Meg Laughing

I prefer candid photographs to staged ones. But doesn't everyone, really? Everybody wants to get their best friend with an expression of natural happiness instead of applied toothiness. Not very easy to do, though. It's pretty easy to get one without the other. Most people opt for the "happiness" half, which explains the ubiquity of lean-in-and-smile shots. Probably a good thing, too. I have loads of "natural" shots that are far less pleasing to look at than those. People being naturally bored, or naturally blinking, or naturally in the middle of talking with an expression more grotesque than conversational. It's the combination of the two that is so elusive. I have a few, and I do love them.

What I like about this photograph is that is exactly how Meg laughs. Well, not all the time. Mostly just when someone's telling a really good story. But it isn't an exception. Like a tabloid photograph of the normally beautiful celebrity caught without their makeup and a fleeting grimace on their face. On the contrary, this matches wonderfully the image I have in my head of my sister letting out a serious guffaw.

Window Shopping

Winter can be a tough time for photographers. Especially photographers that get home from work at 5:30 at which time the daylight is all but gone. No evening strolls through the neighborhood or lounging in the backyard to enjoy their hobby. No taking for granted the casual availability of light. Instead, they have to actively look for it. Little spots where the dark is chased away to provide enough for a photograph or two. But the ones that are made are more valued for it.

Snowlie

Olie loves the snow. Loves it! Freshly fallen is best. I make her sit at the back door and open the slider. She anxiously shuffles her feet and lets out a little annoyed moan. Eventually, she looks up at me and I say "OK", but the "O" is all she needs. She leaps of the back steps and bounds around the yard, as close as a dog can get to being a gazelle, making little trails, which she'll continue to follow 'til the next snow fall.

Occasionally I can catch her and give her a good white wash but only if I'm willing to get down in the snow myself. Here, she was on her way back from vanely searching for a snowball I had thrown moments before. She swore she saw it land, but snowballs are unusually elusive.

Kids

by Helen Levitt

Man, I wish kids still played like this. There's a house down the street where, on summer afternoons, there are almost always a group of kids in the front yard playing some sort of made up game. A couple parents sit on the front stoop while the kids run around in terrific goofball style. It always makes me smile as I pass them on my way home from work. Unfortunately, it is by far the exception.

Helen Levitt was a photographer who lived in New York and made some incredible photographs of life in that city. Children were not her only subject but they may be my favorite of hers. She photographed mainly in poor neighborhoods but pity was not her motivation. She doesn't show her subjects as downtrodden and hopeless, but rather as overcoming and living in spite of their environment. Her children are often seen in truly filthy conditions, but they're too engrossed in their play to notice such trivial details. Her kids are not cute, or precious, or merely happy. They are mischievous, wild, and exuberant. The Kings of their domain. I am glad to be reminded of this more uncivilized side of children.

Passageway

There really isn't much behind this photograph. No story or significant moment. Laura and I were wandering around the boat on our last vacation when she stopped to look out the porthole and I took a picture. Sometimes pictures are just purty. This is one of those.

It does remind me what fun places boats are, though. It's a bit like traveling to a different country. A country where they speak the same language but use funny words for some things. Or a country where the average height of the population is much shorter than the typical American. Or a country where the builders preferred round doors and windows to square ones. So, it's probably a lot like visiting the Shire. But on water.

Calm

Before we left for Bermuda, I had visions of sapphire blue seas, sparkling beaches and cobalt skies, all waiting to be photographed and plastered on my desktop to help me through the cold winter to come. I'm typically not drawn to the post card pictures, but for some reason I was really in the mood to bag some calender art on this vacation. The weather in Bermuda, however, did not to cooperate. The weather was warm but the skies were constantly overcast and occasionally made good on their threats to soak us. The silver lining being that we never had to worry about forgetting the sunscreen.

So instead of bright sunny days providing bold and vibrant colors, I got soft, even, subdued light. We made it to the beach one day (after being soaked on the morning scooter ride) and I took this. No palm trees or sail boats. No puffy white clouds. Just the calm, pale ocean and a nagging rain cloud reminding us that his work may not yet be finished. Hm. This may help me through the winter just as well.

Across the Table

Laura and I go out to dinner quite a bit. Sometimes the camera comes, too. Inevitably, one of us will pick it up and casually take a picture of the person across the table. It's a lazy photograph, one we've taken many times before. But we still seem to repeat it. They all look pretty similar, taken from the same perspective with a window typically providing some side light. But our photographic rut isn't entirely fruitless. I rather like this one.

Cattails

Last year Thanksgiving. Laura went out to gather materials for the centerpiece. I decided to follow, camera in hand. She visited the gardens first, selecting some ornamental grasses then down to the beach, picking up colorful leaves along the way. The cattails offered their goods as well. Feathery tops which Laura could use for an architectural element. I didn't remember them being so tall in the summer. She was practically lost in them, her head well below those of the cattails and her hair blending with the scattered reeds. But I still found her.

Missy and James

Sometimes I try to convince myself that I should be photographing more meaningful things, developing a personal style or conveying a message. To move beyond snapshots and into one of the "real" photographic genres like urban landscapes or street photography. But whenever I hear people who know talk about creating photogrphic works, the common piece of advise always seems to be to photograph what you know or what you have a passion for. So it would be an empty pursuit for me to photograph subjects I don't really care about just to participate in genres that other people deem worthwhile. And the more I think about my photographs, the more I realize that I already take pictures of what I care about, my friends and family. They may not be of interest to a very wide audience like other subjects would be, but they are of interest to me. And if pictures like the one above are the only ones that I end up making, then I will have a happy photographic career.

M & B

I recently got to visit my sister who lives out east. Laura and I had just gone on a cruise and our port of departure was Boston, so we decided to hang out couple extra days before flying back. It was fun to see Meg and Brian in their home and get a better idea of what their day-to-day is like. I got to see her research lab, the t-stop where they usually hop on the train for trips into the city, and even tag along on their Saturday morning run to Trader Joes. The most enjoyable part, though, was watching them together. They're just so cute. Always walking with their arms around each other whether it's down the busy Boston sidewalks or through Harvard's Museum of Natural History. Then Brian would make an observation about how the mineral on display looks like it might be a chunk from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, and Meg would laugh and shake her head. This photo was taken on the way back from one such outing. Classic M & B.