Motel Still Life

Twelve hours of driving from Virginia to Maine, and we were road zombies, with a set of parallel white lines jammed into our heads. Hungry, angry, we’d seen all the bumpers we wanted to see, and many more. We were booked into the only reasonably priced motel in the area, and it turned out to be 50’s vintage, restored, and with all the details still in place (small coffee makers built into the wall) and perfectly in order. I shot a detail on Tri-X film.

Eye of the Beholder

Stand close to a mirror and look yourself in the eye. You're looking out through the pupil of your eye. This is a basic assumption. The eye in the mirror's pupil is a black hole. I suggest staying with this meditation for some time.

The photo above was taken by double exposing an eye (Mary Jane's, a frequent victim of my photos) with the image of rain on a car window. It was done by running a role of Tri-X film through a camera twice. Of the 20 or so exposures, only this one was usable.

The Chair Series - Lawn Chair

Click above for a larger image

The is another image from the Chair Series, this time a lawn chair.
It was summer on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, not far from Chestertown. This spot was surrounded by miles of feed corn. Feed corn is the main cash crop in the area, and large agri-businesses will buy up farms to maximize the profit.

During the summer it can get dripping hot on the Shore. I lived in numerous houses there, and if they were outside of town they were surrounded by the corn fields. It always seemed like the fields trapped the humidity, and added their own. In the early morning a blue-ish haze would hang over them.

I had to un-stick myself from the plastic chair in order to set up the camera to get this shot.

I forgot to mention the local mosquitoes. Able to carry off small children! Large enough so their distinctive “whine” could be heard from a few feet away.

I attended college there, and lived and worked there, off an on, for some time after. From what I’ve said it might seem like I despised living there, but that was far from the truth. In fact, “me and the shore” went through the whole “nine yards”; luck and its opposite, plus, joy, desire, despair, and many revelations.
Photo: Tri-X, Taken with an old Speed Graphic on 4X5” sheet film.

35 mm Double Exposure Film Strip

I took this set of photos using an unusual method. It was taken on TRI-X 35 mm film of friends from work, but the film was run through the camera twice. This resulted in double exposures. I didn’t expect much but mud from the experiment. But, I’ve grown to enjoy the changing expressions and the odd way the images combined. Of course, I know everyone’s story too, and the pictures reflect who they are fairly well.
I’ve split the strip into parts rather than trying to put the whole length on one line.