This is Knut Christiansen. He owns Paellaworks, who provided the fine paella at Slough Food.
Black and white over the slough, from our picnic table. The slough is tidal, and this was clearly high tide.
Edison’s most famous son. The mural is based on a photo of Edward R. Murrow when he played basketball for the local high school.
Tweets, a local cafe. A fine place for breakfast.
This is Jesse. He noticed my camera on my table, complimented it, and we got to talking.
He’s currently busing tables at Maggie’s on Meeker, in Kent, but he’s a photographer himself. Family obligations have cut into that recently, though. He likes to shoot concerts — as I’ve been known to do. He’s also a graphic designer.
Nice, friendly guy.
Peter Turnley gave a presentation, sponsored by Leica, at Kenmore Camera. I got there early, and was lucky enough to bump into Peter in the shop beforehand, and get about ten minutes of one-on-one conversation. I thanked him for his generosity in showing me a previously unpublished picture of Boris Yeltsin via Facebook a year or two ago. Perhaps one of these days I’ll make the time and have the money available for one of his workshops.
One of the things I’ll take away from his presentation was his analogy of photography to sports, and how you have to work out every day. You have to be the person who wants the ball in the clutch. You have to be familiar enough with your equipment that when the opportunity strikes, it’s almost irrelevant — you’re not fiddling, you’re shooting.
Another point was how human beings have developed a finely attuned sense of looking at someone, and knowing whether they’re uncomfortable or not — and we interpret discomfort as threatening (at least potentially). So always be warm, be happy, be comfortable in your skin. And the thing was, throughout the evening, he was all of those things, making it very easy to visualize him that way in the field.
A fine night.
A very friendly watcher of the eclipse, part of our crowd in Hebo, Oregon. She’d come from Salt Lake City. I didn’t get her name, which I now regret. This is about 15 minutes after totality, and I just liked the way the light was falling on her, and she was kind enough to say Yes when I asked to take her picture.
A high school classmate of mine, as she hosted a gathering of our class. I was sitting in the shade; she in the bright sun. I lent her my hat, so she could be more comfortable. (NB: My high school class had only 15 people. Not all of us were there, but the point is, it doesn’t take much space for us to get together.)
At the château de Versailles.
In photography, as in English pantomime, one piece of advice is, “Look behind you!” So here’s a photo of an onlooker to the Winged Victory at the Louvre.
At the Hangar Cafe.
Just before his reading at Powell’s Books Cedar Hills Crossing. This was the launch event for his debut novel, Arabella of Mars.
A fellow who was on guard duty during the talks at the Hotel Imperial.
A Fayum mummy portrait at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
At the mausoleo di Galla Placidia, in Ravenna.
At the vaporetto stop for San Giorgio Maggiore.
Not that I ever called him that to his face. But his jaunty swagger, bullet shaped head, and rough-but-hilarious talk made the parallel inevitable. He was the clear king of his domain, a street restaurant in the Temple Street Night Market. Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong.
George, at Pop’s Diner in Flushing.
At Artcon, a celebration of our mutual friend Art Widner’s 90th birthday. Gualala, California.
At the Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle.
I’m guessing Martina would be embarrassed by this now, but this is what she looked like when Ulrika and I visited.
The officiant of a friend’s wedding.
At a party.
Taken at a campaign rally in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, the night before the US presidential election of 1988 (Mon, 7 Nov 1988).
Taken at a campaign rally in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, the night before the US presidential election — Monday, 7 Nov 1988.
So there I was, at a campaign rally in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, the night before the US presidential election — Monday, 7 Nov 1988. We were all there to support (or cover) Mike Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president. And I hear a voice behind me, “Oh, my god! Jerry (Brown, the then-former Governor of California) is talking to Pat! (Also Brown, also a former Governor of California, and Jerry’s father.) He hasn’t done that for years!”
I turned right around, and made this picture. Because I knew, first names by themselves or not, just who was being spoken about.
Sometimes the value of a picture is in the caption, not the picture itself. So here it is — a quasi-estranged son talking to his father. A little blurry, and definitely artless.
But they hadn’t talked to each other for years.
Tina Bruce at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, in the final year it was held in Agoura, Calif.
Here’s an article from the Los Angeles Times about the band, House of Freaks.
Here’s an article from the Los Angeles Times about the band, House of Freaks.
Taken at the California Ballroom of the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles, on the night of the first Federal observation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.