On this day last year... 1/13/09

I drove past this old house in Glenwood, IL.

While driving around for a bit trying to find out where I should park, I found this church with a big empty lot. To one side was farmland and the other was the woods.



I had to trek through the woods and cross this slippery tree bridge over a river.

The first thing I came across was the barn, which was home to a family of racoons. They must have enjoyed the warmth from the thousands of cow pelts on the inside. I had no idea what it was at first, until I examined closer. They looked like fashionable jackets thrown all over the inside of a barn.
There was a slaughter house located just to the north. I was nervous because I could hear them working, but it looked as if this place had not been used in years.
I would have taken a picture inside there, but I was anxious to walk through and on top of the pelts. Not to mention the racoon family living somewhere in there.....


I kept a lookout for fresh or semi-fresh footprints of which I saw none. That made me feel comfortable enough to keep on exploring.
I circled around the house just to make sure nobody was living here.




I walked up to the front door and peeked in...

The light was just right when I entered. Although I wish some of the windows weren't boarded up.










I started heading upstairs when I heard some rumbling around. Assuming the worst, (e.g. squatters, or vicious baby racoons) I got the hell out of there and and made my way back through the woods and over the tree bridge and back to my car.

Good times...

On this day last year... 1/10/09

The Ho-Chunk casino in Wisconsin.
The hotel hallway.

A view from the hotel window.

On this day last year... 1/07/09

Among all the ideas I have had for this blog I do believe I can keep up with this one. I am going to post image that were shot on the same date in 2009.

These were shot somewhere in Frankfort, IL during one of my explorations.


....So, enjoy...I guess.

2 pics

I recently had 2 photographs accepted as honorable mentions to RoHo Photo Gallery contest. The images will be available for purchase on the their site...

www.rohophoto.com

or more preferably through me directly.

My images will also be published in the the book "body of work".

I've always had an incredibly hard time evaluating and critiquing my own work and feel like this was a major step forward for me.


This was taken on the last night of Christine and my honeymoon on Kauai's Coconut Coast.




This was actually taken on our first anniversary trip to the Traverse City, Michigan area at Sleeping Bear Dunes N.P.

The place I breifly called home

I have begun to dig around in my old slides and negs looking for images I have'nt seen in years. I promised myself that every sunday will be the day for scanning old work.

When I was 18, almost 19, I ran away to Oregon to live with some very close friends. Ashland is a small town in the Southwestern part of the state, just east of Medford, south of Crater Lake, north of Mt. Shasta, and home of Southern Oregon University.
My Friends, Mike Peskac, Morgan Gavin, Eric Ten Broeck, and Brett Bielinski, had moved out there a few months earlier. It made me so jealous that I couldn't go with them on this great adventure, that after a few months and a series of unfortunate events (not to be described here) I hopped on an Amtrak train and was on my way.


[pictures taken from the train of somewhere in montana and the columbia river]

Now I'm not sure if I should make this chronological or not. Which I probably should otherwise it may be confusing, if in fact anyone in the world is actually reading this. I suppose it could'nt hurt to make this a recollection of my/our past. And hopefully get some stories out of these guys.
There were some good, shady, sad, lazy, burnt-out, stupid, hilarious, and idiotic things that happened out there.



The Rougue Valley looking NW towards Ashland
see it bigger here

Mt. Ashland

Mt.Shasta

More from that session.

Not entirely sure how I feel about these images. It was an experiment with layers and textures.

otto

This is a pic I took of otto in college.
I just started looking through my old 4x5 negatives.
I scanned it in as a positive and inverted it, boosted the contrast and turned up with this.
I tried the same thing on another and could not achieve this same result, which is kind of annoying.

mike g portraits

Shot my brother about a month ago. He rocovered, it was a small wound.

The Time Traveller:

























See some more on my flickr page

See Mike's website

A sense of place 2

Lunchtime adventures... take 2.



















I shot some portraits with my brother mike last week. I am currently processing and editing and I hope to be post some of later in the week.

a sense of place 1

I have an idea for this project. I want to begin thinking about and exploring the idea of "Sense of place".

Through a feeling or a memory we feel like someplace is familiar or we are comfortable there.
We may know that place and perhaps begin to take it for granted.

It needs some more thought..., but this is an image where I feel it may be an easy starting point.

I found this place while exploring the areas around my place of employment in the spring. I remember how I felt like this area was overly industrialized and uninteresting. It is full of fast food, strip malls, and Walmart. Throughout years of working in Hazel Crest, I have discovered places that were waiting for me to find them. I began exploring the areas around me where I discovered a sanctuary right beneath my nose.