Document > Create

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In the early years of my photography hobby, I would venture out and search for the most creative shots I could find. Using various tips and techniques that I had read about, I would try creative angles one day. Then the next outing would creatively use monochrome shots or some other techniques after that, and so on.

I would then send the 36-exposure roll off to the developing lab and eagerly await the prints while expecting something mesmerizing and unique to return. It very rarely returned unique or mesmerizing. The average return on film investment was about 2 images out of a 36-exposure stock. Expensive! Yet somehow, someway, I was hooked enough to go out there and try again.

When I acquired my first digital camera in 2001, I would venture out and search for the most creative shots I could find. Using various tips and techniques that I had read about, I would try creative angles one day. Then the next outing would creatively use monochrome shots or some other techniques after that, and so on. I would then race home, plug in the SD card and boot up the photo software in anticipation, while expecting something mesmerizing and unique to return. It very rarely returned unique or mesmerizing. The average return was about 20 out of 100 images taken. Thank goodness digital photography is cheap! Yet somehow, someway, I was hooked enough to go out there and try again.

Over the past twenty-three years, my attitude has changed- hmmā€¦about twenty-three times. These days I am less concerned about creativity than I am documenting travels, events, and my life around me.

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Nowadays, I am shooting less portrait photography, which honestly, is the only time I want to be creative. I miss both creativity and people!

So, if I focus more on documentation and less creativity, the attitude, and equipment has changed to match. I no longer own a mixture of mirrorless and DSLR cameras with about five lenses for each one just in case. I donā€™t have to worry if I forgot to pack the telephoto lens, just because I might use it. Now I can be content with bringing one camera and one all-purpose lens if I choose to.

Recently, technology has been a big factor in these decisions as well. Photo equipment with amazing advances inside, the minimal size and weight of these things to assist in you lightening your kit and allowing me to relax and enjoy.

Did I just spot a tender moment on the street? Snap. Ahh, a new mural to documentā€”Snap. This is out of place and would be interesting to captureā€” Snap.

Now I am getting into documenting everything in photos. Iā€™ve found I can simply relax and walk away from a photowalk knowing there are some keepers on that SD card, instead of forcing myself to shoot something that may not be there only to walk away frustrated.

Another bonus- Iā€™ve come to realize that all of this has been documenting and creating not only a visual daily journal, but also a complete body of work to be proud of.

The ā€œLa Flor Dominicanaā€ Factory Tour

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Hello and thanks for subscribing to the newsletter!

Because of recent news of events on the island of Hispaniola, I’ve recalled a lot of memories from a few years ago when I was invited to photograph, document and serve the ongoing Christian missionary works based in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. Towards the end of the trip, I had an opportunity to head north to the Caribbean coastal town of Sosua for some R&R, but in-between the two cities were mountain jungles and tobacco plantations.

Welcome to the jungle

Our gracious host and founder of the mission insisted we stopped for a cigar factory tour, and of course, this was accepted!

The La Flor factory tour follows the path of the tobacco leaves from the fields to the packaging of handmade cigars. The first thing I noticed, was the aromatic tobacco in enclosed spaces. Then I noticed, but was not allowed to photograph, the floor announcer. His job is to simply read the newspaper and magazine articles into the factory microphone to entertain the workers. Imagine a news barker with a derby cap, smoking La Florā€™s finest with outstretched arms holding up the paper and talking through his cigar into the microphone.

I was then allowed to select from a stack of conditioned, classified, browned, aged leaves and then hand them off to the smiling worker. She then began the long process of turning a leaf into a freshly rolled cigar.

I followed my leaves around the various stages from station to station, watching and photographing workers as they blended, bunched, pressed, rolled, sealed and then allowed me to slide the La Flor Dominica ring around my fresh cigars. The entire process took about an hour to craft my box of the Caribbean’s finest.

Uninformed individuals would say that Cuban cigars are the best, I disagree. Cubans are only sought after because they are illegal in the USA, and I think they smell and taste like Castroā€™s dead feet. My clandestine incursion onto Cuban shores is a story for next time.

