different thoughts on the Wipe Board

Vermont Center of Photogrpahy

2010-03-30T20:56:00.001-07:00

I got two pieces in the months VCP landscape photography show. Here's a picture with attempted with photomerge.

some tuesday a couple weeks ago

2010-03-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

I tried to document everyplace I went one Tuesday. I forgot a bunch of places, but here it is:

catching up

2010-03-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

Tiffany waking up in New York

I uploaded pictures from my canon A590 and remembered all the fun things that have happened to me in the past fortnight. Here's a sampling:

2/01/10
Dan all grimacing
Dan called a few days before and asked if I wanted to go skiing. New skis, new boots, hell yes! The sun was shining and the snow was white. The favorite trail that day was "Stump Jumper" on the south mountain. We ran it over a half dozen times.

2/05/10
I've been struggling in the Image and Object class at GCC. The premise in the curriculum is to combine photography and image-making with 3 dimensional sculpture or found objects or something. This was one false start to the spew of ideas pouring out of this oxymoron.

2/15-16/10
I already posted about visiting Tiara and Athea in New York around my birthday. Here's some highlights
Blurry with David and Gigi They gave us a short video performance in their studio. Check it out.

Ugly buildings, Chelsea
Tiffany pretending to look at Fred Sommer fetus
Train
Sycamore trees on Argyle St, Brooklyn.
There's a lot we saw and a lot we missed. That's a big city, New York. You sure could store a lot of hay in those buildings.

2/21/10
Buckets in the basementIn a big old house like this you don't need to go far to find fun stuff to photograph. I'd say you don't even need to leave this house to find a life-time of things to photograph. But don't tell anyone I said that.

2/22/10
Sometimes I get bored looking around trying to find something to take a picture of

22 Severance StOn the back burner sits a projected I'm calling the Neighborhood Project. The idea is simple and the execution is time-consuming. I hope to bring it to fruition by the middle of the summer.

That's it for now. I will try to keep abreast with events as they happen, but no promises. For now,
...ta ta

a snippet

2010-02-25T19:03:00.001-08:00

i am busy busy busy. but looking at this i like to think of something i read on Tiffany's cousin's facebook:

'bored...just thinking'

posting

2010-02-19T19:51:00.001-08:00

more like once a month. But Friday is blog post day, so maybe i can catch up in the next few months. Friday is also withdraw cash for the week day and chose an item to post on ebay day.

plans for the weekend:

- put together t-shirt printing project for Tuesday
- rest
- catch up in school

I'm sure that I have a million other things boiling on the "to do" list, but those three are front and center. Let's see if I can find a picture from our trip to New York.

skiing monday

2010-01-12T18:37:00.000-08:00

This Monday I went skiing at Berkshire East, aka the B-East. I was looking for Justin all morning and finally found him on the beginner slope slamming his ass and face into the mountain. I didn't get a video of that, but I did get a video going down "Big Chief." This is the winter of skiing for me. So don't be surprised if I post more snowy videos.

Another New Year, Another Video

2010-01-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

This year we started the year with a dip in the Deerfield River. A tradition of the Polar Bear Club. My father started a slightly more extreme version some years ago. Extreme in that a running river is colder and more dangerous than ocean water. After he died, the swim became a sort of memorial to him. Speaking of memorials, this past year we sent out letters to friends and family asking for donations to the James Arthur(is that spelled right?) Salem Endowment, for the American Indian College Fund. As of last count we've raised $19,639, which means we did it! I'll get back with more details, but my understanding is that each year the fund will provide a small piece of cash to a American Indian attending college.

Anyhow, here's the video:

new years resolution

2010-01-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, took a while to get the video to load.

One of my resolutions is to make 52 blog posts this year. And, dear reader, though you may want a little more, I'm making this a short one. For quantity has a quality all it's own. From Christmas celebration Greory's Throrp's email, edited:

christmas time

2009-12-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

I went to a party at Frank and Vivian's on Christmas eve. Frank reminded me that blog posting is for yourself. As Isaac Brock is singing to me right now, "it's hard to remember." So, here's to re-commencing.

Today I met some high school friends at the Hope and Olive: Jessy, Casey, Jaimye, Liz and her husband Robert. After lunch we walked up to the Poet Seat Tower.

oops, i forgot the color balance

Snippets

2009-09-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

We went to Elizabeth Lord's wedding today. I don't know how to spell her new name so I'm using the old for now. Here it is: Schaufelberger. You can see pictures at my flickr site over there ---> Also check out pictures from the parade on Thursday.

Tiffany and I are moving, slowly, to Shelburne Falls. I'll try to update as we make major moves.

another stab at flickr

2009-09-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

hello, if you're interested check out pictures posted on flickr from Frank and Vivian's party a couple weeks ago. I don't remember everyone's name so please feel free to comment. check them out here or on the sidebar.

collaborators wanted

2009-07-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I posted a want-ad for a friend. I received only one brave applicant who saw through my thin veneer of exclusivity. So, I am re-posting the position in more people-friendly terms:

ISO human for long-term/short-term artistic collaboration. Human must have skills and sensitivity. Communication welcome through USPS or email welcome. Collaborators must not be deterred by large gaps in response(we all have important things that take time, right?) Themes may include, but are not limited to, disappointment, isolation, death of loved one, loss, vision, gender, cartography, stratification(economic and geologic), chess, road kill, romanticism, formalism, scataphilia, cameras, exercise, box building, cooking.

