This guy. Times Square. June 2011.

9th Avenue & West 38th Street, Manhattan

I took a trip at the end of last month to hang out with my friends David, Zack, and Kevin for the simple reason of hanging out, taking photos, and talking shop. It was the kind of trip that I'll slowly process in my head over the coming months and gradually figure out what I learned and how my brain changed. More on that, and the trip, later on.

The one thing we did the most has GOT to be walking. We walked everywhere. We barely even got on the train the whole trip. We set out one day with no real goal and ended up walking from Hell's Kitchen down to SoHo and while in the lower west side we ran across this tiny, tiny key shop. We needed another set for the place we were staying so we ducked in to Greenwich Locksmiths to have a set made and ended up hanging out there for a while. Yeah, hanging out at a locksmith hut. This place was badass.

It was a tiny building, purportedly the smallest building in Manhattan, and every place you could see had keys on it. The doorframe, the door, all of the walls. There was even a chair outside made entirely of keys. We met the man behind the metal as we had our set duped and I grabbed a couple of pictures. Pictured is Phil Mortillaro who, as far as I can tell, is the coolest locksmith I've ever met.

Phil, doing work.

Stephanie and random tourists at Cannon Beach, Oregon

My friends over at Richard Photo Lab run a blog called Still Love Film and they ran one of my shots as their blog post for yesterday.

Not only does it remind me of one of my favorite shots I've taken in recent history, we've started a conversation about realizing my dream of making this Poptpop image Huge. One day, my friends!

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Chatom, Alabama to photograph TJ Atchison for Technology Review Magazine. TJ has been in the news as late for being the first patient to undergo stem cell trials in the US; in his case, the trial is for spinal cord repair.

I had the pleasure of hanging out with him and his family for a while and I was so encouraged to see such positive attitudes toward such "controversial" treatment, and even more excited that he's from Alabama.

With the photo, I wanted to illustrate the idea of progress—both the progress he's already made, the progress to come for him personally, as well as what he, as a test subject, is for the progress of human stem cell treatment in general—and the support he gets from the doctors, his family, and his faith. The hand you see on his shoulder belongs to his mom, but to me it symbolizes the entire community of support surrounding him.

Be sure to read the super informative article.

Here's a shot that ran deeper in the article, as well as a portrait outtake.

I recently photographed Sanders Bohlke in advance of the release of his next album Ghost Boy.

I can't explain how excited I am about the record. It's beautiful and weird and beautiful and spooky and loud and soft and just Beautiful. The opening track is called Pharaoh which comes to mind when I look at this shot.

More shots of Sanders to come, for sure. Trust me, I'll be pimping this record.

Here are a couple of recent portraits.

Regular down at Faith Skate Supply. Forgot his name. I hate when I do that.

Rob

Spider-man in Alberta, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Since the last blog post a ton has happened. Not just to/for me, but my state and region. Friends have had babies, shoots have been booked, rescheduled, shot, and delivered. I've seen family for Easter (a good time, if a bit sombre as it is the first holiday without granddad). We have purchased and installed our first bee hive (and immediately fallen in love with each little bee that buzzes in and out). But all this pales in comparison to the tornadoes that torn through the southeast last week.

Amazingly, I know very few people directly around me who lost loved ones or suffered catastrophic damage, which sort of blows my mind given the extent of the damage across Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. But quite literally all around me lay piles of former homes and sentimental mementos clumped together in ugly mountains reminding everyone how tenuous all of life is. And also how little things mean, as comforting as they may be. This has been evidenced to me by the huge groups of people, many of whom now standing with nothing to their name, banding together in their loss, reinforcing the community that binds them. Community. That one element of the human existence has absolutely overwhelmed me with hope. Deep in destroyed and debris filled cities I found neighbors with nothing helping those around them. I saw locals fortunate enough to be spared disaster throwing in their hands and foods and goods and money. I met people who drove hours from their homes to be where people needed them.

In the face of one of the worst storms in history, and certainly my life as I remember it, shines the spirit of altruism and support. What seems to be utter demolition immediately turns into hope and rebuilding.

This may seem hokey and a bit idealistic, but it's absolutely true. I saw it and felt it.

The day after the storm, still unsure how to even help anyone, I got a call from Marshall over at Garden & Gun telling me they really wanted to cover the aftermath of the storms. They are a very warm and very southern magazine and their desire to talk about such a major event in the regions history didn't surprise me. They gave me the freedom to go into these communities to try my best to figure out just what in the world one does after such an insane event.

