I’ve tried several times to fake a seamless. I would put a piece of foamcore upright behind another piece of foamcore laying on a table. There was obviously a seam, and trying to edit it out was a pain.

Then a Batman poster (one of three I have) fell off my wall. So I reversed it and taped it to the pieces of foam core.

Shazam! Mini seamless. It won’t work for models, but for product shots it’s perfect.

I have to thank Tyson and Sara Habein for this opportunity.  They have created a great work with the magazine and I will do my very best to uphold the quality its readers, including myself, have come to expect from it.

I fully intend on hitting the ground running.  I already have some ideas for the next issue, and new ones come up everyday.  There are some things I will have to sort out along the way.  As the magazine is going from a two person operation to a one-man operation, I will probably be calling on the help of Spokane’s creative community for content.  How that will look practically is one of the bits I’m still trying to iron out.

I have a list of artists I can’t wait to approach for profiles, and that list is only growing longer.  I can’t express how excited I am to see the variety of talent and the growth of the art scene in this town.  When people ask my “why Spokane?” I only need to point to the art community (and that really cool giant Red Flyer downtown) to show why I love this city.

Thank you, Spokane, for being awesome.

Oh the joys of maintaining a website.

After wrestling with getting all the kinks worked out, I was able to get my gallery updated. This will be a continuing process, as I’m trying to get my fine art and personal work more established.

Don’t take that as my moving away from portraits. I’m still available for portraits! Portraits!

Like a lot of photographers, I admire the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Extending from that, I love the work of many photojournalists both past and present.

However, the modern “street photography as fine art” movement never really captured my attention. I think because I see so much of the same thing in street photography. It became so saturated with “ironic juxtapositions” and “hey, check out what this guy is doing” that, for me, it no longer qualified as interesting art. It became voyeuristic. It became an excuse to catch people for the sake of catching them. It became long lenses and “will people notice me with this camera?”

I fell in love with street photography again when I stopped looking for pictures and just started looking.

The first few times I started walking around with my camera not hidden in my bag, I didn’t take many pictures. One, I was too timid. Two, I needed to see without the lens before I could shoot through it. I needed to see the world, not pictures.

Soon, I began to see. Sometimes the image is obvious…right in front of my face. Other times, I have to be patient and wait for it to come to me.

With my art, I want to record the world the way I see it. In order to do that…I have to look at it through my own eyes.

I’ve been looking for a film camera for a while now. Two things that were keeping me from jumping into film again were solved with the purchase of this camera.

The first problem was, even though film cameras are cheap now days, I was still having issues with spending money on a camera if I wasn’t sure how often I would really use it. I like film, but I’m a child of the digital age. Until I really figure out what I want to use film for, it’s still just fun for me.

Second, I needed something that if the worst possible thing could happen happened, I would only be out a secondary film camera that was more easily replaced than my digital one.

$35 bucks. A guy on Craigslist wasn’t using it anymore. By “it” I mean this camera, three lenses, two flashes and a “speedwinder” (basically a motor drive to automatically wind the film). At that price, I figured I would at least have three decent lenses. And, since they are K-Mount lenses, I have a lot of options.

Say this camera dies, I have three good lenses that I can mount on a Pentax film body should I ever buy one (even a digital one). Or, say I find an old Pentax lens for a good price. It will work on this camera. Finally, a simple adapter can mount any of these lenses to my Canon. Finally part 2, another simple adapter can mount the Pentax lens I already have to this camera.

One of the flashes (which I used to take these photos) solves the problem of my needing a second flash, but not wanting to spend a lot. This will tide me over until I can save up for a new one.

$35 for a complete camera system…I’d be crazy not to buy it.

I attended, along with Tyson and Sara Habein of SPOKE(a)N(e) Magazine. Tyson, Sara and I then took a walk around downtown to check out the various other art showings going on.

I’m always excited to see art up close and personal. Tonight I was especially excited because of some of the exquisite work I saw. I’m not very good with names, which doesn’t help because I’ve already forgotten most of the artists names I saw. Bummer.

Anyway. It was a lot of fun. I hope to see some more RiverSpeak events come up so I can meet some other local artists.

Here are some shots I took tonight as well.

Big thanks to The Decal Factory for getting these done.