Send your notions to:
Clayton Salem
6 Main St
Greenfield, Ma
01301

or email me

This posting can also be found on the Western Mass craigslist > community > artists

big prints

2009-06-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

For a while I've had in my head this way of pushing my epson 4800 to print large format pictures. It's pretty obvious, but I'm cutting images in half and in thirds and printing out "panels" of those images. I'm definitely pushing the print quality to the edge and maybe a little beyond. I'm also unsure of the final format; I have a few ideas I'll share later. The two forest pictures are from 4x5 negatives, the deer is from a 6x7 negative.

Here's a picture illustration of my process. A couple of issues: cutting glass was a new idea in order to speed up the proofing of pictures. You don't see it, but the glass fits into the scanner and hold an 8x10" sheet of negatives flat to the scanner, much like you would in the darkroom. The other thing you don't see is the film development, but it's much like in any darkroom except I'm squatting over the shower basin. The third thing you don't see here is the larger proofs I print out to fine-tune the image and the splitting of the image in photoshop. I guess some things you'll have to just imagine.

Developing in the shower

The clean-up

Cutting glass for contact sheet scanning

Good cut/bad cut

Scanning negatives

Printing out contact sheet

Looking at contact sheet

In process

A couple other larger format prints

The almost-finished picture

pictures from the late spring

2009-06-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

Here are some things that remembered to take pictures of this spring:

Hanging out at Katie's
she claims to be androgynous, but she's sooooooooo cute!

Sonya was there
ohmagaimsoexcied!
battering chicken and my fingers
student work - i should've given out more A's
I rode out to the Eunice Williams' bridge

allergies!

then i treated myself to a sandwich at Bart's
Yesterday Chris Zinn and I hung out here's the result.... click.

wavering

2009-06-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

yes yes yes and no. i want to talk about atheism, anarchy, authority, but each time i sit down to write it comes out all wrong. this format - a public journal, is not for me. to much exposure, not enough thought. i haven't posted for a month because of my discomfort. i've finished teaching for the term and so the only things i can post about, things that might have some interest are my personal inner thoughts, and the picture work that i'm making. i can't very well talk about job because of the hipaa law i've spoke about earlier, and my inner thoughts i'm saving for myself. so all that's left is my picture work. okay, that's the direction i'll take for the next few posts.

but first,

here's some video still captures from iran:

the dark disc in the sky

2009-05-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my team went out to the Ashfield Lake for a goodbye group for the grads. This is a group of students that have been with me my entire time at Swift River. They swam, we ate food from the Ashfield Lakehouse, we played Frisbee. Then, last night, I woke up with a terrifying image in my head -- it was from the frisbee game: a long floating pass into the endzone, the boys gather around looking into the bright white sky. The frisbee hangs in the sky vibrating and growing larger. I squint and feel the shuffle of bodies around me. We are caught for a moment staring at the growing disc, darkening the sky, blotting out the sun, the sky the trees. I freeze, unsure of what to do, I know I need to jump, but the shuffle around me, the pain in my eyes and the growing disc threaten immenent doom.

I didn't catch the firsbee, in fact, I got knocked in the head by somebody's elbow, but that moment is haunting me, worrying me. To leap would be an act of desperation, as if the frisbee is a black hole and to leap, to bend my knees and leap, I might throw myself into the abyss. Fear of loosing myself, and at once the desire, nagging, burning desire to loose myself into that leap, to reach for the sky, for the black hole, to reach,to stretch towards the thing, the shimmering, shaking thing, growing darker, bigger, vibrating, swallowing the sky. I know, and yet, I cannot act. I can only pray that with practice I may learn to leap up into the dark disc.

100 things

2009-04-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

When I was seven I counted to 100. My dad recorded each number in his slanting chaotic script. It was the first of a dozen accomplishment in this life -- it's been slow going. The other day I started saying the number 100 in my head over and over again when I realized that certain things, upon reaching 100 are accomplishments by themselves. Some of the things I was thinking about: 100 post cards, 100 prints of one certain size, 100 push ups(100 days in a row, yeah, beetch!), 100 seedlings, 100 houses, 100 miles, etc.

I guess the nice thing about 100 is that it maintains a certain childhood innocence as a "big number." Sometime in high school I learned that 100 dollars wasn't as much as I thought it was. And 100 people was a crowd, but not a huge one. In this inflationary culture when we're working our way from the gigabyte billions to the terabyte trillions the lowly 100 is very^10 small. However, an individual with only two hands one mouth and two feet can still approach 100 as a truly monumental task.

I won't promise to do any of the things on my 100 list right now; I'd be working towards 100 things I didn't do, maybe in 100 days.

boredom

2009-04-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

I'm running at 55mph these days, you know, the limit in times of scarcity. I mentor trouble teens, teach them photography and now I'm working on a short movie. Idle hands are the devil's playthings(or whatever). I have a lot to offer, so it's sort of like I'm the very popular guy, everybody wants to participate in what I'm doing. But they're all teens, and our relationship is, by nature, prescribed by the mentor/menti, or teacher/student boundaries. That's a good thing and necessary for that part of my life, but I'm feeling a lack in the other. All of my creativity is going into work. That's okay, but when work is bounded by very strict laws about privacy, rules about intimacy and establishing good boundaries, well, I'm limited. And without creative relationships outside of work, I'm stuck.

