and I'm off

a little inspiration

bang!bang!bang!bang!

Did I ever tell you kids about the time the Jordanian Special Forces taught me and my friends how to shoot assault rifles? This picture of Davis Rossborough wielding an H&K G36 should do the trick. Said Davis: "I am drunk with power!" (Photographer's Corner: You will find that, when photographing a backlit portrait, fill flash often helps to illuminate the subject. You can use your camera's built in strobe very easily, or as here, the muzzle flash of a NATO standard 5.56 × 45 mm round fired at a fully automatic 750 rounds per minute will work too.)

round two

second batch from the Tachihara:
(As always, I invite you to click on the picture you see in order to see a larger version.)

the extremely down low

when I took this picture, I was the lowest photographer on earth (non-metaphorically speaking)



Also, I think I have discovered a new Repetitive Stress Injury; I have called it "Photographer's Clavicle", and it results from carrying around a bunch of lenses in a messenger-style bag and a heavy camera all slung across your body over one shoulder. It makes your collarbone wicked sore. If the legal dept of my employer is reading this, and I assume they are, I'll expect to see my worker's comp check in my mailbox any day now.

Rainmakers (May, 2005)

I had about three months to make this video, and they ended up not actually making any flights until about 3 days before the thing was due.



[Now that I have a blog, and am on YouTube, I think it's only a matter of time before I have a myspace account. When that happens, send someone to kill me, and make it look like an accident.]

I took mine first

but Mark's is better

How I exist in my head

I think we all have an idealized mental image of ourselves that we refer to. This picture, by Hannah Chodos, comes very close to mine: with a few good friends in an all-you-can-eat southern cooking diner somewhere in Alabama, mid-road-trip, sunglasses in teeth, map out.

with magnets

If you've seen War Photographer, you've no doubt been jealous of James Nachtwey's magnetic bulletin board:


Well, now you can be jealous of my magnetic bulletin board:

I had the boys down at McNeil Sheetmetal in Claremont whip this up last week. It's made of a single piece of 22-gauge galvanized sheet steel, a little over four feet high and nine feet long, and shaped like a sideways Nevada to accomodate the cathedral ceiling. Throw in a few dozen rare-earth permanent neodymium magnets from K&J Magnetics, dig up a few prints out of the archives, and it's ready to go.
I've got everything from silver gelatin prints from sophomore year to my old Texas license plate (recently replaced with NH tags reading "RCS") to my passport up there to a shot Jessica Talley took in Cameroon, and room for a few more things.

Finally, this wouldn't be complete without a tribute to Principal Seymour Skinner, whose fondest wish was for

"...a state-of-the-art detention hall where children are held in place with magnets."

Wedding photos

My friend Rachel gets hitched in the sweet home, Alabama

from the deep archive

flipped through a couple rolls of ancient (i.e. August/September 2004) slide film.