My First Photo Show

9 Mar

Growing up in Cohoes and attending La Salle in Troy left me more connected to the suburbs than anywhere else. My closest friends came from North Greenbush, or Latham, or Clifton Park, and that’s where we chose to hang out (mostly because we were geeks that liked sitting in basements and playing video games. That’s a different post.). We were spread out all over the place, and because of this I never really had the opportunity to explore our more urban environs until early adulthood. Actually, attending grad school at UAlbany in the early 2000’s was my first real introduction to all that the city of Albany has to offer, and since then I have had a completely hopeless crush on our state capital. Don’t get me wrong! I enjoy living in Saratoga Springs, but whether I’m eating at one of the many ethnic restaurants, seeing a show at The Egg, wandering around the Empire State Plaza, or catching up with friends at a Lark St. watering hole, I am happy that I always have Albany to come back to.

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I’ve given you this brief personal history lesson because this week I was able to hang my first photography show ever at the Spectrum Theatre. This independent movie house, an Albany institution, speaks to the importance of locally owned and operated businesses contributing to the revitalization of an area. I am so excited to display my work in the lobby of the theatre, to be a part of the downtown area that I have come to enjoy and so much want to be a part of. It really is amazing for me to think that my photographs are actually on display in a public place. It may seem like a small achievement to some, but for me it is the tangible realization of something that simply brings me joy. What more could a person ask for?

A little bit about the show – Faces of China
There are places in the world where I am fairly certain I will never set foot. They are completely foreign places where the people speak languages that bear no resemblance to my own, the smells are as strange to my nose as the language is to my ears, and the food touches taste buds that have sat around bored for my entire life. For some people a trip to China is a commonplace occurrence. For me, China was about as far away from home as I could ever think of traveling.  If you had asked me several years ago what the likelihood was that I would be walking across the Great Wall on a damp April afternoon, my answer would have been a definitive “slim to none.” Two years later I am still regularly amazed at all that I experienced during that 10 day school trip with 15 wide-eyed American teenagers by my side.

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In the end, it was the Chinese people who made the experience truly special. They were some of the friendliest citizens that I have encountered in all of my travels, and they were genuinely intrigued by our presence in their country. I’m sure we were a sight to behold: 21 Americans moving in unison, all with our cameras out, staring wide-eyed at everything we encountered. It was pretty commonplace for the Chinese to follow us around like paparazzi, snapping photos of us in many different states of tourist-ness. We were as foreign to them as they were to us, and it created a sort of sightseeing ballet. We would move forward and they would move around us, always smiling, always interested in where we would go next. I hope I have captured their welcoming nature and their quiet curiosity in these photos.

I hope you have the time to stop by, see a movie, support an amazing local business, and take a look at my pictures. The show runs through April 17th, and it will be up for Albany’s 1st Friday celebration on April 6th. Check out my event page on Facebook, too.

Many thanks to: My wife Amy for (mostly) happily supporting me every time I bring a new camera into our already crowded house and for always encouraging me to go after what I want in life; My friends who put up with me constantly sticking cameras in their faces; Sebastien and Bennett for encouraging some stranger from the Internet to go out and shoot and for setting the bar high for Capital District photography; and All Over Albany for giving me the opportunity to write, share my photos, and generally express myself in ways that seemed improbable in the past. You all rock!

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P.S. My grandmother says hi to The Internet!

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P.P.S If your mother shows up to your show early, this is what happens.

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The Plaza

22 Feb

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There’s something mesmerizing about the Empire State Plaza. You probably won’t admit it, so I’ll do it for you. You, all of you Capital Region residents, you actually enjoy coming here, but you’re not sure why. Don’t worry. I feel the same way, and I’m trying to work through it. The vast expanse of concrete, the bad modern art (some with dangerously sharp moving parts), the abyss-like reflecting pools (don’t get too close!), and the potential jumping off point for the coming zombie apocalypse make the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza unappealing at first glance. But there’s something else, isn’t there? It’s something that makes me want to wander around as if there is a huge secret hidden among the pebbled walkways and white marble retaining walls that many have searched for but never found. It’s waiting to be discovered, and I want to be the one to discover it.

