I took a handful of photos on a recent trip to Washington, DC so I thought I’d post a few. DC is a really fascinating place and I think it would benefit anyone to go and visit at least once. The museums are really amazing (and free!) and there’s nothing quite like standing in front of the actual Declaration of Independence. It will give you chills.

I didn’t expect the monuments to be as powerful as they were. It’s a well spent afternoon to stand in the same spot as Martin Luther King did in 1963. Just standing in front of the White House was quite the experience, too, when you start thinking of all the people who have lived there.

Other highlights of the trip were the Holocaust Museum, Museum of Modern Art, the Allen Ginsberg photography exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, Ford’s Theater, the Museum of Natural History, and lots and lots of great food!

I also did a little post-trip reflection over at our work blog about finding storytelling inspiration in museum design.

In my last post on color slide film, I showed a few images that I had shot about 5 years ago. Here are a few more from that series and it’s made me want to go out and buy some more slide film and give it another whirl.

I recently came across a series of photos that I shot about five years ago and used a couple years later for an improvised jazz piece. They were all shot on color slide film (Kodachrome, I believe) and when I pulled out the slides, I was pleasantly surprised with how they looked! They are more along the lines of the type of photography I’ve been wanting to shoot lately. These images are pulled directly from the scanner with no image altering at all. The colors are really amazing and there is definitely a quality there that you can’t get with digital. I’ll post a few here and a some more in the next few days. Enjoy!

Sub-zero wind chills here in Lawrence this morning. I think it’s safe to say that winter has arrived!

There was a lot of buzz yesterday online about a new photo resource, so I thought I’d mention something about it. LIFE magazine has teamed up with Google to archive thousands of photographs taken by LIFE photographers over the past several decades. This amazing collection includes photographs and etchings dating back to the 1750s and by the time everything has been put online, there will be more than 10 million photos available worldwide. The archive includes photographs taken by some of the most well respected photographers in history including Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Capa .

This is a continuation of a trend that gained a lot of motion in early 2008 when the Library of Congress put a section of their collection online and invited Flickr users to help them in the massive task of adding tags to the photos. Shortly thereafter, several other institutions followed suit and helped create the The Commons on Flickr.

UPDATE: Wow! Here’s another great online collection of historic photographs from Tibet from the past 30 years.

Happy browsing!

Intrigued . . . ?

You can see it in action here.

So, in the mean time, I was cleaning up my office a bit and I came across a camera that I’ve been using off and on for a while. There was half a roll of film in it (your guess is as good as mine as to what’s on the first half!) so I took it out to do some shooting this weekend. I’ll try and have some photos developed to post soon.

The camera is a Yashica Electro 35 rangefinder which is from the early 1970′s and is considered by some to be a “poor man’s Leica“. It has a beautiful lens which stops down to 1.7 so it’s a great camera for low light and for street photography. Since it’s a rangefinder, there is no mirror that flops up when you press the button, so there’s a barely audible click when the shutter opens which makes it nice for candid photos.

The camera came from my parents who got it as a gift from some friends who bought it new in Japan on a trip. They used it for a while, but soon retired it to the closet where it sat for a decade or two until I pulled it out and looked into getting it up and running again. The biggest problem was that the battery had been discontinued for several years, but upon some internet searching, I stumbled upon the Yashica Guy who sells a homemade adapter that will allow you to use a modern battery in it. A few days and $16 later, I was all set to go and I’ve had a lot of fun with it ever since. A lot of older cameras still have life left in them and they’re a blast to use so a quick internet search is well worth it before you toss your old equipment!

My apologies for the lack of posting lately! It’s been busy, busy around the studio and I’ve been working on lots of interesting projects. I should have some more things to post soon!

I did take a little time out to spend some time with my new camera and I’ve been loving it! It’s been good for me to get back to shooting on film and I find that I make much different choices on how and what I shoot when it’s a dollar per click! It’s great to have such rich depth of field and, although the Polaroid film almost has a mind of it’s own, the photos have a great quality to them. The colors are really dependent on temperature, light, etc. and so I can try my best to get it “right”, but it’s still a mystery to me what I’m going to end up with. Below are a few of the early test shots I took and I hope to have some more up soon!

I also wanted to point out a couple of wonderful articles, one is called Gone in Sixty Seconds and gives a very interesting history of Polaroid. The other is called The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 – 1977 and it’s great reading as well.

OK, so since I’ve got you here, there’s also some pretty exciting news . . .

I was just promoted to Art Director at my office at the university which will be a really exciting move for me and I’m really looking forward to it! See how I pulled you in with the cute babies? Oh, the trickery . . .

I think one of the nicest things about biking to work is having the chance to stop and notice things along the way. The fresh air is nice and the exercise is great, but mostly, I think it’s cool not have a pane of glass between you and the rest of the world. It’s nice to be able to stop if you see something and enjoy it without having to park, get out of the car, etc. So, perhaps against my better judgment, I took a camera along on my ride today and shot some of the things that I see on my way to the office!

