Oz Arts hosted FALL in June 2017 for “A Bend­ing of Its Own Kind”, and here are some of my favorite pho­tographs from that performance.

The last Nashville show of Those Dar­lins was late Jan­u­ary at The Base­ment East. They played with Adia Vic­to­ria and Tris­ten, both of whom were beyond excep­tional as well.

I’ve been going to Those Dar­lins shows for many years, well before liv­ing in Nashville, and they will be missed.

Thanks to the sup­port of East of 8th, I’m able to pho­to­graph plenty of shows — which leads to hear­ing great new music! I’d heard Ray­land Bax­ter before, but Ruby the Rab­bit­foot was totally new to me. Both played a great set at 3rd and Lind­s­ley in August as part of the Nashville Sun­day Night Lightning100 series. A nice space with lots of view­ing options (includ­ing boun­ti­ful bal­cony seat­ing!) Be sure to check out both Ray­land and Ruby if you ever get a chance!

When you leave some shows you know that it is going to be seared into the mind for­ever and I’d def­i­nitely count this one as one of them. Three great acts at one of my all-time favorite venues. Lots of superla­tives, I know — but it truly was an out­stand­ing evening of rock and roll.

Come one, come all! It’ll be a great time.

Mov­ing to a new town is fun. New peo­ple, new inspi­ra­tion, new places. And, if you’re lucky, new pho­tog­ra­phy oppor­tu­ni­ties. And Nashville has been quite kind with those opportunities.

But then you get the note. “Thank you for apply­ing, but your work was not selected…” We’ve all received that mes­sage at var­i­ous times. I’ve cer­tainly got­ten my share of them before, but last week was the first time I’d been hon­ored with one since mov­ing here. And it broke the hot streak, which really I had no con­trol over any more than a MLB player’s socks have con­trol over his bat­ting aver­age. There are just so many fac­tors — the juror, the other sub­mis­sions, the pre­vi­ous work the juror saw, the goal of the call, etc. It’s as if the actual work is just a small, small piece of the puzzle.

And so it’s easy to get a lit­tle frus­trated, a lit­tle down. Why bother cre­at­ing any­thing if it might as well sit in a drawer? No one dreams of being Vivian Maier!

Accents 2014 #3

Sub­mit­ting work is a lit­tle like send­ing your child off to school. I’ve writ­ten about this before, and I still think it’s a work­able metaphor. You believe your work is unique and incred­i­ble but now your child will be part of a group where every­one believes their off­spring is spe­cial and has just so much to share with the world. And some­times your child doesn’t get picked for the lead role in the play, or even picked for any role. Which hurts, right? It stings and you feel judged both as a par­ent and you feel your child’s per­cep­tion of judgement.

But you pick them up, and you pick your­self up, and keep on with life. There are lessons in rejec­tion. We can hone our craft when we don’t make a cut. Even though there may not have been much con­trol over the selec­tion process, it is still an oppor­tu­nity to revisit and refine.

There will be future shows, and maybe even future shows where the same work is accepted. The time will come but only if we try again.

A bit of a throw­back with some recently found scans. HP5+, 35mm. Stand­ing in the mid­dle of Bilt­more Avenue.

It is true that if you walk around any pop­u­lated area at night with a cam­era you will come away with some­thing worth­while. Yet, some places open them­selves up for trea­sure more read­ily than oth­ers. And one of those places is New Orleans.

Let’s be clear — there is more to New Orleans than Bour­bon St, more than the Quar­ter, more than the Saints and the beignets and Mardi Gras. But let’s also be hon­est — with­out that cul­ture, New Orleans would more likely be a swel­ter­ing river port, one with tourism built more on fish­ing and bird watch­ing than rev­elry and foot­ball. And while I love the rest of New Orleans (try the fries at The Delachaise), when I can walk to the Quar­ter cam­era in-hand I’ll always try to give it some time.

In Sep­tem­ber 2013 I was in the area pre­sent­ing on Glus­ter with some for­tu­nate hours to spare. I’d been want­ing to test the Fuji x100’s low­light color abil­i­ties so this was a per­fect fit. If you’ve never been on Bour­bon St at night, it is worth a trip at least once. There is the debauch­ery but there are also the restau­rants and bars, the musi­cians and staff, and the lights that keep it all visible.

Before walk­ing, I setup the cam­era for 1/125 sec­ond, f/2.8 at 3200 ISO. It seemed a good mix where it wasn’t a ter­ri­bly slow shut­ter speed, and with the lens stopped down just a bit I could still get some good low light work. The 3200 ISO is a bit of a stretch, but shoot­ing RAW gave me some qual­ity results regard­less of the high set­ting. With all of that pre­set, all that remained was to find the shots. You can see more of the work here.

New Orleans Store­front at Night. Sep­tem­ber 2013

Some­where along the street is this store. Which is very sim­i­lar to the one across the street, and one around the cor­ner. And down the way. New Orleans has bead and shirt stores like the Coast has swim­suit and sun­block stores. Only you don’t have to walk into a plas­ter shark head. I’ve never under­stood how these places don’t get items stolen con­stantly — maybe there is some­one watch­ing the front at all times via CCTV? No idea. Regard­less, they are guar­an­teed good shots for sat­u­rated color and throngs of items. I love the vari­ety — where did the Ari­zona Car­di­nal ban­ner come from? How many com­bi­na­tions of drink­ing puns are there in the world? Thing 1 & 2, Drunk 1 & 2, Trou­ble 1 & 2 side by side with lin­gerie and cos­tumes. Beads galore. All of it mixed up like a dish of hop­pin’ john.

But what really made the image for me is the fig­ure walk­ing by. I don’t think quite drunk, maybe not even tipsy. She walked more with a goal than a mean­der. Cer­tainly dressed up enough to have gone out (or be going out) but I don’t think her des­ti­na­tion had bar stools. A fig­ure of calm, mov­ing delib­er­ately among the menagerie.