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One thing is for sure. It’s a landmark that is unmistakably Albany. I can’t remember the number of times I sighed with relief as a kid upon seeing that unique skyline as we pulled onto I-787 from the NYS Thruway headed to my house in Cohoes after a very long road trip. I was almost home, and I could not WAIT to get out of the family minivan (we are a gassy bunch). Or perhaps I associated it with childhood visits to the NYS museum where I took a great amount of pleasure simply planting myself in their refurbished subway car, imagining myself speeding under that other city in New York that many people mistake for our capital. Even now, as I sit here typing this, I can’t pinpoint what it is about the Plaza that intrigues me so, but intrigue me it certainly does.

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Maybe it’s simply trying to figure out what people were thinking as they designed it that keeps me coming back. I imagine a group of men with thick, horn-rimmed glasses and pocket-protected white short-sleeve dress shirts standing around a table thinking “How much concrete can we dump in the middle of this city before somebody calls our bluff?” Was this just a product of the times, a design born from a typical 1950′s architectural mind where rock and steel represented strength, tried and true blue-blooded American stoicism? Or was it Rockefeller’s silent thumb-to-the-nose at bleak Soviet-era design? We’ll show those commies! We’ll build there buildings here, and then they won’t want to build them like that anymore! Nyah nyah!

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I’m reading into it too much, aren’t I?

You do have to admit that there is something very Stalinistic about the vibe there: everything in its place, emotionless, unwavering. Is that a bread line snaking out of the Justice Building?? But then look at it again. There’s symmetry and wide open spaces. There’s fresh, open air in a somewhat stagnant downtown area. There are….some trees. It’s an experiment in opposites! I’m certainly no student of design, but there’s a dichotomy here that intrigues me and evokes emotion. I wonder if someone can help me figure out why that is?

The Concourse, unfortunately, is a lost cause.

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Standing on History

19 Jan

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Do you know what it’s like to walk across history? Have you experienced standing on the centuries, touching time? There are places on the Earth that I swear are some kind of gateway to the soul of our planet. The Great Wall of China is one of these. You can sense a strange energy coursing through the stone walls and uneven stairways of this ancient monument, an odd sort of memorial to the blood, sweat, and tears of the people who gave their lives to this crazy work of timeless engineering.

I had never climbed a mountain, never had a reason to, until I found myself at the bottom of this wall. It took me nearly two hours to get to the top. It was worth every sweaty, wind-sucking moment. Being at the top of the Great Wall puts the size of things into perspective. Take my word for it: nothing is insurmountable.

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Multicol(or)tured Montreal

5 Jan

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I took this shot at the Palais de Congres, a sort of convention center in the downtown area of Montreal, Quebec, in July of 2011. It is probably my second most favorite shot of the year, and I sat on the floor in this entrance lobby for over an hour waiting for the perfect situation to present itself. I’d actually been eyeing up this building for years as I drove past it on my way out of the city, and i finally took an opportunity to explore it with camera in hand. Incidentally, I shot this “from the hip,” as they say, and I couldn’t have been any luckier. The lighting was exactly as I’d hoped (it was late afternoon), and the angle was perfect. Every time I look at this photo now I wonder what this woman would think of me broadcasting her picture for everyone to see.

Montreal is one of my favorite cities in North America. I’ve been going there to escape the humdrum of everyday life since one of my closest friends from high school started college at McGill University back I’m 1998. Since then I have been enticed by the urban landscape of this very European city so close to the US.

There’s a sort of dichotomy that happens in Montreal that I haven’t experienced in any other city. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent so much time there, but I swear there is a small town hidden among the skyscrapers and asphalt built in the shadow of Mont Royal. I’ve never felt unsafe walking around this city, no matter what time of day, and late at night there is an eerie absence of automobile traffic like I’ve never seen in a place that is equally as loud and fast paced when the sun is up. Additionally, it is one of the easiest cities to drive in, and I’ve (mostly) never felt on edge while navigating its streets by car.

