Photography
On Assignment: Mayor Francis G. Slay
When people ask me what I like about St. Louis, almost always the first thing that I mention is the awesome loft that Dr. Fiance and I were able to buy here. In New York, we had approximately 450 square feet in the East Village (which was the largest apartment that we’d ever had in [...]
To Crop or Not to Crop
Cropping in photography is an important tool that can be used to change the meaning of a photograph, by drawing the viewer’s attention to a different part of the image than in the un-cropped version. Digital photography has made cropping easy as pie. Heck, these days, you can even crop your photos on your cell [...]
The Other Side of the Camera
As a professional photog, it is a rare occasion when you are the subject rather than the photographer, and it can be a bit disconcerting to be on the other side of the camera. Last week, my friend and fellow photographer Corey Woodruff lugged his gear over to my studio to photograph me as part [...]
COLOR Magazine Bronze Award
I was at my favorite bookstore, Left Bank Books today and much to my surprise I found that the latest issue of COLOR Magazine was already on the shelves (as of this writing they have not updated their website to the current issue). I have been eagerly awaiting the publication of their most recent special [...]
In Which I Lose A Large Portion of My Morning
Uh oh. Just came across PocketBooth, a new app for my iPhone. I love photobooths – the old fashioned coin operated ones not the fancy schmancy ones that print clever sayings on your photos. Nothing is more spontaneous and fun. Now I can do it on my iPhone. Oh the humanity. Now I won’t get [...]
Minneapolis
It’s been a busy week, and today was the first day back in the office. My last assignment before the long weekend was in Minneapolis, and after some trials and a frightening run in with a corrupt flash card, I’m back. Overall I feel pretty good about the shoots thus far and now I’m getting [...]
Chicago
I am in Chicago for a shoot, then off to Minneapolis this afternoon for another shoot. It’s hectic and I’m tired of traveling alone – the excitement of traveling for photography has worn off. I miss Dr. Girlfriend and I’m ready to come home. The work itself is still exciting. I even got up early [...]
Cabbage
Here are some more garden photographs that I made recently in PA. I think these go quite well with the corn photos from last week. I absolutely love the color and the complexity.
End of the world
I was in Martha’s Vineyard last weekend (along with the President and the Clintons, apparently) visiting some friends who were vacationing there from California. We were fortunate to get the use of a guest house outside of town in Oak Bluffs near a lake, which proved to be a great spot to watch the Friday [...]
Into the sun
I was in PA for a wedding last weekend, and I took the opportunity to photograph things that I’m normally not able to do. In this case I went into a cornfield and made some images. I have been experimenting with some counter-intuitive methods of making photographs outdoors, since my efforts thus far have been [...]
Clay Patrick McBride on Bravo
I don’t watch much regular TV these days. My couch time is spent watching streaming netflix or hulu, so when I watched Bravo’s Make Me A Supermodel last night, I was shocked back into the world of commercials. I was watching because a friend of mine who I met teaching my lighting class at SVA [...]
Florida
The best thing about Florida is the feeling of being at a resort while at the same time being surrounded by the inescapable feeling that things are just not right. The smoke belching factory on the beach, for example…
Portfolio Site and Update
On Friday I went to a friend’s gallery opening which was amazing and inspiring and got me all fired up to stop k’vetching about my lack of work and actually start doing some work. It didn’t really hit me when I handed my business card to someone that I was a bit embarassed by my [...]
Identifing as a Photographer
Rockefeller Center on a warm February day, iPhone I was out celebrating the 30th birthday of a friend last night. It was one of those events where several of her friend circles came together, so I ended up talking to a lot of people that I hadn’t met before, and so therefore was frequently asked [...]
Moody Friday Goodness
I have a few shots to share from a while back that I’m finally processing. I had just gotten my 50mm 1.4 and was playing around with it wide open. The depth of field is so short it has this crazy ethereal quality.
Obama Inauguration in Times Square
One of the first things I did when I moved to New York was to spend a weekend protesting in Times Square. I’d been in the city for just under a month at the time of the election and since I didn’t officially have an address yet, I hadn’t registered to vote. But that fall [...]
Highball Glass
I assume I will tire of the Camera Bag filters sooner or later but for now I’m loving them.
Film
I’m reading that new Leibovitz book and am enjoying the hell out of it. I love photographer biographies, and although this one is more along the lines of discussions about photos, she does it in a more or less chronological order, and you can see how the work progresses over time. The book is not [...]
Titles
How does everyone feel about titles? When I was in college I would tend to make up romantic, moody, and cryptic (read idiotic and random) titles for my photography. For example titles like “Existential wasteland” and “Thought unfurled” and the ever popular “untitled” followed by a random number – more than four to show it’s [...]