Serving

I love photography's "wow cool" effect of freezing and decontextualizing visual elements that might not otherwise pull a second glance. Steam for instance or smoke, reflections, liquid, air-borne objects--all can move from mundane to magical rendered still, 2D and boxed in. Of course this magic all too quickly becomes (already is) cliche. But my point is, the "wow cool" effect is damned cool anyway, and its a compliment to the camera (albeit maybe not the totality of grubby shutter bugging operators*) that its such a cliche making machine.

* Myself included of course. And although its sometimes disturbing to see hoards of people shielded from an actual view by cell phones and digicams, I still love a culture transfixed by a crude mimesis.

2 Quick Fixes

Bellingham Nightlife

These are from an ongoing assignment to photograph Bellingham nightlife for a new website called gobham.com. You can see my take from last week if you click on the "out late gallery" at the bottom of the page. Not exactly hard journalism, or even soft journalism for that matter, just scenes of a scene. This week's should be online in a couple days. I think this week's were more fun. The students are back, and dancing to 80's music.

Fiesta!

Three from the Ptarmigan Ridge Trail

Ferry Boat Captain

Fetch

Night Shift #3

Tug of War

Dave and Eduardo

Night Shift #2

Penny works from 10:30pm to 8am at Walgreens. "A woman works 24/7 all her life," she says.

Night Shift #1

Ferry Boat Passenger

Dear Friends

These are from a trip down to Portland to visit some of my favorite people.

One Look at Parkour

The Carter Family

The Carters are now three generations deep in puppeteering. Some 30 years ago, Stephen (left) and Chris began putting on shows. Their son, and now their son's son have grown up puppeteering, "its just family business" as Stephen pointed out. This picture has them warming up before the show for their Italian gypsy folk accompaniments. The accordion, of course, was a serendipitous find at a thrift shop. And just like good gypsies, the Carters are self-taught musicians, and good ones at that.

Manning the The Wacky Water Race

This is Robbie, who worked at the Wacky Water Race game booth at the county fair. I was amazed at his ability to remain in genuine pleasant (and marketable) spirits that helped him sell games, but also came with a certain nonchalant self-awareness which allowed him to perform and yet transcend his limited role as game-master (BTW, this is a graduated liberal arts mind at work). Self-conscious irony, sarcasm and double-talk, rather then reaching beyond the contingency of one's identity, leave one drooping pitifully, and often nihilistically into the dregs of this contingency (riff on DWF). But this light hearted (yet hearted, indeed) performance managed to do the trick of transcendence for the man at the wacky water race. But maybe its just me. I was mainly observing from behind a viewfinder, and most focal lengths do tend to have at least a little distortion.

Western Washington Football Practice

Dirty Dirty Dirt Bikes

Still Stuck on a Moment

These girls are about to perform a traditional Cambodian dance at the intermission of a youth Thai boxing tournament. This is a few moments before they are announced to the ring. A moment later, the little girls face lights up into an adorable half blushing smile, into the type of something you might see in a local newspaper. What you won’t see, is this slightly more ambiguous moment, for good reason. People don’t read newspapers seeking ambiguity or mystery. But this blog is no newspaper. Rather it’s the place I publish what the newspaper won’t, and shouldn’t. I’m not trying to flatter myself through this picture, it didn’t take a whole lot of craft or artistry, but boy does that little girl draw out my curiosity. I’m not someone who often yearns to inhabit other people’s minds, my own is trouble enough, but in this particular moment I would really like to know what she was thinking and feeling. Was she poised and ready to take the stage, as if dancing in front of others was a part of her makeup? Or, was she nervous and full of little children’s butterflies? I like to think that she was somewhere else, looking beyond this performance with some sort of profound self-assurance of her movements in dance and in the world.
For me, this is one of photography’s great powers: it has the potential to suspend a moment in such a way as to reveal its layers of depth, complexity and meaning; an incision into linear time through which we can get a view of the immeasurable content we normally only experience the edges of. I’m not saying that this picture does that for anyone besides myself, but its my hope that with time and hard work, that my images will begin to tap into this quality.