Gunther Toody's

I went to Gunther Toody's yesterday to converge with a college friend for a good old fashion mediocre old fashion diner breakfast. I ate what felt like enough greasy food to fuel a thru hike of the Appalachian Trail. Although early in the morning for a night owl like I, and just the beginning of what turned out to be a marathon of a day, it was a joy to sit and eat with my guy from school, his pops and his friend from home. The waitresses at Gunther Toody's have an enormous amount of flair, both as a trait of their personalities and as a component of their uniforms. I hung out for a bit and photographed afterward, but never felt overly welcome. I can understand this, considering most of these waitresses most likely don't identify on a personal level too closely with their Gunther Toody's flair pins and tacky outfits. But, I think, that is what makes the staff there an interesting subject to photograph in the first place, not to mention the brilliant lighting and colors that Gunther's has to offer.
NPPA has published their Best of Photojournalism. In my opinion, Mary Calvert absolutely stole the show. She's good. Although, considering her portfolio really pushed the envolope in some ways, I don't think that the "at-least-one-image-with-subject-reflecting-back-in-the-mirror photo-essay quota" should've applied to her. Seriously, there must be other ways of demonstrating your access to a subject and your appreciation of eye-candy, without falling victim to that cliché (again and again).

A Matter of Frames

Continuing in the rich tradition of photographing mountains through parking decks, I made/took this photograph while fumbling around Golden looking for wild art. I don't know if this series is even a little bit pleasing to anyone else (my roommate responded with a mildly befogged, but more of a neutral "huh"), but I sure would like to put together an exhibit of mountain-car garage images, even if it only goes as far as the walls of my room. There are only so many rock arches to frame mountains with, and most of them are at least 5 hours away from here. Too much time/money/fuel to burn towards photographing something that so many photographs have already been made of. That said, as soon as I get the time/money/fuel to burn, I will for sure head down there to the motherland of arches for a few nights backpack. Which brings me to the next thing I love about Boulder: its so much closer than the east coast to all my favorite places in the United States. In fact, its pretty much equidistantly close to all of my favorite places in the US--lets call it the mean of my favorite places in the US.
One more thing, on a total sidenote, and I promise not to venture too far from photography: how could I have forgotten about Bob Marley?!?! Man, what a musical genius. Having been reminded of this, I find it even less understandable why we peddle out so many prescription anti-depressants to our mopey.
One more music related thing: Andrew Bird continues to put out some of the highest grade and most creatively juiced music around. Thank goodness for that.

Climb Envy

Although, I am not much of a climber myself, I am in awe of climbers, the rocks they climb, and the gear they use to do it. I like talking to climbers too, especially when they use words like "burly" and "knarly". This image is from a mountaineering shop in Golden.

Select Comfort

As I have not had my camera around my neck enough lately to post new stuff, here's an oldy but goody, or maybe just a strange oldy. Regardless, I love it, and I laugh out loud every time that I come across it. Oh, and the guy in the center of the photo is pretty cool, too. Who else would oblige to sprawl out in a pile of tires without a moments hesitation, and very organically meld into a posture as perfect as this? Was that a rhetorical question? Yes. If you are reading this, Tron: Oh, how I miss taking walks in which we spontaneously decide on you jumping into a pile of tires to strike a pose.

Doubles and Wires

Also, church exodus

Leaving Church

Prom Dress Exchange

Your explanation is as good as mine. How this Dude didn't scare the bejesus out of every little promward bound adolescent in there is another question. Granted, he was the brother in law of one of the organizers, but still a bit out of place, and maybe out of his head too. I just wish that I had come away with a better shot. But, I guess people are solitarily silly for only so long before looking around and realizing it.

Alex

I saw Alex and her vibrant blue umbrella, first, as I anxiously power-walked back to my car to fetch my camera several afternoons ago. Everything I saw had started to look like a picture, and I was already cursing myself for leaving my camera behind. So, I complimented Alex on her umbrella and decided to make due with "neurochrome" image capture (i.e. memory). Fortunately, I later bumped into Alex again hanging out on Pearl St. and she gladly obliged to pose for some portraits. Although, I wish the background had been a bit cleaner, I really prefer to shoot natural portraits, with the subject in her environment as is. I am visiting their territory, rather than attempting to transplant them into a preconceived photograph. I don't see anything wrong with the latter, except that I don't like to.

Bear Mt.

Bikes!

The Secret Game

Behind the Second Flatiron

These are three of 4 really nice guys I met on a crag behind the 2nd flatiron this evening. So the Flatiron trail is not the best place to go for solitude, but that can often be a good thing.

TV Time Out

I was so busy, trying to grab action shots, that I nearly missed the important stuff. But, this one wasn't going to slip by me.

Truly, I mean no disrespect to this guy.

