So, no one called me out on it, but in the interest of disclosure, I will ‘fess up: I lied. Know how I said the skates in the last post were K2s? Well, they’re not. Those are my old Rollerblades. * My K2s were squat and bull like, soft boot and hard cuff. On their own they reminded me of a…More
Finding soul
Belgrade, Serbia I’m presently consumed by wanting. There’s garden variety wanting that happens all the time: the new laptop because the close-to-4-year-old one I have is having trouble drawing enough juice to power processor heavy tasks. All the books in my wishlist. More money. Less body fat. To ride the Trans-Siberian Express. And so on. Then there’s must-have-or-will-DIE kind of wanting. Utterly irrational,…More
Radio silence
I’ve been blogging since 1999, when Blogspot was all the rage. Self publishing was a revelation, as was the ability to connect with people I would have otherwise never encountered. Once I started blogging, I couldn’t stop. Writing for the public, even if that public was three people, was my first taste of creative production, this thing we call…More
On resonance
The other day I found Red Bull’s Singapore Seven series – a set of interviews with local movers and shakers about how they got to where they are, and what it is that keeps them going. I went through all 7 of them, back to back. Rapt for once: a non-standard response to internet video, which is…More
Rice
Over dinner, we tell each other about our mothers and rice cookers. I once took a cross-continental flight with a rice cooker on my lap. It was a modest appliance which only cooked for 4, not 7; miniaturized for the student. At the point of departure, having managed to avoid this thing for weeks, my mother…More
Belgrade to Bar, and Back Again
May 2016, Serbia to Montenegro “Are you looking for something specific?” the big, craggy man sitting next to me wanted to know, having listened to my camera schnicking away since he got in from one of the small towns near the border. “No,” I responded. “Just the scenery. It’s beautiful outside.” “It’s beautiful to you because you’ve never seen it before,” he said, waving a…More
Review: The Little Strap That Could (Domke 1″ Gripper w/ Swivel)
(Originally published on Kage Collective.) The Domke 1″ Gripper Strap with Swivel once saved me. In 2013, not long after arriving in Mexico City, I’d made the mistake of getting into the Metrobus – as the name suggests, a rapid transit system on wheels instead of rails – at rush hour. It was packed. I’d sardined…More
The ticketing interlude
The first thing that hits as you when you enter the ticketing area of Belgrade’s main station is the smell of piss, then the sudden muting of the urban bustle just outside its walls. We walked in, didn’t see any signs we knew how to read, and decided to start at the information desk. “Hello,” I said to the lady behind…More
Mayday
It pissed down all day, the skies soggy like my feet. St. Sava Church, monumental in the true scale of the word, a veined marble behemoth calmly dwarfing the surrounding urban motley. The church of St. Sava has been under some stage of construction since the society was that was created for this purpose, was founded in 1895. Wars, I hear, get in the…More
Belgrade in Transit
I’ve been shooting from transport – mostly the public variety – for a long time. Travelling by bus or train has been something I’ve done my whole life, and the ebbs and flows of commuting are familiar, no matter where in the world I am. I’ve shot from buses, trains, planes, ferries, tug boats, and tuk tuks. In Belgrade, I get to add the trams…More
On Writing Everyday
So much for my experiment of posting everyday; managed to fail at that one right out of the gate. Truth is, I simply don’t do enough that is interesting to write about everyday. Take today, for instance. Utterly typical day. I got lost in a book for 3 hours without meaning to. I’m re-reading A Song of Ice and…More
Shadow and texture, Belgrade
Belgrade is all shadow and texture to me right now, a riot of geometry and hue with a thousand ever-changing facets. The old buildings with their patina of post-conflict grit are incredibly photogenic, if only to the guileless tourist. We’ve been doing little other than walking around in the past week and a half that we’ve been here (aside…More
A Camera With My Name On It and Other Things
Early April 2016, Copenhagen A week before we came to Belgrade, Flemming and I met the man himself, Mr FujIb Thordal (key Fujifilm account manager in Denmark), who had a big box of goodies for us. I unwrapped: A production X-Pro 2 with my name on it X-Photographers Book 2016, with my picture in it Fujifilm 5…More
Wet Collodion (Belgrade Day 5)
I got into photography from sheer stubbornness. When I first picked up a camera, people told me, among other things, that I was wasting my time, that I was ridiculous to think I could do it, that photography wasn’t for someone like me. So of course, it became the one thing I had to do.…More
Belgrade Day 4: No rest for the wicked
Some days I succumb to fatigue and leave it to do with me, what it will. Thoughts are dark, dreams of even less light. Just walking out the damn door is a challenge. I see-saw at that inside-outside threshold like a wary animal. Outside there is noise and bright light and people who will look at me and might even talk…More
charlene winfred 