I have many happy memories of times spent exploring all that Montreal has to offer. I still remember my first taste of poutine, the real food of the gods, and I’ll never forget the first time I was cut off by several rude Québécois drivers as I found my way to my friends apartment in my 1993 Toyota Paseo (a very small car when you’re 6’5″) while slowly (too slowly) realizing that the blinking green light is equivalent to our traffic light turn arrow in a left turn lane. Who knew? I am still intrigued by the maze of underground shopping malls that wind through the downtown area allowing even the hardiest French-Canadian commercialized respite from the brutal winter winds north of the border. Whoever came up with that idea was a genius.

I’ve had plenty of people over the years tell me I am crazy for choosing Montreal over Toronto as best Canadian city, but I stand by my choice. I have too many good memories over too many years to turn my back on a city that’s been very good to me. Sure it may not have the hustle and bustle of some of its larger cousins, but I’m ok with that. Give me some culturally sanctioned cheese fries, people with just enough chip on their shoulder to make socialization a healthy gamble, and a place to buy Chinese pork buns or Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, and I’m in heaven. Je t’aime, Montreal. Je t’aime.

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A Bridge and a Message

4 Jan

Brooklyn Bridge

There’s just something about bridges that makes me want to photograph them. I’m not quite sure what it is; maybe it’s the ability to play with different types of symmetry when composing the shot or it might be the availability of some typically cool backdrops. Either way, I can never pass up the opportunity to snap some pictures of these feats of engineering. Have you ever thought about how these old school bridges were built? Imagine putting one of these suckers up at the turn of the century; neither a simple nor a pretty process. Meanwhile, this is the one shot from 2011 that I’m most proud of. Out of all of the pictures I took last year, this is my favorite.

So you were promised a story behind every picture, and this one definitely has a story. However, the story actually has nothing to do with the bridge itself but rather why I was standing over the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn alone on a frigid, blustery morning in February. I had traveled to the city that particular weekend to participate in a fundraising event for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Specifically, I was part of a team (the cheering part because I signed up too late) that was riding stationary bikes in something called the Cycle for Survival. This is an annual event, basically a large scale spinning class, that happens all over the country as a way to raise money that will help to fund research into very rare cancers. One of my closest friends who was being treated at Sloan-Kettering had recently passed away, after a 2 year long fight, from one of these cancers, and I needed to make amends.

Sure, I was there to cheer on my buddy’s family as they rode, but I was also there as a way to seek forgiveness for not being the type of friend that I expected others to be to me. You see, it’s very easy for me to put things off. I am a procrastinator at heart, and unfortunately I missed out on the chance to support my friend when he needed me the most. Every time that I had an opportunity to visit him in New York City something else would come up, or nothing would come up, but I was just lazy. And he would always understand. And I would always convince myself that there would be another time, a better time, for me to go. I made promises that I didn’t keep, and those are the worst kind. For whatever reason or no reason at all I waited until it was too late to finally commit to drive down and see him. He died the day before I could get to him. I never was able to tell him so many things. I’m not sure he knew how much fun I had those nights during high school, nerding out in his basement playing video games and watching movies, or that I actually looked forward to the rounds of golf that we shared on sunny summer mornings, not because I love golf but because he didn’t care if I cheated. I never got to really tell him how much I respected him for earning his PhD in engineering at 28 years old, a degree he was never able to use. I never got to tell him how lucky I was to have him as a friend.

And here I am standing on the Brooklyn Bridge alone before the event, talking into the wind, hoping that it will carry a message for me; a message of sadness; a message of humility; a message of apology.

That’s what this picture means to me.

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Ringing it in

3 Jan

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It’s been a while, blog. You know how it is. Life happens, and suddenly it’s a new year. You haven’t written as much as you’d hoped, and there’s so much blank space staring back at you. I aim to change that in 2012. Things are going to be different around here. There’s going to be more writing, and there’s going to be more photography. Maybe my two readers will even comment some more, get a little dialogue going. Anyway, what I’m saying is that it’s not you. It’s me. And I’m sorry.

