Journal Entries

I try to do or make interesting things on a regular basis. Here are some words and photos about my exploits.

Shiprock, Valley of the Gods, and the Goosenecks

I used my recent trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park as an excuse to further explore the Four Corners region of northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona, and southeast Utah, and make some tintypes along...

Great Sand Dunes Centennial Tintype Weekend

As I wrote about earlier, the National Park Service asked me to be part of their Centennial Celebrations by spending two days at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve giving demonstrations on making tintypes...

Wukoki Pueblo and the Grand Canyon Tintypes

For reasons I go into in another post, I recently made a new darkbox to facilitate making tintypes in the field. That ordeal is a different story, but here are the best results from my...

Portable Darkroom Version 2

Within a few months of learning how to make tintypes in the Haas Lab (thanks, as always, to Kari Wehrs and Brenton Hamilton) I enjoyed some quality father-son time making a darkbox in the woodshop...

Tintype Workshop: Great Sand Dunes National Park

Most of you are probably aware, but just to be sure: first, the National Park Service is celebrating its Centennial this year, and second, I love the National Park system. I don’t remember the first...

DIY Soles for my Birks

For the longest time back in college, whenever a pair of my Birkenstocks wore out (and I mean, nothing between my big toe and the pavement) I’d just hang ’em on a nail (through said...

Carnevale, Venezia, 1992

As I was clearing out some storage space I came across my boxes of old photos from the early days of my obsession with photography, and during a short trip to Maine I got access...

More than one way to create with light

While not strictly photography, per se, I have nevertheless been busy lately making things with light, just light of a different kind. One of the many very cool things at TechShop, the shared workspace I...

Great Sand Dunes National Park Tintype

I recently made another stop at the Great Sand Dunes National Park, as I often do on cross-country road trips. This trip – only 5400 miles, from Rhode Island to Maine, then down through West...

Type Drawer Coffee Table

One of the first things I saw on my tour of TechShop was the ShopBot, a computer-controlled router than could take material 4ft x 8 ft x several inches thick. If I hadn’t been sold...

Ash Island

Here’s an example of the difference shifting about 15 feet to one side can make for a composition. The shot above and the shot below were taken within those few feet of each other, and...

Drunk varnish

Here is an example of what happens when the varnish eats your image (above). In this case I had just added (too much) Everclear (190 proof alcohol) to the varnish to try and solve a...