Week 22

This shot was taken in Tieneman square in 2006. What I really like about this one is the fact that it breaks a lot of photographic rules with the horizon spliting the center of the picture and the subject being square in the middle of the frame, but I think it works in this image.

Week 21

This is a photo of a staircase located in the Putaxai monument in Vientiane, Laos. I took several shots while braced against a pole in an atempt to get no camera shake. Several of the photos have blurred images walking down the stairs, which is actually what I was going for. But after looking at all of them, the best images were the ones without people in them.

I took this photo in 1999. We returned in 2002 or 2003 and went back to this same room. I couldn't even recognize the staircase. Everything had been painted with bright lighting and vendors all around. That is what I love about travel photography. It records an exact moment in time that will probably never be replicated.

Week 20

Food Vendor, Beijing 2006

Week 19

This shot is one I took while on a boat trip down the Li River near Yongshuo, China back in 2006. It was a bit of a frustrating trip, but made for some nice shots. About an hour into the trip they pulled the boats over and made everyone get on the banks......for several hours. Apparently, the police were up river and we were not on an "authorized" boat trip. So we skipped rocks and bitched half the day, then they put us all back on the boats and we returned down river. At least I had my camera with me.

Week 18

Ok, I have gotten a little behind on this blog, so I may need to be doing some double posting to catch back up. I should have more time as the Holidays approach to get back up to where I should be.

This is a shot I took in the Spring of 2006 in Athens. This photo really makes me appreciate the simple workflow of digital photography. One problem with negatives is that you must store them properly and it is not nearly as easy to find the image you are looking for when you have thousands of images. This photo only brings this to mind because I found this image in the trunk of my car when I went to turn in my lease. I'm not sure how the pictures ended up there, but for anyone who has seen the trunk of my car, you would know something as small as 36 images on film could easily be lost. Luckily, they were not too damaged.

Week 17

This is another photo I took in the Insadong neighborhood in Seoul. They were having a parade with traditional performers dancing and playing music. Insadong was always a great neighborhood to capture some unique images.

Week 16

This is another shot I took of the Terracotta Soldiers in Xian, China. Although it is not exciting at first glance, the thing I find interesting about this shot is this is how most of the soldiers were found. Most people believe that when the Chinese unearthed these soldiers, they were all in perfect shape and perfectly preserved. This is not the case, as illustrated by this photo.

Week 15

This shot was taken on my second trip to Laos with Khammany and her family. This is a typical scene of someone selling goods, usually food. I came across a bunch more photos of monks in orange robes, but I think those shots are all too common, so they don't excite me too much.

Week 14

This is another NYC shot of Times Square from above. I had to bracket the hell out of these to try and get the correct exposure.

Week 13

Ooops. I think I am a day late getting this picture up for week 13. I was in Las Vegas and had no access to my computer, or my film files.

This is a shot of the Chrysler building in NYC, taken from atop the Empire State Building. I took it in 2002 on a trip that was given to me for Christmas from Khammany. All I remember is it was very cold, and very windy.

Week 12

Another shot I took while in the streets of Insadong.

Week 11

This is a photo I shot of the Sydney Opera House in 2004. It's shapes are unique in a way it creates an image that is not synonymous with the "average" shot of the building. Most people I know, when they see this shot, ask, "Where is that"? It feels good to capture a landmark people don't recognize, but normally would.

Week 10

This is a photo I took while on my first trip to Las Vegas. It was taken in the gardens of the Bellagio Hotel. Although I find myself shooting flowers often when I am outside, I rarely like how they turn out and I really think they are over done. Luckily, I came across this fairy that made for a nice photo. I really like the way she is framed by the dark leaves above and below her.

Week 9

This photo is of some girls I came across in the Itaewon Subway Station in Seoul. All I remember about this day is that it was the month of July, and anyone who's lived there knows it's hot as hell and humid as a poorly vented laundrymat. Needless to say, this is not what you want to be wearing in July. I later showed this photo to a student of mine and she said they were more than likely in route to a Japanese animation costume party. Not until today, when I was cleaning the dust off this image, did I notice the Japanese comic book sitting between them. My student was probably right.

Week 8

This is a photo I shot of my brother Dustin in about 2001. Although the composition is awful, for two reasons (I hadn't been shooting long and all the empty beer bottles may be another clue), I like this photo because it is a study in light temperature. You can see greens on the building from the parking lot light, yellows on his face from the bulbs in my house, and the sky is a color of its own.

Week 7

This is another shot I did in our apartment in Seoul. I took several of them, but in most of them my necklace is in focus, and my eyes are out of focus. I believe I used a 28mm for these, maybe 50mm. Either way, my forehead looked huge in them. Well, even bigger than it really is.

