Self portrait, London 2002
Welcome to my photo blog.
A little bit about me. First and foremost I'm a musician. I play classical guitar and compose for it as well. And I've spent much of my life in bands playing saxophone and guitar. Photography is my second love. I've been on and off with my camera and for the last decade mostly off. Bur recently I've dusted it off and have found boxes of my life stuffed away under my bed. I thought I would share some of these. Most are from the late 90's into the early 2000's. They're day to day photos from my life in Portland, Oregon. Some are earlier from my past life as a youngster in Baltimore. And many will be from my present life here in Brooklyn. Much of my work is in black and white. I like old movies so I think while shooting these I was fantasizing about a life that wasn't actually in front of me. I'm a bit of a hipster that way I suppose. I do enjoy some color photography as well and those will be presented here.
I don't intend to get into the technical stuff. I'm a guy and I like equipment, but goddam it's a boring topic! I'll be tagging some equipment to gain some traffic (hopefully!) but other than that I'll stick to a story I want to share.
In the early 2000's I held aspirations of doing gallery shows, everything was transactional in my life. How much money can I make on my work? Will I be famous? I've never sold a photo and don't really care.
I took a class presented by a curator from Blue Sky Galleries in Portland Oregon. I'll be honest, kinda fell in love with that teacher. She had just turned 40, wrote a book of poetry, out out her first solo LP of cello music (if my memory serves me well) and did all kinds of charity work in parts of Africa. The class was held in a loft space owned by one of the students. There was about 5 of us total and I was the youngest. I think I may have been 36 or so. There was one female student and 4 of us were guys. We had a couple bottles of nice wine going. I was the only non professional photographer there. The rest had careers so I largely listened. The topic was about your kit to present to galleries. The group kept going into equipment talk: this lens, that printer, this camera, that lightbulb etc. The teacher did her best to keep in on topic. She finally said if she sees the persons equipment listed in their gallery pitch, they're likely to not get a show. I already felt I knew this cause who cares? But they went on about more equipment and how the art of photography is being lost thanks to digital and the kids won't ever know real photography and the sky is falling etc. Ugh...... and as it turned out, I was the only one there shooting film and printing in a darkroom! I finally spoke up and said "you know, a hundred years ago I would bet there was a group of photographers sitting around a nice table like this, enjoying a nice bottle of wine, talking about how the Kodak Brownie is the end of photography and the amateurs are gonna take over and all this and that. And here we are. And the kids? If all they have are cellphones to work with, they'll find some brilliance with the cellphone cause that's just what people do."
So no technical on my blog. Honestly I don't know enough about proper photography to share that. Just the pics folks!
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.
JB 4/18/20
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