So, I'm looking for a friend who wants to work on a project. Something big, something huge, ambitious and over-grand. Someone who can withstand my stony-faced disregard, ignore my whining and self-loathing, someone, anyone, who can keep up.

**this is not an equal-opportunity offer, applicants must be male, or of male persuasion and be between 5'9" and 6'1". Applicant much not work with teenagers or children, must enjoy working in silence, and performing manual labor. Applicants must have better musical taste than me and be able to provide musical entertainment when required. Attractive applicants are desired, though not too attractive, you know, cute, or hunky, but not so drop-dead gorgeous that you outshine me. Applicants must enjoy beer and liquor, but not drink too much because the last thing I need is a co-dependent. Smokers are acceptable, as long your brand isn't Camels, though, with cigarettes the price they are maybe you should quit, we could buy ink and paper for the price of those cigarettes, I mean, come on, eight dollars a pack. Applicants should be C++CAD. Applicants must furnish proof that they have spent some time in a mental health facility. Applicants must not wear green. Applicants must have a cool haircut. Please send application with a self-address stamped envelope to:

Friend c/o
Clayton Salem
6 Main St
Apt 4
Greenfield, Ma 01301 literate and have familiarity with

another quick one

2009-03-24T19:43:00.001-07:00

Today was our lesson on shutter speeds. The students use my camera to capture motion blur(dark against light, light against dark) and freeze-frame. We didn't get to panning, maybe on Friday.
Mr. Salem loves being in pictures
Motion blur
I've been planning to make some big prints using two or more pieces of paper. Here's a first attempt, of course I forgot to put something in for scale, let's see, the clock in the lower left is about five inches wide...

quickie

2009-03-17T07:54:00.001-07:00

We turned the classroom into a Camera Obscura. I couldn't post the "class portrait in camera" because of the hipaa laws. This was the test shot. Check out Abelardo Morell's Camera Obscura work .

putting things on hold

2009-03-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's that time of year -- acceleration in spring. I'm teaching again, today is day one of the trimester. If you don't know, I work full time at a boarding school in the residential department. They've given me the opportunity to teach photography. It's a great way to make extra money, and to make me an valuable employee in these high unemployment times. That leaves me little time for the myriad projects simmering in the back of my head and under piles of unattended to bills, notes and objects of interest. It also leaves little time for this journal. I may have to post just to get some things out of my head and into the world, but I don't expect to be posting regularly. Not that I do anyway...

new camera fun

2009-03-03T19:06:00.000-08:00

So I was cruising craigslist the other day, something I shouldn't do if I'm trying to save money, when I came across an unbelievable deal on an Omega View with three lenses and accessories. For those of you LF camera geeks the lenses are: Caltar IIN 210mm, Fuji 150mm and the creme de la cream, Rodenstock Grandagon 90mm 6.8...sweet. Normally you can't find that last lens for the price he was asking for the entire kit.

Turns out the guy, Dave, is a professional from southern Connecticut. I made the trek down to Hartford and met him in a laundry mat parking lot. Really nice guy, someone offered him more money, but since I'll be using it for education purposes, he held onto for me. Awesome, great guy.

So, of course I very excited to try it out, but I don't want to wait for film to develop, so I set the cameras like this:
With Tiffany as subject
dark cloth goes on
and... snap
funny faces, thanks Tiffany for riding down with me...and thanks Dave

I need your help

2009-02-23T10:46:00.000-08:00

Actually, I'm putting a hold for better names. Please stand by...
Here's what's going on: I'm putting my personal image collection for sale on an online craft sales website. The plan is to sell higher resolution digital images, my own, for personal and commercial use. Basically I am putting my images out as if I were my own stock agency. The difference is that they come from one source (me) and the files cost much less(still working on the price per image, but think itunes). Is this a good idea? I don't know, but I'm going to try it out.

So, what I need help with is a good name. On the side I'm putting up some options that I'm thinking about, but please feel free to suggest others. I'm leaning fishyly because I like canned fish, and it also sort of sticks with the idea of many cheap things packed together.

Walking through Greenfield

2009-02-20T07:34:00.001-08:00

93 Conway St
A couple posts ago I talked about making a picture-map of Greenfield. Conway Street runs from Main St. out to the highway where it turns into Leyden Road. I may not follow it that far, but I've posted from Main St to Philips St here.

Oh, and I've also started an etsy shop to try and sell off the pile of prints flopped around the house: here, thanks Tiffany.

Catching up on some stuff

2009-02-10T09:31:00.001-08:00

I went to Hunt's the other day to pick up some odds and ends. They have a bin of old lenses. I found a 50mm 1.8 nikkor, score! It is filled with dust, the focus and aperture rings are loose and it's an AI lens, which mean no metering, but for 5$ it is a deal. I'm psyched that I now have a medium telephoto for my d90.I don't have pictures of the lens, but here are a couple pictures from the lens:
It takes nice breakfast pictures
Oh, and it came with a soft focus filter attached, hello hollywood.
I'm proud of my fern and my light box.
this isn't with the new lens, I just like it.

