Picture Notes

Taking the time to learn from a chocolate maker…

The National Museum of the American Indian gave a cooking/use demonstration today on chocolate. Right now I can only think about all the photographs I should have made but didn’t. I know it’s bad to talk about the ones that got away and I’m not going to describe any of the missing photographs, the reason I’m writing this down is that I need to remember to take advantage of my environment and to think when I have the camera in my hands. I’m not talking about “great” photography but interesting images that don’t happen every day. Covering the demonstration as a photojournalist makes it more interesting, especially with this kind of subject.

Scouring the web for photographs

I’ve been out there, scouring the web for photographs to write about and finding the same stuff, there doesn’t seem to be much new out there so I’ll only use my own work. Most of the photojournalists seem to be corporate shooters, but that might be because I work in Washington, DC - same talking heads, same podium, just a different face.

When I photograph people speaking at the podium I’m usually locked down and trying to make the picture when they pause and their mouth isn’t moving or when they don’t have a funny expression, it’s kind of dull and tedious. It’s fun to photograph people with odd expressions but most of the time it’s just taking a cheap shot.

Often I look at photographs and wonder what was going through the photographer’s mind when he took that photograph. I’ve spent so much time doing commercial work that when I snap the shutter I’m usually trying to emphasize a particular graphic element, a color, or I’m thinking about how the photograph is going to look on the page.

A Bee Returns

No one is quite sure what happened to the honey bees this summer - 80% of them are just gone. I found this guy on a flower in Falls Church, working away collecting pollen and made this wall paper kind of photograph of him. I like the patterns of the body and the wings against the flower in the foreground. I wouldn’t call this a photograph of a honey bee.

Some think the population crash might have been caused by cell phone activity, millions of people calling home to tell someone they will either arrive late or on time for dinner, and giving their partner confidence that they are not messing around with someone at the office.

I wonder if anyone is looking at the radio waves we are creating with just a simple phone call and how that will effect our long term health, or that of the honey bee or other animals.

These pages are an attempt to explain and explore photographs with words to see if I can stitch them together with the right words.