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10 Years Ago 2

Posted September 7, 2010

It’s been about 10 years ago that I started blogging. I really can’t remember exactly because I had a couple of false starts and changed things around several times. It’s been a love hate relationship but I just can’t seem to give it up not matter how infrequently I update.

To celebrate, if you want to call it that, I decided to dig though my archive from 2000 and pick out some of my favorite images and blog about them.

So 10 years ago I was three years in to my eight year run at The Grand Island Independent. The Indy is a smallish paper in the middle of Nebraska. We were shooting film back then. I still slept with a scanner on and ran on every spot news assignment I could.

I also did a story on a boxing club that met in old converted service garage. The young man in the picture above happened to wipe his face after his work out right in the middle of some of the best light I had seen at the gym.

What does photography mean to you? 2

Posted August 5, 2010

I’ve been reading a lot of interviews lately at “Mull it Over” a web based interview project by Jonathan Cherry where he talks with contemporary photographers. One thing I love about it is he always asks the same opening question, “What did you have for breakfast?” It’s always in an interesting answer.

In his latest interview, at the end, he asked photographer Horatio Baltz to answer the question, “What does photography mean to you?” It was a great answer and I just had to share it.

“Photography is either 1 of 2 things – perhaps even both at once: 1) a dank, dark, cold hole at the bottom of the world brimming with self-deprecation, envy, processing costs, and realizations that perhaps all of your efforts are fruitless or 2) me at 3 in the morning sitting in a rickety wooden chair completely naked (with the exception of a stetson fedora) sweating profusely while scanning strips of negatives, listening to local public radio, chain smoking marlboro reds and wondering when to call it a night.”

I’ve really been thinking a lot lately about what photography means to me right now. Some of my answers worry me. So reading this made me laugh because there’s a huge lump of truth mixed in his answer.