NEW FORMAT

With life getting more and more hectic, it is becoming increasingly difficult to post a photo a day. One major obstacle is the speed of scanning. I simply can not get enough film through the scanner a day to find a solid photo to post each day. In the rush of it all, I feel I am not taking enough time for discussion of the photos or to reflect on the time when I took them. Therefore, I am changing the format from one post a day to one a week.

Day 37/Week 6

Billy Delong, Beijing, China

2006

Day 36

This shot is of my sister in-law Allison decorating a cake back in 2004 at her home in Birmingham. I like the shot, but wish I had used a larger aperature to create less depth of field.

Day 35

Underpass near Sloss Furnace in Birmingham.

Day 34

Inside the Hanoi Hilton, 2001

Day 33

This is a shot of St Peter's Bascilica I took while in Rome in 2006.

Day 32

Here is another shot of the tower in Pisa. This one is a bit more traditional, but still doesn't reveal the massive numbers of tourists around it.

Day 31

This is a photo I took of Bud in his home studio in 2004 while we were in Omaha on vacation. I asked him to pick up a brush and start painting while I fired off a role of film. We bought a painting from him that day of tire tracks along a muddy road. I finally got it framed just a few months ago and it's now finally hanging in our dining room.

Day 30

This is a shot of a street performer I took right outside the Uffizi Museum in Florence. Earlier in the day, I had been walking with Khammany. I wasn't paying any attention and this guy walked up next to me and held my hand. I didn't realize it for about ten yards. When I did, it scared the s&^t out of me. Then, a crowd of people burst into laughter. Later I went back and photographed him at work.

Shortly after taking this picture, I broke the motor drive on my Canon EOS 3. I still have, and use it, but it is held together with gaffer tape. Sad Times.

Day 29

Another grainy shot of Khammany in Seoul. There are a lot of these.

Day 28

In Seoul we lived at the base of Nam San, which is a mountain in the center of the city, just north of the Han River. I use to go up on the roof top and photograph people from above. This was a girl walking on the street in front of our place. To me, she looks ghostly.

Day 27

Another Thailand beach photo. I love the reflection.

Day 26

This is a photo I took of a barber in Vietnam. At first glance I thought it was in Thailand, but while cleaning it up, I realized the print in the newspaper is Vietnamese.

Day 25

This is a photo I took in Italy in 2006 while visiting Pisa on a day trip. I was going through my pictures of the tower and the majority of them are the typical photo of the tower in it's entirety with tourist around it pretending to hold it up while their spouse snaps a picture. Although I usually like having people in my pictures, I like the fact that there is nobody in this one. This picture also reminds us that Pisa is a town where other things exist, not just the tower.

Day 24

This is a photo I took in Insadong, which is a historic neighborhood in downtown Seoul. I was shooting a friend of mine along this reflective wall when these two girls came and stood next to it in traditional Korean dresses. This neighborhoood was a good place to people watch and take candids.

Day 23

Another shot from the Terracotta Warriors in Xian.

Day 22

This is a shot I took of a Monk while on a trip to Thailand with my friend Dennis. This is the first shot I have posted to this blog that is in color. The majority of the time I shoot in black and white when using film. That's one thing I love about digital. The capability to go back and forth between color and black and white, and the ability to switch ISO at any time.

Day 21

This is another photo of Khammany. I'm not sure exactly where or when it was taken. I love the rawness of the grain and the lighting. There is another picture I took of Khammany in our apartment in Omaha that has this same feel. In it, she is sitting in the frame of the bathroom door. Hopefully, I come across it in my scanning process.

Day 20

Italy, 2006

Day 19

Here is another shot I took at the Vatican in 2006. I just got this roll developed yesterday. One factor where I begin to wonder if digital is better than film is when it comes to instant gratification. I know there are a million reasons why looking at your pictures right away is both a great tool and gratifying, but then you never get to experience that feeling of picking up your pictures at the store and seeing what they hold, or don't.

Day 18

Being a Leo, this is a shot I couldn't pass up. This is the door knocker on the main entrance to the National Museum in Cairo.

When Khammany and I moved to Seoul in 2002, and she got access to the U.S. Army base, we were able to go and use the dark room to print images. This is one of the first prints I ever did. We went to the dark room every weekend for a couple of months. It was a good experience, but ultimately, it is an art in itself and I didn't want to spend all my time printing, when I could be shooting.

I still have the print.