Light Pollution

I nearly ran up Mt Sanitas today, nearly as in I was actually keeping pace with the guy who was running just ahead of me, all for the promise of photographing lenticular clouds at sunset from the summit. Man, these things are rare! Of course, when I got to the top, the clouds had mushed together into what became a large amorphous sun curtain (i.e. flat light, and no more lenticulars to speak of). On my way down, though, I came across this view, where one side of the sky hung on to its last few minutes of purple twilight, and the other caught all the stray city light (pollution) in its wispy clouds.
When I see potential for something like this, I need ask myself only one question: do I mind hiking back down the mountain in the dark? Because I'm more and more interested in incorporating both human and natural elements into my compositions, and the lighting was pretty interesting, I decided that my trekking poles would just have to double as seeing-eye aluminum poles. Turns out the light pollution kept parts of the trail at least dimly lit, and my very versatile trekking poles did the rest.
And no, this isn't becoming a Mt. Sanitas blog, although there is so much happening on that Mountain, that I am sure one could write quite a prolific blog about it, and all the little boulderites who've made it their daily playground.

John's Parking Deck

I think that parking decks are my new favorite place to shoot, especially ones in view of the mountains. Yesterday, on my way out, I talked with Jon for a bit, easily the friendliest parking deck attendant that I have ever met. Today, I talked to him some more. I know its obnoxious to force whoever extremely important person behind me to wait while I photograph and talk to John, but its not all the time that you meet someone as damn cool and as damn kind as him. The impatient person behind me is lucky to have John as a parking deck attendant.

Mt. Sanitas

Over the past few days I've hardly shot anything that I felt great about posting. I've kept up with it, mainly to keep to a standard, and to push myself to come up with stuff that I do feel good about posting. Today, however, in the course of about an hour and half, I shot 8 images that I consider post-worthy. Nothing mind-blowing, no dramatic sunset or rare light, just people and scenes that look to me like they need to be photographed. Little moments that make the day rich and visually engaging. Because its not my intention to inundate you with imagery, (we're all already inundated enough) I will spread these out a little. My original idea for the blog was to post images that stood as sort of visual haiku's amidst my day. Because, the metaphor just doesn't work all that well anyway (images don't have syllables, silly) its difficult to determine what counts as a visual haiku. But, for sure, 8 images is way too many syllables for a haiku. I promise, I'm not all that interested in photographing my shadow, my reflection, or really anything that explicitly references my taking the photograph. In fact, I just wanted to take a picture of the damn chair. But I felt way to self-satisfied with how the elements lined up in this frame, and just what a meaningless abstraction they amounted to. There was a sign that indicated the space was for rent. I think it would be great if some old guy with a pipe just sat in there all day on display, smoking. If any rich art patron is interested in funding a public installation piece, I would volunteer to help find the guy with the pipe.

Waiting for the Bus

This is a little bus stop grafitto that I found on the commute back from my hike yesterday. I love walking through town with my trekking poles attached to my backpack. Even better, getting a bowl of three different types of chocolate hagan dasz ice cream upon finishing a hike. I've been nagging my editor about getting some more non-b-ball assignments for this week, but I guess he can't give em' to me unless he has them to give. I'll just have to treat this as little window for personal projects--as to what that means, you'll just have to stay tuned, or RSS fed for that matter (give it a try). Really, it'll make your daily dose of blogs go down a little smoother.

Why I love Boulder...

...amongst other reasons, folks breakdance on the corner on a Sunday afternoon. These guys moved their bodies in ways that I'm just not accustomed to seeing bodies moved. A real joy to watch. I thought maybe if I observed for long enough that I might gradually absorb some of their moves. I haven't tested it out yet. I think I need to spectate a little more first.
Although they each seemed to have a great deal of fun dancing, the greatest part about it is that nearly every person who walked by had a huge smile on their face. Now if we could only replace every third sidewalk folksinger with a group of b-boys, then we'd really be making progress. Thanks for coming out to Pearl Street, guys. Hope to see you again soon.

Go Team!

So, I still have a bit of work to do on my sports action shooting. That's why you won't find it here. Instead I provide you with cheerleader action. This is the stance they take when a player from their school shoots a free-throw. Indeed, they are very devout cheerleaders.

Fiery Trees

This little scene always catches my attention on the way to and from Golden for my work with the newspaper. I don't know what type of trees they are, but their branches often appear to glow orange. I'm so curious about this house and the people who live in it that I want to knock on their door and find out more. I do know that they have a very loud and easily perturbed dog. Not nearly as charming as T-Rex.
Oh, and just to make the most out of my new found joy in creating hyperlinks, check out this multimedia photo slide show by magnum photographer, Constantine Manos. Becuase it tickles my imagination so, I've watched it like six times. Really, take a look. Its much better than watching TV.