Wasting away on a Tuesday

2009-02-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

If you know my schedule you know that Tuesday is my Sunday. This means that I end up wanting to do a hundred things on Tuesday and end up diddling away the day. I said last week that I would do another screen print and show you the process, but I've been waiting for a new screen that I ordered from Dick. It will probably arrive in an hour or two.

Until then I thought I would start another project: photo mapping of buildings in Greenfield. The plan is to create a database of pictures of houses in the neighborhood and link them to the maps in Google Earth(G.E. from now on). As I look into it I realize that it is more complicated than just up loading and linking. To do it right I will probably have to get my own server to host the KML files. The other issue is that, like much of the internet, popularity reigns. You can go on G.E. and see pictures in Greenfield, but they are either "points of interest" or a quirky pic of a snowman. The images chosen are inevitably those deemed appealing to the masses.
Does this point to the inevitable contradiction of populism? See it like this: the most popular images are Eiffel Tower, Daytona Beach, Grand Canyon, Piccadilly Circus, places well known to all people. On G.E. you will find many pictures of these well known places. But the houses that most people live in will not be hosted on G.E. because, after all, who wants to look at pictures of your neighbor's house; it's right there. I guess my hope is that a program like G.E. allows could raise up those banal structures that surround us to object worth looking at. I think they are. Until I've figured out how to by-pass the editors at G.E. you can look at my first step on panoramio here.

2009-02-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

Last night my mom hosted a pre-birthdya party for me. Tobey was there, and Frank and Vivian too. Of course Tiffany was there. And my mom and I. We talked a lot about blogging and wondered at Tiffany dropping her Tiffany in the Trees blog which had a significant number of subscribers. I didn't take any pictures, but trust me there was a lot of food. Instead we'll look at some odds and ends from the past couple of weeks.

Walking across campus we spotted this beautiful Venus and Crescent Moon alignment. One of the students insited I take a picture. Now it looks like momma blur and baby blur.
Soup and Games at the H&O.
Classy
I had some heavy duty dreams last night. This is an illustration of one part. The eyeball floated out of my forehead and stuck to the ceiling.

silk screen printing

2009-02-03T18:53:00.000-08:00

My latest hobby:
Single color Tiffany presaging her migraine on tshirt material
Four color Bina, Mike and Jaimye watching TV on Bristol

I'm very new to this and I am sure that there are better ways to do it. Maybe in another post I'll show you my technique. I could use some pointers from experienced printers out there.

sick like a dog

2009-01-21T17:44:00.001-08:00

I caught a cold over the weekend. I haven't left the house since Sunday. Yesterday I was a wreck. At least today I had the energy to take some pictures:

This is what my view was all day yesterday
Mmmmhhh... starting the morning right
Hello handsome
I dozed in front of this yesterday. At least now I'll no exactly where I was for the inauguration: on the couch.
I was dreaming about this apple yesterday as I lay in bed parched and hungry. Tiffany brought me home two. So juicy, so crunchy.
The leftovers, I was being picky.
On and unrelated note, some of the seedlings are coming to life.
my basal temperature is 100.3, which either means I'm menstruating or I've got a fever.

closing doors

2009-01-16T06:54:00.000-08:00

I know that I don't say much about my real life on this blog -- even the pictures of my intimate space lack meaning, or context. I photograph as if the thing photographed is floating a void of visual looking. (although, maybe that too is a shortsighted description; my pictures float, not in a purely visual world, but in a highly romanticized mode of picture planes, victorian structures and self-flatulation.(boy, sometimes I pontificate when I try to write.(oh,and yes, I meant flatulation, not flagellation, I thought it'd be funny.)))