There is a gallery of images at their website from my time photographing. I traveled to Fultondale and Pratt City on Thursday (28th) with the help of Duquette Johnston and to Brookwood, Cottondale, Coaling, Alberta, and Tuscaloosa on Friday (29th).

Below are some of the photos from Garden & Gun and some others that are personally impacting.

Days Inn in Fultondale, Alabama.

The view from the balcony at the Days Inn in Fultondale.

Debris scattered around Pratt City, Alabama.

Pratt City. Willy Johnson overlooks the neighborhood where he grew up, and where is mother's house used to stand. His mother, Dela, survived the storm by being pinned in a stairwell by an oven.

Further damage in Pratt City, Alabama.

Cottondale, Alabama. Bill Lawler, Pastor of a local church describes the damage to his area.

Debris in the Alberta community in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Trees in Alberta, Tuscaloosa.

A wider view of the Alberta community

Downtown Tuscaloosa.

Boutwell Auditorium served as a Red Cross donation site and shelter for some of those displaced.

Legotron.

I cannot believe the response the Lego 4x5 has gotten! I'm so happy to see so many people around the world as excited as I am about something so silly. I can't thank everyone enough for the comments here on the blog and tumblr and blogs all over the place. I am so excited that other people are excited about creating and photography.

I spent last week shooting and developing and generally getting to know the Legotron a little better and it's even more fun that I'd realized. The thing is predictably unpredictable and it made for some interesting shooting.

Before I get into everything, I thought I'd take a minute to reply to a few of the comments, blogs, and forums I've seen that have been talking about the camera.

The biggest thing is that almost everyone gets it! It's for fun! I didn't build it to feel some grand sense of achievement, nor to create something technically outstanding or in any way superior to other 4x5s. I built it to see if I could! I made no measurements, other than seeing how many blocks/units wide the film holder was. I didn't figure out how long the main chambers should be to work with the 127mm lens I had. No effort was made to accomodate tilt/shift, although I thought about it briefly—I was mostly concerned with getting something made, instead of the perfect thing made. It was a whim (that got super side tracked).

That said, here are a few points, for clarity.

I realize I can throw another lens on it to get to infinity (pointed out by Tony), but I rather like the wide angle look for this, for now. The lack of infinity focus is just another casualty of arbitrary design.

And when I say design, I mean I just messed around for a bit until the basic idea was in place. I did try the lego builder application, but that lasted maybe 20 minutes. My preference is do build hands on, not on screen.

The camera that came out in the end was the fruit of tinkering, not extensive planning. I don't currently have plans to matte-black the inside, nor to tape off the major light leaks (and there are some great ones!), nor building them with all black bricks inside. I'm sure these would help the technical process of making a photo, but I love not knowing what I'm going to get. It's like multiplying the mysterious celebration of seeing a new roll of film for the first time and also not knowing what the camera is going to do!

The total days really working on it probably come out to something like 6 or 7, tinkering at night. It took ages to finish because it sat idle for over a year.

Other feedback I've seen has been a lot to the point of not being able to take it seriously or that I'm not a true Lego fan, or that, if I ever experienced a real large format camera with all the movements, I'd "give the toys back to the children." To which I say this:

It's not meant to be taken seriously. It's meant to have fun and to experiment and actually have fun with my profession and to be part of a larger conversation about making photographs and what is art and personal challenges. And I may not be an avid Lego nut, but man did I have fun! And I have plenty of experience with proper large format. But I didn't have experience with doing it myself with kids toys. And now I do.

There were plenty of questions asked, and I'll try to answer as many of them as I can with an upcoming video I'm going to try to shoot this week.

So, some photos. At the top were two sheets of another local photographer, Kelly Cummings.

Below is another shot of Kelly with a shot of photographer Bryan Johnson, husband of Ashley, from the first post.

I wanted to test it in a studio environment and in a long exposure shot. For all I know popping strobes at it would totally freak it out. Or in a long exposure just what the hell would happen.

That's Jason Hamric, yet another local photographer, on the left. Between three lights, there is about 1200 w/s of light happening in the camera's general area, a lot of which is coming in as wrap from the background. I was so excited to see image...it looks like he was shot on the corner of a wall instead of on a seamless. That would be a happy accident from having super reflective, shiny Lego bricks for walls.

Then the other dude is me, during a 4ish second exposure (it was on T, who knows how long it was really. I just guessed). Notice the massive, nebulous blob on my face. More reflections, I am guessing. Really couldn't tell you for sure.

