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.