Oh, and because Haiti and the Dominican Republic are neighbors and both currently in the news, here is a young Haitian toddler playing in the road, on the Dominican side apparently abandoned, shortly before I snapped this photo. There are strong racial tensions between these two countries, and I found this to be the only fault I could find on the Dominican side of Hispaniola. I was blessed to see the missionaries find him shelter and food. Just look at that handsome face.

Until next week, – Chris

S.

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My tsundoku keeps multiplying and I won’t apologize for this self-infliction. I saw this beautiful novel titled S. in a bookstore recently and decided I had to have it knowing very little about this other than it was sealed in plastic, but well designed.

I was not disappointed. Once I removed the plastic, I then had to break the seal to slide the hardback from its cardboard-protected shell. The hardback itself is designed to mimic a novel from the 1940’s from a fictional author who tells his fascinating life story. Inside, the pages are designed to appear weathered, worn and faded yellow. The story within the story within this story is not only the biography itself, but of two people who communicate through each other’s marginalia (I LOVE marginalia) on these pages. But wait, there is more. Inside the pages are inserted, physical letters, postcards, notes on a cafe napkin, photographs and even a paper compass wheel.

Which do I read first? The typed novel, the novel written as margins or the inserts??

I enjoy a good story, but even more so the approach that publishers are crafting multi-dimensional books to tell a good story and keep the reader engaged. Much like the Rabbits series and my current reading of XX.

The only other book I want but not in my physical possession is The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I need to rectify that soon and increase my tsundoku.

I look forward to devouring S. as soon as possible.

Ricoh GR

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I know, I know. I can hear you bringing this up to me when I said “new year, no new gear.” After weeks of waiting, I finally have a new camera in my hands. I said goodbye to my fantastic but bulky Nikon D90 DSLR and lenses and traded all of those for this compact but powerful single-lens camera. See? It is a used camera and an even trade so that really doesn’t break the “no new gear” rule I set for myself now does it?

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The idea here is to minimize my load and workflow and I think I am there, finally.

Yes, it is an older, used camera but still younger than the Nikon. Sure, there are newer models of the Ricoh GR but those are currently $1k and I just don’t think it is worth it, so here was the compromise. In my mind, this is currently the best bang-for-the-buck digital camera for street photography. I love the compact size, the superb image quality and high-ISO performance, as well as the ergonomics and handling. Looking forward to putting it through the paces soon.

The big things worth noting in the Ricoh GR:

  • 16MP APS-C sensor (a DSLR-sized crop sensor in a compact camera)
  • 28mm f/2.8 lens
  • Ability to change from 28mm to ā€œ35mm crop modeā€
  • No anti-aliasing filter (sharp images)
  • Solid magnesium alloy body underneath

The iPhone 15 Pro Max is still going to be my always-carry camera of course, and I still have a gifted-to-me Canon DSLR system in reserve as well. The other cameras in the arsenal are all analog film.

I usually take photos of urban landscapes, and street portraits, so this compact, but brilliant Ricoh GR is going to be perfect.

S.

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My tsundoku keeps multiplying and I won’t apologize for this self-infliction. I saw this beautiful novel titled S. in a bookstore recently and decided I had to have it knowing very little about this other than it was sealed in plastic, but well designed. 

I was not disappointed. Once I removed the plastic, I then had to break the seal to slide the hardback from its cardboard-protected shell. The hardback itself is designed to mimic a novel from the 1940’s from a fictional author who tells his fascinating life story. Inside, the pages are designed to appear weathered, worn and faded yellow. The story within the story within this story is not only the biography itself, but of two people who communicate through each other’s marginalia (I LOVE marginalia) on these pages. But wait, there is more. Inside the pages are inserted, physical letters, postcards, notes on a cafe napkin, photographs and even a paper compass wheel.Ā 

I enjoy a good story, but even more so the approach that publishers are crafting multi-dimensional books to tell a good story and keep the reader engaged. Much like theĀ RabbitsĀ series and my current reading ofĀ XX.

