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These 10 images are of the Saint Mary Roman Catholic Church in Dayton Ohio.

He kinda liked it!

Well, I’ve been on vacation for the last week (No Internet also). I have about 13gb of images to process, but this one was one of my favorites.

It’s from the balcony of our hotel room. Our first real family vacation in 6 years.

Well, things have been crazy at work and home. I been away for a week or so and now I’m ready for more!

I was thinking about why I love Polaroid film so much. If I look back at my childhood, I can remember seeing my first Polaroid at age 4 or 5. I was amazed the first time I saw that Polaroid picture develop. It was a big deal and it would help lead me to the life I live now. (Photogeek and proud of it)

In the 70’s my parents ended up divorcing. We didn’t have much money, so there usually wasn’t film for the camera. But, I had no shortage of imagination. I can remember many hours playing photographer with that Polaroid Big Shot. Some of those images present themselves in my viewfinders still today. I have many (about 20) Polaroid cameras, but I haven’t found one of these. Ours got lost or thrown out when I was a teen and I kind miss it. You can see one here, http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Big_Shot

So last week, I took one of the Polaroid cameras on our family trip to the zoo. This was a source of great entertainment for everyone, especially the people at the zoo. People would stare and you could hear comments like, “I haven’t seen one of those in years” and “do they still make film for that?” My father-in-law laughed and brought up the fact that “it wasn’t very green”. I’ve never had a problem with looking a little odd and this is a “must have” trait for photographers.

I have lots of Polaroid’s of my son and hopefully some day he’ll realize how special that is.  Considering most of the children his age may never see a Polaroid. I truly hope that the Impossible Project and groups like them succeed in saving Polaroid.

The best part of the day was a little 8 block photowalk in downtown Covington Ky. Below are a few shots from the walk.

I got out and shot a few and I couldn’t decide on one, so you get 5!

This is at an old closed carry-out.

An older one that was on the card, from a faculty outing.

More bathroom stuff.

This is at our new building, my first self portrait there! That’s Mark Cela on the right. His Site

This last one is from the Family Trip to the Zoo. Mmmm, Blurrrr!

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David Seymour (chim)

Lately I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on.  My main focus has been photographers that I’ve wanted to know more about.

The first book I picked up was the book David Seymour (chim) by Tom Beck. In 1947 David Seymour, Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson co-founded  Magnum Photos, the photography cooperative. I’d known the name, but knew little about the man. This book is a great read and Chim was not only an incredible photographer, but a wonderful caring human being also. If you like Capa or Catier-Bresson, you’ll enjoy Chim’s work as well.

More information is available at Magnum.com

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DAIDO MORIYAMA

The Second book that I bought is a “work of photographic genius”. Like the other photographer, I knew the name and some of the work. But for some reason, I’d never picked up one of his books. Most photographers have seen some works by Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe, Shomei Tomatsu, Masahisa Fukase, and Daido Moriyama.

Daido Moriyama is one of the great Japanese photographers and after getting this book, my favorite. His work is like a harder, grittier and darker version of America’s Winogrand or Friedlander. Daido Moriyama’s  images are moody and contrasty, yet they still draw the viewer in. Their darkness seems to welcome you rather than push you away. “Shinjuku 19XX-20XX” is printed beautifully and it comes as a bilingual edition (English and German). Written by Zdenek Felix, he co-wrote the Best of Helmut Newton book. The book is soft bound and has 128 pages.

Here are a couple pages from the book. Daido Moriyama’s work is a little harder to find in the midwest and they don’t have any sample pages on Amazon.

The Daido Moriyama book is available for $26.40 at Amazon.com

The David Seymour book is available for $24.95 at Amazon.com