And for a couple more shots as means of saying, yes, this camera can actually take a photo thats sort of normal, here is Josh and Winslow of the mental_floss art department.

If you made it this far, wow...way to go. I did some rambling.

I'm working on getting some of the questions answered...feel free to keep asking though!

Oh, ps, I made a Lego tripod mount. Haven't gotten to use it yet.

In the April issue of Birmingham Magazine, there is a story I photographed about raising chickens and keeping bees in urban environments. I was just finishing up a beekeeping course at the time so it made the assignment to photograph another apiarist exciting and quite relevant to my personal life.

I photographed Mike and Janice Malone at their home in Roebuck Springs, where they keep several hives of bees.

And on a side note, I also photographed Mike on 4x5 (not the Lego camera, just my Toyo) as the beginning of a long-term personal project having to do with bee culture in my area. Quite looking forward to this!

{ed note: Wow! Hello people from all over the place! Below is my initial post about the Lego 4x5. I added more images and a bit more detail to a new post just now. Check it out here.}

Back in August of 2009, I blogged about having an idea of making a 4x5 out of LEGO bricks. Ten days later I'd made some serious progress on it. I started with trying to use the LEGO builder App on the computer to spec it out before I built it, but my mind wouldn't work like that, so I threw that out and borrowed a metric tonne of LEGOs from my friend Gregory. I made a couple of rounds of prototypes that proved to work well enough for my mind to think Hello World / proof of concept. Fast forward a bit and I got really busy and left the project sitting on a desk for just ages. A big hitch in the progress, other than being busy, was that I'd built just enough of the camera to realize I had to rebuild the main body to accomodate the film holder—a part I'd forgotten to plan for.

Fast forward something like a year, and I finally carved out time to restructure everything to fit the back and actually finish the super-low-budget "ground glass". This weekend marked the first time all the pieces came together! I took 4 frames on Sunday, two Monday, and processed them later that day. I got to scan them this morning and I am COMPLETELY FREAKING STOKED.

Here are the 4 frames I shot. I only took the time so far to edit the one of Ashley.

Ashley Johnson, of A Bryan Photo.

Stephanie, our friend Joshua helping brew beer (as well as drinking one), and Joshua and Kristin's kids.

I'll go into a bit of detail, for the nerds.

• I have no clue how many pieces are in this camera
• It's dimensions are roughly 7"x6.5"x7"
• The main parts are a Main box, internal box, film holder/ground glass slot, lens board, lens.
• The lens is a 127mm ƒ4.7 I got on ebay for ~40 dollars
• The lensboard is two Plates deep and fits perfectly in the slot I built for it (though, I cut it down to one plate in the center to actually mount the lens).
• Focus is achieved by sliding the internal box forward and backward.

The focus range is limited to roughly 3 feet to about 18 inches. It's good for portrait, but certainly can't focus to infinity. Mark II (once I get to that) should have a way better focusing range. I'm planning on making a pinhole lens board too.

The ground glass is just plexi, sanded with various fine grits. It's held in place by a film holder that previously had light leaks, but now has the aluminum center cut out. The fit is tight and I ran a line of liquid nails too, just in case.

I have plans for the next version already. I have a lot more knowledge now and can probably design more accurately in the LEGO App. I'm also going to do a lot of measuring to make sure I have a better focus range (on this version, I just started building on a whim). I'm sure lots of other little tweaks will find their way into the Mark II, but for now, I've got to shoot this guy as much as I can! I'm working on a cohesive project theme to shoot around. I'm open to suggestions too.

Below are images of the process that stretched out way too long.

First picture of early structure, 8/27/09.

The very next day the basic idea was done.

Clear shot of the lens board.

Still messing with it in September.

Didn't really make time to work on it for another 1.5 years. That's ridiculous. Actually, that's insane to me, that the idea is just now finished.

Before the lens board was modified and installed. I had to shave off the stubs on the front and the circle-y things on the back side of the plate to make it shallow enough for the retaining ring to fit on.

My friend House as seen through the ground glass this past weekend.

And the final product again.

A chair, as seen through the ground glass.

Stephanie on the farm in February. Direct sun is not a friend to swing-lens panoramic cameras.

On an unrelated note, I photographed a beekeeper this weekend for an editorial story and I'm looking forward to being able to post the images. I have a shot that I feel really good about for the magazine it's running in, and I have a shot I feel really good about for me. I'm wondering why they are different and if they should be[?].

Sometimes I shoot for a goal and sometimes I shoot for me. I'm almost always happier with what I shoot for me, so why do I ever shoot for anything else? I wonder if this is a compromise I should avoid or if it is just acting according to client needs. What do you think?