- What's your point?
- No, I don't got a point, I went in thinking about writing about disappointment, opportunity, thoughtful progress, but it's coming out all wrong.
- Well, say what you want to say and then put a couple pictures up. You took that picture of a door; make a metaphor where your missed opportunity is the closed door and you can then, uh, move away from the door.
- Yeah, but now that you say it like that it doesn't make sense.
- So what? You never think symbols out very far, just stick it in there and count on the viewer to assume it means something profound.
- I will, I will, but I wanted to talk about the process a little before we leap into the symbolic world.
- Ok, you shot the picture, you talk about the process. I assume that's what you mean, you're very vague sometimes.
- You don't need to be so, whatever. So, I took a picture of the white closet door, it was open a crack and I liked the dark line created by that crack. Then I took a picture of the bathroom door, it's is also white and I've tried to photograph it before, but it always comes out, ergh, bad. Then I thought to myself,
- to me
- Yeah, to you, "the only door I like in the house is the front door." So then I went to the hallway, and took three photographs of the door. I was worried about camera shake and wanted to get the framing, just so.
- OK, so what, you took five pictures.
- Well, I guess I wanted to figure out why I didn't just stick with the first picture.
- It was boring.
- But so is the last picture, it's uninteresting, but it's uninteresting in a way... I dunno.
- Listen, there's more contrast in the last picture. It's a dark door against a white wall. There's nothing much to it. I feel comfortable saying this because we're so intimate, but I think your an asshole for spending this much time on the freaking door picture. You deleted the other pictures anyway, so we can't even look back at them.
- I'm afraid to talk about what I wanted to talk about.
- Yeah, I know.
- It's not even the subject matter, it's the manner that I speak that I fear renders things banal. Like, I am grasping at meaning then, when I write it down, something that seemed profound in my head becomes flat, obvious and leads nowhere.
- Did you smoke a lot of pot in high school?
- and college.
- And did you have these mind-blowing day-glow curlycue images that saturated your head with light, then, when you looked at yourself the next day it was drab, gray and obvious?
- Yeah, sure, you know that. And your sounding like a therapist making explanations for feelings.
- I'm just trying to be kind to you. I'm usually critical and mean.
- OK.
- Well, you know where I'm going, but let's let the readers in on the thought process, okay?
- yeah, yeah, go.
- Well, if you spent you intellectually formative years going into these wild curving mind trips, only to find, each time, that the result was a flat and sort of stupid idea, well, then of course you still shy away from exploring anything very deeply. And since your mode of expression was writing, then hear you are struggling with your inner voice avoiding saying what you want to say.
- Holy shit, sigh, you figured it out.
- Okay, you don't need to pull a fancy role reversal, asshole.
- Okay, but I want people to read this and find it interesting, engaging. This pseudo-therapeutic jawing doesn't attract readers, and it will probably turn a bunch of them off.
- Right, but I'm the one who likes the void. I don't care what other people think.
- Well, I wish I were as brave as you, because I'm imaging people reading this and what they're thinking to themselves about me, about us.
- Yeah, well, if your imaging it why not use some quotes or parentheses or italics. I'm letting you use that stuff.
- To much effort, I don't really know who reads this, certainly don't know who gets this far in this masturbatory dialogue.
- You've been wanting to use that word all morning.
- Yeah, seemed appropriate there.
- Well, are we done now?

Projects around the house

2009-01-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

I was going to label each of the ongoing projects that I'm procrastinating from, but I kinda like their mute thingness without the labels. Just look and enjoy and guess what I'm not doing at the moment.

who wants a postcard?

2009-01-13T10:16:00.001-08:00

Cleaning out my desk I found a small collection of unwritten post cards. Do you want one? Send me your address and I'll write and post it to you.

New Year Resolutions

2009-01-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

If you hang out with me for any extended period of time you will, at one point or another, hear me bragging about achieving my New Year's resolutions in 2008. It seems to me that most people make vague or over ambitious goals. By the end of the year either they've become discouraged with the difficulty of their task or they have no way to measure their progress. So you will hear me crowing about concrete task, achievable goals and measurable steps. I can be quite a bore, I assure you.

This New Year I am carefully considering the years resolutions. Once I start thinking about the things that I want to do I get a little bogged down by my own ambitions. In the interest of getting it out of my head and out into the world I submit this list. This is not my New Year Resolutions, because, as I've said before, those need to be clear achievable goals that have measurable results, but it is a list of Resolutions to be Considered.

Exercise - schedule? Mon, Wed, Fri -- pounds bench pressed? miles run?
Chess - join icc play 100 games online
Photo - create greenfield landscape series 8-12 prints, matt, hang, show
Photo - portraits of friends, family ditto above
Photo - continue list of Photographers I Know, lunch coffee with them
Work - it's out of my hands, but I am applying for a promotion(re-write resume, today!)
Reading - reading list? 12 novels, 24 books? write thoughts, blurbs, reviews of books
Writing - write in journal every day
Relationships - see grandma 1x a week, make a baby with Tiffany, help Mom around the house
Garden - garden
Photo - get some work printing for students $$
Video - organize video tapes, shoot more video
Music - learn to play some songs on the bass, learn 6 songs on guitar
Health - dentist, find a therapist
Finance - buy a house
Education - pursue a post-grad degree, figure out what you'd want to study
Gear - sell enough stuff on ebay to buy the 18-200mm lens
More Photo - print albumen using digital internegatives

more between the holidays

2009-01-04T10:09:00.000-08:00

Yes, the holiday are over, and I should post my new year resolutions, but I'm still getting through the holiday pics and videos.
Watch the video right ...here.
I don't know half the people in the background there
Michael looking cute cute cute, Mara's there too and Bina
eark
This is how Bina pictures herself
Jaimye and Tiffany looking a little busted
PS Thanks to all the people that showed up over the weekend, it is always great to see you.

Between the Holidays

2008-12-30T20:51:00.000-08:00

In an effort to create connections between the online applications I am posting this evening that Chris Zinn and I went out shooting. The full set of pictures will be on Flickr, and the video on YouTube. Enjoy.

while your at it check out this oldy from High Street, watch it to the end!

Brain and Aesthetics

2008-12-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

VS Ramachandran on aesthetic neuroscience: here

trip to the hospital

2008-12-16T12:24:00.000-08:00

Last week my Grandmother had an operation to replace her pacemaker battery. I drove her down to Bay State hospital. We arrived at 7:15am, but they didn't get her to surgery until after 1:00pm. Grandma kept asking what we were doing there. She acted well until right after the surgery - then she was cantankerous. She said something about leaving her to die. Eventually I got her to drink some milk and eat toast.