The only other book I want but not in my physical possession is The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I need to rectify that soon and increase my tsundoku.

I look forward to devouring S. as soon as possible.

Photo Archive Site

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This new website has been designated as a repository for a small set of images to be stored online instead of an expensive third-party photo hosting site (see ya, Flickr!). The actual photo archives are numbered to almost 50,000 images, so only a select few are chosen to be represented on this site. While you are there, take a look around inside the archives!

This is an extension to my main portfolio website that can be clicked here or in the nav bar up top.

I have not yet begun to upload images to this photo archive site and will do so throughout the next week. Okay, maybe one or two of my favorite subject:

Tulsa At 6am

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I decided to go for a walk and capture a view of downtown Tulsa this morning. I set the iPhone shutter to open for 3 seconds to capture light streaks and capture it in RAW. Then I decided to go without light streaks, for a straight scenic view:

24mm @ f/1.78 looking northwest from Peoria Ave and Hwy 51

ugh

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Parsing an exported .json file into something readable like a plain .txt format is proving troublesome. These are old posts that need to be translated and then migrated over to the Archives site since they were not imported due to these .json errors.

Unfortunately, there has been no easy solution. It is all copy/paste and manually removing the gratuitous code, then format it properly and then copy/paste and date manually into the Archives.

ugh
argh
Success.

I’ve Lost The Way

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I canā€™t tell you how many times in the past ten years that there was a desire to build and maintain a map as a photo gallery of places I have been and things I have seen in all of my travels. No, itā€™s more than one map. I have wanted to build my own map(s) displaying all the images of hidden and discovered geocaches across the country. A separate map showcasing all the neon signs I have documented from Miami to Portland and all points in between. Another map to display all the locations of documented wall art from New Orleans to Chicago, you know, up and down the length of the Mississippi River.

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“If you have no road map, you have to create your own.” – Jacqueline Woods

Thanks to careful documentation in the past, I tagged GPS coordinates on to images to look them up later. Then, with incoming new technology, GPS coordinates were built in to the EXIF data of every image, making it so much easier to locate. But what does one do with that information? Build a map to document your travels, of course.

Previously, I relied on Googleā€™s ā€œMy Mapsā€ which allows you to enter these in and attach photos to them, but I do not like Google. Unfortunately, they are one of the best, free sources (free as in they will hoover all of your data for their use, of course.) But Iā€™ve always known there exists open-source mapping programs to help me build one myself. After all of this time, this may be a good opportunity to build and ship one out, allowing me to lovingly document these locations. You know, as a photo diary.

Just a few of my neon images attached inside Google My Maps

So, I downloaded Visual Studio Code, an IDE, installed Python inside and went to work creating a photo gallery that works with ArcGIS, a mapping software tool. Then created an account on GitHub to keep all of my code in the cloud and act as a virtual server, ready for me to pull requests down when needed. Well, I discovered that the costs to maintain these wouldnā€™t be a solution, especially ArcGIS (Geographic Information System.) Enter QGIS, an open-source tool that allows me to do this at zero cost.

Python code inside an integrated development environment

Then I went to work in Python, coding out the framework and processes to make these maps a realityā€¦and then hit a brick wall. Do I really want to do this? I do, yes, but currently I canā€™t be arsed. It isnā€™t laziness, it is restlessness. What else could I be doing instead? But wait, I have the time to do this now because in the near future I may not.

So frustrating is this internal debate that I upload what little code I had to GitHub and then decide what to do with all of thisā€¦later. Maybe the reason is I just spent the last few weeks in code building this website and the Archive website and writing articles on here, and creating newsletters and podcasts and and and I just need a break. I’ve lost my way and my desire.

Speaking of breaks, I am going to relax and finish listening to this album that was playing in the background while typing this up:

Delta Kream by The Black Keys