Now it’s time to jump back into the game head first. My aspiration for 2012, and it’s a lofty one, is to write about a different photo that I’ve taken every day (or at least several times per week). It doesn’t necessarily have to be one that was taken this year, but I want to link my photography back to my life experiences. I believe that we take pictures because we want people to see a story, not because we want them to see how we see things. That’s impossible. In the end everyone who has picked up a camera wants someone else to experience what they are experiencing at that moment, from the most amazing Ansel Adams landscape right down to those picture your cousin Monique posted on Facebook of her bachelorette party (nice sash, Monique).

2011 was the year that I discovered my voice with help from some pretty awesome folks (thanks Front Parlor Series and All Over Albany) and stopped feeling uncomfortable calling myself a writer/photographer (well…mostly, anyway). Now I want to share my stories with you through a passion for taking pictures, and I hope you’ll join in on the conversation. 2012 is the year that I embrace creativity. 2012 is the year that I take pictures of everything. 2012 is the year that I write just because. 2012 is the year I never apologize for being me.

I hope I bump into you along the way.

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Haunting the Capitol

2 Nov

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There are spaces in the Capital Region that will always leave me feeling a bit uneasy: my grandmother’s cellar, Guptill’s skating rink, all of Clifton Park. Ever since I was a kid I’ve expected that if the end of the world had to pick a location to begin, it would choose the Concourse level of the Empire State Plaza in Albany. I’m not sure if it’s the sterile whiteness of it all or the fact that it seems like every bad piece of modern art goes there to die. Whatever the reason, even at 31 I get the proverbial heebie-jeebies while traversing those wide open underground byways.

That’s why it’s so fitting that a main entrance to the New York State Capitol Building, one of the most beautiful structures in Albany, sits above this shiny smooth bastion of soullessness; this juxtaposition of late 19th Century artistry and architecture holding down the throbbing emptiness of mid-20th Century blah.

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How have I never entered this building? My entire life spent in the Capital Region, and I’ve completely missed out. You’d think I would have gone there on an elementary school field trip at some point, but apparently not. Instead I explored it for the first time on Halloween this year hoping to see a ghost or maybe a governor (or in the very least a governor’s girlfriend). No dice this time. Instead, what I found was a place filled with history, hallways, and lots of hand-carved heads.

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The Capitol Building is quite a stunner, with its sandstone carvings and million dollar staircase. When first designed it was predicted that the building could be built in 3 years for approximately $5 million. Turns out it took 32 years at a whopping $25 million, which today would be equivalent to about $500 million. I guess the state had spending issues even back in the late 1800′s. There’s your precedent, Occupy Albany folks.

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How could the Million Dollar Staircase (named for, as you may have  guessed, its hefty price tag) not be my most favorite spot in this entire building? I was so mesmerized by the intricate work done by the stone masons who carved art out of the sandstone that I almost did exactly what our tour guide told us not to do: tumbled to my death. Note to self – Look down when plodding toward a monstrous, seemingly man-made indoor escarpment.  Crisis averted by, of course, my cat-like reflexes. As I regained my balance, our guide continued to talk about the famous and not-so-famous faces carved into the staircase that appear to be pushing their way out of a stony prison (my ultimate nightmare). The detail on these carvings are unbelievable, right down to wrinkled brows and double chins. Two of the most famous faces you’ll see belong to a couple of men who played a large role in saving us from the potential of a country ruled by Southerners, Presidents Lincoln and Grant, their sullen faces looking down at us as if to say “Get it together, New York.”

No matter how strong my completely and utterly irrational phobia of statues is, even I can admit the tremendous skill it took to complete this project.

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Did they see a ghost?

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Nope. They always look like that.

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This was a relatively short tour at about an hour long, and there are a number of places that we weren’t able to see.  While we did spend some time learning about the origins of the Capitol’s ghost stories, the craftsman who fell to his death while working on the ceiling in the Assembly Chamber, the caretaker who burned to a crisp in a fourth floor fire, and the fruit seller who willingly plummeted to his ultimate demise off of the Senate staircase after his business went under, I would have loved to have simply sat on a bench in one of the expansive hallways and waited for a spirit to wander my way. I guess now I have a reason to go back. Meanwhile, I’d truy enjoy being able to witness an active session of our legislature. Now THAT would be a true horror show!

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