She wouldn't let me take a picture of her in bed. All I got were pictures looking outside.
That's downtown Springfield in the distance.

american cars

2008-12-15T12:50:00.000-08:00

moving over to flickr

2008-11-24T18:07:00.001-08:00

I got a new camera and am taking pictures pictures pictures. This format is to cumbersome for the volume so I'm switching over to Flickr for most picture postings. Check it through the link at the side....
ice on dashboard
Tiffany, me and my new camera!

quick walk

2008-11-19T07:35:00.000-08:00

I am waiting for a new camera to arrive. New, modern, digital. In my excitement I went out with my little P&S and drew a sketch of some of the things I might want to take pictures of around town. Here it is:

New Years Resolution

2008-11-17T18:39:00.000-08:00

Last year I made two New Years resolutions: to go to the doctors and to read twelve books in twelve months. This morning I slept in and missed my doctor's appointment, but the other day I finished "Portrait of the Artist as a Young man" and thus fulfilled my second resolution. Here's a list of the books I read this year in chronological order:

What is the What, Dave Eggers, 2006
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami, 1987
Timbuktu, Paul Auster, 2000
Demian, Hermann Hesse, 1919
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, 1985
Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag, 2007
Ghosts, John Banville, 1993
The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer, 2006
Netherland, Joseph O'neill, 2008
Sputnick Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami, 1999
The Devil and Miss Prym, Paul Coelho, 2000
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 1916

Maybe at a later date I'll write blurbs about each book, or maybe I'll just start on next years list...

i took a walk

2008-11-05T11:39:00.001-08:00

Zone

2008-11-05T09:16:00.001-08:00

Half of the front room is given over to my plants, precious junk and studio space. Here's a little trip through it.

it's a jungle in here
mantle one
mantle 2
mantle 3
hardware profile problems
"inbox"
more inbox

slowly carefully

2008-11-05T09:02:00.001-08:00

Here's some updates in my life. Most of my time takes place at school, and I don't have any pictures from there. Maybe next time. But these are some snippets of the past two month:

my favorite meal
this root-ball is the best!
a dead bird at the hallmark photo museum
my new lens!!: fuji 135mm 5.6, fast and crisp. If you mujst know I have a box of color negatives sitting on the light table waiting to be scanned. So, this is the only image I've made with it so far...
I'm growing a beard again

quick link

2008-10-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

Katie Koti's website:
katiekoti.com

enjoy

quicky

2008-10-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for the time to post for a while... maybe i should move onto flickr

Autumn shadows

trip to syracuse

2008-09-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

Here's some pictures from out trip to Syracuse last month.
Tiffany loves fill-flash and driving!
I took thirty pictures before I got this one, perfect.
Lead removal from my favorite bridge on the Erie Canal.
Okay, so this was weird. We were driving around Syracuse. We took a back route through the University. As we were driving down this back road I looked up and saw Budge Hyde staring down at me like the kindly face of God. What will happen to me Budge?

2008-08-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

Twenty one posts ago I acquired a small digital camera. My first, a Canon a570. It is a small affair, not sleek, but with enough manual settings that I have a sense of control. Since then, I've been using the camera to document my life and make image sketches for my "serious" work in medium format and 4x5.

The question that's been bugging me is whether this camera can make a beautiful picture. Hold on, let me clarify: the question is, whether, in my hands, the camera is able to render a scene with the clarity and nuance that I desire. I've made pictures that are clear, that tell a story and a few that have a gurgling sort of drowning-man beauty, like, the blurry monochrome that a man drowning in daylight might see just before he looses consciousness.

This evening I made a hundred and ten dollar investment in Kodak 160 ISO Portra 4x5 film. NC for Natural Color. If you count the developing costs, I will, it's another hundred dollars. That's 210 dollars towards fifty pictures. At four dollars a shot, you bet I'm careful. But, and here's the thing, I have trust in the medium. I know that, if my exposure is on, and I've spent at least some time under the dark-cloth, I will have twenty square inches of a projection of the world, preserved onto acetate. With a little work in Photoshop, or the darkroom, I should find beauty there.

The digital camera, I do not yet trust. It's sensor is smaller than a postage stamp, and the lens is little larger than a contact. I am still nervous about approaching the world with this little box. So a couple hours ago, when a slash of orange light fell onto our ever cluttered table, and the floor around the table glowed with late summer evening blue, I grabbed my little Canon out of my back pack and, trusting it's image stabilization, held my elbows at my side and snapped away. This was the result:

my new toy

2008-08-19T06:11:00.000-07:00

I bought this epson 4800 roll printer a week or two ago. I'm very excited and a little overwhelmed. Here's the first print I pulled, uncorrected, overexposed 4x5 of my grandparents.

the salt museum

2008-08-19T06:01:00.001-07:00

I've got a back-log of pictures. Here's some from Syracuse when we went to the salt museum:

from the sketchbook

2008-07-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

I've been writing in this sketch-book on and off for a couple of years. It's not filled, but I thought I'd share a little with you.

fake writing

this looks like a plan for the year. I think it was early 2006

Tiffany eating pizza

There was a month were I became obsessed with the Westfield River valley. I don't know if I have any pictures from trips there, but i took a couple of notes

Cadbury

Kristin and Paul were talking about making a large table for their studio. I drew up this plan for the table

the dimensions. the table never appeared

I have no idea who Misha is. The second page looks like a card rack and a shopping cart

again, who?