Day 17

This is a photo from a beach on Kopanang a tiny island in Thailand. The waters had receded in the morning when I was out on the motorcycle (ok, it was a 100cc scooter) taking photos. I shot several like this of fallen over palm trees and some of boats. Visiting Kopanang is when I realized I'm not a beach person. We were there for a week or two in 2006, and although it was relaxing, we were ready to get onto our next destination after a couple of days. In Henry Rollins book, "Smile, You're Traveling" he talks about how he never likes to stay in one city for more than a couple of nights. I completely understand him.

Day 16

It was brought to my attention today that there is a mistake on a previous poste. We went to Shanghai not in 2002, but for Thanksgiving 2003.

This shot is another from the Cartier-Bresson show. I actually like the way several of them turned out.

Day 15

This is another photo that was taken in Shanghai in 2002. It's of two guys eating at a noodle stand at lunch time. The thing I love about this is the guy on the right. He must be short on time as he slurps up his noodles and sucks up a smoke at the same time.

One interesting thing to note is the prices on the menu behind the guys. At the time, an American Dollar was worth about 8.25 Chinese Yuan.

Day 14

This was taken in the Vatican in 2006. Again, it is a photo with considerable grain. I believe this was shot on Ilford 400 and pushed to 800. Before going to the Vatican, I had seen many photos with the sun coming through the dome and thought they were "doctored" to look like that. Not true, that's the light comes through. By far, one of the most amazing man made things I have seen in my life.

Day 13

Often times when I go out to shoot an event where people are watching something, say animals in the zoo, I find it more interesting to shoot the people doing the watching. This photo was taken in Seoul in 2004 at a Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit, The Decisive Moment. If I recall, I shot this on Kodak 3200 ISO B&W film. The photos I took on this day are all about shapes and contrast. I was very pleased with how they turned out.

Day 12

This is a photo I shot in NYC in January of 2002. Khammany gave me a trip to New York for Christmas 2001. I had only had my camera for a short while, a little over a year, and spent the entire weekend shooting. Scanning this photo really excites me to find the rest of this New York trip. Some of the photos turned out really sweet.

Day 11

I'm sure young photographers will look at this photo and ask, "why is there so much noise? Doesn't he know how to fix that?" But that's not noise, it's grain. Although you can fix it, I find that I love it. This is a photo of Wendy Martin and her baby, Tana.

Wendy and Nick Martin, her husband, were my roomates in Lincoln. Actually, I was their roomate. This photo was taken in about 2001 or 2002. I'm sure Wendy has a better idea of the date. This photo was shot, hand held, with Kodak 3200 ISO film. I love that stuff, but at $10 a role now, it's painful to the pockets.

Day 10

This is another photo from the cemetery in Omaha. I'm sure a few of them will end up on this blog.

Day 9

This is another picture from Shanghai. One thing I loved and hated about Shanghai while we were there was the pollution. Besides the obvious reasons one would hate pollution, it made for poor photos of the skyline. But on the bright side, it gave a nice constant diffused light all throughout the day, allowing me to photography even during the noon hour.

Day 8

This is a shot of an old building in Omaha near the Metro Community College in South Omaha. I'm not even sure if this building is still standing. I believe it was from the old cattle feed yards.

This was from another day when I was out with my dad, although I don't think he was shooting that day. He thought I was kind of crazy for photographing this building, and I later realized it really wasn't very good conditions for a photo. But looking back, I really appreciate the contrast (I actaully took some of the contrast out after I scanned the negative) and the desolate feel of the landscape and building.

Day 7

This is a photo of a Terracotta Soldier that was moved from the site in Xian, China, into the museum. This was taken in 2006 during our trip through China. I still can't decide if I like the massive light above his head or not.

Day 6

This is by far one of my favorite pictures I've taken. It was shot in 2005 on the Cheonggye Stream in Seoul. Previously to this stream being uncovered, it was a high rise freeway. The restoration of the stream made this a great place in the city to take a walk and relax.

Day 5

This is a picture I took of my friend Dennis in my apartment in Seoul. The apartment was tiny, but I loved the natural light in the living room. To Dennis' back there is a good sized window facing north, and another to his left that runs from about two feet off the ground, all the way to the ceiling, and the length of the wall. Both windows were frosted for a nice diffused affect. I'm not sure when this photo was taken. I imagine some time in 2005 or 06.

Day 4

This is one of the first pictures I took when trying to learn about composition. It is of a train on the Union Pacific Line behind the Heartland of America Park in Omaha, Nebraska. It was shot on Kodak infrared film. If you look at it as a whole, you'll notice some fogging on the right side of the image caused by a sensor inside the camera I had at the time. I really love the "glow" look that infrared film gives. Too bad it is obsolete now.