I'm so removed from Japan and can only interpret what's happening by proxy. I hate that such intense natural disasters hit some times and cause untold devastation...and I'm loathe to think about assessing the damage tomorrow when the full light of day rears its head. I want to remain positive and cling to ideas like how strick their building codes are and how brilliant their engineers are, but these thin silver linings do little help to my mind as I sit and watch yet another nation be rocked by nature.

In an attempt to think of Japan removed from this disaster, I'm posting this fairly ordinary photo. Comfort in the little things I guess. I love the differences between cultures, no matter how subtle.

All the best, Nippon.

Birmingham Magazine's March Issue cover.

Shooting editorial and travel work is awesome. It's awesome for a bunch of reasons, but one part I enjoy quite a bit is how unpredictable the story assignments can be. Just like going into a new country, I love having situations thrown at me and being forced to make good work happen even if everything is coming at me blind. This started happening to me with our local city magazine, Birmingham Magazine, back in 2009 when I started getting assignments to shoot restaurants, and specifically their food.

I have no idea how many plates of food and chefs I've photographed, but now what started as a shooting food for necessity has turned into something that's really fun and way more familiar. I wind up with quite a few assignments with food in them and that was especially true for the March issue. I think I had six stories that had to do with food or beverage in this issue alone, which reminds me; Another great thing about shooting this kind of work is getting to meet so many interesting people who are really great at what they do!

Some of the people I got to hang out with this time: Geoff and his crew at Trattoria Centrale, (Tom) Robey at Veranda on Highland, the guys behind Avondale Brewery, everybody out at The Olive Branch, Chris and Corey at Mix, and Angel...better known as the badass bar keep at Bettola.

Out of those, here are some of my favorites. Be sure to check out the rest of the issue online or pick up a copy anywhere around town!

Geoff at Trattoria Centrale next to Robey at Veranda in the opening spread of the March cover story.

Geoff, his ragu, and Robey with his Lamb shank.

Corey Hinkel and Chris Dupont of Mix fame, among other local favorite restaurants.

Angel Negrin from Bettola making his original, DELICIOUS take on the Manhattan, the Diversione. (It's (sort of) a Manhattan, with added amaretto, a couple of different bitters, muddled apple, and the coup de grâce, the apple garnish that you are to eat the end. AND it is paired with a perfect, small piece of prosciutto. God. Seriously, this drink is tasty.

I have just been completely inspired to do three things.

• Master my Leica
• Continue to shoot in a way that feels natural to me
• Find a way to, again, engage in the world around me more to enable me to shoot to enable me to learn my camera back and forth

This inspiration came from a youtube video on Jeff Mermelstein. Sadly, his is a name I didn't recognize (I'm such a bad student), but his images I felt I'd known my whole life.

More than anything, listening to this interview, he inspired me to go with my gut. And to get moving.

Michael Abbott and Ryan Hughes, of Isis Mobile Payment

I was at a local newsstand yesterday browsing magazines (research!) and ran across an article in Entrepreneur about Isis CEO Michael Abbott (the photo that ran in print is way more interesting, by the way) all about mobile commerce (which, by the way, Isis is about to make explode here in the US). Seeing the shot made me realize I never blogged about the shoot I had for them back at the end of 2010.

I hung out with Michael Abbott and Ryan Hughes (CMO of Isis, formerly of Verizon) back in November to make some formal and casual portraits of them for when they formally announced the company. I've only seen one pop up on the Business Wire, but then I'm not really plugged into that world.

Above are two outtakes from the shoot.

I'm still getting to know the pano camera. One thing I have not liked so far is how compelled to stay static I've felt. Motion and the feeling of motion appeals to me in photographs and I think this one is the first shot on this camera that really felt alive. Skaters down at the ad-hoc park across from Railroad Park in downtown Birmingham.

Granddad, with fish. Sometime in his 30s, I'd guess. That'd put the shot in the '50s, but I could be totally wrong.

I suppose my grandmother took it?

A week ago yesterday my grandfather passed away and I haven't really found words to say about it here yet, though I plan on it. In the process of dealing with everything that death brings, we had small silver linings; lots of laughing, sharing memories, various forms of catharsis, and the best of all...going through old photos. I grabbed all the negatives that looked interesting and scanned them for archive's sake. The above photo of my granddad makes me so happy. He did a bunch of stuff in life but one of his pure passions was fishing and his look of satisfaction here just makes me grin.

More about him soon...I'm still processing, yenno?