Tiffany again

This is a design for a glass tube that could connect two fish tanks so that our fish could move from one space to the other

super market

2008-07-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

i bought a new memory card for my camera. i feel like i can work in photoshop with the larger file-size
we also stopped at the supermarket for a pre-made pizza. I invested in some stain removing supplies

2008-07-23T22:03:00.000-07:00

I had a very difficult day today. I stopped in Shelburne this morning to meet Tom. It went well, we talked about teaching photo, working in photo and self-promotion. Some of the things he said about the different marketplaces for photography made some real sense to me. I took pictures afterwards when I was waiting for my ride to show up. I wished that I could have stayed there all day and seen my friends.
I love being home on rainy days. Let me sit for an hour or two to watch a puddle grow.
I only see family now, my grandmother, my mother and sometimes my sister and family. I miss my friends.
In class the other day we talked about cliche photographs that appear in intro to photography over and over again. I said that the foot-shot is one and how interesting it might be to pursue a well-worn cliche until you find something interesting.
Sometimes the world in my mind is so close to the world around me,
And sometimes the world in my mind is so close I can't see the world around,
And then my throat closes tight
and the walls come up
and I'm left standing in the rain.

life and death

2008-07-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

I drove from Shelburne to Greenfield the other day through Colrain.
Center of Colrain
At work I found a dead baby bird. I brought it home and am trying to decide how to strip it of the flesh. I may explore the gruesome options in another post.
This evening we went out to eat at the pasta place in Amherst. Tiffany itches her eyes.
and sipped lemonaid

image making

2008-07-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

I took two days off teaching photo at ASR so I could teach photo at Insight. The kids were awesome and made incredible pictures.
On Friday Ellen taught with me.
The heavens opening up!
Tiffany found some cyanotype paper, we spent Saturday cleaning the house and making contact prints of old 4x5 negs. Sara, Mat and baby Is.
Got to get a hold on this series. Mats, frames, and maybe a show or something.

bits and things

2008-07-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

This is my trashy car floor
Tiffany rocking out in my sneaks
I bought a basketball.
Jay had a 4th/going away party. Here's Christopher at the party and some lady.
Christopher again
Shadowy Tiffany
Shadow man talking to Colleen
We helped my mom take down a wall in the basement to make room for a new oil tank. It kind of looks like it was an old shipping container.
Mining for dusty boards in the cellar.
Salad reward

toe day

2008-07-02T14:11:00.001-07:00

On Sunday I fell and sprained my thumb. I was smart: I iced it, talked to the nurse, filled out the correct forms at work, etc. But then, Monday evening I noticed that my pinkie toe on my right side was also sore. I soaked it, but then kind of forgot about it and went to work. This morning I woke at four in the morning with a throbbing toe. So, today I called into work and tried the RICE first aid technique: rest, ice, compression, elevation.

The Culprit:
I started getting bored pretty early.

But at least I had a chance to pay bills and get a hold of debt. Here's my home office.
Our bedroom is looking pretty nice these days.
Okay, here I am making an effort to rest and ice and elevate.
This is my best "Rear Window" impression. The look on my face is because I'm using the Pentax 67 with a Tiltall tripod, a sure recipe for frustration.
Frustrated enough to pack up for a trip to the bank, of course just as I'm ready to go it starts to rain.
and pour
But it was just a cloud-burst. Time to get up!
During the day sirens scream down Main Street every half hour or so. Frightening. Here is one.
I went out for pizza
I looked out the window at Roberto's and saw my bike contrasting nice with this truck.
then this...
now Tiffany is back and I can ask her to do things for me. Yeah!

mix of things

2008-06-28T16:20:00.001-07:00

These are pictures from the past week or two, though maybe just one week.

I was shooting the 45 this evening and composed an image on the ground glass similar to this. But, I only have black and white loaded, so what I saw, the rainy green and those shining primaries just won't show up. Maybe I'll be surprised, but I think I need to keep the color film on hand.
I'm teaching a photo class at school. I took some pictures of the kids shooting, but I don't think I can share those, so here is a pano of the classroom before I started tearing it apart:

harvest from a couple weeks ago, the carrots are growing...
aaaahhhhhhhhhhh........
okay, so the light on this was amazing, and I was driving and this is a snapshot, but trust me, it was amazing.
HEY, HOW ABOUT THESE ONES?!!
I bought three pairs of kakhis and no shorts, such is my style, more towards the fall and winter side of life.
I am not a crafty, but I am starting to know the fabric store inside and out. It's only fair, if I get help pants shopping.

We went to a party at Alex's house in celebration of his upcoming wedding. It was at his parent's house in Deerfield. Mostly it was his parent's friends, but we got to meet Erin(fiance) and Chris and Jen who I hadn't seen for years. This is papa Pennock and Erin.
Erin and Jen
Chris(a little) architecture and Jen's hand and eye
Alex's mom made a short speech and cried a little. I'm not an event photographer, so I snapped this picture from behind. I like the comforting gesture in motion
There they are!!