I see a lot of stuff when I’m at a stop sign waiting to go.

This might TECHNICALLY qualify you for Bike to Work week, but you’d probably be missing the point. You’d get a few more badass points, though . . . but just a few!

I think the morning ride is my favorite. Not only does it help wake me up, but the light is really nice. I came across these red leaves today and they were truly brilliant in the sunlight.

This is a nice car-free path that saves me about a block every morning. It’s nice and quiet away from the traffic.

I see this every day and I still scratch my head every time. To each his own!

So, those are some perks of the bike commute. When I’ve been staring at a screen for 8 hours, it’s fifteen minutes of guaranteed unwinding time which makes me much more pleasant when I get home!

In his words:

“The photographs culminate 40 years of my work in the topic of Chinese migration and the emergence of China in an unprecedented pace that shocked the world. I question the process and the cost of how these monumental and irreversible changes affect the faces of the ordinary common folk of this monstrous and diverse nation.”

If you’re interested in seeing more of his work, you can visit his website at www.pokchilau.com where you’ll find a nice gallery of his photographs and you can order his book Flow China as well as his first book Dreams of the Golden Mountain. Pok Chi’s images are fascinating, shocking, humorous, haunting and beautiful and his books are a great addition to any collection. As an added bonus, proceeds from the sales of his books will used for scholarships and charity!

*sniff*

There is some pretty amazing work that has been done with Polaroids and a quick Flickr search will bring up a TON of great examples. Two artists I’ve been looking at lately are: Heather Powazek Champ and Mike Brodie (aka The Polaroid Kid). Of course, there are tons other great artists that I’ll link to in the future and I hope to post some great new Polaroids of my own here soon!

And, of course, a special thanks to Mona since she was the source of the camera. I promise it’ll be put to good use!

In mid-March we took a trip to New York City to visit some of our best friends that live there. It was an amazing trip, not only in the fact that I hung out with awesome people, ate awesome food and saw awesome art, but I also got some new scenery for a week which was much needed!

The first night we were there, we took the Chinatown bus to Boston. It is 1) very popular and 2) very cheap. The ride takes about 3.5-4 hours and really isn’t too bad at all.

We were only in Boston for about 36 hours to visit some people, but we did see some neat places in the city. This is the Old North Church from your 4th grade history class. Remember?

The church is in a historic district of Boston where the streets are narrow and the buildings are OLD.

We were in Boston the day before St. Patrick’s day and the town was already celebrating.

We also saw the New England Holocaust Memorial which was really something to see in person. There are six million numbers like these etched in 6 pillars of glass and are reminiscent of the tattoos that the Nazi’s gave their victims. It was powerful to see them up close…

But even MORE powerful to look up. Definitely a somber moment of the trip.

On a lighter note . . . returning back to New York the next day, we were able to catch the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade! Made me want to listen to some Dropkick Murphys.

Everyone was decked out in their finest green.

We took the Staten Island Ferry which gave us a great view of the NY skyline. Last time I took the ferry in 1998, there was a very different view.

Saw this old bird who looks great for 122 years old! A French tourist I met later on mentioned how tight the security is to get onto the island. I’d recommend the Staten Island Ferry; it’s free and low stress.

We did a ton of stuff on this trip that I didn’t get photos of. Remember, I was trying to get AWAY from work!! Some of those things included trip to Central Park, the Guggenheim, The MoMA, and Brooklyn. If you have the chance, check out Cai Guo-Qiang’s exhibition “I Want to Believe” at the Guggenheim. It is absolutely amazing.

We took a nice walk around SOHO and Chinatown one afternoon and saw the sights, sounds and smells.

They also had a TON of food for sale on the streets all over Manhattan. While I’m here, let me talk about food for just one minute . . . one of the highlights of the trip was the amazing food that we ate. For reference for my future self as well as others going to NYC soon, here’s a partial list:

1. Veggie Planet (Boston)
2. Curry Leaf – Indian
3. Quintessence – all vegan and raw food
4. Ozu – this place is AMAZING
5. Mama Mexico
6. Hampton Chutney – quick Indian
7. Kanoyama (sushi)
8. Yum Yum Bangkok – Thai
9. Failte Irish Whiskey Bar – beer
10. Verlaine – drink specials

Our good friend Allen took us to Ozu for lunch and then we went over with him and his son to the American Natural History Museum. Lots of dinos . . .

. . . and smiley turtles . . .

. . . and scary fish . . .

. . . and pretty rocks . . .

. . . and, of course, small pigs made out of coral, because in New York City, they have EVERYTHING. Thanks to Jane, John, Jason, Ryan, Jamie, Amir, Ann, Allen, Heather and Jenna for showing us the BEST time!!!

All photos: Designojek