Bingo!
The Party
So many wasps!!
what a garden
Why so glum, Jen?

harvest from last week. the carrots are bigger yet
I'm reading Geoff Dyer, "The Ongoing Moment." He looks at famous pictures and how they repeat and echo through the history of photogrphy. One subject that he finds in Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank. My shot, timely considering the price.
Tiffany is either not pleased with "The Parrots of Telegraph Hill," or the distance to the nearest mailbox, or the fact of me taking a picture. I liked the red shoes and the netflix envelope.
I forgot my mother's birthday yesterday.
When I realized, I felt guilty and looked at the floor.

trip to new york

2008-06-19T19:51:00.001-07:00

Last weekend Tiffany and I went to New York. We stayed at her sister Tiara's house. This is Tiara's spare bedroom and woefully neglected guitar
And her woefully fat cat
nice expression, honey
Tiara has to tie her shoe
I've seen this picture before. I thought of Leah when I saw it
This is New York to me
Athea looks good in above-ground train
hot day, cold fish
hot dogs
We stopped at the Renegade Craft Fair. This is about how engaged I felt.
This was the best part of the craft fair
The best part for Tiffany was this gifted necklace and radish. People are so giving
We stopped at the Brooklyn Brewery where Tiara works on the weekends. These are the montessori phonetic vowel sounds:
a as in map
e as in bed
i as in tip
o as in mop
u as in mud
tiffany was given this necklace from a blog buddy at the craft fair. Eventually I'll add a link.
Tiara and Athea at the Thai restaurant
cool boots on the subway
traffic
my feelings about traffic

a repost look at context

2008-06-19T06:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post last week that got me in a bit of trouble. I was frustrated by the mess in the house and took it out in picture form. And, like Tom Young has said, content is altered by context. In this case, the context of my biting titles and text. So here's the same pictures without any blame attached:

breakfast
big mess
teddy takes catches some zees
teddy, clean our room, please
fan to move the air
i wish this stuff wasn't there
shelf to help oragnize our junk
example of said junk
more stuff
By the way, the house is slowly coming together since this shoot. To say we have little time together is an understatement. Last night I got home at quarter to twelve. Tiffany was already in bed. Then she left this morning. I have vague memories every day of her leaving around 6:45 or some hour. A good part of the week all we have is glimpses of one another. In my mind part of the mess is reminders of ourselves to one another. Though, I'm trying to make the clean dishes in the dish drain a reminder for her in the evenings. I think there is a photo project in all this. I'll get to it soon-day.

birthday party

2008-06-11T06:56:00.000-07:00

I still haven't figured out the order that the pictures load into blogger, so bear with me if the narration doesn't flow. This Saturday was my Grandmother's 98th birthday. We had a party at the old-people's residence. Tiffany, Mom, Sister Sara, Brother Mat and Is were there. A note of pride: she lives in her own room with toilet, refrigerator and stove. Not that she cooks, but she's still on her own in a way.
98!
2 cute for words
We stopped at the farmer's market on the way.
Saturday morning leotard fitting.
Annie Hasset played for us at the party
This guy freakin' loves "Pink Cadillac"
Get you're boogy on at the old-folks home
My grandma likes to give you wet kisses right on the mouth
zombie niece
I had a dream last night that I was taking a bunch of very important pictures. I can't remember what of, but the intention was to print out the photographs. Then, as I came to the end of the dream, I realized I was still shooting low-res jpgs, which is true. Maybe it mean I need a 2gig card...

friday with leah

2008-06-06T16:05:00.001-07:00

Leah asked me to help bring her show back from the VCP in Brattleboro. This is her with the wall of polaroids at the Insight Photography Project.
Student art
Back in Greenfield; I volunteered her for a few months.
What is he building in there?
This is how Leah feels about gas prices. Kind of enigmatic...
Genevieve's show at Insight
Someone's nice dog
Packing the pictures
What a view!
Write on me, please!
Tiffany buying patterns on sale
ladder at leah's
Ellen working
stained glass at mesa verde

a night out with co-workers

2008-06-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

at home

2008-06-02T09:28:00.001-07:00

Half beard from the other night.
Don't tell anyone I shaved.

I read a chapter in John Banville's Ghosts this morning and got to thinking about my own thoughts about death. One of the characters just walked across the dunes to the ocean and fell on his face. It's got to be the best death scene I've ever read in a book. I think these pictures are also about narrating death. Still a little incomplete. Check out the whole series: link

more pictures from sara's

2008-05-31T17:28:00.000-07:00

sheep at alderbrook farm
earing
on the way back home we stopped here

blurry breakfast
mat and cereal
tantrum
cha cha cha
chicken at alderbrook farm

hanging out at sister sara's

2008-05-30T14:54:00.001-07:00

We are at my sister's house hanging out with Izzi. Earlier today her three friends were hanging out at the pool. We spent a lot of time taking pictures of my little pony. Iz took a bunch of these.

my little abstraction by isabel coes

tiffany and isabel

an ant we saw

my niece!

this is a drive-in theatre on 146

kids and pool

strobe flash

the coes

tiffany!!